Source: AFP
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Since the first version of Minecraft was released to the public 15 years ago, the block-based world-building game has become a global phenomenon.
Players of all ages and backgrounds have used the game for everything from educational projects and architecture to building communities and creating artwork.
With over 300 million sales, it is the best-selling video game of all time.
AFP spoke to four Minecraft users about how the game has affected their work and their lives:
The streamer
Yang Ji-yeong has become one of South Korea’s most prominent gaming influencers over the past decade, growing an audience of millions across multiple streaming platforms, including YouTube. The main attraction: videos of him playing Minecraft.
Source: AFP
“I think the biggest advantage of Minecraft is the sheer freedom it offers. It doesn’t have a fixed set of rules and goals, but it gives the player the freedom to play in any way they see fit,” the 34-year-old told AFP.
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Yang’s shows, originally just one on weekends, became so popular that she was able to quit her job and focus on streaming full-time, she told Yonhap news agency in 2016.
Today, Yang said, Minecraft continues to offer new ways to connect with people.
“I was also recently invited to play on a foreign server and was surprised to learn that I could play, interact and communicate with users from different parts of the world without sharing the same language or culture,” he said.
The student
Raphael Mesbah, from Paris, says he discovered Minecraft when he was five or six years old.
Some 15 years later, he is a medical student and still deeply committed to the game.
Source: AFP
“Minecraft is like a second life,” the 20-year-old told AFP.
In 2022, Mesbah decided to embark on an extremely ambitious project: building the Paris metro system, line by line, in Minecraft.
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The big plan required help, and Mesbah found it on Grindr. By building a community of Minecraft players through the gay dating app, he has already managed to complete three subway lines.
“It’s a simple and cheap game, many people of my generation already have an account on it,” he told AFP.
“It’s the game of my heart and I always end up coming back to it.”
The virtual library
Minecraft offers a colossal canvas to build entire worlds for its players to explore, and people have built everything from fantasy houses to highly detailed replicas of real structures like airports.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) showed how the game could help fight censorship in parts of the world where access to information is tightly controlled or even banned.
Source: AFP
The NGO opened “The Uncensored Library” inside Minecraft on March 12, 2020, containing banned writings from journalists in more than seven countries, including Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
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“All online platforms are channels that allow censorship to be circumvented,” Vincent Berthier, director of technology at RSF, told AFP.
“Minecraft, which has massive firepower, still flies under the radar,” he said.
“Minecraft or Fortnite are definitely video games, but they also help people communicate and exchange.”
Built with more than 12.5 million blocks by internationally acclaimed design studio Blockworks, the library is regularly updated by RSF teams.
Nearly 25 million people from 160 countries have visited the library since its inception, according to the organization.
The school teacher
When Graham Warden became a school teacher in the US state of Texas, he found that Minecraft was an “ubiquitous part” of the students’ lives.
The 32-year-old told AFP that the game’s structure presents a useful tool for learning and problem-solving because players “think in a different way” while manipulating objects and environments in Minecraft.
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“These are all things we can’t do in real life, so being able to change the mental environment makes it a great tool for all kinds of things, including learning,” he said.
Warden said Minecraft has also become a way for him to connect with people.
“Recently, as I found out I’m autistic, I had to find ways to connect in a different way, because I never really felt like I connected with anyone,” she said.
“I met a group that uses Minecraft as a means to have community. Having a repetitive task like mining in the game can provide the monotony necessary to inspire conversation, as odd as that sounds.”
Source: AFP