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Comment by gswdh | Hacker News Reader

I love gaming as much as the next person - I spent most of my teens playing Half Life and the like.

I have a genuine question as I’m very naive to Minecraft. I see a lot of time / thought / energy dedicated to making things in Minecraft and can’t help but feel it’s a bit of a waste of time. I think I feel this way because I don’t know much about Minecraft or the community. Other than for pleasure (which is a plenty good enough reason on its own) is there any value generated here? People can obviously do what they like with their time but I would much rather spend my precious hours working on something to add to the real world.

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Why do people go for pottery classes, watch tv, ride bicycles, run, read books, or otherwise do anything other than work? I don't mean to be antagonistic but I find your question to be flawed in the first place; why do we have to always "generate value"?

Also, what is "the real world"? At this point, considering how massively popular Minecraft is, Minecraft __is__ an extension of the real world at this point. It's very unlikely that we will ever lose Minecraft to history. Commit the worldsave to a repo and that world is as good as the real world.

It depends a lot on who's playing. For me it's entertainment, and yes... it may be a time waste? but sometimes I need it. Why should we work every single hour we are awake?

I've found positive outcomes from playing the game as well, beyond gaming: for example it helped me realize that you can have a lot of things (in game: build materials) but it doesn't mean anything if you don't use them (in game: build something!). It also helped me reconnect with old friends (we play together in our server, hop into a voice channel sometimes and we also share unrelated stuff outside the game). I know it helped some people get through the pandemic.

It's also a good motivation for kids (and grown-ups!) to learn basic server administration, plugin development, community moderation, and some people also like to fiddle with textures as well.

The game is a creativity source, very much like Lego bricks. The things you do in-game may not have much value, but I'd say it yields great results in the players :)

Are you trying to make a statement in the form of a question? It is a video game, take of it what you will.

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