The Loneliness of Minecraft

Minecraft is a game where you build stuff with blocks. At night, zombies roam the surface so unless you have built yourself a secure shelter, you are going to end up as monster munch.

I got a little carried away during my last session, which clocked nearly 4 straight hours, and ended up building a whole village on the face of a mountain. I achieved this by chiselling out several caves and building wooden balconies and connected the rooms using corridors deep within the mountain.

I kitted the rooms out with chairs, cupboards and paintings and even made the little beds face east so that they would look upon the rising sun in the morning. I built a social chamber, which had the biggest balcony of all, and placed chairs and tables around a decorative rug. I built a kitchen big enough to cater for all the inhabitants of the mountain-face village.

Then I realised that there were no inhabitants, I was the only villager. The game has no other human characters and your only form of social interaction comes in the form of a zombie or skeleton.

At the perfect moment the game’s soundtrack kicked in and I looked at the crudely pixelated skyline. I was left feeling sad and very alone. There were around ten beds in the village and yet no more than one would ever be occupied at a time.