You are the player.
Wake up.
minecraft, originally published in 2009 by Mojang, is a first person (or second, or third!) sandbox game that centers around YOU! your creativity is allowed to come to life in a game that my parents OFTEN referred to as "that lego videogame."
minecraft relies solely on the creativity of the player. you can farm, mine, fight in dungeons, create wonderful stories, and bond with your friends.
i'm extremely fortunate to be a part of the last true generation with a healthy screen:outdoors ratio as a child. my days were filled with wonderful memories of jumping on a trampoline, creating mud pies, and sitting in the grass until my skin was itchy. but my nights? my nights were filled with minecraft.
as may be obvious with some other pages on this site, i had an XBOX 360 when i was a kid -- i actually still own it and repaired it in the summer of 2025! i still remember when my sister came up to me, begging me to help her in her attempt to get Minecraft XBOX 360 edition. me, being 6 at the time, wanted something to do with my sister, so i obviously said yes.
this quickly became my favorite thing to do. every sleepover, early morning, late night, hell, every time my friends came over, Minecraft was placed gently into the disc drive and could be heard spinning for hours until everyone eventually had to go home.
it consumed me. now that i think about it, it was one of my special interests since i first got into it. it's something i've turned to in the darkest moments of my life, and something that has helped me in so many situations it's actually insane. every possible version of Minecraft i could own, I do!
i was in March of my seventh grade year when COVID hit. being alone for days with nothing but my phone is something i'll never forget. i remember hooking my friend's nintendo switch up to my TV and watching YouTube all day, looking for an escape.
this was nowhere near my first experience with Minecraft YouTube. my childhood was full of PopularMMOs, Little Kelly, Scuba Steve, and StampyCat. however, as you grow, what you watch grows with it. and it's 2020. I wonder what's popular on YouTube? hint: DreamSMP
having just gotten out of SMPLive and SMPEarth, DreamSMP was the next logical step. I had already been watching WilburSoot and JSchlatt for a couple years. I grew up with Technoblade. but something strange happened with DreamSMP: it became a cultural phenomenon. goodbye COVID depression, hello DreamSMP!
that's so cringey but that's literally how everyday felt. waking up and crawling out of your depressive episode by watching grown men play minecraft. that's just how the times were and if you were there you knowalso in the heat of COVID, i became a victim of abuse. i drifted away from friends and family who just wanted to be close to me because i couldn't handle being around them (also it was COVID and we were just around eachother too much and also i was like 13).
but, something strange happened. as my love for DreamSMP grew, i wanted to share it! i began showing my mom recap videos of streams so that she would be able to keep up with all of the lore, and our relationship slowly started began to heal over years of pre-teen disgustingness.
since she knew how much I wanted a PC (mainly to play Java Minecraft), she found a computer that her work was getting rid of to bring home to me around my eighth grade year. and oh, God, how my life began.
my friend had just gotten her fancy gaming PC and was invited by a boy at another school to join a Minecraft server that one of his friends was hosting. and so, since i was suddenly available to play, i was invited too! my internet was shit due to being in the rural midwest circa 2020, but i swear that's still the most fun i've ever had playing minecraft. i couldn't stay on the server for more than 15 minute without timing out, and there were multiple occasions where I died and lost my stuff just because i didn't know I had died lmao.
i made more friends, friends i still have today! we still play minecraft together, despite all the years and distance that have been put between us. i'm extremely grateful for every experience this silly little block game has given to me over the 13 years i've been playing.
there's something truly special to this game that I feel has been yet to be replicated by other video games over the past couple of years. without this game, i definitely wouldn't be who i am today, and i'm grateful to everyone who stuck with me while i used minecraft as an outlet to some of the darkest and roughest parts of my life.
if you need any recommendations on versions, i would definitely recommend 1.15, 1.16, 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, and 1.21.8 (only because of the happy ghasts). any earlier vesions to 1.15 is good, but some of the newer versions i'm wary about but not 1.21.8 ONLY BECAUSE OF THE HAPPY GHASTS.
these were the versions where i was happiest (besides xbox 360 edition) and i feel like they have a good block - to - creativity ratio. shelves are damn nice though.
for media recommendations, i recommend:
special shoutout to all the people who liked my original shrine. thank you for loving such a integral piece of this site's history, and i hope you enjoy the new one just as much!!
- leith
And the universe said the darkness you fight is within you. And the universe said the light you seek is within you. And the universe said you are not alone. And the universe said you are not separate from every other thing. And the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code. And the universe said I love you because you are love. And the game was over and the player woke from the dream. And the player began a new dream, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.