Minecraft
Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. -minecraft.net, 2012-2016
Minecraft is written in Java... was a wholely true statement from 2009 to about 2011. If you picked up Minecraft recently, and certainly if you play on a phone, tablet, or console; that isn't the Minecraft you know. Your Minecraft, written in C++, began as Minecraft: Pocket Edition in 2011.
Pocket Edition (PE)
Summer 2013. Then-President Barack Obama had recently begun his second term, U.S. states were legalizing gay marriage left and right, and Sharknado was hot off the cutting room floor. I was in LEGO summer camp.
Of course, I had heard of this "Minecraft" thing before; every kid then had. 2012 was The Golden Age of Minecraft, they say. Another kid at the summer camp was talking about it, and I just had to know more. I got home and bought Pocket Edition on my mom's iPad for $7. Opening my first survival world, I knew that I knew so little, even the animals in the game knew more than me. They probably did then.
I got a hand-me-down iPhone 3GS and I would play with my brother, him on the iPad. We built all sorts of silly houses out of whatever dirt or gravel we scrounged in survival. We made TNT towers in creative. Did you know that TNT didn't go off in PE creative mode then? We had fun. I played with my friends too. They would come over and we would have the 2014 10-year-olds' equivalent of a LAN party.
It wasn't anywhere near the Minecraft my friends were playing. They played on PC, with the real Minecraft, written in Java, with all its features and modding capability. That's what everyone on YouTube played too, not that I figured out how to work YouTube until months later. My family had at the time a laptop running Windows 8.1. My dad has called Windows 8 "the worst operating system ever." One night, he handed me the laptop and an Ubuntu Linux DVD. I Imagine I looked at him with stars in my eyes. A real computer, all for me!
It was at this point that I really started playing what we now call Minecraft: Java Edition. I had certainly played a few times before then—I had an account, and the librarians liked me enough to let me go to the teen Minecraft nights—but this was so different, you must understand. I got to play with all my friends who played on PC. When we moved, my parents helped me with a Skype account to stay in touch with my friends. I spent countless late nights playing Minecraft online.
Minecraft has two main "gamemodes:" survival and creative. In survival, you must gather resources to make food, tools, shelter, and infrastructure, while fighting off the monsters lurking in the dark. In creative, you have infinite access to the entire inventory of resources, can fly freely, and are immune to nearly all danger.
Creative Mode
coming soon