[bstar77]

For the people who criticize Minecraft as an underwhelming gaming experience, you need to look at the game from a different perspective...

For a young child, this game has a tremendous lure... it's very simple to visually take in. All of the objects you build with bricks are abstract representations of real life things. For a child, visualizing a castle in minecraft is much easier to process than showing them one in a Lord of the Rings movie.

The other thing is that there's really no rules. You can pretty much do whatever you want... build stuff, explore, play the actual campaign, fight bad guys, etc. This is the exact opposite of the 'cinematic' experience most other games try to create. Kids will bec creating their own storyline in their minds.

Minecraft is the ultimate game of imagination and kids will eat it up like candy. This is why it's made so much money and has become a cultural phenomenon.

[mmahemoff]

Is it really a child's game? I got the impression it had pretty broad appeal especially as it's programmable.

[bstar77]

It definitely has tremendous broad appeal, but I think the characteristics I mentioned above is what puts it into this category of it's own. Notch has done an amazing design job of baking in advanced gameplay without affecting any of the accessibility.