Sometimes the player dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.
MINECRAFT, the blocky sandbox survival sim, is the most popular video game ever made. A large part of its appeal is that its mining and crafting feel boundless. The game world consists of trillions of cubes, nearly all of which can be broken, transformed, and replaced. Each map germinates from a random seed. As the player explores, new blocks—a pagan trilogy of trees, grass, and stone, arranged into crayon-hued prairies, forests, mountains, oceans, deserts, caves—continue to generate, pushing the map’s edges toward infinity. There is no plot. There is, however, an end: Indeed, dedicated players might uncover the End, an aptly named astral dimension where, after you slay the Ender Dragon and jump through an End Portal, you experience what player…