Inspirational Video Games : Visiting Minecraft

There's a video game that I play with my brother called Minecraft. The gameworld is comprised of thousands upon thousands of blocks. They could be ore or wood or stone or dirt, or any of a hundred different types of blocks. By applying different tools to different blocks, you can mine and harvest the blocks to get items like silver or wool, tools like axes and shovels, food, or any of a number of resources. The Survival Mode of the game involves consistent hunting of chickens, cows, and pigs for food, as well as farming, mining, building, and defending yourself against hostile mobs like creepers and zombies that come out at night. It is exhilarating and educational, like the novel Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, where a teenage boy survives a plane crash in the middle of an uncivilized area of Canada, and must learn to survive the wild using only his hatchet. By mining and collecting blocks, you have the ability to build yourself a house, a farm, domesticate and breed animals, and even create railroads. My brother found these amazing renderings of creations built on Minecraft Survival Mode-- absolutely breathtaking.

Every block had to be mined from the ground (or trees) and placed individually.

A build like this takes several weeks to several months of daily gameplay.

The creativity that Minecraft offers is beyond almost anything I've ever used,
outside of professional CGI programs.

And it's a video game!

Now, the point of this post:

Programs like Minecraft make anything possible. A castle in the sky, a space ship on Mars-- your imagination is your limit! For me, Minecraft is just like any other art form. It's an engaging and fun art form that utilizes technology to make creativity accessible and enjoyable for anyone. The unlimited nature of Minecraft should inspire writers and artists, because it truly displays how much your imagination plays a part in art. These renderings are the product of years of practice, and have been built by Minecraft architects, but they stand as a testament to the power of imagination. Especially with today's technology, anything and everything you can possibly imagine can come out through different forms of art. So why not dream big? Why not imagine the most insane things? Be fearless! The only thing that limits you today is your imagination-- and your determination to see your dreams become real.