I’ve been hesitating to write about Minecraft for about a week now because I wanted this article to go live on our main site first. I first heard about Minecraft probably six months ago or so. In fact, I think I remember taking a peek at it last April, but that could be wrong. At any rate, I didn’t get too involved with it. I was deep into League of Legends at that point, so there really wasn’t time in my gaming schedule.

Fast forward to today, when my LoL schedule has become fairly casual. Now I understand the appeal of the open world. It’s an incredible game, despite the primitive graphics and the fact that the game is still in beta. If you’ve played it, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, well, you need to.

I won’t say much more than that for now, mostly because I’ve written an article for our parent site about the importance of Minecraft’s design. Here’s a quick excerpt:

For all of the fun and magic that makes “Minecraft” great, the thing that makes “Minecraft” important is its design. The game’s original developer, a guy named Markus Persson that the “Minecraft” community knows as Notch, did something a lot of AAA developers would laugh at. Instead of trying to immerse the player in a world by using narrative, he chose to focus on gameplay. By simplifying the controls, the world, even the graphics, Persson created a game world that players can call their own, a world they want to shape and be a part of in ways that other games don’t allow. My own first experience with “Minecraft” was so overwhelming I actually sat and giggled as I played. There is so much potential – truly unbounded creative potential – that I was immediately transported back to childhood, sitting in front of an upturned bucket of Legos, wondering what I should build next.

You can check out the full article on Bullz-Eye.com.