For years Minecraft was this weird blind-spot in my gaming history. I was a massive gamer, but I never touched one of the biggest games in the world. For whatever reason, it never interested me. And then, my friend suggested we start a server with a group of us so I finally had an excuse to check it out. Within just a few minutes of playing, I was hooked. I spent the next few months fully investing any time I could into building out our home base on our server. At first we started with just a house, and then we added a farm, animal pens, huts with automated machines, and an entire village we constructed so we could have villager neighbors. Every day I'd log in and go "OK what am I working on today?" Any time I'd finish a project, I'd start a new one - whether it was building an alchemy tower to hold our enchanters, or an elaborate rail system in the Nether that we could use to fast travel around the overworld. Meanwhile, while I was working hard mining and collecting resources, my wife would love taking what I've found to work on beautifying our property.

Minecraft is truly a one-of-a-kind video game that allows you to really play and engage with it any way you want. We built an entire empire on our server and it's some of the most fun I've ever had in a video game.