I should have written this post years ago when this game first came out, but as time fly’s by we learn and experience the world filling our minds with new ideas.

For those of you who are on another planet, don’t have a 4-10 year-old, don’t keep up with gaming, or news in general, I will attempt to explain what Minecraft is.

Minecraft is a Survival / Horror game where everything is made of blocks.

Almost every block in the game can be broken down and used in crafting. You have to punch a tree just to get the wood to break it down into sticks so you can make your first tools.

You need to craft these things because you start out with absolutely nothing. The kicker is that you have to make some sort of makeshift hut or house before night falls. Why before night? Because zombies, skeletons, spiders, and other horrible monsters come out at night.

Once you get a handle on the world and start to explore you start to work your way down into the depths of the earth. Down there are the same horrors that you can find outside at night, but also valuable metal and gems to make better weapons and armor.

I’m going to stop there, but I’m sure you get the gist of where I’m going. In summary, it’s a giant sandbox of fun, exploration, with crafting as the glue holding everything together.

This being a Tech Evolution blog I wanted to use this game as an example of where I believe gaming is headed.

Minecraft is the most popular of the many games of its type. It is also only the beginning of the fully manipulatable worlds genre. It’s like the 8-bit games of the ’80s and ’90s. I’ve seen many games similar to Minecraft on Kickstarter lately. The newer games have improved graphics and some of the aspects I’m about to talk about.

The thing that is so great about Minecraft is that you can manipulate everything in the world. Every block in the world can be picked up, changed, and placed down in some other part of the world. This concept is not a new one, but before Minecraft, no other game had successfully pulled this type of thing off with millions of people supporting it.

As hardware improves I can see these games getting even more detailed in what ways they can be manipulated. Imagine scooping up a handful of dirt, and instead of a generic block going into your inventory, the dirt is just in your hand. Each pebble and dirt particle is an item that is able to be manipulated and does not disappear when moved around. Wood, instead of being generic blocks could be split like how the wood in the real world is split.

The future of gaming is making worlds that are nearly indistinguishable from our world in every aspect.

I see games like Sword Art Online in our future. Games like this are where you can simply turn off your brain’s perception of the real world and instead transfer that perception inside the games world. Just like in the Matrix in the movie The Matrix.

Imagine being able to play a game as an ant. Learning how to manipulate your 6 legs would be an amazing experience. Or perhaps you want to be a bird and learn how to fly. The choices will be nearly limitless.

Videos and Movies will be a thing of the past as well. Replacing them will be recorded “Experiences” that you can share with other people. These will work in the same way these games will work, you just don’t have control of what happens.

As a gamer, I’m looking forward to this new age of gaming.

Do you think we will ever get technology this advanced? Let me know what you think in the comments.