@nev

I relate. I have been playing Minecraft not seriously but off and on since the alpha days, and recently started playing with several younger/more serious gamer friends. Not kids but 10-15 years younger than me. I was way behind in Minecraft tech and style, but I have a special cape because I was an og mojang account or something and lore about "how the game used to be"

P.S. I guess I also have an odd way of playing Minecraft. I've never fought the Ender Dragon, I have little interest in taming animals; it took years for me to take advantage of enchantments, potions, villager trading, etc.

P.P.S. I actually think Minecraft becoming a "kids' game" was good, I think it helps cut down on general toxicity. Obviously kids' games can be horribly exploitative, addictive, etc. (see Roblox) but it's not quite the same as, like, LoL or WoW.

Combined with the acquisition by Microsoft and the vaguely educational aspect there's just, like, an extra modicum of care that goes into development—like not being able to factory farm dolphins or pandas, lmao, or when they were originally going to let you feed parrots cookies until people pointed out it's dangerous to do that in real life.

Obviously there is a lot of problematic stuff baked into Minecraft and "world-building" games in general (I blogged about it back in 2011!), and Microsoft is evil and all that. But it's gone down a better path than it would have if it remained an indie game for and by 20somethings.