The best game I’ll never play

I’m incredibly uncreative. There’s a slew of very well-meaning people in my life who’ll tell me “you’re not uncreative, you’re just not artistic!” Which I think they intend to be a compliment but kind of twists the knife in a little further- “you are creative! You just can’t draw, paint, make music, write, act etc.”

Thank you very much, feeling great now.

My wife on the other hand, is amazing! She’s a professional art therapist, amazing painter, she plays the piano, she can go from laughing to straight faced immediately, like, just stop instantly. It’s incredible. 

But this isn’t an article about my fantastic wife, or the fact that I don’t know how to hold a pencil. This is an article about Minecraft.

Minecraft has never appealed to me for two reasons: the first is the opening paragraph, and the second is the fact that after working my entire adult life in retail, I’ve been so immersed in clothes, notepads, lunchboxes, action figures and books tied to the game that I’m completely fucking sick of it. I’ve never even played it!

Terrible! Anyway, that’s a lie - I played Minecraft once.

I was hammered after one of those cool, fringe-y theatre shows that everyone pretends they love (whilst googling ‘not allowed to smile watching play?’), and one of the uh, sideshows? Exhibits? Was a laptop with a carefully curated Minecraft world on it. The creator had used the near-infinite resources to make a lovely little house full of stations which activated small autobiographical voice clips and the like. It was a wonderful, immersive, interactive storytelling experience and whilst I couldn’t tell you what the meat and potatoes of it was (remember: hammered), I do know I left feeling not inspired, but appreciative of what can be achieved if you are patient and creative.

Remember earlier when I mentioned my brilliant wife? Well as I said she’s an art psychotherapist, and with Omicron being welcomed in by our fucking useless government (and those dogshit seat warmers on the other side of the bench) with the readiness and glee of the England football team returning from the Euros, all of her work has been moved online. Not great when you specialise in a practice that pretty much necessitates face to face interactions! After a moan and accepting this reality, she did what any self respecting boffin would do: research online art therapy practices extensively to inform and better her work. 

You’ll never guess what she came across in her studies- tons of research of people using Minecraft in therapy sessions. People use it to help people with ASD overcome sensory issues, build relationships and develop social skills, others used survival mode to help kids understand their trauma, and use what happens in the game as a launchpad for developing coping strategies in the real world. I’ve been looking into it a little myself, and am currently fascinated by the research documented in this article by Annuska Zolyomi and Marc Schmalz.

I’m not creative. I’ve not read into this as much as I could, but seeing my wife get excited over this game, and the way it’s being used for incredibly meaningful change in individuals makes me think that Minecraft is the greatest video game that I’m never, ever going to play.