To quote my twitter description, I am quite “…obsessed with all things Minecraft and YouTube.” And because of this obsession (or, rather to feed my obsession further), I watch quite a lot of Minecraft related videos on Youtube.
There are many of cute and funny Minecraft animations and there are plenty of someone’s favorite Let’s Players’ vlogs to ogle on but what I watch the most is Minecraft Let’s Play videos.
I enjoy watching someone else play Minecraft. It is fun to see someone else building their own unique world, enjoying awesome adventure maps, tinkering with brand new mods or generally being goofy with their buddies, all using the same platform that I happen to love. One top of all that, many of Youtube’s Let’s Players are genuinely funny, talented folks (some of them are even nice I heard…gasp!) who like to play the game that I adore. What is there not to like about!!!
I guess I am going into all that because I recently read an an article from BBC called ‘Minecraft videos – why are they so addictive?’ While, the author shares some truly impressive statistics (for example, there are about 42 million Minecraft related videos on YouTube and in March of 2015 alone Minecraft related videos received more than – wait for it! – 3.9 billion views!!) article ended with many questions but no answers and maybe speculation or two. Yes, it is mildly annoying as I was really expecting some sort of answers for question posed by the title. However, as it is pretty obvious that the author neither plays Minecraft nor watch Minecraft Youtube videos, we just file it under ‘another failed attempt by non-Minecraft-player to understand the fatal allure of this block-hole.’ (I made a funny!)
With all that being said, I think I am going to take a stab at the question: Minecraft videos – why are they so addictive?
- It’s about Minecraft! – Minecraft is one of those games that you either get it or you don’t. If you are one who ‘got’ it, then all these videos about what you find enjoyable is quite enjoyable.
- Minecraft is not just a game but platform. – Claudia in the movie Kingpin may be every guy’s type but Minecraft is every game-lovers’ type (except aforementioned ones who don’t get it). There are plenty of monsters to kill, treasures to be hunted, farms and villages to cultivate. List of things you can do in Minecraft is truly endless. Minecraft is not a best selling book that most of popular video games are, but it is a language that is being used to write beautiful poetry, blood-curdling horror and in some case silly garbage. And they are gloriously entertaining!
- There are so, so many of them to choose from. – Please refer to my 42 million and 3.9 billion statistic from BBC above.
- It’s short-term commitment. – As our average attention span, as a species, decreased to pretty dismal level, who likes to watch something lengthy and heavy, unless it’s like, Games of Thrones, eh? With an average length of 4 minutes and 20 seconds and their incredible inventory, YouTube Minecraft related videos are perfect way to watch as little, or as much (to my shame, I am not a stranger to YouTube binge watch but that’s an article for another time…) as Minecraft fans want.
Why do you think Minecraft videos on YouTube are so addictive? Please let me know your thoughts in the comment section below!
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