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If you’ve ever been to the beach, you’ll probably have noticed there are two types of kids – those who have fun building sandcastles and those who prefer kicking down other peoples. I’ve been playing a game called Minecraft recently, and it strikes me as a perfect online representation of this constant cycle of creation and destruction.

A nice castle that someone has spent a lot of time on

In Minecraft you control a character who runs round a world made of 3 foot cubed blocks. Sharing this world with you are are other people with their own characters. You have the power to create more of these blocks, and also the power to destroy any blocks already in the environment. By doing this the idea is that you make huge, complicated constructions and indeed I have seen some incredibly elaborate pieces of work. Its actually quite surprising just how much expression you can exhibit using just the crude tools you are given. Obviously the creations are quite blocky, but in a world where everything is blocky its easy to look past that. You end up with a world where everyone is making clever constructions, and appreciating other peoples constructions, and sometimes even working together on a larger piece. Or at least thats how things are intended to work, in the world where people only build sandcastles.

Unfortunately in this world there are also people who like to destroy sandcastles, and Minecraft provides some quite evil ways of doing this. Of course there is the obvious route of just smashing the blocks people have made. Its certainly much easier to run round randomly smashing things than it is to meticulously place them in the first place. However we have to remember that this is an environment where people are encouraged to get creative. Included in the game is water and lava, which flows anywhere that there isn’t something on the ground to stop it. You can use this to make rivers and pools if you like to build sandcastles, but if you like to kick them down you can also use it to flood any caverns or underground structures people might have made. Once a structure gets flooded it takes a great deal of work to clear out, and even when you have your attacker can just breach the wall again to let more water in.

This room is in the process of being flooded by lava

Its very interesting to watch the power struggle between the builders and the destroyers, abut also very warming to see the determination of some people to keep rebuilding no matter what happens. To watch someone destroy in a few minutes what you spent hours or days making must be heartbreaking, but these players just go and build it right back up again ready for the next challenger to come along.

I’d highly recommend you head to the site and have a look – it runs in a browser so theres no need to install anything. Just don’t get too upset if you find that your creations don’t last more than a day or two.