Minecraft Has Outgrown Video Games

From education and art to content creation and community

Since its release in 2009, Minecraft has undoubtedly become one of the most successful video games ever. But it is so much more than just a game. Because of its sandbox-style and countless different game mechanics, Minecraft shines in many different areas from education to content creation.

Village- and farmhouses with fields and a city in the background in Minecraft, image by Christian Behler.

Education

One of the big topics in traditional education is gamification. It means introducing video game elements to learning environments to motivate the students. Minecraft does this in inverse. It is a game, but by playing it you can learn a lot about many different topics:

Electronics

Minecraft is the perfect tool to learn about electrical engineering. The Redstone mechanics in the game are a one to one representation of logic circuits, which are the foundation of all modern microcontrollers including computers. You can literally build a computer in Minecraft.

I personally used Minecraft to get a better understanding of logic gates. For my computer science degree, I had to take an electrical…