The game that asks you to set the goals yourself

Pocket edition. This is a shorter version of a longer article; you can read the full edition when you have more time.

You open the world, wander around twice, tidy a chest and close it after ten minutes. You weren't bored. You had no goal to bring, and the game didn't come with one built in either.

In 1958 the sociologist Roger Caillois separated two ways of playing. Paidia is free improvisation, with no rules and no goal. Ludus is effort subject to a rule someone set beforehand: the crossword, the goalposts, the time you have to beat. Almost no game is pure; Minecraft is one of the few that comes close to paidia entirely.

That explains at once why it's extraordinary and why it's exhausting. Paidia is wonderful when you arrive with energy, and cruel when you don't: then it doesn't give you a game, it gives you a blank page.

And it explains the new-world cycle. Starting is the only part that comes with goals built in: wood, shelter, iron. They run out in a few hours, and from then on the job of inventing them is yours again.