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Minecraft changed my life.

I know it’s cliché to say that a video game changed your life, but it’s hard to deny the impact Minecraft had on me and the kids I worked with. The sandbox game helped me connect with the children I worked with and made me a better mentor. It helped me build bonds that will last a lifetime, and helped the kids in my life find their voices during a vulnerable time.

Writing for Popverse isn’t my only gig. For years I’ve worked in the childcare industry, doing aide work, mentoring, specialized programs, and nannying. My work gives me a rotating roster of families, some of whom stay in my life for years. I will mention some of these children and their parents in this article, but their names and other details will be changed for privacy reasons.

In 2012 an agency assigned me to work with a 9-year-old boy named Derek. His family had recently gone through a traumatic experience, and he was trying to put the pieces back together while navigating the challenges of childhood. Every day I would pick up Derek from school and assist with his afterschool routine. This is where he introduced me to Minecraft.

I was not a fan.

Minecraft could be confusing for casual gamers who haven’t experienced anything like it. If you aren’t familiar, it doesn’t follow a linear pattern that other video games do. You don’t go through levels, complete missions, and work towards an end goal. You just explore the world, survive, and create.

I couldn’t work the controls, I had no idea how to build anything, and it felt frustrating to learn all the steps. But playing the game meant a lot to Derek, so I pretended to be unbothered every time he asked me to play.

Derek wasn’t a sporty kid or an outdoorsy kid. Taking him outside to throw a ball or run through a field would last for less than 20 minutes before he was ready to go inside and enter his own world. He was an introvert and wouldn’t always express himself. We couldn’t bond over football or music, but Minecraft helped us build our relationship.

Derek came alive while playing Minecraft in a way he rarely did elsewhere. Creativity is one of the key components of the game, and it lit a spark in him. What would happen if we built a tower out of TNT? What if we built a hay maze? Why not make a city of glass in the clouds?

This is where Minecraft differs from other games. While you’re playing Super Mario or Call of Duty you have a singular goal, but Minecraft turns every player into an architect, artist, and adventurer. It encourages you to try different crafting combinations, come up with unique architectural designs for your builds, and create anything you can imagine out of blocks.

Pretty soon, my disdain for Minecraft disappeared, and I found myself enjoying the game. Our Minecraft sessions strengthened our bond, and during gameplay Derek would open up to me about family changes, trauma, school, friends, and growing up.

 At times we would be so immersed in what we were doing that I wound up staying past the time my shift was supposed to end. But I didn’t mind staying at work late. We were playing Minecraft and having impactful moments. Derek’s mother didn’t mind, because he was experiencing joy after going through a long period where joy was hard to find. Our time playing Minecraft meant more than just playing video games. It had value.

In 2013 Mojang held a Minecraft convention known as Minecon in Orlando, Florida. Tickets immediately sold out, but I volunteered to be a panelist, which helped me secure passes for myself, Derek, his mother, and another child I was working with. Preparing for the convention was a big deal.

We dressed up, held a panel discussion about teaching Minecraft to adults, and met lots of new friends. Remember when I said Derek was an introvert? Over that weekend, I watched Derek – once so guarded, his voice a fragile whisper – bloom into someone new, chatting animatedly with other kids, his eyes lighting up as he met his favorite YouTubers, and coming out of his shell. Months after the convention, he still spoke about it every day.

Knowing Minecraft helped when the agency sent me on other assignments. Once the kids realized I knew Minecraft, they would light up, and the ice was immediately broken. There are a few families who hired me on a more permanent basis simply because I 'spoke fluent Minecraft' during the interviews.

I would get text messages and late-night phone calls from parents asking me how to install Minecraft mods and other game-related questions. I was paid extra to come over on my days off to fix the game if it wasn’t working properly due to computer issues or recover a world that had accidentally been deleted.

I started a Minecraft server, which could only be accessed by an approved list of people. This allowed the kids I worked with to play in a safe space and build their connections to one another. I regularly checked the server logs to make sure everyone was behaving, and gave parents access to do the same.

I’ll never forget driving my car one day, and one of the kids sent me a text message because another kid on the server had destroyed his Minecraft house. I pulled my car over, and conference called them. We fixed the communication issue, and the two kids worked together to rebuild the destroyed home. The game had become an interesting tool to teach conflict resolution. As I hung up my phone to continue my drive, I couldn’t help but laugh and think about how nannying in the year 2014 was strange.

One family had twin boys named Adam and Mike. The three of us built a large Minecraft world together on a server. When I traveled to see my family for Thanksgiving, I got a text message from Adam and Mike. “Can u go on the server real quick josh to have a mini thanks giving dinner at the castle on the server,” they asked.

With tears in my eyes, I took a break from my family gathering to log on to my computer and join the boys for our virtual Thanksgiving. Our Minecraft avatars cooked a virtual chicken, sat at a virtual table, and spoke about what we were thankful for. In that moment, I knew exactly what I was thankful for.

The boys wanted to spend Thanksgiving with me, and thanks to Minecraft, we got to have a special moment on the holiday. Keep in mind, this was years before Zoom and other virtual gatherings were as prevalent as they are now. Minecraft did that for us.

I have so many stories like this, and if I tried to tell them all, you would be reading for hours. Some of my greatest moments in childcare involve Minecraft, and it’s given me relationships that are still strong to this day.

Derek is now a college senior. We’ve never lost touch, and when A Minecraft Movie was about to be released, I told him that he had to be the first person I saw it with. On the night the film premiered, I drove 150 miles to his college town so we could see the movie together.

The theater darkened, and the moment Jack Black began narrating, a flood of memories hit us. It took us right back to those afternoons when he was 9. The builds, the servers, the fan meetups, the song parodies, and the conversations. Minecraft was totally our thing, and that night, all these years later, it got to be our thing once again.

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