As we all grow up, we all look back fondly on the memories we made along the way. The nostalgia that comes from a trip down memory lane always makes for a good time. For a lot of kids in my generation, that nostalgic feeling comes from Minecraft.

  Mojang’s simple yet complex sandbox game turned ten on May 17th. For a lot of us currently in high school, our middle school years were during Minecraft’s peak popularity. So many afternoons and evenings after school and sports were spent exploring the game’s blocky world or on a server playing with friends.

  “We would stay up until 4 AM as kids for Minecraft,” said Andrew Tang, “I can’t even stay past two now.”

Much of Minecraft’s appeal came from the creativity it brought out of its players. Players could explore a variety of biomes and build anything they could imagine. The game gave its players a freedom that wasn’t seen in any other game.

   As the years went by, Minecraft became more than just its original creative and survival modes. Servers began to pop up and Minecraft started to transform into a multiplayer game.

   “Making your own server is the best part,” said Andrew Pham, “you feel so accomplished and not many people knew how to program a server, but if you could do it at age 10-11 you were awesome.”

   Online became more than just trying to defeat the ender dragon with some friends. Giant servers allowed players to play different mini games with other people from across the globe.

   “I remember making a ton of servers for mini game,” said Andrew Tang, “they were so much fun.”

Microsoft jumped on the popularity of Minecraft’s multiplayer, as the game was released on Xbox 360 on May 9th, 2012. When the Xbox One was released in late 2013, Minecraft soon followed in September 2014.

    The expansion to Xbox brought in millions of players, and Minecraft became one of the most popular games of all time. In fact, as of its tenth birthday, Minecraft has sold 176 million copies across PC, Xbox, and mobile, making it the best selling video game of all time. It is one of just three games to sell over 100 million copies, the other two being Tetris and Grand Theft Auto V.

   Although not as popular as it once was, Minecraft still has about 91 million monthly players, which ranks it among the most popular games today. However, for high schoolers, they will fondly remember the game’s golden age.

   “Kids today won’t understand how great Minecraft was,” said Andrew Tang, “the games back then were so good.”