Minecraft has not gotten worse, you were happier

Photo courtesy of Oakar567 / Wikimedia Commons

The decade-old Minecraft has seen countless updates and modifications over the years, changes that many longtime fans have met with hesitation.

As we grow older, we go through many phases, despite the number of times we insist that “it is not just a phase!” The action of gaining, and possibly losing, an interest makes us human— life would be mind-numbingly boring without them! Due to these cycles, we start developing associations between these interests and experiences as “good” or “bad.”

If something left a negative memory, and you were obsessed with a song during that experience, you will likely have bad feelings associated with that song. The inverse of such is also true. This leads me to make a bold, but I believe entirely correct, statement: Minecraft is not a bad game today— you were just younger and happier.

Merriam-Webster defines nostalgia as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition.” Plenty of people, myself included, grew up with the game Minecraft, whether that means directly playing the game, consuming content related to it, or joining your elementary school’s Minecraft club. It is not shocking that many of us have nostalgic memories attached to the sandbox game; many late nights with friends were spent going through the seemingly simple terrain and building houses made of diamond blocks in creative mode.

Minecraft in its initial release is nowhere near the game we know today, which is further highlighted by the timeline of updates. Some may consider the older versions to be uglier due to the lack of available blocks, mobs, and simpler textures. On the other hand, some prefer these older versions for many reasons: there are fewer mechanics to learn, the simplicity makes the game more challenging, or the availability of specific add-ons.

Neither of these opinions is wrong; everyone has their preferred version of the game, and no one can take that away from them. Yet, there are particular complaints I come across in my unfortunate, and seemingly endless, scrolling on TikTok: The newest versions of Minecraft is bad, or claims the game “fell off.” The latest versions and updates are not worse— they are just different. When you only consider nostalgic memories, the older versions of Minecraft will appear much better due to the positive association.

Minecraft is over fourteen years old, yet the game gets consistent, and most notably, free updates! This is not common in games— consider Mario Kart World (2025), a game exclusive to the new Nintendo Switch 2, bringing with it the promise of paid content. One could argue that all of the latest updates cause the world of Minecraft to be cluttered, but what game can assure longevity if it never moves past 2011? Do we expect the Minecraft developers to abandon the game because some prefer the old versions?

The beauty of Minecraft is that you can play any version whenever you please; if you are on a system that supports Java Edition, no one is forcing you to play these newer versions. You can have your own opinion on the game— even if we disagree —no one can make you change your mind.

I do believe, however, that complaints based on aesthetic aspects of the game are misplaced. We must remember what Minecraft is: a sandbox game with infinite creative possibilities. More possibilities present themselves when new creative features of the game arise: builders can make more detailed builds with an expanded block palette, the “engineers” of the game can make more mechanisms when more redstone components are added, or one could combine the two— the possibilities are truly endless.

You may prefer older versions of Minecraft because the game is more challenging in some ways, I agree with this sentiment— to an extent. The game did move much slower, especially because the “Sprint” option was not added until right before the game was officially released, so it works both literally and progression-wise. I will, however, raise the counterargument that other aspects of the game have become more challenging with the updates: the Nether got a major revamp on June 23, 2020, caves were expanded on Nov. 30, 2021, and “The Wild Update” brought the very powerful “warden” on June 27, 2022. Each of these relatively newer updates brought a significant amount of new gameplay, many of which make the game more challenging.

With all of this in mind, I would like to present the overall argument once again: Minecraft is not a worse game; we just all have affectionate memories of the earlier versions. As we grow up, we encounter so many obstacles and added stress. There is nothing wrong with returning to games you thought fondly of growing up, and you will always have similar, stress-free memories associated with these games. Some games worsen with time, but Minecraft is not one of these. The hardcore belief that versions approximately ten years ago are significantly better than the ones we know today is almost entirely due to nostalgic memories.

I will always have a deep love for this game; I played for eight hours almost every day with my best friend in fifth grade. I find myself replaying the Xbox One Version of Minecraft whenever I visit my mother’s house; This is to say, I’m no stranger to appreciating my nostalgic memories with this game. Even so, the game has evolved in so many ways, which has assured longevity— if we never moved past old Minecraft, the game would have died many years ago.