I began as a player. A casual enjoyer of puzzles and stories.

One day, I beat the Minecraft Ender Dragon. As I had done many times before, the game was completed. But this time I stopped to read the end poem.

"Sometimes the player read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive", said Julian Gough through the game of Minecraft. 

Creating video games is not just making a fun experience for a player. We put pieces of ourselves into the art we make, and we talk to the player through the trials of a game. 

Sometimes I read the poem and I am my ten year old self, sitting at my family computer, watching the words scroll. I am thirteen years old, playing my first server with my friends. Sometimes I'm sixteen, sitting alone during the pandemic, but not alone in the game of Minecraft. 

This is what games are. To make games is to be a creator, a dreamer, a sculptor of worlds, and to be a human telling another human that they are real.