I’ve heard the stories about MineCraft and I’ve witnessed nephews and nieces obsessing over videos of people playing MineCraft but I’ve never really got it. Part of this is the fact that I am a geek and grew up in an era when all we could think about was getting smaller pixels. 8-bit led to 16-bit led to 32-bit and so on. We were always pushing the envelope for the next leap. So when I first heard of MineCraft and its blocky graphics, I thought it was some weird throwback that would never last.

Boy was I wrong on that front. MineCraft is as much, if not more, of an obsession as anything my childhood could throw down. This past weekend I stumbled upon this video where a group of players decided to build a replica of Westeros from Game of Thrones. The word got out on the Internet, lots of MineCrafters showed up, and they did something truly remarkable. Now I get it.