Minecraft is the world's best-selling computer game and soon to be a Hollywood film. This is why children can't get enough of it.

AJ Minotti has three children – and they all love playing Minecraft. His twin girls aged 10 and his six-year-old son are constantly building stuff with the endless supply of virtual blocks that fill the game. And Minotti, who works in marketing in Ohio, sometimes gets blown away with what they come up with.

"Dad, I want to show you something," one of his daughters said to him recently as she held out the screen of her Nintendo Switch. Her avatar stood before a waterfall. After pressing an in-game button, the waterfall stopped, revealing the entrance to a cave. Inside was a subterranean super-lair complete with interactive lighting and display areas for items that she had collected in the game.

"It was like this whole underground mansion, basically," says Minotti, marvelling. "I was super impressed by it." His daughter had followed some YouTube tutorials but also came up with much of the design herself. "It takes me back to the feelings I had when I was a kid just hacking away on a computer," says Minotti.

Minecraft is one of the most popular video games of all time. First released in 2009, it had sold more than 300 million copies by 2023. It, and similar games including Roblox and Terraria, are enjoyed by gamers of all ages, from young children to adults.

The game seems able absorb the attention of children for up to hours at a time – no mean feat in our distraction-filled age. Some parents fear their children's interest in Minecraft can border on obsession, or even addiction, as they struggle to tear them away from the computer screen.

Minecraft's popularity is such that it has now spawned a highly anticipated Hollywood film called A Minecraft Movie, starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, which is due to be released in April 2025.

There could be deep psychological – even evolutionary – factors behind the success of Minecraft and games like it, say experts. Such games tap into an innate instinct within all of us – one that underpins the success of our entire species. The desire to build.

If you think about it, children have always enjoyed making things – sandcastles, forts, treehouses – to name a few. Consider also wooden blocks, playdough and Lego pieces. Minecraft is, arguably, just a recent iteration of this kind of play, but in a digital space. But why is building things so irresistible for many children in the first place?

All mammals play when they're young, says Peter Gray, a psychologist who studies children's ways of learning at Boston College, in Massachusetts, US. Predatory animals, for example, play at catching things. Prey animals practise dodging and darting.

"They play at the skills that are most important for them to develop for their survival and ultimate ability to mate," says Gray. Humans are unlike other animals in that we owe much of our survival to our ability to build stuff – from mud huts to tools for hunting and gathering. "It's not surprising that natural selection endowed young people with a strong drive to play at building things," says Gray.

He notes that children also play using language and imagination, or make games that have rules and social interaction at their heart – all seemingly as part of preparation for adulthood.

What youngsters choose to build during playtime, and how they build it, tends to reflect the culture they live in, says Gray. "We should not be at all surprised that kids are really drawn to playing on computers today – nor should that distress us," he says. "Kids know in their bones, in their instincts I would say, that these are the skills [they] need to develop."

Julian........

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