Mine, all Mine

If you're stuck at work or someplace where you have internet access and not much to do, and have a couple minutes to waste, I suggest you take a quick peek at Minecraft. It really only takes a couple minutes to learn, it runs in Java in your browser, and it has a simple concept: Shape the world.

There are apparently multiplayer and "survive the zombie apocalypse" modes, but I haven't tried them. I like just clicking it open, seeing the world it randomly generates for me, and then sculpting it a little bit until I've made a comfortable place to live in it.

It's not a very advanced game and the graphics are obviously terrible, but it has a large following. There's a really simple reason why: It allows players to change the world they live in, and create something instead of just destroying it.

I remember the people at Blizzard talking about FarmVille and, citing its popularity, saying that they needed to change their game to incorporate more things in WoW that people could obsess over like in FarmVille. Well here's another hint for you. Over 280,000 people have actually paid for the full version of this simple, terrible block game just because they are able to create something original instead of only killing things.

Focus on the content, the creativity, and the contributions players can make. Give them some control over their appearance, behaviors, and environment, or they will seek it elsewhere. It's more important to many of them than good graphics, or they wouldn't bother with games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress.