When Minecraft came out, it was hard to understand, not that good looking and only really catered to nerd gamers. There was no recipe book, no cute animals, no lush caves to explore, just an unforgiving Day-Night cycle and few, very creepy caves.
But those days are behind us. Minecraft is now considered a kids game and someone who bought the game as a grown up when it still was a grown up game now face ridicule and are “second class gamers” in the eyes of the developers imo. Not to speak of bedrock edition (eww) with its microtransactions and dumbed down UIs.
I remember making a paypal account for the express purpose of buying it after reading about it in a tech magazine (on paper - can you believe it?).
What do you think are currently games that are not focused on children and have great potential?
I don’t recall it ever being considered a grown up game though. Even when Minecraft first came out most of the people I played with was more interested in playing WoW. I think League of Legends was around that time too.
edit: yeah 2009 was mid wrath of lich king, cataclysm didn’t come out until 2010. So that was way too huge a year for WoW to not be pulling most of the older players.
The main reason I stumbled across minecraft was the fact that I had stopped playing games mostly at that point and only played console if at all. When minecraft started, I read about it in a tech magazine and had bought a new computer recently for writing resumes I think. Thats why I wasnt caught up by wow I think.