‘A place that made sense’: Minecraft is 15 years old and still changing lives

When my son, who is on the austim spectrum, was struggling, this classic game opened up his world. It continues to help lonely, isolated people find ways to connect and belong

A few days ago, I was tidying my home office - which more closely resembles a video game arcade recently hit by a tornado - when I found a long-lost piece of technology in the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. It was an old Xbox 360, the Elite model - black, heavy, ungainly, impossibly retro. Out of curiosity, I hauled it out, found a controller and power cable and switched it on. I knew immediately what I wanted to look for, but I was also apprehensive: I didn't know how I'd feel if Minecraft was still there - or worse, if it wasn't. Minecraft, you see, is more than just a game for me. I thought about just putting the console back where I found it. But as this month sees the 15th anniversary of the game's original release, I felt I had to go on.

In 2012, Microsoft held a big Xbox Games Showcase event at a cavernous venue in San Francisco. The company was showing all the biggest titles of the era - Forza, Gears of War, Halo - but in one quiet corner sat a couple of demo units showing off the as yet unreleased Xbox version of Minecraft. I already knew about the game, of course - designed by Swedish studio Mojang, it was an open-world creative adventure, allowing players to explore vast, procedurally generated worlds, collect resources and build whatever they wanted. It was already attracting millions of players on PC. But I had never really given it much time; so I sat down to have a quick go ... and ended up staying for an hour. There was something in it that was holding me there, despite all the other games on offer. That something was Zac.