My main point is that its not a very good game. Anything about popularity is simply that survival games in general were ruined by minecraft’s popularity, in the same fashion that iphones ruined smartphones (all phones must now compare against it, and no phones can fall too far from it). But at least with iphones, it was actually a decent product to black hole around. But thats just how extreme popularity works. FF did it to jrpgs, FE did it to trpgs, cod did it to fps multiplayer, wow did it to mmos, dnd did it to tabletop rpgs, etc. In some cases they were genre-defining, but regardless, their impact on the genre lasts years, if not decades
But as long as we’re making arbitrary assumptions.. I don’t think I’ve ever actually met someone who “hated something because it was popular”, but I’ve met people who’ve accused it, and I’ve met people who think popularity implies quality, and I’m pretty sure there’s a correlation between the two, and I’ve currently got the feeling you’ve fallen prey to the same mistaken thinking.
But the to breaking that mindset with minecraft is this: multiplayer is a hack, that leads people to think a game is fun, when in fact its socialization thats fun, and the game is just a medium for it. The two are conflated, but I’m only trying to talk about the game.
You can take any game with little merit (see: habbo hotel, nearly any mmo, runescape, maplestory, most fps games, etc), add multiplayer to it, gather a community by external means (marketing, the natural social feedback loop, accessibility, etc), a semi-addictive feedback loop, and produce something that, years later, people will say: I had a lot of memories there, and it was great.
But it wasn’t great because the game was worth a damn in any sense a game is worth caring about. It was great because dealing with a group of friends in almost any situation can be made fun. Be it sports, games, drinking, causing trouble, working, etc.
You don’t need a good game to enjoy it, especially when its multiplayer. But simply being enjoyable is not sufficient to call it a good game (marvel films can keep your interest for two hours, but its difficult to argue that they’re good as films. They’re just good enough to talk about a little bit, and really only plot-wise, and kill two hours.)
Ofc, thats not to say multiplayer implies a game is bad. But it can certainly make up for it, by a long shot. It can be a really effective hack.
And to be clear, I had a lot of such good memories (runescape, maplestory, LoL, PoE were mine). But as games, they aren’t worth talking about. The primary value I derived from them was socialization, and an extension of that, economics/haggling. But in their own mechanics and styles, each had superior predecessors and successors, and were totally unnotable in that regard. But those other games weren’t where I had/made my friends.