Minecraft seems tailor-made for people like me. The Top 10 list I did some time ago demonstrates my great affinity for big, open worlds that give me freedom to explore. I'm also obsessed with the creation of worlds and stories. In fact,  Little Big Planet 2 is scheduled for release in January 2011, and I already have 12 four-level worlds planned out for it.

The gameplay in Minecraft centers around making your way through an unknown world, learning to control it, and changing it drastically by building whatever you want. In this way, it provides a different kind of power fantasy than what we typically experience in big-budget releases.

Usually, we derive feelings of power from big, burly dudes like Kratos, Marcus Fenix, and Master Chief. These strong and deadly characters find themselves in crazy situations and save the world (or sometimes destroy it) by slaughtering waves of enemies. Our controller movements and button presses have immediate and often brutal effects on the games we're playing.

World-building games such as The Sims or SimCity give us a different feeling of power: the ability to play as a god. In these titles, we have the power to enrich or destroy the lives of our sims, but only they have to face the consequences for our acts. In these scenarios, we're given ultimate power but no true responsibility.

Minecraft plays on a different axis. While you are not a god, and your power is not absolute, you are the biggest force of change in your world. Without your influence, your world may be gorgeous, but it will ultimately remain uncivilized -- ravaged by zombies during the night and cows during the day. You come in, punch a few trees, dig a few stones, and, before you know it, you've built yourself a giant tower. You created man-made order from randomly generated chaos.

In Minecraft, you are alway adding to the world, as opposed to destroying elements in other titles. Sure, you will dig deep down the earth to extract its rich materials and kill the dangerous underground denizens, but it's always with the final goal of building something or surviving another day. The thrill of the game does not come, for most people, from getting a diamond sword and going on a zombie hunt; it's about building crazy structures. The sense of control -- what we are searching for in any power fantasy -- is created by the liberty we have to create whatever our mind can imagine.

Violent power fantasies rarely give us the chance to express ourselves through gameplay. We set upon the path of a strong avatar and control him as he accomplishes his heroic duties. In Minecraft, you are free to do whatever you want and to shape the world in any way you desire. The ways you face the challenges ahead, whether they're tall mountains or complicated stairwell designs, are all yours to decide. You are the architect of your destiny. And isn't that most powerful feeling?