The Minecraft Difference?

So I was at one of those couple dinners, except we were three couples. The guy next to me asked if any of us played Minecraft with our kids. I didn't really wanna talk geek, so I mumbled something about having tried it on the iPad. He was very much into it, so I ended up saying that I really prefer Second Life. Weird reaction... He went like: What! Isn't SL dead long ago? I said it is alive and kicking; We're just over the hype. So he asked me, what the fun is in SL. Easy, right? Not so easy after all.

A rainy day

So we can login and meet friends, play games and build stuff. Ahem... that's excactly what they do in Minecraft - except they can choose who they wanna meet by using a private server. Oh, and five year olds can build a complete house in like 10 minutes. Hmm.

Some people have animals in SL, but hey... I have horses in Minecraft and I can even ride them. BTW I also have rabbits, and there are all sorts of animals and creatures out at night. Ok, so cars and boats and planes? Minecraft has a boat and railroads too, but no cars and no planes. Not really a big deal. I mean, if I wanted to drive a Ferrari, I'd probably get one or tap Realracing on the iPad. Then what?

Futher up the mountain it's snowing

 While I was thinking, my friend proclaimed that Minecraft had to be better because it was sold for like 14billion or something. Ok, games... In SL we can play games! Oh, but they do that in Minecraft too. They have all sorts of games with puzzles, races, parkour, battles and what nuts. I was having a really hard time convincing him that SL is great, but then it struck me. There's one thing we have in SL which they don't have in Minecraft.

After rain comes sun

That one thing is XXX. Really? Is that the most significant difference. Oh well, we can make much better looking items like cars, houses and rollercoasters and more, but it takes like forever, and I have yet to try a rollercoaster in SL that feels like a rollercoaster; We do have very nice 3D boats that act like they sail using virtual wind, but that's far too technical an argument. I ended up asking for more redwine and turned the discussion elsewhere; This was way too complicated and that Zin in the glass made me dizzy. So here's the question for everyone: Is there a key difference that makes SL better than Minecraft, or are we all just idiots because we like to spend days building a house instead of minutes?