Minecraft: How to play multiplayer

Minecraft is one of the most creatively fulfilling games you can play today, and even with its delightfully rudimentary graphics, the game can feel every bit as advanced as you desire. It essentially hands all the tools you need right from the word go and lets you explore the world at your pace.

There is little to no hand-holding in Minecraft, which works wonderfully in the game's favor as you are then rewarded for experimenting and discovering things on your own.

Perhaps, the most popular way of playing any modern game is to play it with other people and friends. This is why Minecraft also allows you to play multiplayer in various ways, including split-screen on console.

How to play Minecraft multiplayer

There are various ways by which you can play Minecraft with other people to make the game experience a shared one. Here are a few ways by which you can do so:

1) LAN

Perhaps the most conventional and one of the oldest traditions in gaming is to play multiplayer with other people using LAN (Local Area Network). For this, all the players attempting to join the game must be on the same network.

On Java Edition:

1. Choose a host computer. This system should be fast enough to play Minecraft while running a server for others as well.
2. Launch the game and click "Single Player" and create a new world, or open an existing one.
3. Once inside that world, press the Esc key, then click the "Open to LAN" button. Here, you can choose which game mode to set for the others.

On Bedrock/Xbox/Mobile:

1. Press Play.
2. Create a new world or edit a current world by pressing the pen icon.
3. Go to multiplayer and make sure that “Visible to LAN Players” is enabled.
4. Start the world by choosing Create or Play.

Join a LAN game:

1. 1. Go to the Play menu.
2. 2. Click the Friends tab and look for available LAN Games.

2) Online Server

This seems to be the most popular way of playing Minecraft in the multiplayer mode, as it doesn't require everyone to be on the same network. You play on an online server by locating and connecting to the IP address of a multiplayer server.

You can either download the files needed to make a server on Minecraft from the official website or join a server made by others. A server allows two or more players to play Minecraft together.

1. Log into Minecraft,
2. Select Multiplayer from the main menu,
3. Click the Add Server button, and enter the IP or web address of that server. If you don't know the IP of a server, thousands of public servers can be located by doing a web search for something that suits your style of play.