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Can Minecraft Change the Gaming Industry?
An anonymous reader writes "Is Minecraft really changing the gaming industry fundamentally? This author certainly thinks so, and even goes so far as to consider Minecraft's world manipulation a paradigm shift along the lines of 3D-gaming during the early '90s. 'Every block in the game is available to pick up and reallocate. We can tear down and build up. The neat thing is that future games does not need to be as liberal, but they will need to consider how they can make the environment a hell of a lot more manipulable. Now, this is quite a bit too simplified and the vast majority of games must not feature a shovel worthy of digging to the center of the earth, but giving the user power over everyday things (still in game worlds) will be a worthy challenge to consider.'"
Minecraft may give us power over everyday things in the real world, too.
Next paradigm shift:
Sally needs help moving blocks, sign up and earn 5 facepoints!
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Minecraft is just a copy of the Gnomish Mines.
ever since populous and nethack though, it's nothing new. you have to just find a balance on it. but minecraft is blocky for a reason.
What I find great about Mincraft is the the fact that it keeps things sweet and simple. No flashy graphics bringing your machine to its knees, no DRM to fuck the legitimate consumers over, no crap gameplay with a shitty ending. It's just you (and maybe some friends), the world, and your imagination.
Minecraft is definitely evidence that sometimes, less is more. My personal opinion is that game producers have lost the plot - too often, we get served a steaming pile of flashy crud (*cough* EA), and sometimes even non-flashy crud (Duke Nukem Forever, I'm looking at you here!). Perhaps these people need to sit down, take a look at what people are enjoying playing and why they enjoy it, and get back in touch with their market.
If you want stuff blowing up realistically (i.e. destructible environment), you have to simulate it offline, as it's really computation intensive. So it will be "scripted". Minecraft can only get away with it because everything is a cube. Also I don't expect a sudden surge in cubic 3d games. Minecraft is a one time wonder, and it could be only pulled of by an independent developer.
While I have nothing against Minecraft as a game, the level of world manipulation isn't just some incidental feature that the gaming industry Must Take Note Of.
The level of world manipulation is pretty much what makes the game what it is; but also makes the game weird and idiosyncratic in ways that wouldn't obviously transfer very well to other sorts of games. Anybody remember 'Red Faction', that old FPS with the zOMG Destructable Environments!!! It sucked. Faced with the fact that they'd either have to break environmental destructability at certain plot-points, or just have players nibbling in a straight line through the level, the environmental destructability was reduced to little more than window dressing.
Really, in any game that isn't largely about metagaming emergent behavior in the game's rules(y hello thar, Dwarf Fortress, we were just talking about your much shallower and more popular kid cousin...), being capriciously arbitrarily limited sucks("Why can I pick up some books and not others?" "Oh, because some books are 'Quest Items', and you need to collect 143 of them; but the art team couldn't be bothered to actually model the rest, so all non-quest bookshelves are just textured rectangles.") but world manipulability beyond a certain level is useful pretty much exclusively for breaking the game's mechanics(acceptable in singleplay, if not obviously worth the tradeoff in developer effort, pure death in multiplay, unless you are the griefer who is currently grinning in anticipation...)
What gameplay elements are in there anyway?
Engineering/red stone wiring. Spelunking. And patch 1.8...
Every single game for the last 20 years has claimed "destructible environments" (some of them erroneously, with the word "fully" as a prefix). It's the same thing, in essence.
It's been a want of gamers for decades, since voxels were around at least, and it's never really happened how we expect, despite being promised with every big hit.
Even Minecraft doesn't have a fully destructible environment - some blocks can't be moved or changed, and there are depth and height limits, not to mention width wrap-arounds through the use on fixed-length int's on map indexes.
Unfortunately, such a thing would fundamentally change a game. Imagine a 3D FPS. You want to take out the enemy base. Hell, with enough time, you can just move the local mountain across on top of it, or tunnel up into it, or punch a window through the local mountain to make an inaccesible sniper-spot, or literally just flatten the whole place with artillery so you can walk through the ashes and collect all the pickups. It doesn't make for a fun game, necessarily, but it just one of many features that a good games developer can add to a game to make it more interesting. It's the same category as realistic physics, proper ballistics, or better AI teammates. Useful in the right hands, game-ruining in the wrong ones.
Yes, it would be really cool to have zombie/aliens game where you arrange the furniture to build barricades, but in playability terms it can create a nightmare, especially multiplayer. Hell, people whine that they (or the AI) get stuck on map objects that took years to position in the ideal place - what makes you think a billion random objects that can all move everywhere, combined with overpowered abilities to move the earth, will make it easier to get from A to B?
The only way to do it is realistically, which is gameplay-hell. If you want a tunnel into the enemy camp, you'll run out of food and die before you get anywhere, the sounds of digging will be heard, you'll kill yourself through exhaustion and you'll have to put the soil somewhere (which will draw attention). And if you don't get caught by the enemy, it'll still take MONTHS to get there.
(Offtopic: How cool would a well-made free-form Great Escape game be, though?)
It barely works in Minecraft. Yeah, it can make for a pretty cliff, waterfall, cave basin, forest, etc. but it's still an empty world that relies entirely on the player to populate and to differentiate from every other area that was randomly generated as well.
Minecraft, as it is, no more a game than a set of legos is a game. It's neat. It's fun. It allows impressive works of creativity, but is it a game like Mario? No. World of Warcraft? Halo? Need for Speed? Madden? Amnesia? You could make it a platformer but what's the point when you can just build/dig to where you need to go? Where can Minecraft go as far as game opportunities go? Considering how deep it is now, it would be better off as a platforming game set inside a computer so you can dick around with redstone because that's the only deep thing about Minecraft right now.
Some mods do better but in the end, it's still lego pieces. Here's short list of ones that I feel really expand upon the game:
Better Than Wolves
Industrialcraft
And there's tons more that increase variety of mobs, items, terrain and foliage.
I love Minecraft but it is hardly going to change the gaming industry. Minecraft isn't the first game that allowed players to manipulate the terrain*, I was digging tunnels and building fortresses back in the mid-90's with the Worms series. Hell, Minecraft is based off Infiniminer, there isn't much real originality or ground breaking in it. What I think Minecraft did was capture the zeitgeist. There is a large retro movement going on at the moment, and many Gen-X and Y gamers are nostalgic for the simple games of the 8-bit era. Minecraft took that 8-bit styling and gave us a box of blocks to do whatever the hell we want with.
It isn't ground breaking, and it won't change the face of gaming because people still want those other gaming experiences. You don't need two different "box of blocks" games. Even if the terrain manipulation craze took off it would be quickly stopped by the technical limitations of current consoles (which are the target for most games).
Also don't forget that people like nVidia have been banking on physics heavy games taking off (eg with their system where their GPU's can also do physics processing) for years and it simply hasn't happened. Partially because game developers focus on the consoles, which have limited processing power by modern standards, and partially because most people simply don't care that much.
* Red Faction was doing this in 3D in the 2001.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
There have been construction games before, the Sim series comes to mind. Transport Tycoon. Granted these games had more of a goal in their world construction but still.
It is like saying that since Up! was such a succesfull movie, every movie must now be 3D rendered. Or indeed that since Terry Pratchett made a hit by not using chapters, books no longer should have chapters.
Stop saying "X is good, everything should be X". Secret sauce on a McBurger is great so they should put it on EVERYTHING.
And as for adjustable, the world is very square in minecraft, should every game have this simpistic view?
For that matter, do I really want a totally user transformable multiplayer game for every game type? Forget teamkillers now you get people bricking their team in.
The author needs to get out of 10yr old mode, things can be different from each other. I know that is a hard concept but someday you will realize that the A-team is NOT the answer to entertainment you once thought it was.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Whilst I love toys like Lego and Minecraft, they are are not the same thing as games.
Would Tetris be better if you got to choose the blocks, would a film be better if you had to write it yourself (okay maybe most would)?
"Every single game for the last 20 years has claimed "destructible environments" "
Don't forget non-linear gameplay. Which in practice means there's some variety in the order you play linear subplots. Until we got a human level AI a computer cannot create a compelling story, so you have to put up with the pre-baked ones. (Or go full sandbox like multiplayer FPS/RTS games.)
Survival. Adventure (coming in 1.8).
I guess that games have ends, so Minecraft can be more than a game. Like Lego, what are the gameplay elements of that? Some people just like creating, destroying, exploring, building, and even engineering.
Minecraft is also horrendously addictive.
I think Minecraft is the antecedent to more user generated content. FarmVille is psuedo user generated because it lets you choose . Minecraft takes it to extremes and lets you build the individual items by manipulating the elements of an item, rather than an a prefabricated item.
I can see FPS games introducing more customizable 'bases'. We already have turrets in some games but maybe they can extend that and make the bases actually constructable.
It's why games like SimCity, Civialization and Command & Conquer games are fun - you are making choices and generating content by yourself. Personally Minecraft goes too far in one direction - I am not particularly bothered about the components, I just want to see the big picture of interactions. (Economy, macromanagement, Ascendancy game, city building)
I can see Minecraft being helpful in 3D printing. Imagine creating real life items in a minecraft like interface and then printing it? It would bring 3D to the messes.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
That should read;
FarmVille is psuedo user generated because it lets you choose what to build and where to place it.
I think human beings enjoy making decisions and perceiving the environment react to them.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Everyday, real life is boring, there's a lot of nitty gritty, low value things we have to do in order to get to the trully pleasurable bits of it.
Quick example: ...
- Have you noticed that movies don't show in real time the travel time of the characters? Hands up anybody that wants to see in real time the 15h plane trip our action movie heroes take to go from their base to whatever hellhole they're supposed to be blasting stuff up in
This is why most games do NOT include the "repetitivelly move stuff around" bits in them - because it's not fun. Would, say, any of the Mario Brother's games be any fun if you had to shovel dirt around for 1/2h in between getting each coin or fighting each baddie?
p>All we need now is $100 3D printers for home printing!
Why? How much do you really want to print? At least, right now, how much stuff do you really want to print? is a pretty good workaround to actual ownership of a 3D printer. I suspect it's a lot like photo printing: it will turn out to be a fair bit cheaper not to have the printer at home and just shop out the print jobs to a specialist. At least, for the time being, anyway.
For instance, if the materials are the larger part of the expense, then the equipment that can produce the thinnest walls will be able to print your 3D art for the least money. But that equipment may cost far in excess of what a $100 printer is capable of, for a long time.
Regardless, you can be printing stuff right now with one of the many only 3D print jobbers. Shapeways being one which seems to specialize in one-off's which is what hobbyists would be most interested in.
Stuff that needs to be more durable probably won't be printed on the kinds of materials you can feed into a 3D printer anyway. The machines that handle more durable materials are also going to be more expensive than a RepRap-level 3D printer for a while as well.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Not as if this hasn't been known. Diablo 3 will have destructible elements. In GW 2 lots of random stuff to pick up, some of it weaponry that changes your skill bar. Plus maps that change from one play session to the next as far as monsters and events go. Dungeons rearrange themselves; but Diablo had that.
Red Faction had a destructible environment back in 2001 with Volition's Geo-Mod engine, which eventually improved in 2009 with the totally realtime Geo-Mod 2.0 in Red Faction: Guerrilla.
The filter in your brain that parses reality is not installed correctly.
Yay me!
I believe that at night, zombies come to eat you. But people seem to consider that more of a distraction of the real fun of Minecraft.
Minecraft is quite simply batshit boring.
Of course i am bias...
Why does it seem that nobody who's grown up in the internet age seems to be able to use the word "bias" correctly? Bias is a verb. Biased is an adjective. You should be saying "I am biased..."
The biggest advantage of the mind craft "environment" is for the game designer. You can "power up" a "game designer" character to walk around inside of the scenery and craft it by interaction with it. In other words you don't need external tools to design levels etc. I assume most MOORGs also can do that from the inside, but likely they nevertheless use custom crafted tools for that. ... so in a mindcraft environment you only need some "bulldozers" and other tools that are only available to the game designers.
I assume interaction with the lego blocks is done with certain tools the character is wielding
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Zombies are actually somewhat trivial and not really considered much of a threat by most players. The real problem is creepers because those will explode, dealing serious damage to both the player and whatever the player is building as well. The only thing worse to deal with is ghasts, however those only spawn in the nether and reasonable defenses can be sustained simply by blocking line of sight.
Fear is the mind killer.
Everybody has switched to Realm of the Mad God.
AAA publishers are focused on the ONE most popular type of videogame. This is like all movies released during two years being clones of Deep Impact.
On the other hand, gaming is big, billion of dollars big, millions of players big. Since publishers abandon a lot of ground of gaming, this space is filled by smaller studios, indies, and other people. Big AAA don't want or can't risk his money in creativity, and want to "adquire customers" buying and selling "IP". Smaller publishers, indies and the like, don't fear innovation, and create lots of creative and interesting games.
It has not ben always like that. Publishers use to provide a more diverse range of games, and not be all that focused on "Manshooter IV". The game with a version 4 or 5 use to be rare. Now is the norm, and the rare... almost not existing, is a new "IP". Wen a big publisher create a new "IP" is newswhorty!.
This is bad news if you are a console gamer, or you are the type of casual gamer that only want these publishers AAA titles,... or maybe not. People seems to enjoy consuming the lowest common denominator product.
But if you are a PC user, and want creative games, are exciting times. Yesterday week Minecraft was Terraria, this week Minecraft is Dungeons of Dredmor. Is very fun to be a PC gamer atm.
If you ask me, AAA publishers are abandoning money on the table by not having smallers teams making games for niche markets. But I suppose these type of companies want to make fat games, because fat produce the type of stuff executives need. So these companies are driven by what is best for his executives, and this is "big Hits". Even if that means abandoning money on the table. Or maybe I am too cinic, I don't know.
-Woof woof woof!
You've said a mouthful.
Why can't anybody just make a moderately successful product any more without having to "change the industry" with their "new paradigm"?
First it was big important really life-changing things like the Sears Catalog or erasers on the end of pencils. Maybe cellular phones. Now every single consumer success is a "game changer".
I just heard a guy on the radio interviewing the guy who came out with Tito's Corn Vodka. Now, people have been making corn licker since before Columbus, but sure enough, the otherwise pretty smart investment guy whose local radio show it was said "This is a game changer". Fucking CORN VODKA is a "game changer"? The only game corn vodka is going to change is the slow-pitch softball game that turns into a blind melee after the participants partake in several bottles of said corn vodka. The liquor store where I am proud to have a store account has a liquor display containing what appears to be several hundred vodkas, including those flavored with marshmallow and (I'm serious) whipped cream. Besides 17-22 year old females with lower-back tattoos, I really don't know who drinks marshmallow-flavored vodka, but apparently, enough of them have boyfriends trying to relieve them of their britches that these vodkas are very good sellers. So I am told. So when the types of vodka include such exotic offerings, how is CORN VODKA going to be a "game changer" unless you're a corn farmer and the US suddenly drops the ethanol subsidies and a potato blight hits the Midwest.
OK, I've got to stop right there, because my wife has forbid me from having any more Slashdot rants because she says I make a funny noise when I'm writing them and it's only 7:21am here and if I wake the dog I'll have to walk her. The dog, I mean.
(Oh, by the way, the whipped cream vodka really isn't that bad).
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think Minecraft is just a nice small freeware game along Soldat and others. Very good games, but nothing that revolutionary.
Corn vodka? Isn't that just moonshine?
Now we're going to start seeing tons of minecraft clones, since that works OH SO WELL for FPS games.
Anyone for Call of Minecraft 7?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
What gameplay elements are in there anyway?
Your imagination. If you don't have one, then wait for the Adventure update.
Thanks for totally nerding out on a passing comment. :)
Why? How much do you really want to print?
I want to print a Japanese pop star so I reckon about fifty kilos will do the trick.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
People vastly overstimate the impact of Minecraft. The fact that it was successful does not mean that it was good. People bought it because they had fun with it and it was an indie game. That's about it. It's a good game, but as a videogame, it's flawed. You need to do everything, and depends entirely on you to continue, you need challenge yourself, and there is bassically no point going on.
Oblivion Awaits
From a retro standpoint, I prefer the pixels in a 2D world. It's got more enemies, more building options, more crafting, hardcore mode, multiplayer (with player run servers), cheaper price. My wife didn't like Minecraft, she likes Terraria. We play together and adventure in the game, not just build.
Same "full" control over the world.
The word you're looking for is 'toy'. Lego and Minecraft are toys. This is not meant as a value judgment, but just to distinguish them from games. Games (whether monopoly, poker, or civilization) have rules, goals, and ends.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You can't pick up bedrock without hacking, either.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The correct answer is Yes, but not for the reason stated in the article.
Minecraft is a huge moment in the gaming industry because it demonstrated that Gamers are interested in being shown a tech demo that's fun, and paying for the tech demo now in return for a full game later.
This is huge, because if a game developer takes money from a publisher there's a conflict between 'Make a profit on that loan' and 'Make the best game possible'. If a game developer takes money from a gamer, their interests are aligned to 'Make the best game possible.'
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
and Photoshop.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Minecraft has rules. They limit how you move around in the world, what blocks you can mine/dig and how, what items you can create and how, when the sun goes up on the virtual sky and what happens then, how often you have to hit a pig with a shovel to get bacon and so on. It also has goals, although the ones that the game sets (achievements like "build a better pickaxe") are not particularly interesting; it does however have the potential for players to come up with their own goals ("build a huge castle") that supplement those the game provides. What it doesn't have is an end, but I would disagree with the notion that games are characterised by having a definite end. Many board games only end when all players agree they have nothing to do (consecutive passes clauses or similar), but if that is enough to satisfy your end constraint, it also works for Minecraft.
Note, if you don't pay, you will not see most of this, so you might wrongfully classify Minecraft as a toy based on the free "classic" version which is indeed closer to a box of legos than a game.
it gives you the option to host your own lan parties and post it on your own private server. Granted, that isn't changing the market, but I have found it useful for me to host on my server for my friends (who want to play)
Vodka is interesting. One of the few alcohols that can be made with nearly anything and still retain it's status as "vodka". Just off the top of my head, I've seen vodkas made with potatoes, grains, and even hemp.
I believe you mean that Civilization is a game, whereas civilization would be a toy.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I enjoy Minecraft. My wife and I play together. It's fun...
But it isn't that amazing.
Dwarf Fortress lets you dig/build pretty much anything you can imagine. Red Faction let me blow holes in things years ago. Second Life has allowed people to build whatever they want for years.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
I played the java based free version for about 20 minutes. I built a few gigantic staircases and burrowed into the ground. After that It seemed really not much fun. Am I missing something?
Minecraft Porn
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I think it's a whole new category of video games - the Lego of video games. (Consequently, I've seen my son become a Minecraft fiend and he no longer touches Lego.) I think this is game changing because Minecraft has only touched the surface of what can be done; so it's like the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons...wait until we have the Minecraft versions of Might & Magic, HOMM, WoW, etc., etc. Just like Magic: The Gathering was a game changer.
And Cornish Game Hens are just small chickens. Yet they cost more ?????
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
It is a simple game with a so so physics engine, good multi player capabilities and most importantly you do not have to be completely sober to play it especially in multi player mode.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Minecraft is a huge moment in the gaming industry because it demonstrated that Gamers are interested in being shown a tech demo that's fun, and paying for the tech demo now in return for a full game later.
Actually, Quake III showed us that.
Would Tetris be better if you got to choose the blocks
Lockjaw Tetromino Game lets players add the "small pieces" (domino I2, straight tromino I3, and bent tromino L3) to the tetrominoes, or remove the I tetromino from the mix for certain kinds of training, or even remove everything but the squiggly S and Z pieces.
Yes, it's much much better than a game. It's a toy.
Monopoly versus lego.
Almost what ever you want. You can see maps of my server here:
http://mc.minecraft.com/maps/
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
sorry typed that wrong
it's http://mc.bongaming.com/maps/
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
I also question what makes Minecraft a game, but that's not really the point. The point is that Minecraft proved that many people will use a game environemnt as a sandbox completely independent of any actual gaming elements. While other games have provided a sandbox, they never went to far as to provide ONLY a sandbox. The sandbox was only the context for the game. And even then, you couldn't fundamentally alter the landscape (and have it persist) like you can in Minecraft.
None of which is really very game-like. There's no objective. No goals. No "winning" condition. What game elements there are (mobs, weapons) are really just bolted on. I got to the point in Minecraft where I simply turn off mobs. They were nothing more than an annoyance.
Why can't anybody just make a moderately successful product any more without having to "change the industry" with their "new paradigm"?
Because unless it's an immanent-threattoyourlife-OMFG-terroristattack or an industry-changing ultra-mega-blockbuster-paradigmshifting-neweconomycreating-widget, it's not sensational enough to make it into the newstainmentblogosphere.
Survival.
You can "survive" in Minecraft by digging a hole in the ground and closing it off. Anything you do beyond that is just building things. The mobs are little more than an annoyance. I suspect "Adventure" mode in Minecraft will prove to be a dud. Much like adventure mode in Dwarf Fortress. Almost everyone plays in fortress mode because that's where the game is actually interesting and creative. If you want to play a nethack type adventure, there are far far better implementations.
Like Lego, what are the gameplay elements of that?
None. That's the point. Playing Minecraft with mobs turned on is like playing with legos where every tenth piece has a chance of giving you a paper cut.
In Saints Row 2 I could rip a parking meter out of the ground and beat people to death with it. Does that count?
How about Mass Effect - Minecraft?
Shepard: Let's take down those geth!
Garrus: Hold on. I need to rip blocks out of the ground and build us some cover.
Grunt: Krogan destroy walls, not build them! The tank told me so.
Shepard: (facepalm)
Minecraft has rules.
But no goals.
it does however have the potential for players to come up with their own goals ("build a huge castle") that supplement those the game provides.
Minecraft provides no goals. Anything you do is made up by the player. Therefore it is a toy. Minecraft is to games as a baseball diamond is to sports.
What it doesn't have is an end,
Or even a middle.
Many board games only end when all players agree they have nothing to do (consecutive passes clauses or similar), but if that is enough to satisfy your end constraint, it also works for Minecraft.
That's not really an accurate comparison. Board games prescribe very specific interaction between players and they usually have some kind of scoring system. Minecraft has no such thing. Minecraft is an envrionment where people make up their own games, but it is not a game in itself.
None of which is really very game-like. There's no objective. No goals. No "winning" condition. What game elements there are (mobs, weapons) are really just bolted on. I got to the point in Minecraft where I simply turn off mobs. They were nothing more than an annoyance.
Your critique is almost exactly the same one Will Wright received from game execs when he proposed "Sim City".
Some people don't need to be guided and have their hands-held through from the beginning to the end of an experience. Sometimes the experience is what matters more than the existence of a winning condition. If you've put months, or even a year or more into a Minecraft world - who cares if the game has an end? (Though Notch is thinking about putting in one anyway to placate people who aren't satisfied)
Minecraft is the natural extension of the legacy beginning with playing in the sandbox, building things with LEGO, and burning through an entire night on Sim City.
Or just play one of the many superior adventure implementations already available. Minecraft Adventure mode will prove to be a big dud, mark my words. Minecraft without the ability to manipulate the world is pretty damn lame. The mechanics are really primitive. Minecraft is more like a prototyping tool for a better game.
Nope, that's about it. It is really just a virtual lego set. Recent updates like redstone circuits make it a little more itneresting, but really it is just a giant virtual lego set... only not the small legos with specialized parts. More like the toddler version of legos with the huge blocks.
minecraft isn't for you. at least, not yet. it's for people who are able to conceive their own goals, and derive satisfaction from achieving those goals. people who understand there's more to the game than someone arbitrarily turning around and saying, "oh, that's it, you won!"
kinda like life, really.
The thrill is for many people is designing redstone circuits to automate things, like mine carts and traps. Others like to be creative and build structures. I find some of that stuff interesting, but it's not my love. I haven't played minecraft seriously for a couple of months. Some more traditional RPG elements would be nice for me, but probably not others. Combat is a joke and and once you know how to set yourself up the first day, nothing is likely to hurt you, short of falling off a cliff or into deep lava. If you find a good cave system, then exploring can be fun, but again, combat is not a concern other than creepers but you just carry some food with you.
I like the game, but I wish there was other things to do other than build.
I would gladly pay $100 if I could get a setup which let me eat a different famous historical landmark printed in chocolate for dessert every night. Probably $200, even, if it came with the blueprints, because I'm not going to redesign all those things myself.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
People nailed it in the comments, minecraft works due to it's cubic design which reduce the performance requirements to achieve a smooth running world. What needs to be done now is worlds in a game to be cubed into sections. You can let the graphic cards and processors handle texture generation (I've seen some neat dynamic demos) and even have scripted texture rules. The terrain itself can be layered the same way it is now, but allow people to make changes in a cuboid section, effectively reducing the complexity of the destructable terrain. It will reduce the level of detail a player can apply to a landscape and to sculpture a bit, as even with the nice graphics, texture overlay, structures would still be built in roughly cubed dimensions (E.G if you built something out of dirt, you could still guess it's 4 cubes wide, even though textures make it look like a slightly dynamic shape and size). Add a few rules that adjust dynamic shape parameters based on surrounding blocks and wala, a dynamic terrain environment that can have detail levels like the crytek engine and the performance of minecraft. So even though other games have done similar things as minecraft, nothing is identical. It's 3d, and an entire world.
I read an interesting blog years ago about the difference between a game and a toy. A game, as you suggest is goal-oriented with rules and often scores. A toy is open ended which can be applied towards one or more games or can be used for other purposes altogether which are still "fun." I think by that logic minecraft is a toy.. If you're looking for a pre-built game, it's probably not right for you.
Your critique is almost exactly the same one Will Wright received from game execs when he proposed "Sim City".
Not a critique so much as a clarification on what makes a game. Even SIm City is more of a game than Minecraft. Sim City has a generally clear goal of growing your city (though you could create a modest farming town if you wanted. but that doesn't last long). It isn't really even much of a sandbox in taht regard because you're extremely limited by how well your city is doing and how much income you can generate. It isn't like you can just construct building at will like Minecraft.
Some people don't need to be guided and have their hands-held through from the beginning to the end of an experience.
True, they can make up their own game. Which is fine, but that doesn't make Minecraft much of a game. It is a playing field, at best.
(Though Notch is thinking about putting in one anyway to placate people who aren't satisfied)
And it is going to fail because you can't bolt on an end game to something that wasn't designed as a game. It is like the mobs in Minecraft. They are an annoyance. They don't add anything. Some mobs carry valuable materials, but they're not essential. The number of creepers you have to kill to get a useful amount of gunpowder is just crazy. Stupid design.
Actually, it is for me, I think. I am interested in being creative. I love legos. The problem is that Notch is not staying focused. He is trying to make Minecraft everything to everyone. Adding bits of adventure here, creativity there... but the two things just get in the way of each other. That's why he's been forced to create a whole separate adventure mode. They don't fit well together. At least not to the extremes that he would like. A better implementation of the blend of adventure and creativity would be Terraria. The problem with Terraria is that the adventure and creative aspects are fairly diluted, but at least it is playable as a game.
Minecraft has (internal) rules, and you can lose (die) therefore it is a game.
The goal is not to lose.
Now will you argue that Tetris is not a game?
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
You don't need "winning" conditions to be a game. As in role playing games.
Minecraft has (internal) rules, and you can lose (die) therefore it is a game.
Right, except dying has no consequence other than possibly losing a few items. And the internal rules are not game rules so much as just basic physics. Like "this type of block with behave like so." That does not a game make.
The goal is not to lose.
I don't know anyone who considers dying in Minecraft to be anything more than a minor annoyance. It is an element that could be taken out with very little impact on the overall experience. In fact, I think it should be taken out. I think all the role playing aspects currently in Minecraft are completely superfluous. It is almost like they were put in as an afterthought. Maybe as a bit of ambiance?
Now will you argue that Tetris is not a game?
No.
Most role playing games have some objective. And even when they don't, they do have some measure of how well you're doing and some story to follow. And you can lose. Your character can die. But if you really don't have an objective or measure of progress, then your not really playing a role playing game so much as just role playing. Get it?
I've seen spiked whipped cream, but now you're saying there's a whipped cream flavored vodka? Last time you were that funny you blamed it on a vodka pineapple. That shouldn't be the case at 7:21 am.
Actually, friend, I don't drink. Haven't been drunk since college. But if I did drink, 7:21am would seem like an ideal time.
It's all poetic license. I paint a picture, spin a yarn. What I write is sometimes, rarely actually, fictional, but always true.
But yes, there is whipped cream flavored vodka, made by Pinnacle. Also, you will get individual mixologists who do their own vodka flavoring. It's a fad.
I know these things because last summer, one of my students worked as a mixologist at a hip downtown bar. She's got stories...
You are welcome on my lawn.
minecraft isn't for you. at least, not yet. it's for people who are able to conceive their own goals, and derive satisfaction from achieving those goals. people who understand there's more to the game than someone arbitrarily turning around and saying, "oh, that's it, you won!"
kinda like life, really.
So it's basically for people who are slightly more creative than a typical TV addict, but less creative or capable than people who use less limited environments like any of the "social MMO's" such as Second Life or There?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Minecraft was hardly the first to introduce a "manipulable" environment. We've been cutting grass in Zelda games and destroying blocks in Mario games for a long time now.
But you don't have to have an improving character or winning conditions or a measure of how well you're doing. Many do this but not all. This is still "play" and thus fits as a game for most people. But others argue that it's not a game because you're not keeping score and there's no winner. Then again even if you have a goal and a measure of success you still have players cooperating instead of competing, and this seriously messes with some people's ideas of what a game is.
i think your creativity must be way beyond mine if you can derive all that from what i said.
Dying in Minecraft when you are exploring a naturally-generated cave far away from your camp and are near the bottom of the world is frustrating, much more so than a "minor annoyance", especially if your diamond tools and armor end up landing in some lava. Why such hate for Minecraft? Go make your own game if you are so enlightened with what constitutes a game, I'm sure it would be the best thing since sliced bread.
I played the java based free version for about 20 minutes. I built a few gigantic staircases and burrowed into the ground. After that It seemed really not much fun. Am I missing something?
Imagination? When you've created entire cities connected by a switched subway network you'll understand why some people really dig it.
Mods add the smaller parts. Industrial Craft adds electricity, Integrated Circuits adds logic gates, Buildcraft adds automated resource handling, Planes adds airplanes and the player skills needed to fly them, and so forth. Minecraft as it is sold from Mojang is basically like buying a starter kit of basic legos without any of the really specialized stuff.
As soon as the next version is released, it will be much, much easier to add mods and keep them working as the game is updated. This is because Notch has decided to stop "hiding" his legos from us, which prevents us from being able to easily see what he is doing and build on it.
Yes, it is incredibly frustrating and it adds nothing to the experience. You could take the mobs out and nothing would change except you'd be a little less frustrated. In fact, that's exactly what I do when if I get into Minecraft. I'm even to the point where mining is too much of a bother and I just give myself infinite TNT. Digging those tunnels is so pointless. No hate for Minecraft, I just think it could have been so much better had Notch focused more on the creative aspect rather than catering to the people who want it to be more like an adventure game. I honestly don't think it can be both. And ya, I paid for it. So I'm a tad disappointed.
I think Notch is doing what Notch wants to do more than he is attempting to appease individual groups. And you know what? That's fine by me. It's his game.
You've written a number of gripes in this thread toward Minecraft, and my immediate response is "Okay, you paid for it. If you don't like it, it's just 15 euros, so delete it and find something else." But that seems too obvious. While I can understand your frustration, it seems like a huge waste to reiterate the same disapproval over and over again: Why not spend that time writing mods to make it do something you want it to do (you might find some useful ones for Bukkit that achieve some of your goals)? Can't code and want someone else to do the work? Toss the idea out onto a forum related to Minecraft.
In fact, I would suggest that to almost anyone. Don't like something? Grab a toolkit, hack away, and make something you do like. Who knows? Someone else might take interest and join you. You could turn it into an open source project, or keep it closed and make some money off of it.
There's plenty of games I don't like, but I absolutely refuse to waste a dozen posts on Slashdot reiterating why I don't like them--that's far too dreary. I really sincerely think that you have some good points (I like Minecraft, but I generally don't bore easily either), and I suspect that if you were to put the effort into correcting what deficiencies you see either via modding Minecraft or via rolling your own game, you could very well have something good going on. Endless criticism of a game is okay, but I find that it isn't terribly productive, and considering that most people are fairly receptive to Minecraft, you're unlikely to find many allies except for the handful of very vocal anti-Minecraft types.
He who has no
Personally I look at it as survival mode... I've learned to be much more cautious while venturing into the depths and it would not be as fun without the threat of death; it's sort of like Nethack in that regard. Still, there should be a point to all the mining, maybe something like you need to collect enough of a specific ore so that you can build something to get off the planet, or you're trying to unearth some type of artifacts. The game still is technically in Beta though and I can't really knock it for being incomplete, but it is still a game in my eyes.
When I play minecraft, it is certainly a game. I set my own goals for construction and work within the framework provided by the game to achieve it. It's fun. I'm not sure what you're missing.