Minecraft Wins Gaming Arts Award

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that Minecraft has won a new arts award for games, beating the likes of Portal 2 and Ilomilo. The prize was announced at the finale of the GameCity videogame culture festival in Nottingham. From the article: 'Minecraft does involve traditional staples of gaming, including night-roaming monsters and the chance to fight multiplayer battles online. However, it was ultimately selected on the basis of its mood and ability to encourage gamers to become creative. "It's the broadest definition of art that you can have," said Mr. Hall.'"

Comments

Legos on a screen?

[ackthpt]

I'm all for games where you build something. The hack-n-slash games have grown tedius by now (after decades, it had to happen.)

But from the title I expected to be digging a pit, exploring a seam, drilling for something.

Re:Legos on a screen?

[Baloroth]

See, for that you need is Dwarf Fortress. It's free, too.

Oh and just a little more challenging. And by a little I mean "holy shit a lot".

Re:Legos on a screen?

[The MAZZTer]

Minecraft is a sandbox game. As the name implies both mining and crafting are important parts of the game. Mining is necessary to get the ingredients to build the strongest and most resilient tools. Crafting is necessary to produce most of the materials in the game. There is no point or goal at the moment other than any goals you set for yourself (or in an MP server, you can take part in large projects together).

The latest update coming up is actually going to add real mineshafts complete with train rails and archways. But for now you get caves with goodies marking the ceilings, floors, and walls at various points.

There's a lot more to the game too... enemy monsters for example. Flowing water and lava (not entirely physically accurate, but it's easy enough to predict how it will act... most of the time), day/night and weather system (monsters come out at night!), different biomes, near-infinite world. Oh, and you can create portals to hell which allow you to quickly cross large bits of the normal-world map in shorter time. I'm not joking (it's called the Nether).

There are plenty of videos on YouTube. look some up. It's really quite fun, especially online with people you know (strangers tend to be destructive and not fun to play with).

Also there's a subreddit on reddit (/r/minecraft) if you want to see pictures of peoples' creations.

Re:Legos on a screen?

[loufoque]

The game runs perfectly fine on Linux and Mac OS X.
Get your facts straight.

Re:Legos on a screen?

[Hyeron]

Right. Like Java needs wine. Remind me to tell everyone vi is just a workaround for emacs.

Re:Legos on a screen?

[dskzero]

You could also install Windows on your shit if you wanted to play it.

Re:Legos on a screen?

[X0563511]

Sure. How about I give up my principals and support Microsoft. I'm not paying for that, and I'm not pirating it either. I don't want someone else paying for it in my stead either, because that gives MS money.

Ooooo

[Delarth799]

That'ssssss a very nice reward you have there. Would be a shame if something were to happen to it. ssssssss......

NPC village mod (trade, quests, building...)

[Kinniken]

Shameless Minecraft-related plug: I'm the author of Millénaire, a Minecraft mod that ads NPC villages of multiple cultures that collect resources, extend their villages, trade with the player, and since recently give quests to the player. Have a look, it gives new aims to Minecraft. http://millenaire.org/

Re:Portal 2?

[FoolishOwl]

I love Minecraft, but I'm beginning to feel Notch is jerking us around. He's introduced new features that are obviously incomplete, with serious bugs. It would make much more sense if he'd redesign Minecraft so that there was a tidy API and a simple way to add third party mods to the game. It's been obvious for some time now that the mod makers are producing more sophisticated and innovative content than Notch is.

Mojang has received tens of millions of dollars in revenue, and Notch is acting like Minecraft is a hobby project he tinkers with in his free time.

Re:Sandbox game is art?

[mrxak]

If the game were just an endless flat space and you could build on top of it, you might have a point, but the worlds it randomly generates are truly beautiful in their own right. I've spent hours just running around looking at the terrain.

It's Also Pretty Damn Creepy

[Greyfox]

For all that it's all blocky and lego-like, it's also one of the creepiest games I've played. There's always some undead thing or other creeping up on you. I get jumpy in the game just from the sound of my own footsteps or the furnace cooking something. I'll be all like "ACK A SKELETON! Oh wait it was just the furnace..."

I've barely even scratched the surface on building in the game, but there are a ton of neat builds on Youtube. And then this never stops being funny. Watching the youtube videos are almost as much fun as playing the game.

Unlike traditional MMOs where you have no effect on the world you play in, you build your own world in Minecraft. It's a lot more fun that way.

Re:It's Also Pretty Damn Creepy

[hedgemage]

In most games, if the baddies 'get you' you end up having to load from a save point or restart a level. In Minecraft, the baddies don't simply threatten your on-screen avatar, they threatten to destroy things that you have built. When I think of the time, effort, and joy involved with creating a 1 to 1 model of Shakespeare's Globe theater in Minecraft, I'm pretty nervous about some green hissing bastard blowing it to hell.

Damn right I'm jumpy.

Telling a story without saying one word

[yanos]

This game is telling a story without saying one word. It's a game about us, human beings, having to adapt to this hostile world that we don't really understand. It's about trying to control it, to forge it in a way that makes life is easier. It's about making a shelter for the night, about finding food and ultimately cultivating land (because it's much more practical). It's also about resources and ways of getting them. It's about making tools and weapons, about curiosity and exploration. Minecraft is really about the history of the human race, and it is told without a single line of dialog. To me anyway, this game is a piece of art.