Games, Games: Minecraft

Due to the hurricane, this post is extra late. That's ok though! I went stir crazy and after that I went even more nutty and started singing and making up soliloquies for myself. In any case, I'm deconstructing Minecraft today.

To begin with, let's start with Dear Esther. It is an interesting game that is very niche in nature, due to its strong narrative and limited "gameplay" and has many strengths and weaknesses that could be addressed more easily because of the limited scope of the narrative. Minecraft, in contrast, seems like it wants to do everything. Players are, unlike in Dear Esther, given a set of actions that create more complex actions. They are able to walk, sprint, jump, punch, pick up blocks, and place blocks. From these simple actions, they are given even more options, such as combining blocks, and from there it goes onward. Minecraft is very much an open world game, where the environment and your interaction with it is the key. There is much emergence in Minecraft, and that's what makes it so hard to deconstruct.

The entire game is about a world that you can deconstruct and reconstruct as you please. There are 2 main game modes, Survival and Creative, with singleplayer and multiplayer options for both, that allow for much of the magic to happen. Using these 2 game modes that come inherent in Minecraft, people have formed many differing opinions as to what exactly this game is all about.

In my own opinion, and that of many others, Minecraft is all about exploration and discovery. There is a certain art, finesse, and beauty to the randomly generated worlds, vast vistas filled with vast mountain ranges, lush living forests, hidden waterfalls, echoing caverns that seem to stretch onward forever, snow covered plains for as far as your virtual eyes can see, and more. These are what made the game for me.

There are also people who say that the game is made through the player’s ability to craft the environment to however they want, limited only by the game’s simple physics and virtual inventory. There are people who have created amazing things, such as a to-scale model of the Starship Enterprise, an entire working city, all sorts of strange contraptions, traps, and simple computers using the game’s resident form of circuitry (redstone), and much more.

There are others still, that affirm that Minecraft is all about survival and the hunt. These are the players who play to use the days to gather and build in order to survive the dangerous nights. They create the basics of what is needed for survival, and then make weapons and armor to hunt the monsters that come out at night. After hunting in the overworld, they continue to build up resources in order to eventually travel to the Nether, and later to the The End, to hunt larger, scarier, and tougher prey, with the end goal being becoming slayer of the Ender Dragon.



What I've laid out about what players take from Minecraft is by no means exhaustive, but due to time constraints, because I want to put this out in a timely manner, this will have to do.

This game is more than just a game. It is a culture and a community, a lifestyle and life choice, and it is something that is much more than what anyone could have thought. Though it does have its problems, Minecraft is a shining example of why indie games are the way of innovation.

A more full deconstruction of Minecraft will follow very soon!

Minecraft, much like Dear Esther, is an award winning indie game that is trying to break the boundaries of what a game is. Minecraft received critical acclaim for its innovative and open gameplay, while other criticize it for its lack of guidance and goals. It is a game that has redefined the  sandbox genre and pushed it into the spotlight, taking on the likes of The Sims and Sim City.

Emergence is an interesting word because it describes a phenomena in games that happens in the real world as well. It is best described by Jesper Juul: [It is a] Game type where variation appears by the interaction between elements in the game. Emergence games often surprise players and even the designers of the game. The opposite of progression games .
 
Emergent gameplay
Commonly used to mean gameplay that was not anticipated by the game designer, though this is a problematic definition.

• Smith (2001) describes emergent gameplay as the "future of game design" and advocates game design that allows the player to solve tasks in unique, personal ways.
• Emergent gameplay can be described as either an aspect of the game itself, a subjective experience of the player, or an interaction between the player and the game. (Half-Real, chapter 3.)