Hello Everyone,
My kids recently got Minecraft for Xbox and play the player all the time. Watching it, I don’t get it. I know it’s a commercially successful game but it looks life the most pointless boring game ever made. What am I missing here?
Mods, could you please fix the headline for me. It should read game, not ale. Thanks
It is a survival game, one of discovery and invention, and also one of purpose and a direction in life to follow for a ultimate goal. It takes one from the physical world into 2 supernatural ones that are needed to complete the challenge, using items obtained in the former to advance to the latter.
That being said the minecraft world is a very lonely one, yes there are towns and yes they are a haven, but the people who are there may as well be vending machines, they don’t talk anythign then Hmmmm, and the only other function is a trade they are willing to make, most a bad deal, and that person doesn’t change their trade, it’s always the same. So even when you defeat the ender dragon in the ender world and come back into the regular minecraft world nothign really has changed and the player is still very much alone.
In that I loved the start and middle of the game, but the ending just left me at the point of what was the point of all I have done.
My kids play it as well. Personally, it’s not for me, though I play Space Engineers which is kind of the same thing except in space. It’s basically a crafting and building game where you mine raw materials that allow you to build stuff. Some of it’s pretty cool, though to me it’s tedious in the extreme. Still, my youngest daughter has built whole cities with a rail road system that transports animals that she captured around in the cars. Really, I think, it’s the social experience they like…she has a group of friends from all over the world that play with her and chat with her online while she plays. And they can play the thing literally for hours on end if I let them.
It is a sandbox game and much of the gameplay is really just making stuff. Resources are gathered, bases are built, quests are made to go find special items to build more stuff. The redstone system allows the creation of some pretty impressive devices - logic circuits, various machines. Some things are built just to get more stuff but some of it is just creation for creations sake.
On servers people can cooperate to build more complex stuff, and explore other’s creations People create adventure maps for others to explore. There are also various mods that offer different gameplay. Sometimes its fum to just explore the world and enjoy the vistas.
It certainly is not for everyone but I think it is a pretty good game for kids and it still has a surprising amount of depth so that a lot of adults enjoy it.
Minecraft is basically computer Lego. If you understand why Lego is popular, you will understand why Minecraft is popular.
Now there’s an idea.
I have not played it, but I imagine it to be like the original SImCity which I played on a Mac back in 1989 or 90 when it first came out.
Not really, it really is like Lego, but in survival mode you first have to find the resources you need to build the stuff you want. Which means a lot of mining, dodging lava and bats and skeletons to find diamonds and other rare materials in order to be able to build your fortress or town or whatever.
Moderator Action
Fixed (although I kinda think ale might make minecraft better).
Also, since this is about a game, let’s move it to where we talk about games.
Moving thread from General Questions to the Game Room.
anther one for computer lego, my kids love it but they use it mainly in creation mode and we don’t let them online for the collaborative modes.
There’s a good gameplay element to it as well, although I agree with Kanicbird above that it loses it’s way towards the end. Playing on survival, you need to progressively do various things to open up new abilities (e.g. brewing) and parts of the game (the end, the nether). You also need to get good at the controls to deal with the monsters effectively. Most kids probably play in creative mode, where you don’t have to do any of this and it’s a complete sandbox.
I’m out of the loop wrt computer games (just getting back into them as my kids are old enough to play), so I don’t understand why the game side of minecraft has stalled so badly. Seems like the developers could absolutely go to town on it if they so desired. Maybe they think there’s enough there to keep most people happy. I know there’s a massive third party community who do stuff with it, but it’s not something I’ve dipped into.
It’s also one of the most beautiful and atmospheric games I’ve played - ironic given the blocky graphics.
It should be noted that in the earliest versions, when it first became so popular, it wasn’t even really a “game” at all. Nowadays, there’s an ultimate goal, and quests, and so on, but those were more or less tacked on to the base, which is (as others described) basically computer Lego. You can build nearly anything you can imagine in that game, as well as a great many things you can’t imagine (for instance, it’s actually possible to construct a working computer within the game world).
Yes it is basically computer lego, but it also leads more advanced players into design (redstone, and creating tournament areas), genetics (breeding bees, sheep, horses), programming (making modifications to the game itself). I do not play, but my children are really into it. My son spent 5 months running a server for his sister’s gamers club last year and is making modifications to his server to get it up and running for this school year right now.
I read a theory that Minecraft actually depicts the aftermath of a Zombie Apocalypse. It makes sense – you’re all alone, aside from primitive and widely-spaced NPC villages; you’re unable to craft anything but the most basic tools, weapons & armor (redstone contraptions notwithstanding); and what type of creature most commonly attacks you at night? ZOMBIES!!!
It’s my pet theory that Minecraft’s primitive graphics are actually the secret to its massive success. The low resolution forces your imagination to fill in the blanks, leading to an immersive experience much deeper than the most detailed GTX 980 SLI graphics could ever provide.
Frankly, I think it was a mistake for the developers to add traditional “gamey” elements like the Ender Dragon and whatnot. Minecraft is, at its heart, a building simulator (albeit one where creepers come out at night to blow up and destroy your creations) – the best description can be summed up in Zero Punctuation’s review [NSFW: language] where he says, “I noticed a nearby mountain and thought, you know what that’s crying out for? A skull fortress! With flaming towers and eyes that weep lava flows!” Adding silly things like dual-wielding skeletons (coming soon) or underwater fortresses have actually detracted from the game’s main appeal, in my opinion.