Over the last few months, Minecraft has become the internet’s newest craze. Simplistic, elegant and buggy little game that it is, it's taken over the lives of so many geeks worldwide (making it's creator an overnight rich-thing).
Minecraft combines simple ‘Lego block’ worlds with a ingenious crafting mechanic… and not much else. There’s no story, no goal and absolutely no point. The only achievement you will ever receive is that of personal satisfaction a sort of ‘I made it’ feeling. Its not exactly a social commentary, but it makes you think about a world where the only objectives ever set for you, are set by yourself.
The game is bought for around £10, and for that you get an account and a single, really very tiny, executable file. Once you start, you’re in a random spot, in an (almost) infinitely huge randomly generated world, with nothing but your curiosity and a pair blocky hands.
The first thing to do, is to chop down some trees, trees that you craft into wooden planks and then into a workbench (the centerpiece of all homes and bases). Then, instead of going out and exploring the world, you need to burrow yourself into the nearest mountainside and seal yourself in. Staying out at night is deadly, since all different types of baddies come to reduce you to player-pate once night falls. You’ll have more than enough time tomorrow to explore gaming’s largest ever game world.
As you adventure, whether above or deep below ground, you’ll come across more and better resources; coal, iron, gold and even diamond. Use all this cool stuff to build larger, better, deeper. Then relish in it, because you’ve just done something unique - no one else has ever done this quite like you have. Sure, there's similarities between systems and efficient ways of doing things, but this is yours. Now step back and look at the impact you've had on this world. Suddenly, there are towers in the horizon. The night is no longer dark, but instead lit by the rays of your many beacons and tourches. The depths are no longer dark hidden and full of dangers, but sealed and safe, pillaged, possibly spewing out lava onto the surface. Hapless pigs run around with saddles on their backs and the chicken population dwindles, and you happily punch a passing sheep to gain more wool for your latest project.
Now I play Minecraft in a social setting - I have a server run by a group of friends from Bristol and along with another Pilotish friend of mine, we've created our base. We've spent days levelling ground and digging rock to create a runway. We've built a railway station complete with track-selection courtesy of Minecraft's best and most buggy feature - red-stone circuitry. Hell, I even took the time to create a doorbell with the Westminster chimes. We're on a integrated rail network of which, "The Sandstone line" is but one small part (http://mc.zem.org.uk/wiki/Sandstone_Line) - oh yes, we document everything on a wiki.
Why do we do this? What's the benefit of playing Minecraft for days on end?
I like to play games for their story - games like Bioshock, Half-Life, Portal, even Borderlands - but Notch (the man-god who created this gem of a game), oh dear Notch has put nothing of the sort in here to distract me. So I sit, and I play, and I think about what exactly I am doing. I sink hours of my life into a game who’s only reward is its gameplay. The only thing you’re rewarded with is a token of all the time you’ve spent hunched over your computer; your world. Its a place you crafted, its a place you mined, its YOUser generated. You’ve created a place for yourself, most likely, no one else is ever going to appreciate it the way you do. But you will, you’ll appreciate that there used to be a mountain there, until you and your greed and your curiosity came and turned it into a gargantuan stone tower.
With Lava.
And a Doorbell.
tl;dr: Buy Minecraft and never sleep again.
No comments:
Post a Comment