Friday, February 10, 2012

Minecraft


Hello. Today the topic is MInecraft. For those of you that don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, Minecraft is a computer game dissimilar from any that have come before it. Everything is blocky including the animals and the people but the graphics are fine. The movement scheme is up to par as you move across this blocky world, constantly discovering new biospheres and discover whole new uses for materials you thought useless.
The history of Minecraft is actually pretty incredible as well. For the first I think 6 years, Notch programmed this game in Java by himself. No team, no office building, no real support in a language that was never intended nor designed for that. He made it almost free and constantly available to the web from day one as he moved through his first Alpha to what it is now, constantly using user feedback and viewing the mods people were using as ideas to help him better the game, and better it got. We went from a simple exploring game, it something filled with wolves and wild cats! Pigs, cows, and chickens dot an ever-changing landscape that sprawls off in all directions as far as the eye can see during the day, and unspeakable terrors during the night. It’s an amazing game that you can get lost in for hours, if for no other reason than because the world is always new, always random. It never repeats. It is a game of mindless oblivion, which is pretty impressive for a game where the player has no purpose.
That’s right, I said no purpose. There is no end goal of Minecraft, no final destination or quest to follow. You are (or at least were) the last Minecraftian and, as far as you can tell, the only Minecraftian to have ever existed. You build a structure, hide from the badies at night, try to make your way in whatever way you want. You can be a farmer, an explorer, or an artist. You can live in a small dirt hut, or a huge mansion, limited only by your imagination. That’s how a game with no purpose is so addictive and so popular. That is one of the many things that set it apart from any other computer games to date. Every world is truly unique and every world is your world.

Word count--395

4 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. WoW is addicting! I had to quit before coming to ISU or else I would have never had gotten my homework done.

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  2. This game sounds cool, i like how its only limited by your imagination. I feel that how the creater used user feedback was very intelligent

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  3. Nice, but what a time suck! I don't think I could play a game where my character had no purpose what-so-ever. Interesting concept though.

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