Some Thoughts: Minecraft

Since I've been playing vanilla Minecraft for over a year I thought I would get down my thoughts before I start modding the game and loose track of what Minecraft actually was to me.

The first purchasable build of Minecraft was released around two years ago (December 23rd, 2009). The game soon blew up into popularity and its creator, Markus "Notch" Persson, was made into a millionaire. Even after the initial rush of sales, Minecraft grew more and more popular, with many updates, fan-made videos, and even massive collaborative projects of amazing scale. Minecraft's popularity grew so much that it was able to get its own convention named "Minecon", where the game finally got out of its development process and was officially considered released.

Minecon was just ended a week-and-a-half ago. The full game has finally been released, which means that its possible to officially review Minecraft as a game and as an experience. Now, don't get those two confused; a game and an experience are different things. See games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Deadly Premonition to easily observe the difference between enjoying experiences and enjoying games.

Now, back to Minecraft; as an experience, Minecraft is fantastic. It can basically be summed up as digital Legos with a survival aspect attached to it. Building castles with moats around them to defend yourself from the horde of enemies that appear at night is a satisfying experience that never loses its charm. Also making your own crazy, illogical structures out of blocks is a satisfying experience as well.

HOWEVER...

Minecraft as a game is a bit lacking.

First off, Minecraft gives no real purpose to explore beyond an established area. Yes, there are villages, but they serve no purpose other than varying the terrain. There are one-room dungeons, but they don't contain anything useful that you couldn't get from mining. There are even small dungeon biomes underground, but they are extremely rare and can only be found with a rare item that occasionally breaks when you try to use it and requires getting semi-rare items that involve a high risk of death.

Secondly, the different dimensions of Minecraft feel more like side areas rather than part of the main experience. And the dimensions aren't even good side areas, as it seems that the purpose of these locals were to try out some new world generation code. Each dimension has only one "Main Attraction", and beyond those there is no reason to stick around. You can't acquire more resources to upgrade your gear (or even make new gear) and almost all the structures that spawn in these dimensions are either decorative, boring, or both. It's even impossible to live in these vistas, considering that most food is impossible to grow and entire structures can get ruined within seconds.

To sum up my opinion of Minecraft; it's a great experience that I think everyone to play, but the game's world is lacking meaningful content that breaks me from enjoying Minecraft to its fullest. And that's my thoughts.

Some Thoughts: NightSky

To put it simply, NightSky is a ball-rolling 2D puzzle-platformer. Every stage you roll your character (a black sphere) around, maybe solve a puzzle or two, get to the right side of the third screen and move on to the next area. It's not some epic journey with all of these events and bigger set-pieces with every change of scenery. I think that's why I like it though; the game is trying to impress you by what it is, not what it's attempting to do.

Let me explain; there's a difference between impressing people by who you are and what you're trying to do. While a scientist may have discovered something that may change the world, the scientist is still a scientist who does long, complicated equations and probably spends all of his day in a sealed room. The scientist, as a person, is unimpressive. Now, look at a passionate chef that manages to juggle cooking three meals and would gladly re-make an entire dish if he thought that it wasn't up to whatever high standards a person would have; who would you rather have a chat with? While I'm sure either choice would be interesting, I feel that a majority would find the chef a more engaging person.

I believe that above analogy can be used in terms of the video game industry. Many big-budget games (and even some small-budget ones) impress you with specifically what's happening rather than what's there. While I'm sure Call of Duty is a solid game, I can't think that people play it because they're looking for some feeling or weight to the world; they're playing it because events are unfolding and kill-streaks are incoming. I also can't see any other reason why the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game series is so popular and is considered a cult classic besides having a world that screams "I want you dead" at every minute.

Now, back to NightSky. The reason it fits in the "I'm impressing you by being what I am" category is that the whole game lacks a sense of straight-forwardness. There isn't any precursor that suggests that what happens next is what should be happening; it just happens. This is one of the reasons why Minecraft is popular; there's no coherency to the world, things are just as they are, giving that sense of an unpredictable future. NightSky follows this mentality, going from dark caves in one area to a high-above-the-clouds city of Victorian architecture. This sense of unpredictability that I had playing NightSky for the first time is what really enhanced my experience. Of course, I'm not really surprised by this since the game was made by Nifflas, a one-man team that's known for making very unique and unsuspecting games. Either way, I enjoyed this game. I guess that's the end result.