"Some games give you everything for free. Your weapons drop from the sky. Your tasks are handed to you. You arrive in the world as capable as you will ever be and your survival is a foregone conclusion."
" Have we, as humans, so irrevocably lost ourselves to the care and feeding of our always-on, just-in-time, wash-and-wear civilization that the pure, primal terror of the night no longer holds sway?"
I'm calling major bullshit on these. Minecraft is the epitome of a game of this type, everything IS given to you. anything you need already exists in the world for you to carve out and put together. No character progression, no skill levels, no upgraded items. You want a sword made of grass? Shit, just make one, no hassle.
I know its sarcastic, but you cant make a sword from grass, nor do I think can you actually farm grass (at least I havent been able to). And the actually uses for a grass sword would be so laughably pitiful that I couldnt even image in the time and resources one would waste on it to craft such a ridiculous weapon.
But more to the point, nothing is given to you. Hell, before achievements were added, they didnt even give you a sense of direction. you start with nothing and can end with anything in the range of nothing to everything. You dont start with a sword, you dont start with a craft box, you dont even start with shelter. And god help you if you odnt figure it out by the time night comes and the creepers, spiders, skeletons, zombies, and ghasts come to wreck your shit. Sure, you may stumble across something like a pick ax of diamond (though I've never seen that, even after fighting enemies with it), but you may also just stumble upon a legally binding deed to a paid off house (*cough*inheritance*cough*). Minecraft (like any game) is exactly reflective of your effort towards it. You want that cock and balls statue of gold, you go mine the gold. One wont just appear from the sky. You want that House of glass surrounded by lava falling in such a way that it resembles the beauty seen at Niagara you smelt the sand and sling buckets of lava.
You want an upgraded item? You just made a stone ax instead of a wooden one. You want character progression? Your clothes change from simple nomad to hardened veteran incased in diamond. You want skill level? you were able to craft from a table,a nd now can smelt from a furnace. You can farm sugar for cake, or create obsidian for fortresses. You made light with torches, glass from sand, and ingots from ore. You did something that the newbie may not be able to, you gained a skill. What, you think real world glassblowers are just born with that knowledge, that they dont have the trial and error?
I hate how people continue to put Minecraft on a pedestal, and this is the worst example. Why Minecraft? Why is it so special?
One could easily say the same for Zelda. I never saw it as anything more the the classically and overused greek hero arc thats so stereotpyical in games. And even more so it was a nintendo fantasy adaptation on LotR of sorts, with its population of elf like creatures that interact with humans, monsters, and magic in a wide expansing world with dungeons and mythical inspired bosses.
Instead, lets look at the question of why not Minecraft? Its probably one of the few and truest adaptions of the human development. You are dropped in a strange yet familiar world, with nothing on you but the close on your back. You forge your way through with trial and error, making yourself a home in the day. Your first night comes, you have that moment of confidence, that you mastered the day, you can master the night just as easy. Then you hear it, the scratching, the hissing, seeing the beady red eyes stare back at you and rush to make acquaitance with your body in the most unfriendly manner. You turn to your pockets, and you have nothing, for you know nothing. You didnt know to make a stick or a crafting table or a sword. You didnt know that you could make armour from the leather of the cows you saw. You had no idea that you needed a torch to give light, to make a safe shelter to close of the dangers of the world. You are helpless, you can only flee.
So you do, or you foolishly stand, the htought that maybe, just maybe I can survive with my fists, that my strength will overcome theirs. Either way, you either live, and start the day new,s eeing light is the enemy of the creatures,a nd they die in it. or you die, and begin life anew, a fallen chance that you learn from. A defeat in the war of life.
Eventually you learn, you learn to craft this world in your image, that you are the master of your domain. That digging up/down can bring in a flood of water/lava and snuff you out again, to see your hopes and dreams and achievements washed away/burned away in front of you. You suffer the pitfalls and hardships and finally dig the world to bed rock, then recreate it in your image, your mind. You have mastered your life, mastered the world around you, made your statement that you are ________________ and this world, this life would not beat you. You started with nothing, you ended with everything. You conquered the darkness, defeated the beasts of the night. You are god, transcended from man and his mortal confines.
So what now? You've mastered life and its challenges, beaten everything. Crafted it all, mined it all. Your castle of diamond looms in the distance, your bright kingdom of perfection. You do what is human. You destroy in a fit of overzealous rage, that somehow the castle mocks you and then must sit in the perfect world you made with nothing available to help you recreate it. You fade away into the night, knowing you have done your best, and that you mastered what you could. Or you start new, life reborn, challenges to reconquer, with the knowledge of what you had in your past life to attempt at the new.
Maybe its me reading in, but Minecraft is possible the true digital personification of the human mind and its capabilities, as well as life's journey and struggles. Sure, you could read into another game, and dismiss minecraft as nothing more then child playthings and a lego clone, that there is no satisfaction. But that doenst mean that because Pitts sees it as so, he is should be wrong and blatantly told so.
Honestly, Notch didn't throw enemies into Minecraft as a social commentary on the futility of civilization and how fragile we really are. You know why he made enemies? Because a game without enemies is GODDAMN BORING!
