So Minecraft is one of the hip video games ("... More than 22 million people have paid to immigrate to his world and settle there (nearly three times as many as live in the gigantic multiplayer game World of Warcraft), be it on PC, smartphone, or video-game console.") "... the profits it’s generated—$86 million in 2012 alone—rival those of the world’s largest entertainment releases." I take some notes during reading of this article technologyreview/review/516051/the-secret-to-a-video-game-phenomenon/#comments I quote: . "... The reward for defeating the dragon is a poem, written by the Irish novelist Julian Gough, that describes Minecraft as a dream. It reads: This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter … And the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, the player was alive … And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better." . Coded in Java . "... your tasks: to mine and to craft. These twin abilities—destruction and creation—are mapped to the game’s two main buttons. Press one and your stumpy arm will flail in front of you with comic speed and repetition, chipping away at whatever object you’re looking at, eventually reducing it to a floating cube of material that may be collected and stored in your inventory. The nature of the harvest is dependent on the material you “mined.” Chopping a tree will produce a block of wood. Chopping a cliff face will yield a chunk of granite. Hammer the beach and you’ll nab a cube of sand." . "...With these raw materials you are free to build... The game’s rhythm established—build during the day, shelter during the night—you continue with the chaotic implementation of your half-cocked ideas. The hut becomes a shack becomes a lodge becomes a house becomes a mansion becomes a castle. Through a rudimentary tutorial you learn that certain blocks require certain tools, and using a craft bench you begin to fashion simple utensils: a pickax, a shovel, a hoe, a sword. As the range of blocks you’ve harvested diversifies, the range of domestic features you can build widens, and soon your abode is furnished with candles, paintings, elaborate stairwells, and bay windows."
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 16:02:53 +0000
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