A Serious Critique of Minecraft's Crafting System

when i called minecraft out for its crafting system in my last video i was met with some backlash and of course this is to be expected because people love minecraft almost as much as i love an inconsistent upload schedule but after reading the comments people were actually bringing up good points so i decided to set my pride aside and rethink my argument now let's get one thing clear i still hate crafting in video games and if you want to know why i think this again i have a video on the subject in which i went pretty into depth on my argument against crafting but perhaps i overlooked something in minecraft i mean in many ways the game is an anomaly an independently published pixelated game that somehow overtook the world in just a few short years defined a generation of childhoods and remains popular against all odds to this day so i gritted my teeth and prepared to dive back into the brutal world of minecraft i begrudgingly struck down trees had a terrible time mining and finding diamonds and hung my head in shame as i passed the usual milestones of course i'm kidding i had a wonderful time as always but during this playthrough i paid special attention to how the crafting system impacted gameplay i reiterated the issues i had with it and then tried to look at it from a new angle then i went and took its crafting system and compared it against other crafting systems that i've liked and hated in the past and finally i decided my final stance once and for all but of course i wouldn't be a very good youtuber if i told you the verdict of the video right at the very start so buckle up because today we're going to deep dive into minecraft's crafting system to see if it can break free of the archaic confines of this outdated system and if it actually can make it into something good or whether crafting even in minecraft sucks [Music] i don't think i really need to explain how crafting works in minecraft in 2020 but let's refresh our memories just in case in minecraft crafting is a circular process in which you take the materials you gathered to a crafting bench or similar apparatus arrange the items in a pattern or use the recipe book if you don't have a brain and boom you have a new item you can place delicately in your home but let's dive a bit deeper and establish the context that will allow us to explore the crafting system a little bit further now depending how you frame it the beauty and essence of minecraft revolves around this simple cycle and its simplicity is what helps to make the game so good at its core it's really just a game about going out and mining and then coming home and crafting why why does that sound so familiar and after pondering it for a bit i came to the realization that the magic of minecraft is this flourish around that concept at its core because the gameplay loop is so simple you're given immense freedom as a player think about why you play minecraft is it because you enjoy hitting blocks until they fall apart if so you're stupid is it because you really wanted to kill the end dragon i don't think so the core gameplay goals of minecraft are rooted in creativity and making it fun for yourself plenty of people added friends to the equation which let you reap the rewards of sharing your lavish creations with other people as crazy as it is minecraft is a game without a concrete goal but due to some incalculable coincidence of variables it was also an almost universally intriguing game it let you flex your creative muscles and rather than give you a storyline you got to make your own you see typically developers hold the audience's hand as they journey through the story and to get places to go things to do people to see and end up walking you through the game while not letting you have a modicum of control that makes it fun and not that there's anything wrong with a heavily calculated and tailor-made experience but sometimes it pays to take a risk on your audience notch and the developers behind minecraft put their faith in their audience and told them that they'd give them a world but the players had to make the fun obviously it worked partially thanks to the developers and partially thanks to minecraft's intelligent player base dedicated wham so we've established that because you make the content the end game of minecraft is creative expression whether that's building a house making an in-depth redstone creation or setting up a saw like torture chamber for your friends now how do we get there in order to create in the game there's a few steps you first have to complete first you have to go out and gather materials on occasion this can be a bit monotonous as sometimes you're stuck hunting down specific materials like soul sand soul sand more like suck more like suck my soul out sand soul sand but usually gathering in minecraft is fun and a lot of it happens passively as you adventure through the beautiful world a lot of memories are made here thanks primarily to two systems the procedural generation of the game and the mob system thanks to that each and every time you go out to gather materials whether on purpose or just to explore it's a unique experience skipping over to the third step in the process we have the placing of the blocks again this is a vastly rewarding step as you see the fruits of your labor in their finalized polished glory and it's not just rewarding in the sense that it's the final step it's also the step where you get to plan your creative expression and execute on that plan so with gathering as the adventurous first step in with placing as the imaginative creative third step we're left with who goes in between crafting now at first this seems like it's just a simple step between the fun parts which is what i said in my previous video however simply saying that it's there to bridge the gap between gathering and placing doesn't come close to telling the full story so with the groundwork laid out let's dive into it first let's see what the alternatives could be one of the biggest signs of a bad system is if another better system could take its place or if it could be removed entirely on that note the first alternative to a crafting system i can think of would be having everything you gather be usable in many games as i said in my previous video this is actually better than having a half-baked crafting system as it allows for developers to be more intentional with their placement of items in the world and allows for more narrative integration with those items but it's not as simple in minecraft because it is such a unique game the game is structured around having to combine materials in the fact that literally every single block you come across is an ingredient that can be turned into something else think about if everything you gathered was only usable in its base form you'd have to raid villagers and steal their beds rather than farming for wood and wool and making your own you'd have to stumble upon flint and steel in a chest just to get to the nether clearly this option makes no sense for a game like this and another alternative would be looting the items off mobs like having to go out and kill creepers every time you wanted a chance to get a bed but it just doesn't feel right for minecraft i mean for one tons of people play in peaceful mode so they don't have to induce the panic attacks that are caused by second it wouldn't make a lot of sense for mobs to be walking around strapped with paintings or anything like that in a game like skyrim looting items off the mobs makes sense but with the sheer quantity of usable items in the game that are unlikely or impossible to come from a mob it just wouldn't make a lot of sense at the end of the day minecraft just is not a game about combat so basing the acquisition of items around a system like that kind of defeats a lot of the purpose in many games this can work but in minecraft this is not the solution now the third and final alternative is the replacement i like the most in most games building story around the procurement of important items and making the less important items widely available to reduce pointless grinding again this is great in a game like skyrim the witcher animal crossing you name it but minecraft is a weird game there are only a few important items in the game and a lot of the beauty of the game is in the sheer number of design options you have thanks to the diversity of materials on top of that minecraft is a game almost more than any other that people love to replay when i come back to the game which i do all the time there's no chance i'm going back to my old lame ass outdated world i'm making a new one because a lot of the fun comes from creating a world from thin air and exploring every unique thing it has to offer even if the quests were perfectly written it would get extremely repetitive to jump through hoops every single time you make a new game i don't care if i was talking to a village wizard voiced by liam neeson every time i wanted to learn to go to the nether eventually i'd want to find him and kill him so just looking at the most common alternatives right off the bat there doesn't really seem to be a good replacement for minecraft's crafting system and i think i know why this is but i'll get into that later but just because you can't find a good replacement doesn't mean that the system is good necessarily i mean take dwarf fortress it's one of the ugliest games i've ever seen but it has to look bad to package all the intelligent complex systems into a manageable game it's like a reverse kardashian okay so it's no surprise that crafting is irreplaceable in minecraft but with the context set and the alternatives explored it's time to get to the meat in the video it's time to critically break down minecraft's crafting as a piece of game design and fasten your seatbelt because this is where i really dove deep and began to change my mind about a couple of things as i've said in the past in my opinion a well-designed game system is one that's able to provide meaningful engaging gameplay enhance or progress the story or otherwise provide a deeper level of understanding or depth to the game in its world that may sound a bit vague but let's walk through it bit by bit first up we have the gameplay what does it feel like to craft in minecraft and remember though the context is relevant here we're trying to isolate the crafting system as much as we can for the most part crafting in minecraft feels pretty good it's better than most systems like skyrim the witcher or animal crossing unlike animal crossing it's not a difficult to navigate sea of menus that allow for zero time optimization and unlike skyrim and the witcher it's not just a single key press crafting in minecraft is quick and snappy but it requires a bit of finesse first you just tap e to open your personal crafting menu or hop on a crafting table if you want to craft some more advanced stuff then you take out your materials arrange them in a shape that in most cases resembles what you want to build and in other cases makes you question your sanity and voila you have a fancy new item while it's not particularly impressive to craft a pickaxe it's intuitive responsive and speedy now it can get a bit tedious remembering where stuff goes after a long break from the game but most people who play have these recipes ingrained in their minds like the pledge of allegiance and at the end of the day the fact that you gain knowledge over time is satisfying and very representative of the ethos of minecraft because in many ways skill in minecraft is defined by knowledge but we can talk more about that another time right off the bat though not enough to impress me especially when compared to other game systems minecraft does pull ahead of the pack from other crafting systems when it comes to pure gameplay now on to the next step story i just sit and think about this one for a while because like i said minecraft doesn't have a traditional storyline you make your own story in minecraft and that's not something you can plan for every single person who plays this game is going to have a unique experience that is personal to them and them alone more so than in almost any other game when a game doesn't have a storyline this element of game design changes a bit it instead becomes how does crafting contribute to minecraft's version of the story the one you make yourself this gets a bit more abstract but let's make it simple crafting acts as a catalyst for creativity we've established that it's a checkpoint between gathering and placing but after looking at more critically i think it serves a greater purpose than that crafting contextualizes everything in the game it drives the purpose for gathering blocks it helps spark creativity and allows you to transform the world bit by bit without crafting minecraft wouldn't let you sculpt the world in the ways you'd like even after you move the blocks around the biggest impact on the world the human footprint that you leave behind is from crafted items you're able to take a space that is untouched freshly created procedurally generated has just existed for a limited amount of time and modernize it just by using your imagination and the crafting bench by providing the context for and driving your purpose and actions in the game crafting fuels a lot of the day-to-day tasks in minecraft and that cycle is undoubtedly fun i mean it's been on t-shirts for years eat sleep mine repeat at the end of the day minecraft is a unique game in many ways every single block is gatherable for use the storyline is inconsequential and the fun is in many ways dictated by the player even though i still think crafting systems are overused and in many cases poor game design minecraft as it does in many ways deviates from that which is normal minecraft is an anomaly of a game where players dictate the narrative and it has a crafting system that is nearly perfect for the weird game that it is so after all the conclusions i came to today i've changed my mind crafting in minecraft is actually a clean well-designed system and it both contextualizes and drives gameplay in a way that elevates the player's experience in the end and i can't say i'm surprised without crafting minecraft just wouldn't be the same and even worse they'd have to change the name but before i wrap things up i just want to say thank you to those guys that commented on my previous video because sometimes when i'm writing i don't engage enough accidentally with contrarian arguments by commenting you guys helped me reevaluate my stance and in the end i think i came to a much more logical thoughtful and genuine conclusion so thank you for that and of course massive thanks to my lovely patrons for helping make these videos possible and thanks to each and every one of you for watching until next time this has been meraki [Music] you

Channel: Meraki

Views: 62,705

Keywords: minecraft, crafting in minecraft, the magic of minecraft, minecraft survival, minecraft survival 1.18, minecraft java edition, video games arent fun anymore, crafting in minecraft for beginners, crafting in minecraft mobile, crafting in minecraft survival, crafting in minecraft education edition, crafting in minecraft pocket edition, crafting in minecraft beta, crafting in minecraft pe, crafting in minecraft switch, crafting in minecraft ps4, crafting in minecraft java, meraki

Id: NpIUqE9iXHw

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2020