Another Serious Critique of Minecraft

it happened again like so many others I felt the urge to return to Minecraft some people call this phenomena the two we Minecraft phase some people have an expression you never really quit Minecraft you just take long breaks I think we will be playing this game forever but Minecraft has changed it's still inev it released over a decade ago but it never stopped being made and perhaps it never will perhaps today's survival mode is merely the alpha for the game it'll be in another 15 years so every time we come back now there's something new to chew on sometimes something good like the new Nether and all its beautiful new biomes or the bees the new Cherry forests or the doubled World depth and all the new caves in some ways Minecraft has never been better than it is today but the truth is in recent years I found my playthroughs ending earlier than intended projects left unfinished a growing apathy and my long breaks getting longer what happened oh my God is Minecraft bad uh no you didn't need me to tell tell you that I don't even know if Minecraft can be bad because it is not one game it is many as it is freely Changed by mods and servers and extreme play styles that have you build a country out of string or exploit the game until it bleeds there is no Universal critique of Minecraft but I am here to tell you that there is one Minecraft with problems and that they matter because this Minecraft is the one it is to most the default experience and because I believe what they say is true that we will be here again that we will be playing this game forever we'll start with the the simplest problems that some of the many things Mojang have piled the top Minecraft's Timeless core just aren't very good indeed when it comes to Minecraft updates it is becoming harder to miss the voices of disappointment with Mobs who rarely spawn who are not worth the effort to seek foods with no meaningful difference from any other blocks that do little more for the average player than cluttering their increasingly strained inventory space resources like amethyst and copper for the three people who think what's really missing from their latest build is a different texture of purple or a brown block that could be a Blue Block instead there are new systems like archaeology which introduce an entirely new way of interacting with blocks you can rightclick on a select view in specific locations to access largely disappointing rewards there are new trading mechanics that skirt the line of helping the game by encouraging farming or bringing new value to previously worthless resources and harming the game by making it easy and tempting to get ahead in the least interesting ways possible some profoundly dull routine made to squeeze the bestest gear from a series of 2D interfaces and then there are the dungeons damned to the fate of being just fine by explicitly decentering what's interesting about Minecraft to instead revolve around its just fine combat system and all suffering from a problem with reward that the amount of ways to get loot has far outpaced the quality of loot in the game a music disc frustratingly likely to be unlistenable horse armor so that the horse you might not have won't die in the fights it never gets into something easily found elsewhere like seeds gold or iron Enchanted armor that's worse than what you've got or maybe something something good but even if that's so like an enchanting book or strong Enchanted armor there is a remarkable lack of interesting enchantments in Minecraft the drought of loot is only equaled by its confusion hard dungeons sometimes contain strong rewards but sometimes have little more to offer you than the color of the blocks they're made from jungle temples are easy and the loot inside is weak desert temples are easy and the loot inside is strong so strong in fact that you'll probably get more loot from temples on the way to a woodland Mansion than you'll get inside the Woodland mansion what players are best served by this direction is their Direction there is no doubt Minecraft has never contained more mediocre a lot of the new stuff just isn't very good and as it piles on the game bloats growing bigger but not much deeper that being said their mechanical intrusions are relatively limited and pale in comparison to something more immaterial about the ways Minecraft has changed there has been a Vibe shift the Overworld is filled to the brim with thriving intelligent life factions both friendly and hostile new villager mechanics make the involvement of villages in a given run likely the oceans now ruled by a race of sentient puffer fish the nether by a race of sentient pigs the ruins of people recently dead or lost long ago shipwrecks temples Nether Portals Trail ruins ancient cities and Min shafts have spread to the point that it's now harder not to find yourself near the memories of someone else and the overt impossibility of well generation has been tamed though not completely in favor of more believable representations of geography Minecraft has never been or felt more nor normal and its lonely dreamlike surrealism the feelings evoked by The Game's early development and that were solidified by its soundtrack into an affecting atmosphere has greatly thinned which is disappointing not because it has changed but because it was unique and it has been traded for something familiar and more so for the fact that Minecraft doesn't do something familiar well there is law now but no consistency for which things have law or for how much the law is meant to explain and in fact the law doesn't seem willing to explain much of the game we actually experience at all are we meant to ask question questions about why Woodland Mansions are comically large or so dark that creepers spawn besides the pillagers are we meant to ask why creepers Spawn from Darkness if the law can only explain a small fraction of what the game is and in this case that would seem inevitable then how will it ever create an actual sense of history or make me believe that I'm in a genuine narrative universe but as I am relentlessly reminded that's what Minecraft is now meant to be the world can no longer be what I imagine it to be you certainly don't need law to tell you that dragons are cool or pets but what if a dragon could be your pet and you could dress it up and make it battle other people's pet dragons climb the leaderboard become the best dragon master in all the land sounds dope but most of all ethical because your dragons are not kept in a horrifying techno prison of some kind they live in a bright and colorful city which you can bling out to your heart's content buildings decorations habitats you can breed your dragons you can evolve your dragons you can teach your dragons new skills you can embark on quests with your dragons you can be dragging your opponents online including some of your favorite content creators or you can form alliances with them them or the some 450 million people who've got Dragon City if you're looking for an enjoyable little mobile game my link in the description or the QR code will get you started with a truckload of food 15,000 30k gold and the very rare de pet [Music] dragon okay back to Dragon Minecraft another problem is that the law tends not to be very good there is little in the way of tonal direction or thematic Direction and very little in the way of fresh ideas a fallen civilization a buried evil these are simplistic entries into a well-worn category sometimes it handles mystery well ancient cities slick with an infesting Darkness loomed over by an unlit portal in the shape of a closed die that's a hook but it's also something Minecraft usually fails to present that thing that makes me want to know more The Cosmic Love crafty and Mythos Minecraft first established for itself with the end and the end of men worked because it fit the game's lonely dream like character and for the same reason it didn't seem to need an explanation but as that Vibe erods the end is increasingly laid bare as kind of mid Lovecraft stuff that is for some reason ruled by a random dragon and that is for some reason the end to Minecraft do la just make it good because if you don't all you've done is lose something special the game has moved towards realism perhaps out of a desire to educate children but the lack of an intuitive rule for when the game will be unrealistic leads to a sense of artistic confusion and the reduction of any educational benefit what child could tell that diorite is a real mineral but that farm animals don't actually appear in intermingling herds in the wild breeding still encourages inbreeding domestic cats still magically terrify creepers and below ground caves are more Fantastical than ever the borders between the real and The Surreal feel arbitrary Minecraft has not moved from one direction to another but from direction to directionless directionless of art atmosphere and fiction were once problems reserved for mod packs now it means almost nothing to feel vanilla and Minecraft's Vibe is little more than being chill the music Still hits but not quite as hard because the truth is it was written for a different game perhaps there is a lesson here about the Perils of forever death continuing to push a game forwards with no destination if you expect to be working on the same game in 10 20 30 years might it be better to avoid establishing a Clear Vision today so that it does not become a prison for the you in the future can Direction and Perpetual development coexist I don't know maybe it's not that simple it rarely is bloated and confused by directionless expansion frustrated by performance that somehow finds another Cliff to fall off with every passing year it's no surprise that a large faction of the Java player base have chosen to abandon all the good things about modern Minecraft for the Simplicity and focus of the old days for many the version of choice is beta 1.7.3 just before the addition of sprinting and hunger and structures mod packs like better than adventure seek to continue Minecraft's development within the early game's tighter focus and community I ities like Golden Age Minecraft have formed around a shared ambition to restore something lost there is a trap here I'm sure you sense it of empty Nostalgia Rose tinted glasses where old game different becomes old game good to prove new game bad but I believe there are things worth learning from the way Minecraft used to be for me I like to go all the way back to Alpha I like the bright green reminds me of my first world and those first Minecraft videos ever uploaded to YouTube like everyone else I fondly remember the first time I experienced the perfectly balanced canvas a world divided into blocks that were not too small to make building something significant tedious or intimidating and neither too big to impose overly severe limitations on the players's Creative Vision Minecraft made remaking the physical world in the player's image easy it digitized Lego it was always going to be the success it came to be but how do you make a Sandbox into a game this was the task of survival mode and it was during Minecraft's Alpha that its design began to solidify into something truly effective the first night you spawned into your world and the sun was going down you had 10 minutes when night fell the Overworld was home to monsters this was a time before Sprint mechanics made you faster than your enemies or Shields allowed you to diminish the threat of creepers and skeletons being outside without light made death a matter of time so don't be rush to make tools from wood then from Stone find coal to make light and build yourself a shelter Knight was a kick up the ass to interact with Minecraft's core feature contrary to a popular misconception the reason it it worked so well was not because it was hard but rather because it struck a very particular balance it was hard enough that it had to be addressed but easy enough that it could be addressed in almost any way when you motivate building the danger is that the motivation creates specific demands the players feel beholden to meeting and ultimately work to stifle creativity not night it provoked a solution but not a specific one and so it was not just night that you were solving but also the vastly more interesting problem of realizing your creative Ambitions and desires some people made a hole in a wall or a house from a cave or from wood or dirt near a beach or at top of mountain everybody made something if extrinsic motivation comes from the game and intrinsic motivation comes from you then Knight was an extrinsic spark for an intrinsic flame and as a spark it remained effective once you had a basic Foundation you were safe but being stuck inside a heart or a hole in a cave half the game wasn't exactly appealing so you'd better continue to build make it nicer and bigger expand your region of influence with light and secondary structures before long you could build through the night without interruption but danger remained in the distant dark a grim possibility waiting in the peripheral a constant quiet whisper a motive to keep going Minecraft understood the nature of creativity some people will always motivate themselves for others it's difficult to provoke in a vacuum but it's a runaway thing if you can motivate someone to lay the foundation they'll more easily motivate themselves to do the rest another example was farming Health did not regenerate so food to heal was necessary and increasingly so as mining Expeditions became more ambitious over time farmed food could also be stacked where slaughtered food could not be the most reliable means of getting food was farming and farming necessarily meant building perhaps it'd be nothing more than a wall and a trench but with that there perhaps it had become much more you see survival mode was not about survival it didn't have survival mechanics it wasn't trying to evoke the constant tension of the survival genre instead survival was the context for incentives that told you firmly at first softly soon after to engage with Minecraft's mechanical strengths it did that very well and the simple fact is it's easier to make design effective when there is nothing else there that threatens to distract it sometimes well what else are you going to do can be a valuable question another strength of Minecraft's Alpha was its gripping story what of course Minecraft never had a story back then it didn't even have law but games well they're not beholden to what is written we inhabit their fiction experience their worlds and fulfill their roles and a word need not be spoken it's not a matter of some secret genius it's simple it's that the average Minecraft run reliably shared certain experiences and would often go on to take the form of a basic and Universal narrative shape a soft narrative if you like I do believe that once upon a time Minecraft's soft narrative was pronounced the beginning tension and danger a lost man dropped into an eerie world with 10 minutes to live embodying the behavior of a vulnerable primitive human you crafted primitive tools from wood and rocks in an attempt to meet your immediate physical needs then according to the mechanical incentives of the game but also as a reaction against the emotions of the beginning you would move Beyond Survival you would Thrive this progression was a basic inevitability of the mechanics at hand but it also felt right as a fulfillment of a journey Thrive could mean anything but it's no coincidence that people tended to build castles instead of cottages back then things that aren't practically useful but nevertheless feel right as a reaction to the world diamonds were especially effective because they're not just strong Diamonds Are a symbol of wealth and opulence to have them represents an absolute reversal of status from the crude wooden tools with which your journey began a fitting climax a satisfying end people would make a point of putting their diamonds on display and hiding them from thieves who would never really come surviving to thriving was the soft Narrative of the average Minecraft playthrough fulfilling it brought a certain amount of satisfaction finishing it a certain amount of closure and I'd argue it served as its own motive to express creativity to experience Minecraft at its best it's a complicated thing to return to Alpha One fears that it was all just Nostalgia it's a beautiful thing to realize that some of the magic was always there written into the code and yet Alpha is an alpha it's a small and limited experience focused yes but there's only so creative you can be with a handful of blocks only so deep you can dig only so much to discover and Alpha had its flaws old cave gen to have heavily encouraged mind-numbing techniques to maximize efficiency and since you always respawn at the wild spawn the actual punishment for death was a dice roll day meant you could safely return night meant being repeatedly killed or hiding in a dirt hole for 10 minutes Minecraft's Alpha was an alpha I'm not saying go back I'm saying I understand why people do and that I believe in these earlier versions of the game we find evidence that Minecraft might have started making the wrong decisions a long long time ago this year beds turned 13 years old old that's too old for most Minecraft youtubers to sleep with of course but for the rest of us it has been 13 years since the dying of the night the first thing I want to say is I get it I get why Mojang made Knight skippable it was effective design but it wasn't perfect let's say you make a world knowing exactly what you want to build with all the motivation to see it through for you night is nothing but a hindrance or perhaps you'd like to explore the Overworld un impeded night makes that impossible also monsters are scare we and small children are a billion dooll audience I get it Knight had the potential to be limiting fine so limit Knight back it was the function that mattered not the form and Mojang could always find some other way to do what Knight did uh I won't bother with the spoiler alert guys that's not quite what happened the delicate art of creating a video game makes different elements of design interdependent if you carelessly remove one others may break or stop making sense so what would have been ideal is a surgical approach instead Mojang dropped an atomic bomb on night and didn't bother to clean up the debris beds were not IM mid game unlock that would keep the first night intact but quickly allow experienced players to move Beyond it they were not something you could choose to activate like bonus chest before well generation and they made no attempt to contribute a first step incentive of their own perhaps by requiring a shelter to be housed in beds were a part of the default experience they were realistically achievable within minutes not hours and you could place them in the middle of an open field of course monsters don't matter if you're asleep before they can spawn and you're encouraged to behave this way if you're asleep before they can spawn youd don't have to deal with burning mobs or creepers in the morning so the night has been erased the first night has been erased and because of that the default ambition of the first day is to do nothing more than to get your hands on a bed a roote an emotionless routine that either involves walking into a village and stealing one or finding three sheep to punch and with that we can wave goodbye to our soft narrative from here on the only function the day night cycle serves is to demand at a Brisk pace of six times an hour that you rightclick on a bed that's not a challenge it's a repetitive inconvenience whether you're building or exploring or if you're on a server doing anything because everyone on the server needs to be asleep at the same time but even if you're in a position to ignore the pressure to sleep like a singleplayer mining run Mojang will literally send a squadron of attack drones after you if you ignore the pressure too many times you might wonder then why the day night cycle is so short back in Alpha the 10-minute length of day was presumably a conscious design choice to create the right balance between tension and the freedom to choose what and where you'd like to build today today the only thing the length of the day night cycle determines is how often you're pressured to right click on a bed so why are we still slave to a number chosen to meet the Ambitions of Minecraft's 13-year-old Alpha most crucially the first step incentive night offered was never replaced we lost farming too today farm animals spawn more commonly more kinds of animals drop food and the absence of night means there's never a time you can't go outside to slaughter them so you want food you go on a quick Rampage and you're good for a week the balance that made farming a better idea than not farming has inverted of course you might live in a desert where that isn't true and you might just decide to build a farm anyway right you might even choose never to sleep Minecraf here is a free country and you can do whatever you please and that's true there is no Universal critique of Minecraft but there is a crucial difference between what can happen and what is probably going to happen people optimize the fun out of their games people follow incentives that's why designers use incentives because people follow them people are going to sleep this leaves Minecraft without a spark and for many that will mean a flame that stays unlit but Minecraft do not just wipe the Slate clean of any extrinsic spark it has also introduced new incentives that actively encourage you not to place that first block basically Villages Villages are everywhere it's entirely reasonable to expect you'll find one on your first day Villages are entirely welcoming so much so that you can openly steal everything inside the village and sell it back to their owners at a price Villages provide beds a pre-built farm and a pre-built w Life protection from the Iron Golem immediate access to the trading system housing and not just one house but a wide range of choice each with enough space for every crafting apparatus in the game including Brewing stands which you can also find in the same Village and the less useful ones which you can also find in the same Village in a more immaterial sense they provide Refuge from The Game's characteristic feeling of loneliness with the welcome of people and pets or surrounding bustle in the aesthetic sense Village structures closely resemble the kind of houses modern players generally want to build they're quaint cute complete with all manner of little aestheticism if you go into the game thinking I want to build a quaint little cottage and then the game immediately presents you with a quaint little cottage along with a truckload of extrinsic incentives to use it or remain close what's likely to happen next it's as if villagers were designed to tick all the boxes the intrinsic impulse can overcome that but it is going to have a harder time and it is also possible that a Player's Choice to protect a village from outside threats could lead to offence which could then lead to something more but for most purposes a ring of torches will do the job Minecraft isn't just a game that lacks incentives it's a game that contains dis incentives Minecraft designs against intrinsic motivation Minecraft designs against building that sucks also why but this isn't the end no this is the end ask someone what the goal of Minecraft is today and they'll give you a much clearer answer than they ever could have before you go to the end to fight a dragon the final boss of Minecraft you follow a central progression path to get there which involves a bit of exploration some Dungeons and quite a lot of fighting so now for the question is that a good thing there are good things about it exploring the Overworld is never anything less than wonderful and there are bad things about it like the inevitable period of farming Endermen to get all the eyes you need but what I mean to ask is does it make sense for Minecraft's Central progression path to mostly be about combat why does it seem so disinterested in the things that make Minecraft Minecraft of course you don't have to do it it doesn't have to be the goal of your playthrough but it is likely to be of course it's likely to be it's literally called the end it's immediately followed by the end credits on that basis alone it is inevitable that getting to the end will be perceived as the point of Minecraft but then there's the equally pressing fact that most other games have a similar progression path most other games end with a final boss and so players naturally import their assumptions realize that a good proportion of the player base were not even alive before the end was introduced and if you go into the game convinced that the end should be the central ambition of the average Minecraft playthrough then doesn't building something something with no relevance to that ambition doesn't that start to feel secondary almost wasteful doesn't that seem unfortunate I'd say it makes for a bit of a story too what's the soft Narrative of the average Minecraft playthrough today well I spawned into a world I was powerful and insulated from the dangers around me and then for some reason I decided to kill a god what do you think should we call Peter Jackson today the the main reason people seek the end is that it's framed as the end nothing about the beginning of a Minecraft playthrough makes the end a fitting end nothing about the rest of a Minecraft playthrough makes it feel right to start murdering a bunch of aliens use their eyes to find an ancient portal and kill a dragon in an alternate Dimension nothing about walking that path is satisfying in soft narrative terms and indeed in hard narrative terms why is this the end to Minecraft now there is another inevitability what next the story is over the end poem in its long and fancy way urges you to wake up from this dream you going to stick around maybe maybe you only came here for the loot or because it was just something to do but if for you this was the goal of Minecraft it's difficult to change that story now the problem is not that the end is bad I mean let's face it the boss is decent at best largely being a matter of fighting full damage but the atmosphere is haunting and at the end of the end are its cities Minecraft's most mechanically interesting dungeon also its most rewarding it's not that Minecraft would be better without the end it's that I don't think it should be characterized as the end it's not even that it is an end a long time ago this place was conceived to fill a gap in Minecraft to give it a clear and concrete goal to Forever answer the question for those who needed to ask it what do I do in this game a part of me screams that an even longer time ago there was a version of Minecraft that gave us those answers perfectly damn well but maybe there is a valid need for a more definitive end that something like night could never produce why should such an end be a bad thing must it direct you away from from Minecraft's mechanical strength I don't think so and why should it not direct you the right way instead that could mean a million things but a simplistic suggestion would be some way to build to the end to mine the materials for a portal that you would construct by hand in this way allowing the player to choose their Central progression path it's not ends that's the problem it's this one and as Minecraft's progression faces criticism some take it as criticism of the concept of progression as if the way it is now is the only way it could be as if Minecraft hasn't always had effective progression through Mining and Tool tiers as if mods haven't proven how many other forms progression could take but the questionable direction of Minecraft is stood for such a long period of time that it has effectively become invisible we're blind to its parameters we take them as given and see only the details we wonder whether ancient cities are better than Woodland Mansions not whether it's a good thing that dungeons are the assumed way for new major content to be added to Minecraft or that dungeons are increasingly perceived as Minecraft's basic and primary unit of cont content it isn't a good thing but let's not confuse concept and execution again dungeons face more inherent problems problems rooted in their nature as content specifically designed to decenter everything except the least interesting parts of Minecraft dungeons are kind of stuck in this role specifically because of the mechanics they seek to decenter good luck making an interesting puzzle when you can just mine through the puzzle and if it's so easy that players aren't compelled to do that then it probably wasn't a very interesting puzzle you could always disable mining but then my point would make itself it's good good to have somewhere to give meaning to all your high-end gear it's bad for that to be seen as what there is to do in Minecraft a perception spread by a number of things one being a main progression path that mostly involves combat in at least one but likely three dungeons another being that dungeons have become among the only places that give meaning to your high-end gear combat underground against the basic mob roster was made far less intimidating with Sprint and shields combat above ground was made non-existent with beds there has never been less danger so what is good gear for now what gives a stack of diamonds they're worth if not to prepare for dangers that you will only find in the end the nether or a dungeon the end once more the Nether and dungeons in toe are therefore made to feel more Central than perhaps they should this sure does seem like a bit of a pickle but here's the crazy part there is a solution to this problem it lets you keep most of the advantages of Dungeons and fix most of their drawbacks it's simple elegant it is already in the game and it has always been there it's called mining mining is the context for what in actual game play terms is dungeon crawling it's an endless series of tunnels and Chambers sometimes there'll be monsters sometimes there'll be loot difference is the loots in the walls instead of chests and the tunnels are much less rigid and much less predictable which makes exploration much more engaging the other difference is mining doesn't have to do away with what makes Minecraft interesting for one the generation of the caves themselves produce an endless number of physical problems that must be solved with blocks navigating a steep fall circumventing a pool of life lava creating recognizable features in the environment is important to prevent yourself getting lost in a gray and winding place while creating an easy path of retreat in a steep and Jagged place is important to prevent yourself getting killed flowing water can be used to your advantage or blocked off combat encounters meanwhile tend to be more interesting in closer combination with the world itself and greatly more varied both in terms of mechanics and reward mining makes for better dungeon crawling than the actual dungeons I wonder then if certain dungeons wouldn't have been better as underground biomes there's nothing wrong with combat nothing wrong with material reward but should they not come from the most interesting places people often ask me what I think of the cave update on account of the first video advocating for one so firmly and the answer is I think it's wonderful seriously mining has always captured the mechanical Joy of exploration the constant anticipation of whether you'll find Treasures or Horrors when you break into the next chamber or place the next torch thanks to the new cave generation there is now another dimension to that fun now the sight of a cave itself can be its own reward some of the things you'll see in the depths are breathtaking and for the same reason those physical problems to solve are more interesting and more varied than ever before since caves now tend to be so much bigger and so much easier to find the cave update has also found a way to solve the strip mining problem strip mining is Mindless and boring and also relies on abusing the game's debug mode and now the average player has much less of a reason to do it but there was one problem that the cave update did not address but with regards to what there is to mine nothing has meaningfully changed since Alpha in fact the cave update has made it worse it's easier than ever to get diamonds not only because their spawn rate received a flat buff but also because big caves mean exposed surfaces which makes it easier to see generated veins and big caves means it's easier to find abandoned Min shafts where diamonds spawn most commonly that sucks within 3 to 5 hours you've probably mined everything worth Mining and from there the process loses much of its excitement because Rewards are now indirect maintenance for tools or armor you already have or experience a mere number that might make your tools and armor better and that could be gained more quickly in basically any other way this is the second part of Minecraft's loot problem plenty of ways to get it not much to get that would be a shame even if it weren't for the larger context that mining will therefore take up a very small fraction of any major progression path quickly giving way to something that is probably much less interesting I think we ought to reaffirm a simple perspective there are lots of games that have traditional dungeons but only Minecraft has Dungeons that are good in the way mining is good and only Minecraft can if Minecraft was still in its Beta And you told me about the role traditional content and more traditional forms of power progression would eventually come to take I wouldn't be upset but I'd certainly wonder what's the point let's talk about the nether update the new biomes produce many of the same mechanical challenges as the underground perilous gaps perilous gaps of a more diffuse nature perilous gaps made perilous by height instead of lava Dunes of swamp-like Soul Sand that slow movement where enemies best counted with fast movement most commonly spawn getting to the dungeons in the nether is more mechanically interesting as a dungeon than the dungeons in the nether unlike the cave update it's also more beautiful netherite is the new thing to mind for a tier above Diamond which indeed I did predict would never happen you guys can stop telling me now in a recent stroke of Brilliance raiding a dungeon has been made mandatory to craft netherite gear but you can still get the raw material through mining unfortunately by mining I mean using the debug mode to find a specific y level and then doing this what is this strip mining on crack is still strip mining mining for netherite is mining if there was nothing interesting about mining the nether update is good but it does little to solve the lacking of the post- diamond stage of Minecraft's power progression it is only to the game's detriment that mining has taken such a back seat in modern Minecraft I also think modern Minecraft is good because it's Minecraft because you can do this but if we really will be playing this game forever then shouldn't we advocate for its default mode of play to be the best it could possibly be Tangled in a web of 10 years of updates different artistic and mechanical Ambitions have combined to a mess then again perhaps it's time to stop pretending like the game is the only thing that's changed games got big before YouTube and Minecraft would have been fine without it but the experience of playing Minecraft and the experience of watching it have always been tightly linked and YouTube has changed comp competition has pushed content to extremes and there is little space left for the kind of lowbudget improvised and inherently personal content that normalized a personal and improvisational approach to Minecraft now wonder and mystery are allowed to exist for a Pico second before being explained away while guides for perfect mechanical optimization are created and released on speedrun Pace modern YouTube makes the process of establishing A Game's meta nearly instant YouTube has made this normal but other social medias aren't blameless with the rising dominance of image sharing platforms like Instagram Twitter and Reddit as well as the rise of short form video has come the promotion of what something looks like at a first glance above all else which in turn leads to the promotion of a build's immediate aesthetic value above any other quality a build may have a restrictively narrow Focus there's plenty of ways to build something in Minecraft but only so many ways to make it look pretty and it's a focus made even narrower by the basic fact that social media creates a powerful pressure to fit in increasingly making everything look the same the quaint cutesy Cottage is a plague it's not just a problem for things people build with the intention to share them online it becomes the basic image of what a good build should look like for anyone who sees them am I going too far am I talking out of my ass how far will I go to avoid the more obvious answer maybe it's me who's changed maybe I'm only talking to a small fraction of you now the ones who've change like me there really is no Universal critique of Minecraft but you want to know why I made this video because I play Minecraft today and I make this this is my latest world and that frustrates me why can't I motivate myself to do better shouldn't I be able to overcome backwards incentives when I know I want to what's wrong with me here's the part of the Minecraft video essay where someone tells you with an air of profundity that time has passed but the thing is it's a trend because it's true no one wants to be seen questioning their maturity but we all know that part of growing up is leaving something behind we have changed and it's more than a matter of nostalgia because Minecraft is a game whose mechanics thrive on the unrestrained character of our youngest selves isn't it it's a game where you build things out of blocks partially for a given reason but mostly for your own your own creative whims even back when Minecraft contained extrinsic Sparks it was you who lit the flame but now it's harder because part of being an adult is the belief that what you do should have a use a productive value and games don't have one but most of them make you feel like they do whether it's as inherent as moving forward in a story you care about are clearly Quantified with loot level UPS unlocks metrics of progression grind a Skinner box for 3 hours and nothing feels wrong because the bar went up the numbers got bigger but I spend just one hour building something in Minecraft and I feel guilty it was a meaningful experience but somehow it still feels like I'm wasting my time so that's it that's who I've become someone who believes creative expression is wasteful Minecraft is designed against itself and holy canoli I am too so is there is there any hope for a cure I don't think there's hope for direction or foundational change but for improving Modern Survival yes it could address the loop problem bring order to the balance of reward and difficulty it could better encourage building with a meaningful update to farming by making pade Villages an actual feature instead of an agonizing series of exploitations that few will ever bother to engage with or perhaps by externalizing the crafting process where a better tier of furnace for instance would be built in 3D space but I'm Dreaming now and it would seem unwise to wait for Minecraft to change a good thing then that there is something everyone has the power to do feeling guilty it won't be easy to ignore incentives especially ones that come from me but I'm running out of options it's not our task to abandon maturity but to relieve ourselves of the shame of expressing those basic human qualities that we associate with the child when it's time for a game will we surrender ourselves to a different kind of experience bar forever I want mcraft to be better but maybe I do still have it in me to build a castle too maybe Minecraft can still be the game we remember it being if we choose to make it [Music] so oh and if you need a break from Dragon Minecraft how about dragon in some cities you know what I'm saying links in the description if you want the 15K food and the 30k gold and the super rare de pet dragon special thanks go out to El Hudson Lex Williams Andre baluta holy shift Dennis Williams combat wbat John Lemley Dylan schaer Murphy waral the last great Opium Den how long do I need to make my username before mylight stop saying my name out loud Dan Walker Shinu Caleb finore DJ Chino Chase Baker G Series William Vela Joe Simmons I pay my camg girl so why not you Navy husky save Mt the poet deluxo Calvin black John C Cory Walter beak hiury story tell Max monochrome only roller Runner Ethan sich Jack Connor Fraser Milo W Jason H Ray cwell Joshua Car purple PP pit slab Joshua Lovejoy ablan Ryme Veta Cole bramlet essel and benl Logo lubos Thomas prudy White Light best girl Milo Adams creepers Tent Master kfka new XC very professional dodo Douglas totally straight up Anonymous yo Mark Carter Nikita shosen dog best dog I echolocate my husband using your voice nebulus Rascal Ryan green and cud or possibly showd e

Channel: Whitelight

Views: 319,220

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Id: _KqeLT-EOe0

Length: 37min 24sec (2244 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2024