Minecraft from Square One: The Quality of Minecraft by Kevin Nunez

The only way to surpass reality is within a virtual environment that is only limited by the abilities and creativity of the players or the rules established within the virtual game by the creators themselves. The gaming industry has and continues to advance at a relatively accelerated pace, but as it does so, it only slowly removes a few limitations within every new game released and grants players more freedom. Every video-game-player has at one point stumbled upon some restriction while traveling through a game, perhaps a door that cannot be opened, an opening which is blocked by an invisible barrier, and in almost every case, the inability to alter the virtual setting itself. Minecraft is the only game which I have encountered that allows the player to overcome the limitations of a video-game and even take advantage of them.

Minecraft is a game, which consists entirely of blocks or cubes, where the player must survive in a simulated world with seven different biomes by removing and placing the blocks that make up that same world with limited resources. The first alpha version of Minecraft (rated E for Everyone) was released April of 2009, but was officially released on November 11, 2011, available only for the PC and was created by Markus Persson, founder of Mojang (The Amazingly Unlikely). As Minecraft progressed, regular updates were added to the game correcting the defects that it contained, and so did the players’ creativity within the game. A second game mode was introduced to Minecraft soon after, creative mode, which granted the players infinite resources and the ability to fly as well. Soon after, Minecraft was released for the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, and is currently available for the Playstation 4, Xbox One, Playstation Vita, and Android and Apple devices as well. Minecraft is well known primarily because of the immense freedom that the players have over creating new things or altering the virtual environment within the game, but also exceeds in user-friendliness, special features, game modes, graphics, and availability on other consoles.

To begin with, the controls for Minecraft are relatively simple and easy to grasp, especially because a guide is implemented within the game, and explanations of what objects or resources are and do is offered within an in-game accessible menu. Most of the controls for the incomparable video-game are shown at all times on the bottom left corner and do not act as an obstacle in most of the consoles. Since the setting of Minecraft is made up of individual blocks, there is a small, white cross at the center of the screen that helps players identify exactly to which block they are pointing at and the game is in first person. Unlike most games, the cursor or sight is either not present or is obtrusive, meaning that it often times can interfere with the gameplay due to its size, shape or color and a third person view is not very user-friendly. The only control in Minecraft that I had difficulty locating on the Playstation 3 version was the control to run, which is activated by double-tapping the L3 analog stick upward, but is very easy to use. As for the computer version, most of the controls are controlled by the mouse, and the controls for the Pocket Edition of Minecraft for Android and Apple devices, are mainly driven by the touch-screen ability of the cell-phones. Left click or tap to place a block, right click or hold to remove a block.

One of the most astounding aspects of Minecraft, but incomparable to the freedom granted to the players, is its features. By features, the criterion refers to bonus or extra content within a game that extends the games’ story or original boundaries. In this case, when a player first enters the world of Minecraft, they are placed randomly in any of the seven biomes available which are a desert, jungle, forest, swap, plain, a snowy area or a mushroom island. In each of the biomes specific plants, trees, animals, and weather patterns are implemented. The seven biomes constitute the originally intended setting; however, in Minecraft the players are able to build portals to other dimensions. Currently there are only two, The Nether, which most would compare to hell, and The End, which is where a dragon awaits and when defeated, the game supposedly ends. Although most game endings finalize the gameplay in perhaps a story or campaign mode, Minecraft ends with a strange dialog between a “mysterious force” and the player, but the voice of the player is obviously not their own but rather a typed script, and with the respawning of the player back into the normal world. The Nether and The End both offer a different setting in which the player can choose to play in, thus altering the difficulty of the video-game and keeping the players attached to Minecraft.

Along with the features of Minecraft come its game modes. Originally Minecraft was intended to be a survival mode type of game where the players would be set in an environment with limited resources in which they would construct houses, buildings, farms or systems to survive. It is extremely similar to the way the real world functions, if the player needs to build a wooden house, they chop down a tree; if they need stone, they mine stone; if they need food, they harvest crops or slaughter animals. In addition, within the survival game mode of Minecraft (excluding creatures from the Nether and the End), zombies, skeleton archers, large spiders, and creepers (green quadrupedal creatures that explode when they get too close to the player) spawn at night or in caves and attack the player(s). In addition to this, cows, sheep, pigs, chickens and fish are also part of survival mode. However, by setting the difficulty of the game to peaceful, the aggressive mobs will not spawn, while normal animals will continue to do so. The difficulty levels are peaceful, easy, normal and hard. The harder the difficulty, the more damage the creatures cause the player. Creative mode on the other hand, is basically the very same concept except that the player cannot sustain damage, and all resources are implemented into the players’ inventory with and unlimited supply. Minecraft also supports multi-playing in either of the two game modes.

As stated before, Minecraft is made only out of squares, cubes or blocks. The players’ hands are rectangular, pigs are square, the wood is cubed, even the string of fishing polls are made of smaller blocks, but the graphics are very high. Despite the fact that the majority of the objects appear as pixilated; Minecraft can even be played in 4K or ultra-high resolution. The default layout of the appearance of the blocks can also be changed according to the players’ standards. For example, in the default layout all blocks are made of smaller blocks, but if the player would like to see the blocks a bit smoother, he or she can do so by changing the block style.

Once again, Minecraft gains the upper hand above nearly all video-games due to its wide availability on many different consoles. Minecraft is available on eight different devices, while a standard disk video-game can only be read by one console. This allowed the rapid growth of the games popularity since many people where able to play the same game as another with a different console, which allowed them to share ideas since the controls and appliances are relatively the same. The only disadvantage is that the most updated version of Minecraft is available on the PC, which can easily be updated frequently, while the game on other consoles can take months to update because of the preparations needed due to different service providers or companies.

Finally, the most overwhelming characteristic of Minecraft is the power granted to the player to create unimaginable structures, mechanisms, designs, components, even inventions within the virtual world. The one element that allows all of this to be possible is a resource within the game called redstone. Redstone is a mineral that can transfer signals through, above, under or around blocks that activate certain mechanisms by acting like a pulse of electricity, and the players of Minecraft took advantage of this and their ability to alter the setting block by block, designing extremely complex to relatively simple mechanisms. Up to this date, players within Minecraft have created working calculators, real-time clocks, functioning automatic tic-tack-toe games, circuit boards, re-playable full songs, automatic slaughterhouses, automatic farms, defense mechanisms, hard drives capable of storing one bit of data, all within a video-game. Inside of Minecraft grew a science. Advanced players looked at the specific details and conditions set within the game and took advantage of them in order to create tremendous contraptions. For example, players figured out that a zombie spawns within one-hundred-twenty-six blocks from the player and can survive a fall of 23 blocks, but not 24 because it would lose all of its life. So they built a platform 170 blocks from the ground so that the zombies would only spawn on the platform, made a water canal that pushed the zombies down a hole and made them fall 23 blocks into contained area where the players could kill them with a simple tap and collect whatever they left behind. For many, Minecraft may be but another game, but for thousands of others, it is an endless puzzle that truly tests their creativity and critical thinking.

Despite the complexity of the advanced features of Minecraft, the original story mode is very simple. Each player, as did I, started by spawning on a single square in a random biome observing the strangeness of the blocks, wandering until stumbling upon a pig, hitting it and then watching it run around in circles. But now, I have the ability to build retracting bridges, automatic harvesting farms, and invisible doors, all of my own design. Every player, as did I, started changing the world of Minecraft from square one.