If you were to wake up on a deserted island, what would you do? For many N.C. State students, the answer would be “punch trees,” at least if they were playing Minecraft, that is. Though it is still in the early stages of development, Minecraft is already a wildly popular computer game that stresses creativity and exploration over combat. Brian Sykes, sophomore in aerospace engineering explains the basics of the game.
”You’re placed in a randomly generated world of various types of terrain and you really do whatever you want,” Sykes said. “You unleash your creativity by building anything you can out of wood, stone, or other materials you can find.”
Of course, players have no obligation to build or mine if they choose not to. There are no missions. No challenges. The game is completely open-ended, with no definite goals given to the player from the beginning. Billy Julliani, freshman in computer science, explains.
“Unlike a lot of games which are linear or structured, Minecraft is completely open,” Julliani said. “You’re not given an objective. It’s inferred you want to mine for resources and then build up your own empire, so to speak.”
Richard O’Briant, junior in mechanical engineering, described the diversity of options available for the things that players can build in the game.
“You essentially build whatever you want,” O’Briant said, “It’s kind of like the Sims, but with no bounds. Or at least, simplified, so you’re not given a piece of something, you’re given the ingredients.”
This openness may sound daunting at first to some gamers used to having goals, and others may ask the point of such a game, but this doesn’t faze most Minecraft players. They feel the game has an inexplicable “fun” quality to it. When asked why he plays, Brian Sykes was at a loss for words.
“I really don’t have an answer for [why I play]; I just do,” Sykes said. “It’s just fun.”
For Billy Julliani, the fun is just the accessibility of the game.
“There have always been these sort of open-world creation games, but they’re not really accessible and they’re not really games,” Julliani said. “They’re more on the side of simulations. [Minecraft] actually is a game and it feels like a game. Yeah, it gives you the creativity of a simulation so people who are more interested in simulations can do that, but people who are interested in gaming can play it as a game. It has the ability to be a lot of different things for different people.”
According to Richard O’Briant, the creative nature of the game makes it especially attractive for engineers.
“It has spread like a virus through engineering,” O’Briant said. “It’s like Legos, except simulated. Ask any engineering student, and they’ll tell you ‘Legos are awesome,’ just so you can show each other ‘hey look what I built.'”
Though creativity and construction is one of the primary focuses of the game, Minecraft is not without a combat element.
“Minecraft is unique in the fact that is uses a day and night cycle as part of the gameplay,” Julliani said. “You spend your day outside in the world mining for resources and building up your defenses and spend your nights fighting off the various enemies in the game.”
The game is still in the alpha stage of development, though its Swedish creator Markus “Notch” Persson, who works just outside of Stockholm, claims it is rapidly nearing the beta stage. Because of this, updates are frequent and the game is constantly changing, new features are being implemented, and the ability for gamers to interact with the environment is constantly being improved.
One of the more recent updates created a mineral known as “redstone” which can be used to make circuits and logic gates that can be used in various ways. For O’Briant, this is one of the game’s best features.
“My freshman year in high school, I took an electronics class and I was able to actually build circuits and that was really fun, and in this you can essentially do that, but you have to think spatially,” O’Briant said. “You can build combination locks. Some people have actually made computers, like 16-bit adding machines, which is ridiculous.”
The most recent of these updates was released on Halloween and added a number of features including new enemies, different climate regions in the game, and even an entirely new hell-like world known as “The Nether” for players to explore. So far, response has been positive from most players, including Brian Sykes.
“Instead of having only one temperate climate across your entire world, you can now have various biomes where you can experience different climates like tundra or desert or rainforest,” Sykes said. “It really enhances gameplay.”
During the game’s development, Minecraft is being offered for €9.95 ($13.87 USD), but when finished, the price will be raised to €20.00 ($27.89 USD). By pre-purchasing, players are promised all future updates, including the full version of the game and all updates made to it. More can be found on the game’s website, http:// www.Minecraft.net.
