Why does everyone like minecraft?

[Aprilgold]

Video game stories are a main aspect of a game that i enjoy.

Well, for me, it's probably because video game stories are, for the most part, a ball of moldy earwax. Badly written. Badly plotted. Badly acted. And the worst part is it's a frucking movie you get to just sit there and watch. That's great gameplay, constantly hitting the skip button.

Yep, its true.

Well, since it actually is what gaming SHOULD be now in days, no, not the building aspect, gaming should be just THE GAME, none of this bullshit on cinematics, or stories, or fucking tedious gameplay, it should just be THE GAME!
Minecraft, the reason I bought it was because it is what I think games should be, ABOUT THE GAME!
...
Also, this guy also has reasons why I like the game.

snip

DERP, BEING SUPER HOSTILE FOR NO REASON, DERP! I couldn't resist, no, just snip.

Wow, how unnecessarily hostile. Anyway;

a) No, it's not. Minecraft is good, whether you enjoy or not is where the opinion part comes in.
b) Yeah, you're right, the possibilities aren't infinite, but they are huge. Yeah, when you put it like the game does seem completely mundane. That's why you shouldn't put it like that. Context changes everything. Stacking those blocks isn't all that limited when you consider that each block is a different material, with different properties, which had to obtained through different ways and can be used for multiple construction methods. So yeah, I reject your point.
c) Yeah it's an opinion, but it's a bloody common one and would be upheld by many Minecraft fans.
d) Despite temptation, I'm just going to write "Yes" because that would be obnoxious and irritating. Just note that all other points you merely replied "Nope" to are being ignored because of lack of discussion value.
e) Yeah, I know. Except Mojang is a big company now (in financial terms. They are a small studio, but they could probably afford quite a few more employees), the fact they haven't sold out is something I personally find refreshing. And yes, they do sh*t. They just "leaked" out 1.9, little more than a week after 1.8.
f) Well yeah, it is the best I've ever seen for a game. Maybe that's personal taste, but it's still a good community.
h) No, it's not. Adventure maps are custom built maps that operate on the vanilla game, RP servers are just that, RP servers and Shadow of Israphel is made on a private multiplayer server, no mods were used up until a fairly recent episode.
i) It's planned to continue being updated after release.
j) Indeed I did, it was a rhetorical device to draw attention to fact that I've repeatedly stated the game is good, because it is.

Further notes: I only in one case referenced an external example, and it was only really an offhand reference and was entirely to do with Mojang, not the game. And talking about irritation, being unnecessarily insulting rubs me the wrong way as well.

Its true, Mojang is small, financially they COULD hire more, but they are probably saving money for the future.
Minecraft has INFINITE possibilities, if you want something, use Java and make it happen, because you CAN do that, if you want to drop kick a creeper, BY GOD make it a mod, do you want circles, you can do that too, just do everything needed for it.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

People have compared it to Lego already but heres how I see it;

Imagine a game where you play as Lego Men in first person and have an infinite amount of blocks to build with without having to worry about physics. A lego world is generated at random by a well developed algorithm, and you can explore mine and build on this world as you wish. And just to top it off we have enemies, multiplayer and a huge crafting system with tons of usuable items such as mine carts and redstone.

Hell Lego alone is fun enough.

This just multiplies the fun of lego

*continues making spaceships on the side*

 

[Tharwen]

It's an adventur-y sandbox, and that's the sort of game I like.

Other games that appeal to me for the same reason (e.g. 'Here is a massive world full of people having a good day. Do with it what you will'):

Assassin's Creed
Rome: Total War
Dwarf Fortress

 

[conflictofinterests]

2: Its creative

I'd disagree with it being creative, its a creative tool but it isn't creative in of itself

I'm pretty sure Minecraft was the first game that was a sandbox for the sake of being a sandbox, not for any other end (making the setting more believable, for instance.) That being the case, it was infinitely more of a sandbox (concerning the vocabulary of actions goals one could have). In that sense, it was quite creative.

 

[conflictofinterests]

Sorry, double post x_x

 

[conflictofinterests]

I do not understand minecraft mania at all. Photoshop's better. MUCH better.

THANK YOU

i was waiting for this, but literally any creative media software from photoshop to 3Dmax are far superior.

You make
a) better looking things.
b) in less time
c) with more control
d) with more customisation
e) (my personal Favourite point) something that can be shown to anyone and be recognised (and probably respected), as opposed to minecraft "art" which only holds value within its odd community.

There are plenty of other instances of "art" that only hold value within their odd communities.

Other than that, your first point is an aesthetic evaluation, which is inherently subjective, and the other points may vary depending on a person's skill with either program. If someone is good at Minecraft and shiiiiiity at Photoshop, they they will tend to make things more quickly, with better control and customization than with Photoshop.

 

[Vault Citizen]

I'm staying away from it myself, I'm just not good enough with building games to justify getting it. I can't deny that I've been tempted though.

 

[AngloDoom]

I do not understand minecraft mania at all. Photoshop's better. MUCH better.

THANK YOU

i was waiting for this, but literally any creative media software from photoshop to 3Dmax are far superior.

You make
a) better looking things.
b) in less time
c) with more control
d) with more customisation
e) (my personal Favourite point) something that can be shown to anyone and be recognised (and probably respected), as opposed to minecraft "art" which only holds value within its odd community.

There's no difficulty to overcome in photoshop. You don't have to travel to a dungeon to find materials to craft a block so you can go deeper into a dungeon to find more material to craft the item you want.

That's like saying "Why RP in an RPG when you can write a book?"

 

[RatRace123]

Because it's addicting and the lego comparisons have been made already, but the fact that you also have to contend with enemies trying to murder your ass adds suspense and further fun.

 

[James Mann]

People enjoy minecraft because people enjoy having an open physics sandbox with a fresh but familiar feel, an embedded sense which comes from the childhood love of stacking lego bricks merged with new environments to help replicate the sense of innocence while not requiring the creative and inquizitive nature at the same level as a child. Building a home, a fort, something youve seen on tv is definately something everyone enjoyed as a child and minecraft merges that into an acceptable adult level that you can try and enjoy with your friends without being a 4 year old. Its simple, which is something that most physics sanboxes cannot accomplish without a limited variety of choices.

The next reason people like it is that its versatile, i read someone read that you cant do much just stacking boxes, i argue that not only can you do a hell of a lot stacking boxes but also that its not the only thing that the game has to offer, from weapon-smithing, diverting rivers and waterfalls of water or lava, huge mines can be produced and even portals to a completely new map with a unique set of tiles which have features entirely different to that of the starting land. Redstone allows for entire circuits to be produced, allowing potentially mindblowing amount of uses to the items craftable with redstone.

Players are rewarded for hunting and killing the mobs on the map, anything from wool food and feathers from killing animals to gunpower for killing creepers, which add even more diversity to the game. The game has a massive amount of resource able to be collected via mining, so even stacking boxes gives huge variety to the most basic idea of the game, all the blocks have unique properties, you can harvest crops and trees on the grass terrain, build fortresses out of the stronger materials such as stone, breaking the gravel offers flint which is used in bows, which can be used in dispensors which can be triggered by a creeper (or another player) stepping on a pressure plate, or use the same pressure plate trigger a piston to push that skeleton into that river of lava in your glass pyramid? Coal, i believe the most common of the 'ores' assuming you can class it as an ore, its most basic use is to make torches to light those caverns, but how about you put it into the furnace and produce a few bars of metal or glass, or use it to get that cobblestone into stone so you can build your walls out of something a little sturdier... or keep burrowing downwards and find a vein of gold ore to build yourself a monument of your favorite body part?

portals, TNT, giant floating fortress, underwater bedroom, glass maze, a tower on the top of the mountain so you can see across the oceans, build yourself a boat, hell a pirate ship if you dont mind it being a bit stationary, cotton block sails, tree truck mast and dispensors as cannons? it can stay just off the docks of your skull mountain island, with its deadly mazes down to your gold and diamond stash and netherworld portal?

And i havnt even listen all of the possibilities in the BETA version of the game, this game isnt at a proper release level yet and somehow it has more variation and potential playtimes to the big releases.
"How many things can you do stacking blocks"?.. how many things can you do with a gun? even with a large number of guns the difference is pretty much cosmetic and the guns work the same just with slight stat alterations, but as long as you keep on shooting any of the guns do the job at hand. Throw a grenade to kill that guy? run round the corner to shoot more guys? shoot those guys so you can chase after that guy and shoot him too? for what? so you can shoot more guys or see the next cutscene explaining why you want to shoot those guys? what else... not much you can do driving around, rts offers a bit more versatility but when it comes down to it minecraft offers a massive amount of opportunity and is continuing to grow rapidly. The modding community while not revolutionary works to push that even further, mods adding new creatures, new tools such as painting open up massive amounts of possibility for even what could be considered fairly simple mods. Everything in this game is about fun, about creativity and opportunity, as long as you have the will, time and creativity to make what you want the means are in there somewhere for you to do it. And while i admit you cannot drop kick a creeper, ill tell you that you wont get that much satisfaction drop kicking an exploding entity in a first person game, but if you asked someone in the modding community nice enough im sure youll find someone who would be able to add some sort drop kicking function to the game.

And the potential of the game is growing so fast, that you only have a small amount of time to build so much before a new feature, or features are introduced which allows you to look at the game and think of so many more possibilities that even something as adding the ability for pistons to be able to pull as well as push can open up so many new possibilities to gameplay.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It's simply a Lego adventure game, the only story is the one you make of it.

 

[conflictofinterests]

Spoiler

It's so low resolution! It is obviously lower quality art than anything anyone could slap together in photoshop!

:|

Oh, and Duchamp wasn't an artist. He just threw shit together.

:|

 

[Belaam]

I do not get the appeal at all. I find it monotonous and pointless. Sure, I can make a model of Isengard, or Serentiy, or whatever the heck else I want, but I could pour hours and hours into doing the same thing with Photoshop, or even a pencil and some paper and get the same result only with something far more accessible.

The game itself is not particularly creative at all. It gives players a very basic world with very basic rule and then lets them be creative. Which is why some people love it. And yes, it's cheap.

Clearly, that's enjoyable enough for about 3 million people to put money into the game. (There are about a billion PCs in the world) And that's fine. But it is not the end all be all of gaming.

People gripe incessantly about the grind in MMOs, but I find even the 30th time through Stranglethorn to be more enjoyable than the amount of digging needed to build even the most basic home.

Personally, if I'm going to sit down for hours to plot out something, I'd rather create a fun weekend activity for my daughters, or create a D&D campaign, or make a great lesson for my next class, or an amazing date night with my wife. Perhaps it's just that, for me, I want more payoff for learning to create something. I spent a couple of weeks once learning to sew enough to make my own Halloween costume one year. Years later, I still have the costume, and the basic skills, which are, on rare occasion, useful elsewhere. I understand that the creative process is a lot of fun, but for me, I want some permanence to what I make.

Again, to each their own, but this is more or less why I do not like Minecraft. I see it as them giving me space to create something, but if I am going to spend hours, days, weeks, or months creating something, I personally want that to be something with more of a payoff.

 

[Thaius]

I once had the same reservations as you do now. I not only play games for the story, I study them as a narrative medium. I'm aiming for a job writing video games. I run a blog specifically about video games as a narrative medium. Interactive media as a storytelling tool is my academic focus and my passion.

So let me put Minecraft in a different light for you. No doubt you've heard all about the building and the creativity, but that's only one side of the game. The other is, for people like us, far more appealing.

You are placed in a strange world. Not only do you know nothing about it, but no one else does either; there is not a living soul in the world but you, and any friends you know who have played the game have absolutely nothing to say about your world because it was developed from a random key specifically for your game. You are the only person, in the game or outside of it, alive in this world.

You start with nothing, not even basic supplies, but through intuition and perseverance you create tools that allow you to create some torches and burrow a hole into a hill before the monsters come out at night, lighting it with your torches and closing yourself in. You hear the zombies moaning, the spiders hissing, the bones of the wandering skeletons clanking together, and you're sure that somewhere out there is a silent and deadly creeper or two, but you know you are powerless against them in your current state. Trapped in your home until the sun rises, you use collected stone to make a better pickaxe and turn to mining deeper.

By the time you realize you can no longer hear the moans of the undead, the sun is high in the sky. You find some remains of the monsters, burned to death by the coming of the dawn, and you collect some resources from them and move on. You will continue like this, moving from home to home, exploring deep caves, towering mountains, and endless oceans, taking in the beautiful vistas and always looking to the horizon, until you feel the need to settle down or, eventually, reach the end of what can be explored. You will defend yourself, explore the ruins left by those who came before you, and forever journey to see what lies beyond your discovered country.

This is a meager description of this game. It really cannot be understood until it is played; it is an epic struggle of you against nature, discovering a unique world with nothing but your wits and what resources you can gather. It provides moments of pure beauty, speechless wonder, and unbridled fear. It truly must be played.

 

[The Night Shade]

My first guess it's a good game

 

[AngloDoom]

I do not understand minecraft mania at all. Photoshop's better. MUCH better.

THANK YOU

i was waiting for this, but literally any creative media software from photoshop to 3Dmax are far superior.

You make
a) better looking things.
b) in less time
c) with more control
d) with more customisation
e) (my personal Favourite point) something that can be shown to anyone and be recognised (and probably respected), as opposed to minecraft "art" which only holds value within its odd community.

There's no difficulty to overcome in photoshop. You don't have to travel to a dungeon to find materials to craft a block so you can go deeper into a dungeon to find more material to craft the item you want.

That's like saying "Why RP in an RPG when you can write a book?"

Clearly your not an artist if you think "theres no difficulty to overcome" its all about the quest for perfection , ironing out the details.

And no it isnt because rpgs have game elements. whereas minecraft has things blowing up your work.

How is that "quest for perfection" any different for Minecraft? People constantly update their houses, pictures, rides, whatever they create. That statement is just as apt for practically anything if someone dedicates time to that creative output. Regardless, in that statement, if you want to add an orange colour to something in photoshop you simply move a slider along a bar, but in Minecraft you have to go and hunt for the materials for that colour. I'm not in any way saying that photoshop is an easy affair, but there's nothing standing in the way of your expressing yourself outside of the limits of your own imagination, Minecraft has zombies.

Minecraft doesn't have game elements? So, monsters attacking you and reducing a life-bar until you die and reset a small amount of your total progress isn't exactly the same as an RPG?

I'm not saying one is better than the other, but your argument is "photoshop gives you more creativity." I'm sure there are better programmes out there for people to play with to get even better effects than photoshop, so that argument is also void.

Added to that, Minecraft doesn't cost hundreds of pounds.

 

[pwnzerstick]

The only people who say minecraft is boring are those who have never played it. Once they do they're hooked.