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>I don't get the hate the Minecraft gets now as my experience was really great My experience with minecraft was when notch was on /v/, and my dislike of the ga

by setr 8y ago

>I don't get the hate the Minecraft gets now as my experience was really great My experience with minecraft was when notch was on /v/, and my dislike of the game is how notch basically has/had no idea what he was doing. He accidentally stumbled into a good formula, and arbitrarily followed community requests with no real plan, destroyed any interesting aspect of survival mode, until it became that creative held all popularity, and then the whole game slowly became a lego building-maker, with a thin veneer of survival on top (mostly amounting to a random sudden death, but otherwise completely ignorable once you figure out the main enemies). As /v/ got fed up with his constant hiatuses, he moved over to reddit and I quit paying attention. But the game early on had a lot of potential, and it was mostly wasted. Its only notable aspect is an addictive feedback loop, and online play, at this point. It has more wasted potential in it than spore — impressively disappointing. And it got so close to something fruitful that it ruined any game that actually does attempt a proper survival mode — they’ve all become minecraft clones, or minecraftlikes, and cant escape the perpetual black hole of its name. Even now the genre of survival-building-sim is only just getting back onto its feet, but it’ll remain crippled probably for at least another decade

nyolfen 8y ago
surely there are dozens of mods that can scratch the survival game itch. this sounds like some weird post facto hating it because its popular thing to me.
- setr 8y ago
  My main point is that its not a very good game. Anything about popularity is simply that survival games in general were ruined by minecraft’s popularity, in the same fashion that iphones ruined smartphones (all phones must now compare against it, and no phones can fall too far from it). But at least with iphones, it was actually a decent product to black hole around. But thats just how extreme popularity works. FF did it to jrpgs, FE did it to trpgs, cod did it to fps multiplayer, wow did it to mmos, dnd did it to tabletop rpgs, etc. In some cases they were genre-defining, but regardless, their impact on the genre lasts years, if not decades But as long as we’re making arbitrary assumptions.. I don’t think I’ve ever actually met someone who “hated something because it was popular”, but I’ve met people who’ve accused it, and I’ve met people who think popularity implies quality, and I’m pretty sure there’s a correlation between the two, and I’ve currently got the feeling you’ve fallen prey to the same mistaken thinking. But the to breaking that mindset with minecraft is this: multiplayer is a hack, that leads people to think a game is fun, when in fact its socialization thats fun, and the game is just a medium for it. The two are conflated, but I’m only trying to talk about the game. You can take any game with little merit (see: habbo hotel, nearly any mmo, runescape, maplestory, most fps games, etc), add multiplayer to it, gather a community by external means (marketing, the natural social feedback loop, accessibility, etc), a semi-addictive feedback loop, and produce something that, years later, people will say: I had a lot of memories there, and it was great. But it wasn’t great because the game was worth a damn in any sense a game is worth caring about. It was great because dealing with a group of friends in almost any situation can be made fun. Be it sports, games, drinking, causing trouble, working, etc. You don’t need a good game to enjoy it, especially when its multiplayer. But simply being enjoyable is not sufficient to call it a good game (marvel films can keep your interest for two hours, but its difficult to argue that they’re good as films. They’re just good enough to talk about a little bit, and really only plot-wise, and kill two hours.) Ofc, thats not to say multiplayer implies a game is bad. But it can certainly make up for it, by a long shot. It can be a really effective hack. And to be clear, I had a lot of such good memories (runescape, maplestory, LoL, PoE were mine). But as games, they aren’t worth talking about. The primary value I derived from them was socialization, and an extension of that, economics/haggling. But in their own mechanics and styles, each had superior predecessors and successors, and were totally unnotable in that regard. But those other games weren’t where I had/made my friends.

by setr 8y ago

nyolfen 8y ago

surely there are dozens of mods that can scratch the survival game itch. this sounds like some weird post facto hating it because its popular thing to me.

setr 8y ago
My main point is that its not a very good game. Anything about popularity is simply that survival games in general were ruined by minecraft’s popularity, in the same fashion that iphones ruined smartphones (all phones must now compare against it, and no phones can fall too far from it). But at least with iphones, it was actually a decent product to black hole around. But thats just how extreme popularity works. FF did it to jrpgs, FE did it to trpgs, cod did it to fps multiplayer, wow did it to mmos, dnd did it to tabletop rpgs, etc. In some cases they were genre-defining, but regardless, their impact on the genre lasts years, if not decades But as long as we’re making arbitrary assumptions.. I don’t think I’ve ever actually met someone who “hated something because it was popular”, but I’ve met people who’ve accused it, and I’ve met people who think popularity implies quality, and I’m pretty sure there’s a correlation between the two, and I’ve currently got the feeling you’ve fallen prey to the same mistaken thinking. But the to breaking that mindset with minecraft is this: multiplayer is a hack, that leads people to think a game is fun, when in fact its socialization thats fun, and the game is just a medium for it. The two are conflated, but I’m only trying to talk about the game. You can take any game with little merit (see: habbo hotel, nearly any mmo, runescape, maplestory, most fps games, etc), add multiplayer to it, gather a community by external means (marketing, the natural social feedback loop, accessibility, etc), a semi-addictive feedback loop, and produce something that, years later, people will say: I had a lot of memories there, and it was great. But it wasn’t great because the game was worth a damn in any sense a game is worth caring about. It was great because dealing with a group of friends in almost any situation can be made fun. Be it sports, games, drinking, causing trouble, working, etc. You don’t need a good game to enjoy it, especially when its multiplayer. But simply being enjoyable is not sufficient to call it a good game (marvel films can keep your interest for two hours, but its difficult to argue that they’re good as films. They’re just good enough to talk about a little bit, and really only plot-wise, and kill two hours.) Ofc, thats not to say multiplayer implies a game is bad. But it can certainly make up for it, by a long shot. It can be a really effective hack. And to be clear, I had a lot of such good memories (runescape, maplestory, LoL, PoE were mine). But as games, they aren’t worth talking about. The primary value I derived from them was socialization, and an extension of that, economics/haggling. But in their own mechanics and styles, each had superior predecessors and successors, and were totally unnotable in that regard. But those other games weren’t where I had/made my friends.