Email: About Minecraft and surprises

Hey Malstrom,

first of all, thanks A LOT for posting up Minecraft and X’s Adventures on your blog… after watching roughly 5~8 episodes, I realized I was completely addicted to merely WATCHING someone play the game. Bought it, loved it, been playing like crazy for the past 4 days, alternating with PES 2011.

Which brings me to the second point, surprise in games. I, like many other people, was left wondering why such a simple game like Minecraft, with no objectives whatsoever, could be so fun and addicting. I’m finding answers to that question by the day (the possibilities indeed seem to be endless), but the surprise factor is definitely there:

Two days ago I was mining downwards, minding my own business, when I started to hear strange zombie noises nearby. Damn, those things can be really creepy underground. Since I couldn’t figure out the direction from which the noise was coming from through the speakers, I put on my headphones and concluded they were definitely to my left, maybe upwards. After some digging, I hit a cave system. IMMEDIATELY, a creeper jumps towards me and my heart goes racing… BAM! Half a heart left… I think to myself: “Damn, I’ve mined so much iron, I must get out of here right now!”. I quickly turn backwards and try to make a run for it, just to hear a skeleton behind me, shooting the fatal arrow.

Point is: this game can surprise the player to no end. One minute you’re completely safe, mining or building without any trouble, the next moment you’re dead. You NEVER feel completely safe. Even now, when I’m strip mining deep down, I get a bit uneasy to dig the blocks directly in front of me… an arrow could come flying by any second.

Well, that’s it for the email. No conclusions this time around, just a big thank you for showing it to your audience. Fantastic game indeed.

Iwata says that one can tell a good game because it is fun to watch. X did a really good job capturing the experience of Minecraft in those videos. I want to talk much more about Minecraft as the game is doing things that you don’t see any game do and taking baby steps in directions that really challenge how we think of a video game.

For example, Minecraft in multiplayer is an experience everyone should try out. Minecraft creates a passive multiplayer which is something I don’t think we’ve really seen done in a video game. With most games, you must play with your friend when you are online at the same time. But with Minecraft, you can enter your friend’s server and see what changes he did to the world while you were away. You don’t get that experience in any console game. You don’t get that experience even in a MMORPG. I find the idea of multiplayer gaming but… not at the same time to be really, really interesting.

I’ve been following the Minecraft scene closely and have been very impressed with Notch. The success hasn’t appeared to have gone to his head (yet). He isn’t out there demanding someone build a statue to him.

There are two reasons why I am impressed with Notch:

1) He recognizes of what I call the Sid Meir Rule. The Sid Meir Rule was that when Civilization became successful, people came to Sid Meir with “ideas” and many of these “ideas” were for Sid Meir to put in futuristic units. In Civilization, all the units cease up to modern technology with an uber-spaceship way to end the game. Sid Meir dismissed all ideas of future technology saying that the player could not associate with it. Contrast Civilization with Alpha Centauri which is a fantastic game. Alpha Centauri doesn’t make much sense with its red alien fungi and technologies such as bizarro cloning vats. The person can understand ‘gunpowder’ or ‘the wheel’. But ‘Eudomania’ and ‘N-Space Compression’ makes no sense and are unfamiliar. Even though Civilization II was inferior, gameplay-wise to Alpha Centauri, it ended up being ‘more fun’ because the game world felt more familiar and easier to get into.

Notch shoots down any suggestion of ‘technology’ or anything that smacks of ‘technology’. Anything being powered by oil (which isn’t in the game yet) he has said, “No” because it is too technological. The player understands chopping trees for wood with an axe or mining stone. Even a crude wooden boat works. But making something like an airplane wouldn’t fit. Making guns wouldn’t fit. Instead, Notch will likely add in ‘spears’ which you can throw. I think a huge part of Minecraft’s charm is how everyone is familiar with the ‘low technology’ which we rarely see in video games. Notch has also ruled out magic because he recognizes that doesn’t fit.

2) Notch understands much of the ‘fun’ of the game is due to the tension between the player and the enemies. His plan is to make the game ‘more hard’ and intends trying to overshoot into ‘too hard’. The worst emotion for a gamer to have is to be bored.

The typical Minecraft player seems to go through this cycle. At first, the player is scared to death because night is coming, and he must rush to make a shelter. As time goes on, he slowly carves out his shelter and gets better supplies. Eventually, the player overshoots the enemy threats by building a massive fortress that the poor dumb monsters could never hope to overcome.

Notch’s reaction to make the game harder by adding harder mobs, the hell world, and the radical changes of making torches burn out to having monsters spawn, underground, in more well lit areas is very shrewd. The feeling of danger makes Minecraft a compelling experience.

You know what makes a good superhero? A good villain. Without a well made villain, any superhero falls flat. In movies and books, good stories have well made villains. People focus on the hero, but the true mover is the strength of the villain. With Pac-Man, it was the Ghosts and their personalities (even having names!) that really helped launch the game over the top. When Donkey Kong appeared, the star was Donkey Kong and not the nameless guy we would know as Mario. Mario, despite starring in several games, didn’t become well known until a well made villain was put in place in the form of King Koopa (and all his henchmen). When NSMB DS came out, everyone was sorely disappointed that the Koopa Kids were not present. With Metroid, the star of the game is really the monsters especially the Metroids (who were very scary!). Even Zelda was defined and even advertised based on the strength of its monsters.

Currently, the multiplayer experience has no server based damage. You can hug zombies and swim in lava just fine. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next patch.

Minecraft is a fantastic experience. But it is so much better multiplayer with friends. When you discover diamond, you share the experience with friends. And when you build something, you also share that too. And you can explore with friends or drag a friend to see a cave you discovered. I think the next patch, Notch will enable you to invite friends to your single player world.

The surprises that come from emergent gameplay are so much more satisfying, addictive, and genuine than the ‘scripted events’ or ‘gimmicks’ games keep trying to put on us.

Since you liked X’s videos, emailer, here is one you might like. What happens when you hit a chicken with a fishingpole? Why, you create the Chicken of Destiny.

People around the world are giving tribute to the Chicken of Destiny.

Bok! Bok! Bok!