Minecraft
Minecraft is a 2009 independent sandbox game written entirely in Java (an Indonesian island), created by Swedish professor Markus "I-can't-make-circles-or-other-shapes" Persson.
Persson began on the project after he decided that he had a deep yearning to create a game that was more boring than real life. Instead of, you know, making something that would actually benefit the world. At the time, he probably thought the project as small, insignificant. Little did he know that his creation would soon amass a mighty army of sheepish gamers that would never have a relationship or even know a life outside of Minecraft.
The game is mainly comprised of extremely pixelated blocks, gardening tools, inconsistent gravity, developers who don't listen to the community and keep making their playerbase angrier and angrier, and twelve-year-olds who will spend every waking moment at this little game.
Gameplay
Minecraft is notorious in the gaming world for having absolutely no plot line, no variation in gameplay and no aim at all. All in all, it makes the game as about as interesting as the math homework most of its players should be doing instead of playing it.
There are seven game modes.
- Survival Mode
The primary mode of the game. In survival, Minecraft players have to remain alive, carving out a living from a cruel and pixelated environment. There's no plot, no nothing; just endless wandering in a strange pointless world. Players generally spend the majority of their time mining for ores, and sometimes crafting those ores into other equally pointless things as they practice their Minecraft.
This monotonous and tiring job, however, is considered very important. After all this hard work, you gain ... the ability to mine and craft faster. Yes. Its a preposterously vicious cycle. Its so absurdly pointless, that many esteemed psychologists have hung up their coats and quit believing Minecraft to be final and conclusive proof that Freud was wrong.
Supporters point out, however, that there is a lot more to the game than just mining. Building, for example. When players take a break from all that mining and crafting, they are given the chance to create. Using stone, sand, metal, wood, and tools ridiculous over-sized pixels that resemble nothing they're supposed to, Minecrafters can construct pretty much anything they want. Then, once they have built it ... well, that's all. They get a sense of accomplishment with the thing they built (which looks ridiculous and resembles nothing it's supposed to), then they just head back down to continue mining. All of this building is (of course) pointless and does not in fact increase the speed at which it's possible to mine. I mean, seriously, if building had any importance, they would have called the game Minecraftbuild. But they didn't. Deal with it.
There is even a scary final boss called The Wither. According to the internet, if you summon it, it will hunt you in real life. And we all know, everything on the internet is real.
- Creative Mode
Same as the above, except all the mining and crafting has already been done for you, and you get to spawn an infinite amount of materials from a retro-looking creative block menu, so it's even more pointless than survival mode.
In Creative Mode, you can build (or destroy) whatever you want, and you are invincible. You cannot be killed, and you can carry over 2,000 blocks of gold and still be able to run fast. Many people use Creative Mode to express their "creativity", hence the name.
Some people use Creative Mode to build nice, beautiful houses. Others use Creative Mode to build witty, thought-provoking inventions. Others use Creative Mode to build other miscellaneous structures. But there are also some people who use Creative Mode to build giant ...dildos ...what? Yeah, this wasn't part of the script.
A common thing done by many people in Creative Mode is the mass usage of TNT. The spamming of TNT proves to be very destructive, destroying everything within a 75,000-mile ... er, block radius. But this destruction comes at the cost of your processor. If you set off more than 1000 TNT in one go, your CPU is fucked if it's more than five years old.
But hey, at least anyone is able to freely build Dr. Robotnik pissing on the moon or something. I don't know.
- Adventure Mode
Similar to Survival Mode, Adventure Mode is a game mode intended for player-created maps, limiting some (most) of the gameplay in Minecraft. In this mode, the player unfortunately cannot destroy any blocks with any tools or place any blocks, in order to avoid spoiling adventure maps or griefing servers. But players are still able to interact with mobs and other entities and turn a Redstone mechanism (such as a lever) on or off. This means that you can still activate a sex machine within Adventure Mode.
- Spectator Mode
Similar to Adventure Mode, but your ability to interact with the world is reduced to that of a ghost! In Spectator Mode, you become a floating head ghost thing that can fly through blocks. This is by far the easiest way to find diamonds! Unfortunately, you can't activate levers or buttons, and so you cannot activate a sex machine within Spectator Mode. Nor would you be able to do anything about the diamonds you do find, since you can't mine them. How sad. At least you can spectate naked women, and nobody would know, or even be able to stop you.
- Hardcore Mode
The gamemode for hardcore gamers who have no life, as the name suggests. Hardcore is exactly like Survival Mode, except you can't change the difficulty. There's also something about being unable to respawn if you die, but nobody ever dies anyway, so it's not that well known. Also this makes the game ever-so-slightly more realistic, since in real life, you can't actually turn the difficulty down whenever you want.
- Multiplayer Mode
The multiplayer mode mostly consists of n00bs, and dick-ass face-head guys in full diamond armour killing them for entertainment, and burning their diamonds and destroying their nice looking base- for fun. Wait... I just called myself a dick-ass face-head. Aah well, you caught me - I attack random n00bs for fun. But trust me, it's for good reason!
- Developer Mode
Gamemode only to be used by developers, completely blocked off to the public. Seems a bit crap, isn't it?
- Story Mode
The most controversial gamemode, Minecraft: Story Mode, was developed by Mojang with the help of Telltale. To this day it remains the most criticized and controversial gamemode.
Wait ... what do you mean this isn't a gamemode? Of course it is, it's in the goddamn name ... wait, what? It's a completely separate game that was also re-released on Netflix as an interactive series? Eh, who really cares anyway? At the end of the day, it's still the black sheep in terms of Minecraft games.
- Sex Mode
The fabled sex mode is not an actual playeable mode in the game, but a urban legend which rumors that a secret +18 mode for the game can be unlocked if a series of intricate parkour moves are enabled in a very specific order. Its gamplay is rather easy: Steve and Alex are constantly fucking the living hell out of each other. Do I have to say anything else?
Physics
Minecraft's science laws are so pathetically unrealistic, some have theorised that the game was solely developed as a 'fuck you' to real-world physics. The game operates in a world where only two materials are affected by gravity, where you can carry more gold than the Federal Reserve and yet not even be slowed down, where a chest can fit five thousand of the same sized chests inside itself, where you can break rocks with your hands and it shrinks instead of breaking, where torches burn underwater, where water doesn't flow down the holes in doors or trapdoors, where people and animals can walk inside each other ... and I haven't even mentioned the water physics yet.
Graphics
At its creation Minecraft was run in a highly laggy one gigabyte of fail. Over the years it has gradually become more reliable, as Mojang improved it in various areas, e.g. speed, variety in materials, gameplay ... They seemed to leave out one crucial area, though – the graphics.
Lazily simple, and shockingly pixelated, Minecraft's graphics are a divisive issue. Many people argue that the style is unique, and the game just wouldn't be the same without it. In other words, they're trying to hide the fact that it's a complete failure in every way.
Why do the creators choose to stick with such a terrible look? Why, instead of a smooth surface, does there have to be gigantic pixels that make up the environment?? Why do you have to download multiple megabytes of files just to modify Minecraft so that it can have good graphics? Well, that really is the question, ain't it. One idea is that it's cheaper and easier to program that way. Which is a complete load of crap, if you ask me. I mean, c'mon; Mojang cashes in big time from people who pay a buttload to buy the game, so why is money such a large concern here? And easier programming? Seriously, they have the best developers working on it!
Reception
Critical
While many have criticised the game due to its grinding repetitiveness, others praise it because it passes the time, keeps the kiddies occupied and is one of very few games that really exercise the imagination of its players (with the possible exception of every single other create-and-design game ever made). Most of all, though, it has been applauded due to its amazing ability as a contraceptive. Namely, it can turn the most sexually favoured male into an anti-social basement-dwelling retard.
Maybe not the most orthodox use of a Java game, but it can be effective if you have a fat husband.
Commercial
Minecraft is one the most widely-purchased PC games of all-time, having currently been purchased by more than nine trillion people worldwide, and in the process making over thirty nillion dollars. This is the result of staggeringly high numbers of dull, addicted gamers; nerds, basement dwellers, Canadians, and basically any other knuckle scrapers with money. And if you think you know what addicted means, think again. These people get more enjoyment out of finding a diamond ore than most people get out of a long lasting relationship. They feel more grief when they lose that diamond ore than most people feel when they lose that relationship. And to top it off, they spend like fifty hours a day on the game. I know. Fifty five hours a day!
That's a lot.
It's like they all fear that if they leave the game for even a second, it may spontaneously combust. Its more likely, however, that they fear they may actually get distracted by the call of real life, which may force them to reflect on all those hours they could have seen on superior sites like Bookface or Uncyclopedia. It is a looming menace to every lonely gamer that they might realise they have wasted their life, spiralling further down into society than the neighbourhood bum, eventually taking the appearance of your stereotypical gamer with absolutely no chance at marriage, sex, sense of accomplishment, or a true and fulfilling lifestyle.
Why are people so drawn to endless mining and crafting, you ask? Psychologists have puzzled over the elusive answer to this question for years now. Many say that is because people wish to escape their boring lives, to live in a world where they have complete freedom and ultimately control. But it's a strange thing to say, really.
Because if they're trying to escape boredom, then Minecraft is the last place you'd go.
See also
External links
