Minecraft
I am not a gamer. I can say that with complete honesty. One of the games I play is half game, half UN-like roleplay. It's called NationStates. The second is Beat Saber. The third and last is Minecraft, as you may have gathered from the title. I was going to write a post about Minecraft, but I really couldn't express what I wanted to say properly. I was going for something like the Foreword of the book Block City- How to build incredible worlds in Minecraft, which is an amazing book that features people's amazing Minecraft creations. How amazing?
Air Traffic
Colossal Carving
Dragon Spawn
These are some other majestic builds featured on minecraft.net, which features these kinds of things regularly. I highly encourage you to check out more if you're interested. So, I wanted to write an essay or something... That kinda failed. I think I'll put in instead my favorite quotes from the previously mentioned Foreword:
"In Minecraft, we're in the world of Plato's essential forms: the sheep are the essence of sheep, the mountains are the essence of mountains. The human imagination fills in all the details."
"If you want complexity, you will have to build it. But if you do build it, it will be yours--your complexity. It will be the only complexity in the world.
There are many games in which you can be Ulysses, and have adventures, fighting monsters. But very few games in which you can be Thoreau, and build a cabin by a pond, and wander, and contemplate, and dream. Build a cave, a cabin, a city...
Minecraft, in survival mode, does a good job of that first kind of game. But Minecraft in creative mode is that rare and wonderful second kind of game.
Most games are impatient with patience. They don't want you to be relaxed, quiet, mindful; to be absorbed in a task for hours, days, weeks, months, years.
Most games assume a hyperactivity of mind, an instability of self, a radical impatience, and so they try to amuse you, distract you, pleasure you with novelty, endlessly, forever."
"...they make us feel alive by convincing us we may soon be dead."
"But in creative mode, Minecraft lets us feel alive by playing. Not playing at killing. Playing at playing. Because you never feel more alive than when you are playing, creating, lost in a game. Building a fort, with your friends."
"The last great real frontier, the American frontier, closed a hundred years ago." (Well, space is the final frontier, but I digress.) "But Minecraft still shimmers into being ahead of us, endlessly, a dream of the eternal frontier."
Air Traffic
Colossal Carving
Dragon Spawn
These are some other majestic builds featured on minecraft.net, which features these kinds of things regularly. I highly encourage you to check out more if you're interested. So, I wanted to write an essay or something... That kinda failed. I think I'll put in instead my favorite quotes from the previously mentioned Foreword:
"In Minecraft, we're in the world of Plato's essential forms: the sheep are the essence of sheep, the mountains are the essence of mountains. The human imagination fills in all the details."
"If you want complexity, you will have to build it. But if you do build it, it will be yours--your complexity. It will be the only complexity in the world.
There are many games in which you can be Ulysses, and have adventures, fighting monsters. But very few games in which you can be Thoreau, and build a cabin by a pond, and wander, and contemplate, and dream. Build a cave, a cabin, a city...
Minecraft, in survival mode, does a good job of that first kind of game. But Minecraft in creative mode is that rare and wonderful second kind of game.
Most games are impatient with patience. They don't want you to be relaxed, quiet, mindful; to be absorbed in a task for hours, days, weeks, months, years.
Most games assume a hyperactivity of mind, an instability of self, a radical impatience, and so they try to amuse you, distract you, pleasure you with novelty, endlessly, forever."
"...they make us feel alive by convincing us we may soon be dead."
"But in creative mode, Minecraft lets us feel alive by playing. Not playing at killing. Playing at playing. Because you never feel more alive than when you are playing, creating, lost in a game. Building a fort, with your friends."
"The last great real frontier, the American frontier, closed a hundred years ago." (Well, space is the final frontier, but I digress.) "But Minecraft still shimmers into being ahead of us, endlessly, a dream of the eternal frontier."
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