I have a survival strategy building sandbox waiting in limbo, just need to fix a few easy bugs and get some Alpha Testers.
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JonSnow13 wrote:
In all fairness Minecraft is a great game. Not because of it's sandbox nature, but because of how simple and easy it is to pick up and play. All animations are fleshed out, it's simple and clean. Progression is straight forward and rewarding, wood to stone to iron to diamonds. Exploration is fun. I disagree a little bit with that. People are tending towards this idea that simple games are the best. It's not a static relationship. The complexity of the task should be relative to the perceived effect of the task. In other words, we're not Zombies who play the most mindlessly simple games we can find. In fact I challenge that. In my opinion people are constantly seeking learning and an ever increasing level of complexity that grows as the results of their actions become more and more pronounced. I think Minecraft isn't successful because of it's simplicity but more for it's unbounded achievable complexity. | |
After trying to make something huge and complex in Minecraft Creative mode, I realised it isn't as fun as Survival. After some thoughts why Survival is better than Creative, I came to a conclusion: In Creative, you can build anything, but in Survival, you have to build a shelter to survive your first night. So, what, in my opinion, makes sandbox a good one isn't only unlimited creativity, but also the path which the game encourages you to go on. Minecraft isn't fun only because you can build much stuff, but because there's a creeper or a skeleton which you must be cautious of when you're minding your business.
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Well you can build a shelter in creative, it just doesn't mean as much. Not really any sort of achievement. People like to work towards goals and receive a benefit for understanding and following rules. Like standing outside will get you killed, rule one.
It's all about system dynamics and when you bring someone into creative mode you're removing them from the system. [edit]Creative mode does present it's own pros, not to bash creative. It's just different and not as good as survival in the long run. | |
I think one of the best parts of sandbox games is the many opportunities for emergent gameplay. For example, there are role-playing minecraft servers, where players don't just say "hey we're playing minecraft let's build houses" but instead create their own characters and goals which aren't necessarily part of the game's mechanics.
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Well in Minecraft there's really nothing at all which compels the player to do anything related to progression. So even the act of saying "Lets build houses" is completely created by the user.
In fact there's no advantage in the game to having a really nice looking house or township because just having all your stuff in a room you dug out of the ground would work just as well. I mean really, I often get by quite well just holding everything I have with me. Aside from collecting food to stop your character from starving, staying away from of defending against monsters, and keep your head above water for more time than you have it under.. There's really nothing compelling people to do anything. So I agree completely. If you want to know what makes the Minecraft sandbox fun, just look at all the stuff you do in it which you don't even have to. | |
That's a good point. If you want to filter out less-intelligent people, make a game that requires intuition and doesn't provide a tutorial. That's the beauty of simplicity, right?
I have a friend who doesn't play games that use the brain (zombie shooting, CoD, etc.) So my friend dies often by not doing anything to actually survive. My friend doesn't really like Minecraft, haha. So for smart people, it's a good game. That simplicity is a design choice, of course, and some people won't like it. Hopefully you're better off without those people, though. | |
Red Hall Dev wrote:
Aside from collecting food to stop your character from starving, staying away from of defending against monsters, and keep your head above water for more time than you have it under.. There's really nothing compelling people to do anything. So you mean, there's nothing else? Nothing compels you except for...the things that do compel you? Having a house that looks nice is not necessary, but having a house that allows you to increase your ability to survive is definitely beneficial. Yeah, you can sit in a hole with your wooden sword and wait until daylight every 20 minutes, but really it's not going to work out great. You'll probably end up climbing out of your hole directly into a creeper...or three. And you will be spending 10 minutes in a hole doing absolutely nothing. It's much better to at least build some enclosed structures with doors, one at the surface and one in the mine, with a well-lit path between them. Because you really -do- want to get iron and diamonds to make better weapons, tools, and armor; it's just like leveling up in an RPG. There's also the exploration part of it. Originally you were not really rewarded by the game for exploring the surface and/or getting into the nether. But since then, they have added things like villages and temples, and of course the End, which do provide some direct reward (even if it is just "you won the game!") There's a lot in Minecraft that provides a tangible goal. It's definitely not as direct or linear as many games (i.e. you don't have someone on the communicator device saying "Your next goal is to mine some iron!"). That's why a lot of people have trouble getting into it - they would prefer having the game tell them exactly what to do. | |
Kaiochao wrote:
So for smart people, it's a good game. That simplicity is a design choice, of course, and some people won't like it. Hopefully you're better off without those people, though. I don't know if I would say Minecraft is a game for intelligent people. I'd say it's a game for intuitive and creative people. To me Minecraft is more attractive to the Artist than the Scholar. If you want to play games where you're among intelligent people then I would say to play something like Eve Online. Most people who play are adults which is a luxury and they're generally either studying or well studied alreaady. I say this because when I play Minecraft online I typically meet people between the ages of 8 and 15 and they're generally not very intelligent. That isn't to say there aren't Scholars on Minecraft, there are and in fact they have the best servers and do some of the most incredible things but they are more the minority I think. | |
Magicsofa wrote:
So you mean, there's nothing else? Nothing compels you except for...the things that do compel you? Well you're right about one thing, a hole in the ground could potentially get you killed in the very rare case that you dug up and got hit by a monster. For that reason I think the only thing you need in the game to survive is a hole in the side of hill with a block dugout for a window so you don't die from monsters. Well that and enough food & coal collected. But aside from that I think you're not looking at it in the right way. You said well really we need better tools, iron and diamond and we need path ways that are lit and we need to explore and find things. Actually not at all. You're failing to distinguish between and want and a need. There's no need to ever leave the home you dugout except for food. It's a fact. Anything beyond going to collect food is something you "want" to do. Players "want" to explore, they "want" better tools, they "want" to reach the neither. So I would argue that there's nothing aside from food which provides a tangible goal. As for reaching the end and beating that game, that doesn't mean anything either. You just go back out into the world after you defeated the dragon and continue as if nothing happened. This is no kind of tangible goal. I know it seems a little bit existential but it's true that to continue playing there's nothing you need to do. In fact when you die you just respawn so even going to get food doesn't mean anything, a shelter doesn't mean anything. But now please don't get confused about what I'm saying. I'm not saying that the system doesn't have any kind of goals in it at all. I'm just saying that the only goals the player has are created within the mind of the player. Think about life. I wake up in the morning and have breakfast because if I don't eat, I die. I don't want that so I eat breakfast and I go do some work during the day. But.. Think about the game. In even a broader sense, the game offers me nothing tangible in reality. I don't have anymore money or anything material when I play Minecraft, it's worth nothing to me logically. However... The human brain makes the game real. It makes the goals real, it makes death real, it makes us want to achieve and create. These are how we gain goals in games. It's trickery with the human brain and I was just going on a bit of a tangent and saying Minecraft is a prime example of people doing this. | |
Yeah, playing games (and playing them well/beating them) isn't really necessary for our survival. I guess you could call it trickery, since games involve an abstract set of rules.
However, games can be good for your brain. They can make you better at problem solving and coordination. They can also make you happy, assuming you don't ragequit too much. I think that problem solving, coordination, and happiness ... while not necessary ... are beneficial to our lives. We survive better when we are smarter and happier. At a basic level I think playing games, along with many other optional activities, satisfy the same desire that eating and having sex do. Besides, Minecraft now has the Hardcore difficulty setting, in which you don't respawn after death. Instead your world is deleted and you have to start a new one. | |
Good point. I've just got to add that survival in real life isn't the only reason why we do things. I mean a nice car isn't going to serve a robot better than a cruddy car but any person will take the nicer car.
Like life is about getting what you want, and to get want you want you have to survive. That's just the primary goal, before anything else. | |
Because the nicer car makes it easier to survive?
A car with AC in it will serve you better than one without. | |
Every action movie ever mades plot: You're being chased in a car, by a car. The guys in the other car 95% of the time are trying to kill you. What's the best survival technique then? To go faster than them? Nah... Couldn't be.
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Well, theoretically a fast car will be better at avoiding crashes. Of course that means you have to be a good driver...which nobody is (except me)
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Yeah, it depends on the situation. If you're dealing with an open road then the fastest car you can find is going help you get away but actually if you were in a confined place trying to get away you may be better of with something slower but stronger.
I'd say an APC? xD | |
A better car is generally not just a raw improvement- after a certain point it is generally more of a social status symbol. A bigger engine is practically speaking generally more of a liability than a benefit (worse fuel consumption, heavier vehicle, etc.) but is desired for (largely fictional) percieved reasons. Not sure how this is relevant to the OP, though, except to illustrate that social considerations are as important, if not more, than other types of human motivators.
As to Minecraft, I would say it has definitely improved in the last year. The addition of miscellaneous sites such as temples and the like makes exploration much more interesting. Adding NPCs gives more options for activity and resource use. What would be really nice is if they could add more varied enemies (not just more powerful- different types that can lead to some interesting interactions- something like giant ants that move dirt/sand to make ant nests for example) and maybe expand villager usefulness. | |
It's just a great game.
Most sandbox games fail, because they are poorly designed. Look at Wurm Online, and Roma Viktor, etc...