When you play Minecraft, there is always some things that will seem off as far as real life is concerned... As an open world game with no official storyline/explanation for imaginative players, you are left to make sense of the game world on your own terms. When playing games, I've always been the type to justify glitches or odd gameplay elements in terms of some type of in-world explanation, even when it doesn't make sense...
To save space, I've put my TL:DR opinions in spoiler tags:
For example, back when I used to play Morrowind on PC, I would need to turn the view distance down to just being able to see for about 5 meters in front of you because my computer sucked and could barely run the game... While playing, however, I would justify that the world was covered in a supernatural fog, a la Silent Hill or Stephen King's "The Mist". Or, in another example, you play a kid who grew up in an underground vault in fallout 3, yet once you get out and start exploring, you immediately become an unstoppable killing machine, despite a complete lack of real conflict or training in your character's life... My justification for that is that your character is secretly a super-advanced Android, similar to Harkness from Rivet City.
Anyway, I think you get the picture... The question is, how do you find justification for the elements of Minecraft that seem odd to you?
I brought up this point in another thread about how high you prefer to have the gamma settings... Some would say that putting the settings high in any game is cheating, as you're not playing the game how the manufacturers intended. I personally prefer to have high gamma, so I can see everything, even in pitch darkness... Cheap? Maybe, but I'm not taking chances in the darkness... So how to explain it? My character is the chosen one, and therefore boasts the powers of a master wizard... Including but not limited to perfect vision.
Actually, I find this explanation justifies about anything in the game that might be considered unrealistic or resulting from abusing glitches...
How can your character carry so much weight/mass without lugging around a sleigh/sack OR having it impede his movement? His pockets are magical dimensional gateways, of course!
What if you're scoping out your world in creative to locate underground structures such as the end portal in survival? Your character is casting a spell of Astral Projection to learn these things, duh!
How about when you're trying to use a pickaxe enchanted with Fortune III to get four diamonds from every diamond ore you come across and you need to repeatedly save/reload? Well, your character is looking into the near future to find out exactly how to chip away at the ore to safely extract the diamonds, and each attempt represents each failure that WOULD HAVE happened if your Wizard hadn't been using his magical foresight. This same logic could apply to getting the best enchantments without wasting a bunch of time, items and experience... Alternately, this extra time invested could represent your character's concentration and research coming into play; rather than being seen as abusing a gameplay feature, these are players who won't settle for whatever their first attempt at something is and takes extra measures to ensure that their efforts are as efficient as possible. That's how it works in real life, after all.
So on and so forth... The best part is that the game already supports this theory, what with giving you access to enchanting, alchemy and interdimensional portals... And spare me the whole "you're cheating!" or "that's not how the creators intend the game to be played!" lines, given the constantly changing nature of this game it seems to me that personal preference reigns supreme.
So tell me, how do you justify your Minecraft experience?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hi, I'm "Endo" and I play MCXBLA. Also, check out this Facebook page I made specifically for my MCXBLA pictures.
I approve of the practice, that it is generally better to rationalize the existing game behavior than to argue against the game that you can't change.
Though, excepting for your example on carrying capacity, the other examples are "cheating" by the way I play, and thus not subject to needing rationalization. Hopping into Creative mode, or Reloading when you get an outcome you don't like is something a player can choose to do as an artifact of the software, and not really part of the main game experience.
Instead, I'd look more to explaining why fluid behavior is different in MC than the real world. Ex: liquid viscosity and surface tension is greater in MC's universe, thus water is only able to flow 7 blocks from it's surface, rather than perfectly distributing itself.
the world complex a rotation every 20 minutes, hence, the 20 minute day.
For example, I can carry 2304 stone blocks, each one meter on a side. Assuming for the sake of discussion that they're granite, my PocketRef tells me that they weigh about 2601 kg each, or about 5722 pounds -- or around 6,000 tons, total, for an inventory full of stone blocks. That is, by the way, enough blocks to build at least 20 small houses. But I can't carry 37 shovels, even though a shovel weighs about five or ten pounds at most, and you could put all 37 into the space of a single block.
Technically, I could carry 2304 gold blocks, too, if I had that many. (creative mode!) That's 97,758,397.44 pounds of gold. Yes, over 97 million pounds of gold. But only 36 shovels, never 37.
So I don't even try to rationalize it. I just go with however the game works. That saves a great deal of stress (and math).
The inventory fiction is so ingrained in game mechanics, and so necessary for an enjoyable experience, that I don't even think about justifying it in real-world terms. In the real world, things aren't blocky either. Trees don't spring instantly out of the ground fully grown. Animals (generally) have 2 sexes, and you need one of each sex to breed. Offspring doesn't come instantly after lovemaking. Days are longer than 20 minutes long. You can't build structures in mid-air. Etc. There is too much in Minecraft that is pure fantasy to try to make it fit into a reality mold. I care more about the rules of the game world being consistent than about them being realistic. For example, redstone circuits should always behave according to their rules, rather than "burning out" or glitching. That bothers me a lot more than trees staying put in mid-air after I chop off the bottom of their trunks. As long as I know what to expect, I can get into fantasy physics just as well as the real deal.
All of the discussion so far has been valid and carries it's own logic, I like the discussion so far.
As for what has been said, I have to say I can understand the thoughts on what is or isn't legit in game terms, which is part of why I use the word "justification". How much value you get from a game of Minecraft is entirely based on how you decide to play and what rules you consider essential.
I don't enjoy building in creative, because it takes a lot of the fun and meaning from the game... In survival, everything you do and build has some kind of purpose or meaning... At least, until a certain point, after that it's about the same as playing creative mode but without the perk of flight. Yet, I "cheat" when it comes to save/reloading and surveying in creative without ruining the sense of accomplishment I get once I've made progress.
I don't dupe, that's one of those things that would take the enjoyment out of the game for me.
As for not bothering to make sense of the inherently surreal world of minecraft, I have to argue that with the exceptions of carrying capacity and liquid physics (I actually did that exact mathmatic process earlier today, with th 2304 blocks), most of the "oddities" listed by cobra951 are reasonable simplifications of the real world... They still follow how things work in life, however oversimplified they may be. It's also important to recall that this is a game meant to be understood by young children, so the representation of many aspects of life have to be translated in a comprehensive, yet innocuous way.
My ultimate stance is that this game is meant to be played in whatever way you personally get the most enjoyment out of it... and the manufacturers are just trying to keep up providing enough material to let our imaginations continue to go even wilder.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hi, I'm "Endo" and I play MCXBLA. Also, check out this Facebook page I made specifically for my MCXBLA pictures.
I have no issue with deserts and snowy biomes spawning next to each other in Minecraft because snow does fall on and near deserts in a lot of places on Earth:
I always play with "Wilson" my piece of white wool. He is ALWAYS there when needed. And I think Wilson once told me he went to M.I.T. and Oxford... But my health isn't the best right now. I can't really remember . But I've found drawings that speak of a underground labyrinth that can take you to other worlds. Wilson says I might be delirious. But I swear Wilson hasn't moved for weeks. What is he hiding....?
Wilson is probably conspiring to murder you... My advice is that you take this "companion cube" of yours and INCINERATE it! It's probably thinking of killing you right now!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Hi, I'm "Endo" and I play MCXBLA. Also, check out this Facebook page I made specifically for my MCXBLA pictures.
"Justify" Minecraft?
You can't. It's a game, not the real world. (You can't taste, touch, or smell it, can you?)
Like any game, it's just a graphical vehicle for you to play with.
Besides, the OP, while getting caught up in details, is missing the obvious.
How do you 'justify' a world made up of cubes?
huh. this is a pretty interesting post. i mean technically there is mythology and a hint of a story. but in the end i think mojang wanted us to create a world of our own design. our own history. thats why adventure maps are so crazy and imaginative. cuase you can do whatever.
ill take an example from halo, i used to be a forgeaholic. check out my maps. halo reach mm - clover and illuminati. halo 4 - aquaduct (still in the submission process for mm)
but anyway within forge the story telling is only limited by imagination but theres a reason why 80% of the maps have backstories involving spartans and covenant. becuase thats what the story of the game centers on, you could recreate lord of the ring areas. and the story would still some how end up being based in the world of halo.
so when you basically get thrown into a world where you create everything including the history then you are truly allowed freedom to create.
so if you want to yell "notch be damned, another faulty piston, im never buying from that man again" every time a piston lags, then go for it. cause there are no limits to this game..... except you know.. the limits to this game. lol
"Justify" Minecraft?
You can't. It's a game, not the real world. (You can't taste, touch, or smell it, can you?)
Like any game, it's just a graphical vehicle for you to play with.
Besides, the OP, while getting caught up in details, is missing the obvious.
How do you 'justify' a world made up of cubes?
We're probably coming from different angles here.
I'm used to playing tabletop RPGs and war games. Things that sort of simulate reality. Sort of. And one of the most annoying player behaviors is the guy who would argue that the game mechanics were wrong because "that's not how it works in real life"
In BattleTech, a game with 100 ton 'Mechs stomping around, folks would argue about how the physics of a 100 ton, 12 meter machine would cause it to sink in the ground unless it had ridiculous oversized feet.
That kind of thinking sucks the fun out of the game.
So, I encourage folks to apply some fuzzy physics to justify the game mechanics that you can't change, rather than creating stress by picking on the game so it's not enjoyable anymore.
That kind of thinking sucks the fun out of the game.
So, I encourage folks to apply some fuzzy physics to justify the game mechanics that you can't change, rather than creating stress by picking on the game so it's not enjoyable anymore.
Fuzzy physics, magic, or IRL physics applied to "explain" the game internally are all really one in the same activity. Dissecting the game IRL may be exactly what makes it fun for some people and for other might suck the fun right of it.
For myself, I think I agree most with killenjoke (with some modifications, of course) :
in the end i think mojang wanted us to create a world of our own design. our own history.
(snip)
so when you basically get thrown into a world where you create everything including the history then you are truly allowed freedom to create.
so if you want to also yell "I don't really want to explain anything, it's just a game" or "notch you genius, I love this game" or "i'm the genius, I made this world and I want to be able to explain everything in it!"...
then go for it. cause there are no limits to this game..... except you know.. the limits to this game. lol
Another real world phenomenon I personally like to apply to the Xbox version is the fact that we live on a limited-sized planet... and a very small one at that, especially considering the billions more of us that live on it than did even when I was born. The limitlessness of space teases, taunts, and entices us and fuels our imaginations; but it remains, in reality, completely inaccessible for the vast, vast majority of us. The daunting task ahead of us IS managing this little world's limited resources for the benefit of our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren... Within the realm of Minecraft, it IS just a game. Applied to reality in my own mind, I can make it represent much, much more.
Yeh I dont know how or why you need to justify a video game, it's not supposed to be realistic in any way. I could understand a little justification on games that are meant to be as realistic as possible though.
Yeh I dont know how or why you need to justify a video game, it's not supposed to be realistic in any way. I could understand a little justification on games that are meant to be as realistic as possible though.
There's some key assumptions there you're making.
"not supposed to be realistic in any way"
that presumes that you know the developer's intent when they created the game
the game has various traits that mimc real life. limited resources, unfettered possibility (you're not stuck on rails forced to shoot whatever pops out at you).
Like any simulation, it abstracts many aspects of real life to a more manageable set of rules within the game.
there are larger life lessons that can be observed in the game. Some of which may be coincidental, some of which may be deliberate by the designer of the game. the end story you see after beating the Ender Dragon reflects such deeper thinking, and implies the developers did have some intent for deeper thought behind the game.
No one said the OP can't have his fun. If reconciling MC with the real world amuses him, then why not? The thread is a discussion, and a rather good one. I find it interesting to read everyone's different take on the concept. It may spark better understanding of the game's philosophy, and of each other.
To save space, I've put my TL:DR opinions in spoiler tags:
For example, back when I used to play Morrowind on PC, I would need to turn the view distance down to just being able to see for about 5 meters in front of you because my computer sucked and could barely run the game... While playing, however, I would justify that the world was covered in a supernatural fog, a la Silent Hill or Stephen King's "The Mist". Or, in another example, you play a kid who grew up in an underground vault in fallout 3, yet once you get out and start exploring, you immediately become an unstoppable killing machine, despite a complete lack of real conflict or training in your character's life... My justification for that is that your character is secretly a super-advanced Android, similar to Harkness from Rivet City.
Anyway, I think you get the picture... The question is, how do you find justification for the elements of Minecraft that seem odd to you?
I brought up this point in another thread about how high you prefer to have the gamma settings... Some would say that putting the settings high in any game is cheating, as you're not playing the game how the manufacturers intended. I personally prefer to have high gamma, so I can see everything, even in pitch darkness... Cheap? Maybe, but I'm not taking chances in the darkness... So how to explain it? My character is the chosen one, and therefore boasts the powers of a master wizard... Including but not limited to perfect vision.
Actually, I find this explanation justifies about anything in the game that might be considered unrealistic or resulting from abusing glitches...
How can your character carry so much weight/mass without lugging around a sleigh/sack OR having it impede his movement? His pockets are magical dimensional gateways, of course!
What if you're scoping out your world in creative to locate underground structures such as the end portal in survival? Your character is casting a spell of Astral Projection to learn these things, duh!
How about when you're trying to use a pickaxe enchanted with Fortune III to get four diamonds from every diamond ore you come across and you need to repeatedly save/reload? Well, your character is looking into the near future to find out exactly how to chip away at the ore to safely extract the diamonds, and each attempt represents each failure that WOULD HAVE happened if your Wizard hadn't been using his magical foresight. This same logic could apply to getting the best enchantments without wasting a bunch of time, items and experience... Alternately, this extra time invested could represent your character's concentration and research coming into play; rather than being seen as abusing a gameplay feature, these are players who won't settle for whatever their first attempt at something is and takes extra measures to ensure that their efforts are as efficient as possible. That's how it works in real life, after all.
So on and so forth... The best part is that the game already supports this theory, what with giving you access to enchanting, alchemy and interdimensional portals... And spare me the whole "you're cheating!" or "that's not how the creators intend the game to be played!" lines, given the constantly changing nature of this game it seems to me that personal preference reigns supreme.
So tell me, how do you justify your Minecraft experience?
Though, excepting for your example on carrying capacity, the other examples are "cheating" by the way I play, and thus not subject to needing rationalization. Hopping into Creative mode, or Reloading when you get an outcome you don't like is something a player can choose to do as an artifact of the software, and not really part of the main game experience.
Instead, I'd look more to explaining why fluid behavior is different in MC than the real world. Ex: liquid viscosity and surface tension is greater in MC's universe, thus water is only able to flow 7 blocks from it's surface, rather than perfectly distributing itself.
the world complex a rotation every 20 minutes, hence, the 20 minute day.
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Retired StaffFor example, I can carry 2304 stone blocks, each one meter on a side. Assuming for the sake of discussion that they're granite, my PocketRef tells me that they weigh about 2601 kg each, or about 5722 pounds -- or around 6,000 tons, total, for an inventory full of stone blocks. That is, by the way, enough blocks to build at least 20 small houses. But I can't carry 37 shovels, even though a shovel weighs about five or ten pounds at most, and you could put all 37 into the space of a single block.
Technically, I could carry 2304 gold blocks, too, if I had that many. (creative mode!) That's 97,758,397.44 pounds of gold. Yes, over 97 million pounds of gold. But only 36 shovels, never 37.
So I don't even try to rationalize it. I just go with however the game works. That saves a great deal of stress (and math).
The golden age: it's not the game, it's you ⋆ Why Minecraft should not be harder ⋆ Spelling hints
Minecraft is an escape from reality, after all.
As for what has been said, I have to say I can understand the thoughts on what is or isn't legit in game terms, which is part of why I use the word "justification". How much value you get from a game of Minecraft is entirely based on how you decide to play and what rules you consider essential.
I don't enjoy building in creative, because it takes a lot of the fun and meaning from the game... In survival, everything you do and build has some kind of purpose or meaning... At least, until a certain point, after that it's about the same as playing creative mode but without the perk of flight. Yet, I "cheat" when it comes to save/reloading and surveying in creative without ruining the sense of accomplishment I get once I've made progress.
I don't dupe, that's one of those things that would take the enjoyment out of the game for me.
As for not bothering to make sense of the inherently surreal world of minecraft, I have to argue that with the exceptions of carrying capacity and liquid physics (I actually did that exact mathmatic process earlier today, with th 2304 blocks), most of the "oddities" listed by cobra951 are reasonable simplifications of the real world... They still follow how things work in life, however oversimplified they may be. It's also important to recall that this is a game meant to be understood by young children, so the representation of many aspects of life have to be translated in a comprehensive, yet innocuous way.
My ultimate stance is that this game is meant to be played in whatever way you personally get the most enjoyment out of it... and the manufacturers are just trying to keep up providing enough material to let our imaginations continue to go even wilder.
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2421.html#.UfCYZm1qOWk
Just Google
snow desert
and you will see lots more examples.
You can't. It's a game, not the real world. (You can't taste, touch, or smell it, can you?)
Like any game, it's just a graphical vehicle for you to play with.
Besides, the OP, while getting caught up in details, is missing the obvious.
How do you 'justify' a world made up of cubes?
ill take an example from halo, i used to be a forgeaholic. check out my maps. halo reach mm - clover and illuminati. halo 4 - aquaduct (still in the submission process for mm)
but anyway within forge the story telling is only limited by imagination but theres a reason why 80% of the maps have backstories involving spartans and covenant. becuase thats what the story of the game centers on, you could recreate lord of the ring areas. and the story would still some how end up being based in the world of halo.
so when you basically get thrown into a world where you create everything including the history then you are truly allowed freedom to create.
so if you want to yell "notch be damned, another faulty piston, im never buying from that man again" every time a piston lags, then go for it. cause there are no limits to this game..... except you know.. the limits to this game. lol
We're probably coming from different angles here.
I'm used to playing tabletop RPGs and war games. Things that sort of simulate reality. Sort of. And one of the most annoying player behaviors is the guy who would argue that the game mechanics were wrong because "that's not how it works in real life"
In BattleTech, a game with 100 ton 'Mechs stomping around, folks would argue about how the physics of a 100 ton, 12 meter machine would cause it to sink in the ground unless it had ridiculous oversized feet.
That kind of thinking sucks the fun out of the game.
So, I encourage folks to apply some fuzzy physics to justify the game mechanics that you can't change, rather than creating stress by picking on the game so it's not enjoyable anymore.
Fuzzy physics, magic, or IRL physics applied to "explain" the game internally are all really one in the same activity. Dissecting the game IRL may be exactly what makes it fun for some people and for other might suck the fun right of it.
For myself, I think I agree most with killenjoke (with some modifications, of course)
so if you want to also yell "I don't really want to explain anything, it's just a game" or "notch you genius, I love this game" or "i'm the genius, I made this world and I want to be able to explain everything in it!"...
Another real world phenomenon I personally like to apply to the Xbox version is the fact that we live on a limited-sized planet... and a very small one at that, especially considering the billions more of us that live on it than did even when I was born. The limitlessness of space teases, taunts, and entices us and fuels our imaginations; but it remains, in reality, completely inaccessible for the vast, vast majority of us. The daunting task ahead of us IS managing this little world's limited resources for the benefit of our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren... Within the realm of Minecraft, it IS just a game. Applied to reality in my own mind, I can make it represent much, much more.
There's some key assumptions there you're making.
"not supposed to be realistic in any way"
that presumes that you know the developer's intent when they created the game
the game has various traits that mimc real life. limited resources, unfettered possibility (you're not stuck on rails forced to shoot whatever pops out at you).
Like any simulation, it abstracts many aspects of real life to a more manageable set of rules within the game.
there are larger life lessons that can be observed in the game. Some of which may be coincidental, some of which may be deliberate by the designer of the game. the end story you see after beating the Ender Dragon reflects such deeper thinking, and implies the developers did have some intent for deeper thought behind the game.
Let the OP have his fun.