Minecraft Forums

BloodyPhoenix is actually erring on the side of optimism; I'd guess I've seen something about the Minecraft weight/size/density issue posted (sometimes with even more elaborate mathematics) a dozen or more times. But it's something that fascinates people, and it beats exchanging opinions about why some specific console, YouTuber, or version of Minecraft is the best/worst ever.

Transdimensional engineering might explain it.

Of course, so might a simpler thing: game structure. As BloodyPhoenix said, "carrying hundred of rounds of ammo and eight different guns while still being mobile is not possible either." Minecraft and its stellar-core-dense pockets is just the most extreme of, well, just about every game that incorporates a player inventory. Just as in Minecraft, where you can carry 2,304 cubic meters of gold (44,436,635.2 kg according to figures from the Pocket Ref, 4th ed) but you can't carry 37 shovels (which I could do IRL, and I'm neither as large nor as young as Steve), in the first MMO I played you could carry 26 full suits of armor, but you couldn't carry 261 gems. The fact that this number is a multiple 26 should be a giveaway: the gems in question (white amber, if any of y'all ever played NexusTK) stacked to 10, and there were 26 inventory slots, designated A-Z. And the fact that Nexus had stacking at all put it ahead of even earlier games, usually of the text adventure type, where any one item -- whether it was a key or a carpet -- took up one space in inventory. And there's a good reason for tihs: I've played around with some game design, and when you start assigning size and weight to items, managing them turns into a real hairball, and fast. Consider the ways in which 100 feathers differ from 100 pebbles. The pebbles are heavier. The feathers are bulkier. But the feathers are more compressible, too. They can go in a smaller bag. And what about bags? Some number of empty bags can fit inside another bag, but what if those bags aren't empty? How many bags of feathers (which are compressible, remember) can fit in that volume? How many bags of pebbles can you carry before the seams blow out? If you have a bag that's a bit bigger than a chest when it's empty, you can put 100 empty bags in a chest, but you can't put 100 chests in a bag. As you can tell, the whole issue of realistic inventory management becomes overwhelming in a game context -- especially one that's supposed to be about something other than organizing your stuff.

Which takes us to the other aspect of the issue: the player's role in the game. Now, IRL I've been hiking and backpacking for many years. I've also got issues with my knee (no, an arrow was not involved) which imposes a greater than normal limitation on my carrying ability -- it shifts the balance point in the weight/distance equation some. So I've had to be very, very selective about what I choose to carry. Out of sheer necessity, my pack loadout is an example of just how much stuff you can fit into how little weight, and my lifestyle when I'm living off what I can carry is an example of how little one really needs. But that takes a lot of time, work, and expertise. I've been backpacking since I was so small I was in the pack (my dad had one of those kiddie carrying packs, back when it was a new thing) and I know exactly what I'm going to need, when, and why. I know exactly what obstacles I'm likely to face (including ones I don't expect to face, such as falling off a rock and breaking a leg, but need to plan for), and I carry those items which can most efficiently deal with them. I've also had decades to accumulate and fine-tune the things I carry; if I had to grab random stuff from around my house to meet the same needs, it would be a lot heavier and bulkier. Emphasis on a lot. Now, in a game -- let's say some generic FPS -- none of those factors apply. "You" -- your game avatar -- doesn't have years to accumulate specialized items; you're picking up whatever you can find, often off of dead enemies. And you don't know what obstacles you might be facing -- climbing along a rooftop or mowing down legions of zombies? Also, often you can't revisit earlier locations to pick up items that you find out now that you need, but you didn't think you would, and either enemies or game mechanics (or both) prevent you from caching items for future use. So you have to be able to carry what you're going to need, in all reasonably likely scenarios, with you. Having to make a decision as to whether to carry the sniper rifle or the sawed-off shotgun -- and then having some part of the game cut off from you because you chose the wrong one -- isn't fun, it's annoying. And (although some of them seem to forget this) games are selling fun. Sure, you can go back to a save and play it over. But you've broken the immersion when you do; you've reminded yourself, rather forcefully, that you're not B.J. Blazcowicz fighting Nazis; you're Joe Smith, fighting your game console. So from a game development standpoint, while the developer wants the player to be making decisions about whether this is better to keep than that, they don't want to make those decisions so difficult, or their consequences so punishing, that they, rather than the action, become the focus of the game. If the game is supposed to be about fighting legions of zombies, you do not want to make it about inventory management instead; that's a quick route to single-digit ratings on Metacritic. The player is supposed to be a hero, blazing away at those zombies, not a computer geek, trying to decide if it's more important to carry some spare socks or a spare T-shirt. (note: the socks win, always) And whether or not the hero is in an unfamiliar situation, the player making those decisions certainly is, so there has to be a rather large margin of error. This requires, overall, a lot of laxness in the exact details of what the hero can carry and still climb silently up walls. Like, more than his own body weight. It's a case where precise realism would be tedious and boring, and if we want something tedious and boring, we don't have to pay $50 for it; there's plenty available in our real lives. (and it probably has a positive payoff -- "thank you for mowing the lawn!" rather than a negative one "are you in there playing games again?")

So, as much as I snark about Minecraft's insane inventory, and those incredibly sturdy pockets of Steve's, I know the reason for it. Minecraft wouldn't be much fun, after all, if building your house required spending an hour to move each stone block into place. Well, I suppose it might be, but it certainly wouldn't be the same game. IRL, it took tens of thousands of people decades to build a one of the great pyramids; in Minecraft, one expects to be able to accomplish the same single-handed in a matter of weeks. The kind of fun that the game provides, even in survival mode, requires the ability to carry around thousands of cubic meters of stone, miles of railroad track, etc. It wouldn't be much fun without that.