Minecraft Forums

sandbox aka do whatever you want

i think its more of a magical but post-post-apocolyptical theme

Minecraft is anything you want it to be.

You can build almost infinite things, and mods add even MORE infinite things. Although there are some fantasy things like potions and enchanting, there's also redstone and command blocks. Silverfish, by the way, exist in real life.

It's definitely fantasy, but it is medieval fantasy. Unlike the Legend of Zelda.

Minecraft is special. It does not fit into any "normal" genre. One could argue Minecraft is its own genre. There are plenty of knockoffs that are pixelated-voxel-based sandboxes. Minecraft has spawned a whole new category of games, but none have lived up to the original. Just look at the variety of user creations, mods, maps, ect that change the game and could be interpreted as putting the game into other genres.

But lets be real here.

Minecraft has no genre.

Its up to the player.

While reading the comments, I was thinking...

There is not much of ingame lore that tells us a story. the biggest thing is the wierd dialogue after the ender dragon is dead... This means, exept for this dialogue, there arent many clues for what the Story of Minecraft is.
And before you say "A Story is not a Theme!", I know this. But every Story has a theme! Every! Single! One!
I can Tell, because I read and write Fanfictions regularly.

What Type of Story could the Dialogue after the Dragon dies fit in/imply.
What I remember from reading the Dialogue in the Wiki, those who are Talking to each other about the Player are Gods and something like that, and refer to Minecraft as "The Short Dream" and our real World as "The Long Dream" or whatever words they used to express it.
Thinking this further, it gets philosophical and creepy.

We could assume that the World of Minecraft was inhabited by Humans who had a Medeeval/Ancient/pre-industrial culture and then (re)discovered Magic and tried to exploit it as much as possible, makeing easey to create Portals to the Nether (or, how many People call it, Hell) where Objects with strong magical properties can/could be found, and building fortresses there for Farming huge amounts of them, finally enabling them to Create Portals to another previously unknown dimension called "The End".
Trying to conquer the End, like the Humans attemptet to do in the Nether, and were almost succesful, the Humans stumbled across Magical Ender-Energy that was too much to handle... The Ender Energy turned the People that where supposed to build Ender Fortresses slowley to Endermen, who managed to Teleport back to the Overworld, where they accidently scared the **** out of People.
Humanitys Efford to Exploit Magic backfired at them causing bad Stuff from other Dimensions to leak into the Overworld, leaving nothing but ruins, mutated Spiders and Plants (Creepers) behind. Then, Nature claimed the now almost human free Land back. Most of the left humans got a Zombie Virus they cought from Pigs that were/are in the Nether for too long or have been exposed to a lot of Nether energy. The Rest mutated into big nosed emotionless Human-like Beeings with extremly limited intelligence (Villagers) leaving Steve the only living unmutated, unzombiefied Human left alive, misteriously without any memories of his Past. (This is, unless you play Multiplayer, of course)

But After Steve takes Revange and Kills the Enderdragon (A Godlike creature that produces lotts of Ender Energy) it is revealed that Steve is in fact "The Player", only existing in a Dream within a Dream (within a Dream within a Dream? Minecraftception!), thus makeing the Real World part of the Story, makeing the Player able to go to Creative mod, add Mods and create a compleatly new Story.
Leading to a Ponit where Steve becomes/is Godlike himself. Implying that the Player (You, sitting in Front of your Computer!) is too...

This Story is only an Assumption.
To those who say "The Theme is up to the Player bc. of Mods, Maps and texture packs", that could also be said about The Sims.
Its Genre is Life Simulation, and without Mods, its Tone is mostly Akward, Children-friendly Comic Style that is supposed to be funny but somehow resembles our everyday lives in a way. But there are also tons of Mods and Custom Content that add an erotic theme, or compeatly turn it Dark and Hostile with Murderers rapists and stuff...
Also, there are Expansion packs that make it more (Pets, Whether, Seasons) or less (Vampires, Werewolves, Whitches, TimeTravel, Alien Abuctions) realistic.

This is the best response to this I've seen yet. I like it. I haven't ever read through the entire end-game dialogue, so I didn't even think about that as Minecraft lore.

BTW, I'm writing a story that's supposed to be about Minecraft, but not in an obvious way, and your comment just gave me a couple ideas! Thank you!

It has the same theme as Civilization: constantly advancing technology.

Well, except that Minecraft's physical laws are not the same as Civilization.

Both games start us at the Stone Age, and both games let us develop better and better technology (from Cobblestone to modern-looking Quartz blocks, Diamond armor, etc)

Well it IS a sandbox game but how would you describe that sandbox? I say really, it's up to the player to make the theme/genre. You can stick to the script of Minecraft, making a simple house and simple tools and build up until you are ready the fight the Ender Dragon and "win" the game, making the game a game with a point and goal, a survival game, and a creativity game. You also might want the stick to creative and build whatever you want, making the game a creativity and building game. Maybe you want to make a big castle or town and roleplay along to it making it creativity, building, acting, and possibly adventure. Basicly, my point is Minecraft really has no theme or genre and it is up to the Player to have fun and do what they want.

You where talking about the genre, not the theme.
Its like, when somone asks what the theme is for game xyz, and you say "Its a Shooter/MMORPG/RTS", you didnt answer about the theme, but the genre. Everyone knows that Minecraft is Survival Sandbox. Mass Effect is an RPG, just like Spellforce. In both games the Player runs arrount the World, does Quests, Kills Enemies, Levels Up, finds better Items and goes on... But Mass Effect and Spellforce have diffrent themes, while they have the same genre. Spellforce theme is light medieval fantasy, Mass Effect theme, like said, is Sci-fi space opera.

I think minecraft have no genre, for me its how you imagine minecraft.

A lot of people have been mixing theme and genre up. Since it has already been explained countless times I'll make this short:

Genre is the technical type, sort of like how Monopoly is a board game, except it's a bit deeper. Where Mass Effect is a video game, it is also and RPG shooter. However the theme is (as was stated above) a sci-fi space opera.

Theme is the story type. Fallout-for example-has a theme consisting of a post-apocalyptic world where you must scavenge to survive. That's the theme as opposed to the genre, which is it being an RPG.

Simple.

As for the theme, yeah, it's sort of a game that shoves you into a world and says "This is your story. Make it good."

Thank you for explaining it better than I did...

Minecraft's theme is blocks. Everything else is up for grabs.

Minecraft can be looked at three ways. You can think about it as naturalization \simulator because it tries to simulate real life. If you think about it Minecraft could be fantasy Middle Ages, mixing some technology(Redstone) and some fantasy elements(potions, monsters etc.) while still keeping realistic elements of the Middle Ages like swords, bows, full armor, especially chainmail, occasional castles and temples, untouched land, etc. The third option is that Minecraft is nothing, anything, everything, reality, fantasy, realism, fiction, and nonfiction, all at the same time. Minecraft is Steven Hawking's one equation to solve the universe, which hasn't been discovered yet. Tell Hawking that I found his simple equation, it is Minecraft.

It tries to simulate real life? So. paper actually comes from sugar cane?

Sandbox .

It has a 'Look down from a mountain and see what lies in front of you and what you have done' feel to me. That feeling of awe when you realize everything you've done and realize that was only over the last week. Not sure what genre that is.

Survival mode is pretty close to what he says, Fantasy style Adventure, just because things aren't magical looking doesn't take that away! Remember there are fantasy games/movies without magic, just set in a medieval style world. I also recall Notch saying something like "not pew-pew" regarding adding magic to the game, before potions and enchantments came around. So magic is clearly there, just a more subdued version than you might see in most fantasy. Also Endermen and most everything associated with them, and portals don't seem to have any explanation outside of magic or at least something beyond our understanding. I suppose if you look hard enough you might find a scientific reason for magic too though. I mean the Endermen teleport, they teleport on Star Trek, why couldn't it use the same mechanics?

It even gets close to RPG in terms of the XP use and it's connection with enchantment, not to mention how easily the game lends itself to actual Role Play since you can easily create a community on a server where someone might choose to be a miner, or blacksmith etc.

But I like the fact that a lot of games today (mostly indie games :P) don't fit as well into a specific category, it's nice that you can have a little of two (or more) different types of games in one.

This game dont have theme cause this game u can do anything u want ... do mods do maps do anything... u can actually do anything wat u want... u can make ur own mod for some more realistically doing what ur life is how to sleep even its not night anything... if ur a good coder