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What even is the Minecraft community.


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Greetings and salutations, Serenes.

Okay, so that video reminded me of the MC community and how weird it is and the questions I have, which I'll just drop here, I guess?

-Why do adults play this? I can see the merits, but there are many games that do parkour, combat and stuff better and look better.

-Why is the combat in these animations and in general taken so seriously? It's literally just shooting with a bow and hitting stuff, how can you not be good/be an expert with such barebones mechanics?

-Why do these animations even exist and who makes them? Also, who voices them???

-What is with all these "girl vs something" animations?

-When will it die.

-Why do people call it "epic" and stuff? It's just blocks and the simplest form of combat, there isn't anything "epic" about...placing blocks and playing minigames while hitting stuff.

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-Why do people call it "epic" and stuff? It's just blocks and the simplest form of combat, there isn't anything "epic" about...placing blocks and playing minigames while hitting stuff.

there are a lot of things i could comment on, but i want to comment on this one in particular

please watch this and tell me this is not pretty epic

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Oh no no, I didn't mean those things, those are actually super duper cool, but it's not like everyone builds something of that caliber and I guess I didn't make it clear enough that I was more confused about people making all those videos and stuff about Herobrine (Is that even still relevant?) or making a big deal out of the Enderdragon thing and writing adventure novels about Minecraft and it just seems way too overblown into anime territory when really, it's more about building that fighting.

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Minecraft is like Pokemon, in all the worst ways. I stopped playing after discovering there's no copy/paste in creative mode.

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Another thing to keep in mind, and this is specifically why I played it, is that since it can be decompiled and worked on with a common text editor and the graphics are so blocky and simple to render the necessary budget for base-game-equal new content basically nonexistant, it's also an extremely good game for modding stuff, and people have made huge numbers of mods for it to add in stuff of basically any conceivable subject, to the point that you can basically turn minecraft into anything. so there's an astronomical amount of content to the game. I made a bunch of my own mods too, actually. It was tons of fun.

Edited by Alastor15243
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Minecraft is like Pokemon, in all the worst ways. I stopped playing after discovering there's no copy/paste in creative mode.

It's called MCEdit :^).

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It's simple, easy to get into, and you can do a lot of shit with the game. Everyone, regardless of their age, can play it at their own pace and are encouraged to be creative. It's not hard to see why people enjoy it.

Just like you, I don't really see the appeal, but I wouldn't sweat it. People like different things, and Minecraft happens to appeal to many.

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I stopped playing after discovering there's no copy/paste in creative mode.

There is now, though! Added to vanilla in 1.10.

member of the MC community here reporting in though, and personally imo base Minecraft is nothing special. It's not particularly stellar until you take advantage of its enormous plethora of mods which only exist because its community is so gargantuan because people are weirdly obsessed with it. It can be whatever you want it to be. A FPS? Yep. An RPG? Yepperoo. A strategy game? You betcha. A freaking pokemon knockoff? Yeah that exists. If you can think of it there's probably a mod for it. And all of them have the customizable sandbox functionality at the heart of Minecraft, which will always put a spin on whatever genre you turn the game into. It isn't just a sandbox game, it's a sandbox sandbox game.

...Unfortunately, Minecraft is also coded in the most disgustingly inefficient code I've ever seen and it gives even high-end PCs trouble, because Java is the worst thing ever, only shortly followed by Flash. When you stuff a bunch of mods into it, while it changes the experience so drastically that it becomes an entirely different game of massively varying calibers of amazing... Its stability suffers. And the problem is that because Minecraft is obsessed over like this, minecraft in particular, all its clones which are literally the same game but better designed on the inside and more receptive to modifications are left neglected without even remotely as much content for them, and there's... basically no way around that.

Minecraft is a behemoth that nobody can topple and due to how badly it's internally designed the modding community is constantly in an effective arms race against Mojang, and always behind. Many mods can't transition between versions and I've seen many a great mod die off because of it... Mojang is working on the code, but it doesn't solve the problem that they don't actually have anything to support mod devs for this game. People who pour their hearts and souls out into projects to adapt onto this game, only to get stomped on and shoved aside. ...Honestly that's a problem with many game companies these days, but anyway... The thing is that even after all that Minecraft still feels like a game permanently in beta. It's like Starbound, it just feels hollow until the community comes around to fix everything the devs didn't add, fucked up, or would never have thought of.

I really wish that people could divert their focus away from this thing to something more receptive to community work like this... Bah.

But as for why people obsess over Vanilla, or the game originally in the first place anyway? ...Well, hell if I know.

This may sound incredibly mean because of the connotation of the word, and I don't mean it as an insult, but I think it may have something to do with Minecraft's niche appeal to autistic people. Something about the game gravitates the people who the rest of the world reject towards it, although in no small part due to its popularity I imagine... It's available on basically every platform you can think of and is so simplistic that just about anyone can pick it up. It's like the virtual parallel to Legos, but you get infinite pieces, the ability to interact with other people, a special game mode, and so on and so forth for one price. It's the same game with shared fundamentals across so many different platforms that anyone can access of any age or, well, anything.

So yeah, the Pokemon comparison is basically on-point. Pokemon is a phenomena because it's accessible through so many different mediums and people of any age group can get into it and understand it. The anime, the manga, the games, the spinoffs, whatever the hell it is you do, it's all still Pokemon. Minecraft is the same way, though imo Minecraft doesn't have even remotely the same "charm" pokemon has...

And personally I think it's getting liked for the wrong reasons because that's not where its true potential lies. Tell me straight up that a game that can bridge every genre gap you can think of, whenever you want it to, wouldn't be absolutely amazing.

...But this is kind of a ramble from me for a topic that doesn't seem to have been serious to begin with, but... whatever.

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Oh, that was a very interesting post to read, I can understand the appeal of it much better. It's the accessibility and simplicity that makes it so easy to jump in and participate and the modding community (Which still amuses me, even though I left my MC phase ages ago. (It was really just me watching a ton of Skydoesminecraft videos and being cringey.) ) is what makes you stay in it. And I can agree, it is surprisingly similar to Poke'mon in a fandom-ish way, seeing as how they both can appeal to all kinds of people, but Minecraft kind of seems more soulless to me because the only real reason it's alive is the fandom and fanwork, while Poke'mon works by itself. Sorry if this sounds like a joke thread, I'm just not very educated on how these things work.

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I don't think "appealing to autistic people" is very accurate in explaining its popularity. In a class of 30 or so little children, how many have played MC or are big fans? Likely all of them. How many autistic? None or like one probably. You wouldn't attract much attention by "appealing to autistic people" (whatever that means).

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...but Minecraft kind of seems more soulless to me because the only real reason it's alive is the fandom and fanwork, while Poke'mon works by itself.

I understand completely. This is what I meant by it "doesn't have the same charm as Pokemon".

It's a more technical charm than the sort of thing that actually gets people to latch onto things. Much of the obsession you see is the result of of children who've practically been raised on the thing.

Minecraft has extraordinarily little lore or character to it, other than the mobs and the players, of which only two actually stand out as being iconic. The Creeper and the Enderman, which both have their own developmential history that kinda makes them interesting. They're also foreign concepts that are generally more or less something unique to minecraft. I'd like to add the guardian fish thingies to the list but I don't see a lot about them compared to the other two, maybe because they're comparatively new. Anyway, other than what little is implied by the existence of "The End" and "The Nether", as well as the things that inhabit it, minecraft has literally nothing to it. So it kind of just... exists. It's as you said, it's only a thing because of the fandom.

Meanwhile in Pokemon, everything is iconic. This is actually something that's perplexed me for quite some time. I don't really know how Pokemon managed to take off and soar with its designs and all when there were other franchises who did something similar. I guess it was just in the execution of the games and something to do with the time period... Hell if I know, I was born in '96 so I don't know the thought process of kids back then. But what all this does prove is how going original is always better than recycling things. And, uh, obviously Pokemon also has narrative depth to it, which gets explored to countless varying degrees in official media, unlike Minecraft which leaves everything to the player, for better and worse.

Whenever you make something, you always have to consider; "What will people remember this by?" And ideally, you want that to be everything! Not just the aesthetic, not just the narrative, not just the characters and designs, not just the gameplay, not just the extra material... Pokemon somehow succeeds in doing that, I feel. It has memorable characters strewn about with iconic designs literally everywhere, a bright and colorful simplistic aesthetic that sticks with you, a narrative that ranges from simple and basic to deep and complex, mechanics that are always the same but have little spins on them every time, and extra material which always intertwines with everything else.

Minecraft on the other hand has a dull-colored aesthetic, no narrative, very few memorable designs or characters, and most of its appeal comes from the gameplay which is only good with the addition of mods; everything else is the product of the interactivity it creates, which Pokemon also succeeds in doing to an effectively similar extent. The difference is that MC fills a niche which had nothing to fill it prior in that it can do whatever the fuck you want it to do, very easily; it can be whatever you want it to be.

I don't think "appealing to autistic people" is very accurate in explaining its popularity. In a class of 30 or so little children, how many have played MC or are big fans? Likely all of them. How many autistic? None or like one probably. You wouldn't attract much attention by "appealing to autistic people" (whatever that means).

On this note I just meant it as an example of how open it is to anyone coming in and playing it. It also nets it a lot of positive rep, which just aids in its popularity.

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This may sound incredibly mean because of the connotation of the word, and I don't mean it as an insult, but I think it may have something to do with Minecraft's niche appeal to autistic people. Something about the game gravitates the people who the rest of the world reject towards it, although in no small part due to its popularity I imagine...

Whereas I can appreciate the effort to not be offensive, I don't think you get why saying something like that would be offensive in the first place. Minecraft appeals to a wide variety of demographics, so singling them out as the whole reason that the game is successful is disingenuous. Your second part doesn't logically flow (people who are rejected are going to play something because it's popular?), and it's pretty rude of you to consider autistic people as "people the rest of the world reject" in the first place.

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*snip*

Oh for goodness sake.

Yeah fine sheesh my wording and thought process there was wrong and off, are you gonna just ignore everything else I've said for the sake of yanking out the controversy from it? I'm sorry, jeez. Let's not devolve this into a petty derailed debate.

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For what It's worth, my mom teaches people with learning disabilities and most of them are into minecraft.

I suspect most of the reason that minecraft has such a large fanbase is simply the fact that it came first. MInecraft clones only started popping up because minecraft had achieved enough critacle mass to be worth cloning, by which point the fandom was large enough to make making mods for minecraft a better idea despite sloppy coding simply because vastly more ppeople will see them.

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Another thing is that probably Minecraft is just so open and versatile that people with disabilities can always find a way to enjoy it without them being hindered by their disabilities. As always, Ritisa perfectly described the reason why I don't like Minecraft, when I was younger and into it, I expected a world to explore and learn, but once I saw the main world and zombies it was like I knew it all. Endermen seem to form some kind of society, but it's never explained. Zombies appear to look like Steve, but it's never explained. Heck, we don't even know what the Nether and End are. While Poke'mon is just... so big, so rich, there's so much to see, but it's all simple and shares the same rules. That's why I don't like Yugioh either, there are tons of cards that imply tons of lore, but they're just numbers in the end.

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One of my little cousins loves minecraft. I think its mostly because he can switch to "god-mode" or whatever its called. Basically he likes feeling op I suppose. I know that's why he plays Halo or CoD with me, because I'm just awful at them.

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Pretty much anything you can do in Minecraft you can do in Super Mario Maker, but with better gameplay. I wonder why Minecraft is still big...

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Pretty much anything you can do in Minecraft you can do in Super Mario Maker, but with better gameplay. I wonder why Minecraft is still big...

that is not even true

like, they're pretty much incomparable in any way that isn't that they both allow user-generated content

and better gameplay is of course subjective compared to if a person even likes mario platformers or not, as in mario maker is that one thing while minecraft can be many, it's the classic definition of breadth vs depth - while minecraft has very many basic systems, it allows players to do a lot more different things compared to mario maker which can focus on doing a few things well

Edited by Tryhard
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