Feminism in VideogamesFollow

I'll admit I know nothing about Minecraft. Any time I see a Minecraft "person" it's the dude in the turquoise shirt and five o'clock shadow who looks like a computer from 1995 just took a ****.

Not evangelizing or anything, but having played it a fair bit, and with what limited knowledge I have of your game playing, I'd say it seems exactly like a game you'd really enjoy. That is a fairly representative description of "Steve" the default player skin. There's no option to choose a female version. I'm not actually arguing Minecraft discriminated by gender. It's pretty genderless.

Can someone tell me exactly what is so fun about minecraft? Last time I was curious and looked it up, it seemed like an open world built on the concept that the user can build things out of blocks or some ****. I really didn't dig what I was seeing, but maybe I was looking in the wrong place.

I've never played Minecraft, but from what I can tell its a game about creativity where most games now days focus on Story, Guns, Etc
It just sits you down says,"Here are your tools, here is your materials, Go nuts"

Can someone tell me exactly what is so fun about minecraft?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/9/17/

I think that sums it up. If you have a particular personality type, it's a very compelling game. If you love twitchy FPS games you'll probably hate it. If you like games where you think "I wish I had windows, I should be able to make glass out of all this sand" Then you try putting sand in a furnace...and it makes glass, you'll probably enjoy it. Nexa and I generally play games together as we have a small amount of time that we can dedicate to some sort of leisure activity that doesn't involve the children (although Hannah plays minecraft, it's an amazing game for kids). We, Nexa especially, tend to overthink modern games. "Maybe we have to cut down a tree and make charcoal to get the guy to give us the drawing?" No, we just follow the arrow to him and click on the box. In minecraft, most of the things just actually work the way we'd expect. You do cut down a tree and make charcoal if you can't find coal to burn. If you pour water on lava it makes obsidian. If you dig clay up and fire it in a furnace it makes brick.

You get the idea. I assumed a lot of things about the game before we played it. I was wrong about most of them. It's easily one of the best games I've played in a decade. Replay value is absurdly high, along the lines of Total War or Civ games, if you're that kind of gamer. I recognize that's a high standard, but it meets it for me.

Now I'm going to have to update Minecraft and play this weekend. I'm already drawing up the plans for my splitlevel brick home with a wrap-around porch....

It's really a game I should like but it hasn't really grabbed me. I'm kind of missing an initial reason to do something other than because you can.

There's an elaborate endgame and boss mobs? That said there is nothing that forces you to play it, I guess. I recognize many people won't enjoy it, but there is probably a reason it's the best selling indie game in history by a very wide margin.

I've also been playing Minecraft since it was in alpha testing, so it's one of the few things in life I can say I was into before it was cool.

However, I am just now realizing how easy it is to use a console command or a mod to keep items on death.

Just now? The second day we owned it, Hannah was explaining server commands to us.

Best part was picking up a person that irritated you. Maybe they weren't happy, maybe they threw up after every ride, it didn't really matter. They were grabbed and dropped in a small area way off in the corner of the park. Once there they wandered aimlessly until they were exhausted, starving, and had a bladder that was about to explode. Taunted constantly by dancing bears and food court containing nothing but balloon stands until the now merciful hand placed them at the exit.

I just never bothered. I knew there was a huge Minecraft modding community out there, but I usually prefer to play games as-is. Plus, the challenge of Minecraft (i.e. without cheating) was part of what made it so different from modern games.


Well sure, but if dying 10 biomes away is going to make you not want to play, teleporting yourself there to recover items or giving them to yourself from the console seems ethically ok.

There's a paradigm shift in today's youth and game playing. My older son started playing Terraria a while back (long while back at this point) and was quickly showing off all he had created via various duping exploits. He wasn't hurting anyone since it was his little world so I held my tongue but it's hard to say "Go you!" for having a bajillion of something you gained via save/reload tricks rather than by actually playing the game.

I previously mentioned the time he started playing Portal 2 and, well before he finished, was dropping quotes from the ending. I asked and he said "Oh, I went yesterday and watched the ending on YouTube". He couldn't understand why that'd make me facepalm and I can't get my head around "Yeah, I'm still playing the game but thought I'd watching the ending first". Just different generations. Pretty sure I read a Cracked article once touching on the same (today's kids considering hacks/cheats as just part of playing the game) but I'm too lazy to try and find it.

Of course, I can't pretend this whole thing is brand new. I remember the GameShark and other console cheat devices. I never used them though or knew anyone who did but I know they existed.

Well, you were a bad person and spoiled your whole childhood.

Turns out Snape killed Old Yeller.