I've given it a lot of thought, and I don't think Minecraft would be so easy to pick up and play if in weren't so 'blocky'. At least not without some really good design. The size of the blocks in Minecraft really lend themselves to being able to put together things that approximate real life structures, while maintaining a sufficient level of simplicity.
This simplicity makes reasoning and manipulating the game world less challenging, resulting in the game being more accessible to a wide variety of players.
This is probably why the old 8- and 16-bit games seem to have so much more compelling gameplay than ultra-realistic modern games. Well, that or we are just cranky oldtimers.
A thought that crossed my mind some time ago is some consequences of fine-detail in Minecraft. You would be able to create objects of higher complexity packed into a manageable size. Would you pay money to someone who created a really useful (or cool) object in high-fidelity Minecraft?
I've given it a lot of thought, and I don't think Minecraft would be so easy to pick up and play if in weren't so 'blocky'. At least not without some really good design. The size of the blocks in Minecraft really lend themselves to being able to put together things that approximate real life structures, while maintaining a sufficient level of simplicity.
This simplicity makes reasoning and manipulating the game world less challenging, resulting in the game being more accessible to a wide variety of players.
Similarly we don't give children atoms to play with, we give atoms constrained into lego blocks.
Constraints give rise to creativity. Just compare that to the "1K" or "7 day" competitions.
1 reply →
This is probably why the old 8- and 16-bit games seem to have so much more compelling gameplay than ultra-realistic modern games. Well, that or we are just cranky oldtimers.
A thought that crossed my mind some time ago is some consequences of fine-detail in Minecraft. You would be able to create objects of higher complexity packed into a manageable size. Would you pay money to someone who created a really useful (or cool) object in high-fidelity Minecraft?
You don't wanna be in the Uncanny Valley - Minecraft is cute, because it's not real - hard from real.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley