I’ll presume you already know what Minecraft is since you’ve found your way to this humorous website that mostly talks about video games and wrestling. In case you’re unaware, an attractive dude with a beard made the open-world sandbox game Minecraft. In this game, your goal is to gather resources so you can construct things that let you get more resources, which let you construct even more things. That’s all there is to it.
I’ve never played a game as entertaining as this one.
It falls into the same category as other time wasters like The Sims and World of Warcraft, in my opinion. It is a game that gives you a different life in which most of your time is spent on random chores that, although they might be useful in real life, only serve to provide you virtual blessings in a virtual world.
Hey, some folks do like that, though. I swear to God that I do.
Based on my observations, every new player in the game experiences the same things. In a rushed chronology, they may be regarded as the several Minecraft eras.
A list is starting to form.
The Discovery Era
You are aware of the game. Your friend persuaded you to get the download. After viewing the video, you made the purchase. You understand the basic idea: Pluck wood, gather sticks, gather sticks, and construct an axe. Compared to Vegas, it sounds like more fun.
You launch a fresh game. You come to rest on an endless map at a random spawn place. You have the whole world ahead of you. How do you proceed?
Wooden blocks are obtained by punching trees. The Year’s Best Game.
Then you realise the sun is setting virtually. You erect a rudimentary shelter and find yourself waiting in the dark as terrible noises loom outside your pitiful structure. Should you get the courage to go outside in the dark, you will most certainly meet your demise at the hands of one of these jerks.
You come to the realisation that this is the game after a few in-game days following this pattern. For this, you had to pay money. “Well, I won’t allow these things to defeat me.” You state. “I’m going to pick up the skills and prevail.”
And with that, you step into the second age, without realising that you’ve already lost the hard way.
The Age of Iron
You look up Minecraft on Google. You peruse the Wikipedia quickly. You’ve built a lovely four-by-four hut that you call home and whipped up some great pick axes. You tossed some flashlights outside. Astonished that stuff. But you’re craving more.
You’ve heard that levels 64 and 32 contain iron ore. Diamonds and gold are positioned even lower. That stuff is necessary. Now that you’ve been digging for days. Your dreams are filled with deep, dark caverns that hold undiscovered wealth. You’ve been down for so long that you’ve lost track of how to climb back up.
Your first diamond was mined by you. You have slain a creeper, really. You’ve been addicted.
You’ve amassed seventeen heaps of cobblestone in the meanwhile. In any case, you have to go back up for food. With all this extra crap in your inventory, what are you going to do?
What you’re going to do is craft.
The Expression Age
You almost feel compelled to wretch when you see the digital shack you’ve been living in for the past few days. It’s an innate loathing.
You require more than just a place to stay. A home is necessary for you. You need something worthy of a digital explorer who, with his bare hands, has dug raw diamonds out of the world’s underbelly. Something that fits your majesty is what you need.
Before you know it, seven IRL hours have been dedicated to constructing a three-story castle that will keep you safe at night. It doesn’t take long to realise that you’ve made it so big that the castle is truly where the monsters are spawning.
But that’s just the beginning. You can find crafting recipes in the Minecraft wiki. By drawing it yourself, you’re showcasing your own skin to the community. You admit that you haven’t played Minecraft for very long. Just now, you were having fun in a cave. What you punch out of the earth is unrelated to it. It relates to the things you have constructed.
The Age of Industry
You’ve not had any sleep. You’ve seen something on the internet where someone created a TNT and Piston canon, and you want one. Building intricate subterranean railway networks is what you’re doing to optimise mining productivity. You’ve been reading the Redstone Wiki for three hours in an attempt to gain more insight into the logic that powers AND/OR gates.
Furthermore, you no longer only mine. It’s farming that you do. You’ve been hollowing out a portion of the earth for the better part of Tuesday, so you could construct a seven-story slaughterhouse with a water-powered conveyer belt that will bring mob merchandise right to your door.
In the last 24 hours, you constructed a coop for your chickens and collected several hundred eggs in case you wanted to bake a cake.
You’ve created a powered device that eliminates the need for you to press a button by growing and harvesting sugarcane for you.
For yourself, you’ve produced an endless supply of resources. Nothing is lacking for your avatar. Is that correct? The game is over. Is it time to put down the pickaxe and perhaps take a jog or something?
No. It is time to get things built.
The Obsession Era
You’re facing an issue. It’s visible to your buddies. Perhaps you too can see it. But you’re still living in denial. You are aware that this game won’t keep your interest indefinitely. You’re positive that as soon as you finish building your 1:1 scale USS Enterprise model, you’ll cease playing.
A sandbox game such as this one has the drawback of having nearly infinite possibilities. Desire to build a New York scale model? Take it on.
Do you want to play through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time from start to finish? You are a bit out of touch.
9% jobless rate? Everybody is using Minecraft. The sixteen million people who have spent so much time creating VIRTUAL SHIT in this game are too many to count. I want to curl up into a ball and cry for all of humanity because of it. And that leads us right up to our old age.
The Decade of Great Depression
Do not misunderstand me. There is no desire at the root of this sadness. Resources are still unbounded. It strikes you when you’re spending a few hours a day polishing the seven square mile metropolis you designed on your own.
And that’s when you have the realisation. You’ve produced a lot, but why? You’ve created an intricate underground system that can move up to twelve people in rush hour and crosses your city in less than a minute, but you’re alone on the server. Like Will Smith in I Am Legend, you are by yourself.
At that point, you come to your realisation. You’ve created a great deal, but why? You’re alone on the server, despite having built a sophisticated underground system that can transfer up to twelve people in rush hour and across your city in less than a minute. I Am Legend’s Will Smith once said, “You are by yourself.”