D’ANDRE NICHOLAS

A DETAILED VIDEO GAME ANALYSIS

The game that I’ve chosen to further research, and one that I’ve personally played, is Markus Persson’s infamous Minecraft. Minecraft is a game that allows players to engage in several activities such as crafting, resource gathering, combat, and multiplayer interaction inside of a randomly generated world of the usable materials. With the help of Mojang later on, by late 2011 Minecraft became playable for pc. Ever since, it’s been continuously releasing for new platforms such as consoles, mobile devices, and now in 4K. Although the game contains enemies powerful enough to be coined “bosses,” Minecraft provides no direct story as to let the player create their own experience entirely by hand. The world is comprised in a 3D grid system, displaying most items as 1x1 blocks, while some do have other unique forms contained within the same 1x1 space. Starting with nothing, the player must collect resources directly from the world itself, or combine them, to assist them in their adventure or create a material that may have a better aesthetic. Randomly generated, the player is provided a countless combination of biomes, structures, and resources that would have to be traversed to be discovered. The size of the world can be chosen before creation, but even a smaller one is larger enough to take a while just crossing it. With the implementation of multiplayer, people can join strangers and friends alike to team up and create larger scale works, defeat tougher enemies for bigger rewards, or even as competition against another. A Minecraft player is essentially given full authority over their world, while at the same time placed at the bottom hierarchy of it to grow and define their own space and experience. As a game for all ages, Minecraft’s basics are easy to follow, but allows further dynamics for more grind-worthy players.

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The component of this game I took a closer look at was the crafting and potion system. Minecraft provides a wide range of products that can be made in exchange for a number or combination of resources. When you starts the game with nothing, you’re crafting abilities are very limited. Presumably this is to simulate the limits of building by hand. However, one the first items you need to make is a crafting table. This table then unlocks a much larger portion of possibilities. The crafting table is not to be mistaken as some magic material converter, and rather as the ingredient book to Minecraft. When you open the crafting menu, in three screens in the corner displays your full inventory, what materials are needed to make the product and also highlights incomplete requirements, and finally gives a description of the final item. In the center, you can see the format of the ingredients to make the item. The game allows some items to be made in single quantities per set of ingredients, while some may come in multiples such as 4. This choice changes the level of difficulty in acquiring enough resources as to not have to take another trip to what may have been a tough battle or to a place that may be, in itself, hard to travel to. On the other hand, you can potentially create in multiples more than what you need to save extras for another time. They’ve created several types of materials that can be made into a product, each one giving it a new appearance or attribute. So even if you don’t have one resource to create an object, maybe another can be substituted.

To be able to create potions, special drinks or throwables that cause status effect changes, you need to create a brewing stand. A brewing stand serves as the crafting table for potions. You can’t make them through the crafting table. However, you need the crafting table to make bottles for the liquid, and to potentially alter resources to become the ingredients in potions. As a new Minecraft player, having these crafting segments separated by machine seemed inconvenient. However, the brewing stand is much more independent of instruction that a crafting table as if it were a marker meant for the growing players. It kept the crafting guide from becoming too overwhelming. So once you place a bottle of water in the stand, you can mix one ingredient in up to 3 bottles to be brewed. This is where complication starts. One round of brewing doesn’t guarantee a finished potion. Depending on what you want, you may need to go through multiple rounds of brewing. Also, some ingredients may brew, but that doesn’t always give the water an effect. It can just change the name to show something happened. Finally, even a finished potion can has tiers of “strength,” or duration. A 1 tier potion won’t last as long or be as powerful as one brewed to 3 tiers. The tiers are indicated as green bars under the potion’s icon. This gives players a better opportunity against stronger enemies by permitting them to change their battle style to effect changes to greatly weaken their opponent.