You might have seen a respective tweet by Notch, which gave me the idea to name my post exactly the way I did.
https://twitter.com/notch/status/1407424478049669122
- notch
Tweeter “experts” of all kinds immediately attacked Notch saying that no one asked him in the first place and that Minecraft is more alive than ever, with the total number of players spotted on servers being the best proof for it.
I was surprised that some random dudes feel entitled to throw the game creator a pile of mindless insults in the face. Notch built Minecraft from scratch and breathed life into the whole genre of voxel-based games. (I’m not forgetting the merit of Jeb either) Aren’t you supposed to be thankful? Ain’t he supposed to be admired and listened to?
After I came across that tweet, I started to wonder if I want Minecraft to be dead personally to me. I’ve been craving to play it after about a 5-year long pause, but then a number of things kept me from simply installing it back.
Minecraft helped me out a big deal when I spent most of my time working at a monastery kitchen. Imagine, no days off with only morning and evening shifts alternating. I’ve calculated that I consistently spent more than 200 hours a month working. It’s not that I’m complaining; I know that it’s not the most torturous job in the world. Returning to my cell after shifts, I thought to myself, ‘I can take it as long as there’s a house in Minecraft I can return to’. Seriously, it gave me the necessary recreational space while most of the other brothers found their consolation in drinking.
I settled on a high river shore close to a swamp, casually hearing slimes squishing and getting a glimpse at a witch who had a night walk under a full moon.
One of the usual routines was exploring the underground ravines of course, but nothing compared to listening to the rain thumping on my roof – the dull, distant sound of running water. I discovered that I loved fishing during the rain. And that rain provided a certain bonus to the fishing drops, too, so that it turned out to be a win-win.
I also built a little railway, dreaming about expanding it block by block the more I played.
I couldn’t set large rendering distances though. My Samsung R-something-plus could only handle three chunks without lag. It kept FPS barely above 25 most of the time. Everything beyond three-tile distance was hidden in fog, and I didn’t mind. I even found a little community of players who preferred it foggy. But I do remember setting it to four so that I could enjoy the sunrise from time to time.
I don’t think I will ever forget that area; I keep regretting losing that particular world seed and everything I had built.
After my laptop got stolen, installing Minecraft back was one of the first things I did after buying a new one – on the money I earned from a new, normal 9/5 job. And this time I could proudly afford an officially distributed copy rather than a cracked one. It’s not because the devs were super-obsessive over protecting the property rights, quite on the contrary (do you remember the ‘we call them potential customers’ quote?), yet I genuinely wanted to support them in a meaningful way.
My approach to gaming has changed altogether: I wanted to attach some utility value to it. So that the time I spent gaming could no longer be considered “wasted”, I listened to audiobooks and fished, or explored, or brewed potions. I also dedicated some construction objects to real-life achievements. It worked passably well, although I lacked décor items for sure.
When roaming dungeons, building cozy wool-floored bedrooms, fishing, and automating farms were becoming boring. I indulged in mapping. I used to stare at the 4x4 maximum scale map I got on the wall, realizing that I cartographed it all. Or idly burning nether bricks with lava. Or exploiting a zombie spawner.
But Mojang was already a part of Microsoft at that time, and I started to notice the game’s weaknesses and how the development stagnated. Everything that the game consisted of prior to that point (September 2015) was a hit. Rails and minecarts. Redstone circuits. Villagers and creepers that pwn you from behind on hardmode and whatnot. These features were parts of the vanilla game, pre-1.0, associated with tons of memes and respective ridiculous situations. It all was glitchy and poorly optimized in terms of performance, so I expected a “professional” touch from Microsoft just like many other players did.
If you’re on the side of disappointed players, it needs no further description or explanation. Just like many other players, I expected that they at least won’t spoil the masterpiece. But that’s just what they do.
I mean, what happened to a good dozen of other projects that Microsoft bought?
Nokia came up with Symbian. The world adored the platform and viewed it as revolutionary in comparison to Android. Ruined and forgotten after MS acquisition.
Skype. It was like the world’s #1 messenger on the peak of popularity. Then, MS acquisition happens: they make it an official Windows messenger that is always in the autorun, never shuts down, and reads unimaginable loads of user data in the background. For some unconscionable reason, they rearrange the interface, too, like the sole purpose of it was to confuse a user. Ads? Sure, have some. Subsequently, the Skype co-founder backed another messenger, Wire, that was meant to be a lot less intrusive and resource-hungry.
Github! Ridden with censorship and “premium features”, lost competition to Gitlab shortly after MS kindly took it under its wing.
If they don’t buy it, they follow the notorious EEE strategy: Embrace, Expand, Extinguish. There is not a single exception that I’m aware of. Can’t even install Linux on a Windows system without a headache because UEFI will bark at you: it’s DANGEROUS, don’t trust a third-party OS provider!
All of that was pretty much a sign that MS acquisition was a death sentence to Minecraft. So, is it dead already, or is it alive?
Some true fans would play it exclusively for the pleasure of listening to C418’s tracks, I imagine. C418 is a genius. Such dear things keep attracting people like myself to resume playing and ignore whatever they were frustrated about.
I remember a point when they introduced granite, andesite, and diorite minerals but did not immediately add the respective slab and stair blocks to the main game. Nonetheless, these blocks were available in the Adventure mode. Felt like a suggestion to “buy another product”. The lighthearted and respectful attitude to players was gone. Efficient strategies and advanced marketing were in place.
They could just polish what had already been done:
- improve villager AI so that they don’t invite zombies in at nights, opening doors with a welcoming gesture, or simply dying because zombies bite through closed doors;
- improve the AI further so that the villagers actually do something beside Huh, Hmmm, Argh, and rubbing noses, e.g., mine blocks or repair houses;
- finally tweak the railway systems so that actual reliable trains become possible;
- basically add more content (people have been asking for gemstones, colored torches, more ores, etc since forever);
- a noticeable performance increase?
I’ve been out for so long that I don’t honestly know if any of it happened. Did it? Probably not.
Should I forget about it and use mods then? But hey, I heard that they don’t invest too much into mod support either. Back in the days when I still played it, people just did not run Minecraft without Optifine. Minecraft Forge compensated for the lack of features in the vanilla game, but you’d still run into mod cross-compatibility issues.
They say that community defines the course of development, yeah, sure. Choose one out of four useless mobs, for example, like it happened with an addition of an annoying airborne creature that screeched at night.
When they rolled out the Aquatic Update, my frame rate predictably got dumped. Thank God, you can freeze a certain version and stick there for peace of mind. Shields were cool though. Can I please have shields but no aquatic-ness?
One more occasion I freaked out was when I saw a Minecraft Handbook in a local store. A Minecraft Handbook for kids, with colored pictures and all. The brilliance of the marketing strategy struck me again. While what used to be the target audience of Minecraft grew 7 years up since 2015, some Chief Marketing Officer decided to target 7 years younger than that. Teenage geeks, computer sciences students, coders who loved to mod it, older gamers – some of them must have felt betrayed. But no, said the CMO, it is strategically best to hook up kids. Push Minecraft forward as the best virtual learning environment in schools. Don’t forget to sell them the hats! What’s trending now? Darth Vader? Spiderman? Yes, those ones.
Kids generate more profit I assume.
Brilliantly cynical. Diabolically unethical.
Let the older players keep streaming videos of villagers STILL being stupid.
The latest occasion when I freaked out was the account migration. You have to register a Microsoft one instead of a soon-to-be-inaccessible Mojang one. What is there to expect? A hundred strictly necessary cookies that improve customer experience. Some emails that must be channeled right into trash. Super important, super secure 2FA (not because they want your personally identifiable information, god forbid). And a FREE hat! So exciting!
The last time I registered a MS account was because I couldn’t use Skype without it, and I developed persistent physical repulsion to both Skype and the Microsoft Account service then and there. I don’t want to develop a repulsion to Minecraft. Seeing the hand of Midas Microsoft touching it, turning it into a tasteless chunk of gold is heartbreaking enough.
I’m coming to a conclusion that everything I used to love about Minecraft must be found elsewhere. This is where I also humbly ask the community members to point me in the right direction.
Gotta wave goodbye to all the heartwarming loveliness. Awesome C418 soundtrack. Greeting sunrise with a fishing rod on a seashore. The sounds of rain and thunder. Long cart rides across diverse picturesque biomes. The thrill of exploring spooky caves and cracks...
Gotta settle for a survival horror in 7 Days to Die or give a good look to Minetest or Vintage Story.
And pray to indie gamedev gods to somehow return the soothing experience to me.