T w e n t y S i d e d

Sorry about no Sims 4 Overthinking this week, the usual writer team for that series is undergoing a possible integration (two system members becoming one) and I’m not gonna touch it till I know what they want to do Confused about what any of those words meant? Check out our explanation post.  I’m Jax, or Jaxson, whichever. I was the system member that wrote all of the very first posts we did after Dad died Real cheery stuff.  He/him and all that jazz, just please don’t refer to me as a woman it makes me itchy.

Introductions out of the way, time to complain.

Microsoft doesn’t understand Minecraft to an offensive degree, as in: this is asinine at this point, what the entire fuck are they doing.

Let’s remember for a moment what made Minecraft one of the the biggest cultural booms a video game industry launch has ever seen For instance, this statement requires very little defending, even though it’s a big claim.

Sure, the Wii was a pretty big deal, it brought in people who’d never played anything before. But Minecraft, unlike the Wii, seems practically immortal. It doesn’t show it’s age because of the big goofy graphics, and because nothing can ever be Minecraft. When you tell a Minecraft player that Minecraft is fifteen years old, they almost always react in total bafflement, either because it’s been that long or because it’s only been that long, both reactions are possible.

The very first time I ever saw Minecraft was before ores had been implemented. Water had just been added, and my dad was going on and on about how this game was going to be huge. He made a waterfall, and cursed. He had been working on trying to make a random generation world for the last several years at that point, and when he saw the big goofy blocks he realized someone had cracked the code before he did. Dad was mad he didn’t think of ‘Cavegame’ first.

As updates came out, and Notch became a very rich man, Dad would often curse in frustration and envy. It could have been him, he’d often comment. He’d begun messing with larger pixels just a few months before the first ‘Minecraft’ had dropped. He even spent a few weeks coding his own version, just to see, I suppose, what he missed out on.

The envy didn’t stop him from enjoying it, though. The TwentySided Minecraft server was where I met one of my first real friends, the man I ended up marrying. The server itself was a fantastic example of one side of the Minecraft coin, creative mode. Structures filled every blank piece of land as far as the eye could see. Pixel art and houses, statues and recreations of real-life places. I was building in creative mode, in a time before the creative inventory was released. Every time I needed a new block I had to ask a server moderator to summon me one.  I built a hotel, a small amusement park, and…nearly had to be banned because I could barely read or write and my attempts at the word ‘come’ were…incorrect.

Creative mode was a place for art, and survival mode was a place for resource management, both had their space in the community.

When The End was added to the game, I told one of my friends I thought it was stupid, but I was okay with it because ‘I’m sure they’ll do something for the builders next’. The ender dragon felt, at the time, unnecessary and forced. But the most common question people asked when they didn’t like Minecraft was ‘Okay, but what’s like, the point? What’s the goal?‘

The addition of the end felt like it would at least put a stop to that question, although it felt to me like caving to peer pressure. I loved both creative and survival modes, and, to me, it was okay that there wasn’t an ‘end goal’.

Then came iron golems, villagers, desert temples, The Wither, more biomes, ocean monuments, end cities, woodland mansions, bastions, lush caves, the Deep Dark, Archeology. Who the hell is playing Minecraft only to learn about the world’s history? Especially since it’s a game that updates before our eyes. I can understand and respect the structures, they’re nice enough, but we don’t need more goddamn boss fights, we need building blocks, and some quality of life fixes. How about a command to look up the coordinates of your last death? How about fixes to the command block UI? Maybe a crafting recipe for name tags? Vertical half slab? A way to change stair shape in survival? Can we get any block with a reasonable blue color for builds? How about a single piece of furniture? 

These updates are nice, but Minecraft didn’t become an overnight sensation because you could go buy sand from some guy. It became big because people like to build things. This is like if Lego got confused about what people liked about Lego and started selling pre-built Lego toy guns. Sure, you can take them apart and build your own thing, but if you wanted a toy gun you’d go buy from Nerf. You bought a Lego kit to build with, and they sent you a pre-assembled spaceship with a toy inside if you take it apart, and the toy gives you a hint as to the story of what ancient fictional civilization invented Lego. What? I just wanted to build a damn farm.

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them