Minecraft Beyond Construction And Survival

Minecraft is an alluringly moving target to try to pin down, and so in order to assess how it is "well-played"-well-designed and iteratively well-redesigned, in this particular case-we need to think more broadly about the approach the developers have taken toward the creation of the game in addition to its formal game mechanics. It isn't enough to just look at the game's design, we should also think about the changing goals of its designers and the way players interact, and the implications of these interactions for the game's future development. Extremecraft This paper will describe the game and track its progress through the Alpha and Beta stages. Then, I'll isolate the two key players' activities in the game-construction and survival-and show how the game's success is due to the interrelations and tensions that exist between the two activities. In the final part, I'll explain how Minecraft's tensions between construction and survival have caused it to be seen more as an online gaming platform, one which is explicitly facilitated by the game's design, and which has led to thrilling experiments in games for learning, game play as an educational space and games as play spaces for exploring artistic goals.