I’m going, to be honest with you guys: I haven’t enjoyed Minecraft the way I did when I first played it for a long time through a minecraft server host. The reason being? For me, Minecraft was all about the love of discovery – of exploring a new world and finding something new every time. I would be motivated to cross that next horizon, because you never knew what new type of landscape layout would be generated, or if there would be a village or temple or dungeon hidden in some unsuspecting valley. Do you remember the first time you entered a desert temple? Or ran into your first abandoned Mineshaft? It was amazing. I need these moments in the game, every time I play and as a veteran player those moments have been long gone.
Exploration in Minecraft has suffered, I think, mostly due to the fact that for at least a year now, Jeb and the rest of the development team (because it’s what they are most interested in, and what their talent lies most in) have basically only focused on the creation aspect of the game and piston and Redstone circuitry (and recently, optimizing the game code, which really needed to be done). All of this is great, Minecraft is the lego of our generation, and the deluge of creativity that the community has produced from these updates is impressive, to say the least.
But I think there is a fan base here that is being ignored: the adventurers. More and more kids are turning to video games for fun because the world around them is being developed into parking lots and strip malls – there are no more forests to play fantasy in.
What I want is more discovery in Minecraft. How can this be done without completely overburdening Mojang? Now, this is getting into Mod API territory (which is coming soon?) but my solution to this problem has been inspired by the game ‘Spore’.
Do you remember that game? In spore, you were an animal evolving in a (literally) infinite universe of infinite planets and species and space ships. This was possible because the game developers put the creation of objects in the hands of the players.
What I’m saying is this: players should be able to upload their creations onto a central library database, and this database should be uploaded into the algorithmic world creation engine of Minecraft itself. Think about it: custom-built structures, traps, Redstone machines, landscapes, scenery, trees, ruins, even books written by players… all completely new to you every time you play the game. There would never be a lack of something new, because of the sheer vibrancy of the Minecraft community. This would also start a new golden age of creation for those who are in the game for the building aspect because it would give them a platform upon which to build their legacy right into the game itself.
This is obviously a quite radical proposal and one that would need a lot of technical details to be sorted out, but if implemented (be it by Mojang or the modding community) I would probably never stop playing Minecraft for any length of time.
A side note: to discourage really stupid stuff from being added (like huge castles made of the diamond block ) there should be a rating system implemented into the created database.
