Free Writing - My Super-Structure

    Now that I have played Minecraft for a while, I am beginning to be able to perform more complex functions, and I am more confident in my ability to survive the challenges of the game world. From my hideout in my original, humble shelter, I was able to gather a great deal of wood from nearby trees, stone and metal from my mine during the night, and food from a mine that I built and irrigated. With my massive stores of resources, I was able to begin construction on a much more substantial structure, I wanted to leave my mark on this server.

    
    My first step was to find a relatively blank plot of land, somewhere with enough open space to spread out, while not falling in the shadow of any other character’s existing homestead. Then I built a large wall surrounding the entire area where I wished to build in order to keep out monsters, though it wouldn’t be enough to keep poaching players at bay. Luckily, no players bothered me for a long while, not since the flying moderator. Then, block by block, I built a superstructure, modelled after a giant tree, it featured many levels, including a rooftop garden and a glass-bottom observatory.

    In order to increase the magnitude of my impact on other players’ actions, I built easily accessible entrances to my rooftop garden to all players, with signs stating that the area is open to everybody. This garden has trees that players can harvest for wood (a very valuable resource for new players that can be scarce in crowded servers) and wheat that players can craft into bread. Since the creation of my massive treehouse fortress, I have noticed trees missing, though the saplings re-planted out of courtesy. I’m just glad that I can say that I have influenced the gameplay of another, and hopefully for the better.

Mass Communication, Masspersonal Communication and Personal Communication

   One of the most important aspects of interactive digital worlds are the many ways in which players, moderators and the game itself communicate with the one playing the game. Interpersonal communication is the most simple, often featuring one sender and one receiver of a message, and may be done through any number of channels. Mass communication involves a “one-to-many” channel in which the sender portrays a message to a large number of receivers. Masspersonal communication involves using mass communication channels for interpersonal messages or vice versa. There are usually examples of each in any MMO games as well as other digital environments.

    In Minecraft, a majority of communication is conducted via mass communication or masspersonal routes, usually through typed messages that may be seen by all other players. Often while I am playing, and not interacting with other players I can see messages they send to each other, which quite humorously, have addressed my presence in the server. There are examples of interpersonal communication as well, my group members and I usually use Skype so that we can talk to each other while we play.

    Throughout my play time so far, I have only really interacted with two other players, both sitting at polar opposite sides of a scale of nicety. My first encounter was with a well-armed character with golden armor (having played Minecraft before I knew that gold armor was near useless). I had just poked my head out the door and he tried to kill me with a bow and arrow and take my stuff, however, I was able to chase him down and kill him, and I got a free pair of shiny golden pants. The other interaction happened between myself and a player who seemed to be a moderator of the server as he could fly and seemed completely uninterested in my possessions. This just goes to show both the variety of player personalities and the complexity of character interaction.

Information Creation and Manipulation

    As a result of the gameplay style of the world of Minecraft, it is easy to observe one’s impact on the digital environment and on the play styles of other players. This week, along with another member of my group, I found a server that suited all of my needs, rise.risenkingdoms.com. This server most accurately mimicked single player gameplay, but the world was littered with other players creations, some humble and familiar, some massive and quite impressive. One feature that I have yet to understand is the existence of towns, where outsiders are not able to modify the landscape or access the belongings of others. As a result of this limitation, we simply built a humble structure of our own a great distance from the nearest town, hoping to not step on the toes of any other players.

    
    Our first little shack had little effect on the play of others, built with the intention of avoiding other players as PVP was on, and all of our possessions could be accessed by others if we left our settlement unguarded. The extent of our information creation at this point extended only to our group members, to whom we left signs that we crafted as to the location of our house, and clues to find our loot chest that we buried for safe keeping.


   

    The other unintended recipients of our presented information are the NPC monsters that continuously attack us, they spawn in near our structure and interact with our presence. I’m hoping that our next creation will portray more information to other players in the server, perhaps in some way impact the way in which they play the game.

Minecraft Day 1

     I’d like to preface this entry by stating that I have played Minecraft before, though never online and never with any mods applied. I have broken dirt, stone and wood blocks and made them into shelters and shuddered inside whenever I heard the hiss of a creeper. These past experiences never even scratched the surface of what seems to be the expansive experience that is the world of Minecraft. My first time really playing Minecraft, with the other members of my group, involved finding servers, downloading mods, and playing game modes that I never even knew existed, such as capture the flag and a modded PVP mode with guns.

         
            
    We booked a study room in the library for our first play session, one member couldn’t make it but since we were playing online, she was able to join in from home and communicate via Skype. Our first step was to find a beginner friendly server, a task that is not quite as easy as it sounds. Many of the servers that we looked at only featured specific game modes such as creative or round-based minigames. Many also featured PVP, one feature that we were all nervous about because of our combined lack of experience. We experimented with a few but never quite found one that suited all of our needs. What I personally was looking for involved a similar experience as the single player adventure mode, but one that would be accessible for our entire group so that we could cooperate and overcome the challenges of surviving the dangerous world.