Probably one of the greatest times I've had in Minecraft lasted for almost 2 and half years on a small invite only survival-roleplay server. Everyone, which started with around 10ish players, was forced to come up with other stuff to strive for. It being a partial roleplay server a lot of it was medieval based, so there were farms, bakeries, markets, religion, and so on. At the end everyone in the server had their own story, their own plotlines, some were heralding war heroes, some were great poets, and some were beloved builders or explorers. It started out with a 1000x1000 or so border, with a castle in the middle. People built houses, personally I built a large tower, before moving in with a small group who had made a fort. As the server grew, so did the history, there were expansions, there were wars, religions rose and crashed, entire kingdoms formed just to be consumed by a neighbouring kingdom. At the end the server spawn had moved two or three times to different kingdoms, with some laying completely empty after having been abandoned. These weren't small villages either, these were huge cities with some 50-70 players at that point. So much history and stories, 99% of which is left out as it could fill a trilogy of books. At the end, due to less and less activity we decided to shut the server down, not before killing the ender dragon as an event of course. But it was the best 2 years I've had, and a lot of good memories and friendships formed because of it. Maybe one day I'll have the pleasure of experiencing something similar.
@@jamesbildsten7841 I agree it would be awesome. I think of taking screenshots since some months, because I lost everything from the past about minecraft. If I remember well it was on a hard drive that I had erased, thinking I saved everything before realizing that I missed a lot of things, that were definitely lost then. But now I want to record most of it. I have a small server with a friend, and it was so cool showing him how his base looked at the start. I'm thinking of making a public one and inviting players. Just to have a chill experience, and build some stuff together. Nothing crazy, maybe some vanilla minecraft or something like the Better Than Adventure mod.
A lack of boredom is one of society’s biggest weaknesses now. It’s odd to think about, but it seems that boredom is actually a great driving force and increases creativity and motivation. It lets you think and process your thoughts and feelings. We have a survival drive and confuses boredom for doing nothing when you should be focused on getting food, shelter, procreation, etc. So we don’t allow ourselves to slow down and appreciate the moment, especially where there are endless forms of entertainment at our fingertips, in our pockets, hanging on the wall, sitting at a desk, etc. Boredom is strange because people would rather electrocute themselves or harm themselves than suffer through boredom for too long. Yet boredom allows those who live too much in their head to appreciate their environment, and those who live too much outside of their head to be contemplative, self reflective, and burn less energy focusing on what’s around them. Minecraft seems to be a cycle of boredom, then creative inspiration, then motivation to accomplish that task, then boredom once again. A cycle that we probably need to spend more time applying in our daily lives. God knows that I struggle with boredom and motivation. If I actually took the time to act on my creative impulses, I’d have far more to brag about, to appreciate about myself, to chase away depression and self doubt, and overall just to live for. Minecraft presents boredom in the most enjoyable way possible, and it works wonders. There’s a reason that no matter what other games come out, I will always go back to Minecraft periodically.
Minecraft's Multiplayer is so successful, I think, because it allows players to share the "designer" role. As you've said Minecraft requires players to design their own experience, and that takes from a finite pool of inspiration. On a server, one player can act as the designer for many players by encouraging a social idea or goal. These social ideas also inspire them to be creators while playing. Once the designer burns out, the next player might have since gained inspiration or creative energy, and can now assume the role. I think this one reason why servers tend to last longer than singleplayer worlds.
@@CBMX_GAMING This is very true, I think for many in the real world the inspiration to create art comes from the social activity of sharing it. This leads to more inspiration for multiplayer minecraft
and maybe streaming a singleplayer world is more fun than playing offline for similar reasons, since the chat could help inspire the player while they're playing
I think Minecraft has a big nostalgia factor for a lot of us too. We played it so much as kids, and now that a lot of us who grew up with it are full grown adults, we get to revisit a part of our childhood. It's comforting to come back and play it every now and again. Another great video though, your animations look sick!
There's also my generation. I was already mid way through college when minecraft came out. And i get pretty much the same experience and nostalgia. Gotten similar sentiments from even older folks.
@@Niyucuatro I was about 23 when I started playing Minecraft, so probably a bit older. I can't remember the exact year, but it was between 2010 and 2012. And yep. There's this nostalgia, I remember so many fun adventures, so many different builds and people I met and liked to talk with. Back in the days... Now it would be difficult to play online. Mostly because I'm roaming around reddit, discord, youtube, all that stuff. And everyone I see speaking about the "golden age" of Minecraft does in english. My native language is french, and it seems people in france weren't affected by this wave of nostalgia. Maybe it wil come back, who knows. But for now it feels so weird speaking to english people in voice chats. I'm kinda good at writing english, but my pronounciation is horrible. I struggle to understand accents. It's anyway awesome to see how many people are attracted to old versions.
@@AGKyran From Spain myself, so i can relate. Though when it comes to minecraft i've never gotten into playin in servers. It has been mostly singleplayer for me. With a private server for a coop Better than wolves run once.
My goal in every world is like this: -Get wood -Get stone -Get iron -Build a house, a cow farm and a sugar cane farm -Get 5 diamonds -Get 16 obsidian -Get fortune and mine all the ores you have found before -Raid the fortress -Raid the bastion -Get netherite -Find the stronghold -Beat the dragon
I find it quite interesting how Minecraft's golden age was when there was barely any content in there. However, that didn't take the fact that every element in the game was well utilized and iconic. You could just buy a plushie of everything, a cow, a sheep, an enderman, because each and every one of those elements were essential to the gameplay's core, and tried to give something unique to the player. As well as this, there was more Minecraft animations and let's plays from different youtubers, because the point of them was to see how they would react to these different elements of the game, giving it a better sense of a sandbox game, where the player could roam free and think of whatever he wanted with these specific elements. However it is as if overtime, with the implement of new mobs and content, the game has achieved a point of saturation, where there is a defined line from what direction to go when you start a new world. Hopefully find a village (which is easier to spot now than other versions), and go from iron to diamond to netherite, always keeping in mind that progression.. that necessity for the content which we now feel chained to. Maybe Minecraft was best left with minimal updates and just left to the modders. Sure, Minecraft might have seemed more boring back then by the lack of content, but it still invoked a creativity in many that it is lacking today. I've barely even started the video and am already giving a point of view on this topic. Damn. It really made me think. Good work 👍 Also I'm too lazy as to just delete everything I've written up to this point.
I am coming back after years and playing a world with my new GF, and I'm unsure if she's noticed but I'm refusing to go to the nether. Get as much enjoyment and development out of the content before expanding to the next level. Artificial limiting.
I think that the real problem is that Minecraft has expanded to the point where, if you want a more linear, extrinsically motivated game, you can have a half-decent one in the base game, without custom maps or mods - but only a half-decent one, and one without too much replay value. So some people go the easy road and reach the end without learning about the tools they need to forge their own path from there. When you've beaten the dragon enough times that there's no challenge in it, mastered elytra flight and gotten full netherite a couple times, you need to either pick a different playstyle or choose from one of a wide variety of mods, maps or servers, and the game itself never tells you that.
I call it the slopification of minecraft. To much stuff has been added without consideration for the balance and flavour of the old stuff. like flooding some prefectly nice chips in ranch and molten cheese. It has become slop.
I know you probably get these comments a million times but I LOVE how many videos from small creators I get now, with their own niches and styles, I kill for your pixel art style and how you don’t make this video scream for “watch me!!! Please don’t click off!”
I only have one Minecraft world. It's a sci-fi/fantasy kingdom built entirely by me. I started it in Summer 2019. Every few weeks, I hop on and do some menial task, like extending a road, or building more houses. It quickly gets boring, despite the sheer scale and grandeur of what I've created, because there is no goal. I will never be finished. It's just me in this world devoid of others, slowly building a kingdom with no occupants. It's very lonely.
my main Minecraft world is just a lot of repetitive projects in order for expansion of my base and domain I want to change the world and make it unrecognizable.
@@foreverlikethestarssI'm currently remodeling the capital city. I built it with mostly stone bricks, and it just became oppressively grey. Now I'm replacing that with various quartz blocks and wooden features. It's going to take a looong time lol.
@@lars1588 quartz blocks are beautiful i need to get a piglin or a villager trading system so i can use them more often instead of flying around in the nether for a couple hours
@@foreverlikethestarssThis is in creative mode. I couldn't imagine trying to build my world in survival. It's simply too massive and complex. The amount of mining that would've been necessary would be enormous.
i see it less as useless bloat and more as inspiration and new tools with which to create. newer blocks added to the game have granted so much opportunity for building that simply didn't exist before. my favorite thing to do is to make nice interiors, which simply wouldn't be possible on the same level with the previous limited block set.
1:08 "Goals are either explicitly given to the player or are created by the player themself based on what they would like to achieve." Or, like in Rainworld, they're vaguely hinted at and it's a lot of fun trying to figure out what you're actually supposed to be doing-- the goal is not known by the player during their first playthrough, but becomes apparent when you actually do it, and having to figure out pretty much everything is part of the fun.
The developers of Minecraft have been very careful not to reveal the entirety of their design philosophy, but I remember they did reveal to the players one rule that they absolutely cannot break: “if something happens, it is the player’s fault. Sure a creeper can blow up your base, but you chose to engage with that creeper, or you were willfully ignorant of it’s presence. Or the wither could destroy the entire world, but the wither cannot exist without the player summoning it. The only thing they could think of that was out of the player’s control was lightning strikes burning down their house sometimes, but they fixed even that with the lightning rod item
a couple days ago when i beat the ender dragon, i made it a harmless goal to read the ENTIRE end credits scene, well little did i know most of the end credits scene was filled with the actual credits and i had to sit there for over an hour and just read everything.. it felt so rewarding to reach the end poem
I created a world where my objective is literally plant wheat until i get bored, no more, no less, also some progress so i can plant it fast, and better
Ok, but I fundamentally disagree with the idea that a game can be either have intrinsic or extrinsic goals. Every game needs extrinsic goals, otherwise it’s by definition not a game. Yes, you can add your own intrinsic goals, but at that point you are playing a different game entirely. For an analogy, the simple act of playing with Lego is not considered a “game.” Yes, you can add rules to it that make it one, but those rules are not inherently a part of the design of Lego. Minecraft as a product can be considered a game because there are extrinsic goals, at least in survival mode. If that mode didn’t exist Minecraft would be more of a toy or an application than anything else. Furthermore, Minecraft understands this pretty well, and there are a _ton_ of extrinsic goals. The biggest flaw in your analysis is assuming that an extrinsic goal needs to be something as major as a boss fight, when in reality it can be anything. Getting the wood to make the tools you need, for example, is an extrinsic goal. So is getting iron and diamond, getting to the nether, finding a fortress and killing blazes. Each one is an extrinsic goal that allows the player to do more and more things, including their own intrinsic goals. To this extent, it’s not unreasonable to wish that the game had more of them. The essence of a game involves a goal, something restricting the player from achieving that goal, and the implementation of meaningful choices for the player to make that affects how well they can achieve that goal. Minecraft is a brilliant game because it does all three aspects incredibly well, _especially_ the latter. It’s one of the rare instances of a game giving you an immense amount of choice and it actually working out, unlike something like Breath of the Wild where the player choice is almost completely meaningless. Now that’s not to say that your overall point isn’t correct or that intrinsic goals can’t be a part of the mechanics that lead to extrinsic goals, but it’s absolutely important to note that intrinsic goals by themselves inherently are not a part of game design.
The Minecraft analysis is on point as always, but wow what an amazingly edited and well composed video. You are really developing your craft! Keep up the good work
Easily my favorite video you have made so far, the anticipation was killing my old bones but this far exceeded any expectations I could have had, such an authentic video that formats thoughts minecraft fans have somehow never bothered to explore as deeply. Also I loved the whole jeep tag portion!!!!! You'll always have my continued support for your content, you are a king to be relished on youtube
I experience this cycle of heavy engagement and sudden abandonment (sometimes dropping it for good) for most interests in my life so I didn't realize this was a universal experience when it came to Minecraft. It's interesting, though, and it does make a lot of sense.
As a minecraft addict who hasnt taken a long break, and thinks about it even when on a short break I have realized as an ADHD autistic person that I am not extrinsic /goal/ oriented at all. The idea of completing goals in a new game like breath of the wild, stardew valley, and others make me feel overwhelmed and like I just dont want to do what the game "wants" me to do. I love it
Calling out the Sims series for having the same effect is so true. I want more games like Sims 3/4 and Minecraft that I play for like 1 week a year, every year
the easiest way to not get nearly as bored of Minecraft is to simply keep playing in the same world, how do you expect to use all of the new features and spark your creativity if you are spending all of your time reclimbing Minecraft's tech tree.
bro forgot the mention that mods double the average time you play without burnout. and with lots of mods makes the games playtime go from a week or so playing to months or years.
Minecraft is never a game for long-lasting play. I think you should leave it when you get bored playing it. Wait a few years and come back to it, then pick up your memories and love for it again!
This is the best video essay about Minecraft ive seen this year. And quite frankly, you express the same feelings I have regarding this game and creating your own goals. Awesome work man 👍
Alright bro how many mojang credits did you get with this video? jokes aside, I actually do agree with your view on intrinsic vs extrinsic goals. my sibling and I used to play a very similar game to the tag car game you mentioned, so I feel we're bit of kindred spirits. The problem you neglected to mention is that, minecrafts systems are rubbish. And they get worse and more bloated with every single update. Every other sandbox game you showed has better, more intricate and more well thought out systems than mc. Especially zelda. It's no excuse for the mc devs to sit on their asses and not add new meaningful features. A while ago I was trying to create a minigame involving minecarts. And it was so infuriating. Nothing worked as expected. The rails were annoying to place and work with. The minecarts kept glitching out or randomly stopping/reversing. The tracks wouldn't switch if they were in a certain orientation. And so many other glitches and bugs in this one system. Imagine. And this system doesn't even interact with many other systems. Compare this to Terraria, where the devs lovingly ensure that everything works as it should. Or zelda where the devs intricately built every system to interact with every other to a T. And you start seeing the problem. You also kinda skewed the data in favor of minecraft. That graph you showed includes third party counts like mods and minigame servers that the mc *game* can not take credit for. Furthermore as seen on online discussions. A lot of people who revist mc are not doing so for the game, but for the nostalgia of times they had while playing their friends. I'd argue that if minecraft was a single player only game. We wouldn't be seeing these bouts of re-visitation nearly as frequently.
Me whos been in my Minecraft "phase" for 2 years ☠️ If y'all want to enjoy Minecraft longer, create bigger goals. Ive been making a massive fucking map for the longest time that as I create I realise how much I can add and improve older sections. I am constantly playing mc BECAUSE of that one single creative world, and the several others that I can fall back to whence I finish this one.
honestly for some reason i never get bored of minecraft i've been playing on the same world for almost a year and i just don't run out of ideas this is easily my favorite game of all time.
those lines where they say "dreamed" hella ties in with my ancient creators theory, what if steve is dreaming and there is no end, nether or wither or zombies or skeletons its just steves endless imagination
For me, I never be bored of this game. From my first play on my father's phone when I built a pyramid on superflat (1.9) to this day. I always gonna make something, neither it is a minigame to goof with my friends or just an experiment. But when it comes to survival... I don't really play it so much so I don't have any professional opinion. And also one guy said in the comments that the torch on the thumbnail is nostalgic. He's right. And omg keep up the good work Tekqgs!
I have sunk and am still sinking countless hours into both modded and "vanilla" (quality of life + very targeted content like auto crafting tables). But the experience is vastly diffent. In Terraria and modded Minecraft, you are always restarting with a fresh world and like mentioned in the video, primarily chasing after goals others set for you. The world on the "vanilla" server I'm playing on with a small handful of friends is over 10 years old now, and I intend to keep hosting it for many years to come. This permanence helps a lot with motivation for those big and satisfying self made goals. Of course there are times of inactivity too. But coming back to work on something new feels much less boring / exhausting than progressing through the same game for the 50th time and stopping after the dragon/elytra/netherite or whatever you consider "beating" the game.
One thing I want to mention that a lot of players don't really think of is, if you've hit a creative burnout but don't want to stop playing and want to keep your world to build in later, you could always turn to mods for new extrinsic goals! There's no rule stating you cannot start modding your primary survival world after playing in it for a long time in vanilla (so long as you create a backup before doing so you should be fine, always create backups of your save before updating to new versions and before installing mods, THAT should be an unspoken rule) I would 100% install Twilight Forest or something and implement it into my world if I felt like I wanted something RPG-like to do and I'd also end up using the Twilight Forest assets in builds after the fact!
I liked how he used halflife as a contrast to Minecraft. The core philosophies are basically completely opposite, one free form and one on a rail. And yet, they’re both amazing games.
typically i’ve played year round for almost 13 years round and of course i’ve taken breaks and lost and gained interest overtime but with the most recent updates being kinda boring (IMO) i just feel like my inspiration is slowly dying :P I try new things and as a builder I have so many new blocks to work with however the world just feels so empty and I wish I was given MORE reasons to build. More locations, a reason for these locations, etc
My favorite part of the end poem is how it feels like an invitation to stop playing the game. A game that goes on forever. A game that will always be there to continue. It's so refreshing
0:45 that "sine-wave" interest is how my interest in gaming in general has gone. And I almost exclusively play different kinds of creative / strategy games, where your intrinsic goals make the gameplay experience. Makes sense.
I’ve play Minecraft almost every other day for the past 7 years, I truly don’t understand how people could become bored. Infact at times I feel frustrated when my friends seem seemingly bored from things that we planned out and wanted to do.
Thank you for sharing such an interesting point of view on this topic! I never really tried to analyze my experience with mc and it always confused me why at some point I just did not feel like playing anymore, but watching this video suddenly made me feel self aware, in a good way. I feel I needed to hear this. ❤
I like that when I am done and go through my creative burnout, I can come right back to where I left everything off without a change, and just pick my projects back up with fresh new ideas and experiences that I have learned from my time away. Considering that I started playing Minecraft when I was 6 and I am now 17, my minecraft worlds have grown and developed with me.
3:00 This reminded me so much of that time I played that one 3D cab driver game and I had the most fun while just drifting around and speeding through the city and not picking up people while my car gets so beat up and doors start opening up from all the hits while I keep on swerving
I've had lengthy discussions with a couple of my best friends on why we seem to be unable to commit to the mc server I was hosting. It seemed to always boil down to the lack of extrinsic motivators. Those of us with seemingly infinite intrinsic motivators, people who've been playing these kinds of creative games most of their life are able to "hold on" for much longer, but the burnout is way worse. Like, I'm big into redstone, and a friend of mine is big into building massive Japanese temples. She can't do storage tech or automation, and I suck at building nice things, so we work together a lot. I think collaboration is the backbone of Minecraft, and is why I don't play singleplayer anymore (except to test stuff in a creative testing world). Unfortunately, I had to shut down my server. Running costs and zero players isn't exactly a good thing, so we all went online couple days ago to have a grand send-off. I opened up a little server museum filled with maps of everyone's bases, a progression map of the spawn village (my place), and little trinkets/items with incredible stories behind them. It's sad, but that's Minecraft. For as long as I have the world file saved and backed up, we can come back at any time. There's no expectations or pressure, and that's why I still play this game even after over a decade. W game.
we had the most fun back then on a LAN-Party when we were playing HalfLife Deathmatch and Malte was having like 4 times as many points as the next player, so we decided to turn it around and the player with the least points wins. our goal was to find some explosive and blow ourselves up before getting killed by Malte and without scoring a kill on any other player.
Sadly you didn't mention mods as an experience altering minecraft, but i guess it would make the video too long and stay a little from main point. That said I can't imagine playing modern minecraft without mods. I have started playing it around beta 1.6 and I consider it my golden age of minecraft when I was teenager, game was frequently updated, watched mc youtubers, played on custom maps, I regularly read minecraft news-site and engaged in various minecraft servers (though I never could stick to one server for long). Years passed and I still have never gotten Elytra and like you said my phases of playing minecraft are too short to get any meaningful progress. I just keep making new world, playing some and coming back years later with a new world. This reduces repeatability, because early game is pretty much always the same. Without modpacks I couldn't play minecraft anymore, because at this point there is nothing new exciting for me and some mods like Create are amazing.
Most my other friends find Minecraft boring and rarely play more than an hour or two Me and own friend could go for 12 hours straight and have played on the same server for over 2 years straight, simply because we made such intrinsic goals (create mod progression, building multiple cities, Alex’s mob discovery, etc) It’s amazing
I used to burn out so often but something changed now where I have kept the same world and regularly played it for over a year now slowly but surely making massive builds
growing so far from minecraft feels sad knowing that all of the things you said was very true i was bored becuz i got nothing to build i was bored becuz nothing nor something was new, ive built many structures i was bored to all from it, and then its gone my creation was built back then 2015 when i was 9 years old used to have minecraft create alot of worlds it used to be "pocket edition" you woulnd't imagine how i was creating funny structures some better some worse, i just realize now minecraft could be boring and also exciting like coming back on java with my moms laptop is quite exciting i mean the boredness the emptiness between how long you play naturally exist now i feel like ive been INTO it back then now i just kinda hop back in spent for weeks and leave it for months to come.. i just wanna let yall know that it is natural to be bored it has ability to our imaginative to be gone nothing nor has left to it. it may be never as it was but you're heart was filled with amazing moments that's all thank you...
This video made me realize, or perhaps made me remember, why I fell in love with Minecraft and why I spent so much of my childhood playing it. These days, I'm much the stereotype of the person who returns to Minecraft once a year for maybe two or three weeks, and I'd long since wondered why. What gives? I wondered; why is a game that encapsulated my childhood no longer so fun to play? Is this just what it means to grow up? In a sense, I think I was right in that assessment, but I just didn't know why. Most importantly, I never stopped to think if that's necessarily how it had to be. The one detail I'd missed when thinking about the difference between then and now was my friends. Hopping on my computer right after school to play Minecraft with my online friends for the entire rest of the day and night and even some of the next morning are some of the happiest memories I have the pleasure of retaining. Playing Minecraft together, making up stories- kingdoms and empires and religions and in-jokes and entire worlds. It may be a bit sad to say but I don't think I've ever been happier than in those moments during all those years. But, as all things do, those times passed. We got older, we grew apart, we fought, disappeared altogether without another word or trace. When I first started playing Minecraft I would play every day with a small handful of friends, which gradually became over a dozen, and then over two dozen- now I still only talk to 2. Even then, it's not as often as I would like. We don't play games together at all anymore, we rarely voice chat. Rarer still we'll watch a movie or short anime together. I have a few other, newer friends I've made over the years of course but we're all adults, they all have jobs and/or go to school, they have responsibilities, significant others, most aren't like me and actually have friends IRL. They can't sit on the computer all day playing Minecraft anymore, the few times I convince someone to set up a server, few can spare the time to really get into like I remember, often hardly anyone's schedules intersect to have everyone on the server playing together like the good old days. And even when the stars align, everyone's so tired, so exhausted, they can't bring themselves to do anything other than just idly build stuff they think is cool. They're too mentally exhausted to come up with kingdoms and gods and legends and lore. They're too tired to dream. I could probably whip up some cool ideas for a Minecraft world myself, I'm more than capable of dreaming up all manner of myths and legends, empires and sweeping histories, but personally, what's the point if I can't share in that process with the people I care about? Or at the very least with others who have the time and interest. I'm rather shy, even online so perhaps it's more than a tad my own fault for not joining up on public servers and seeking online communities for this but still, the point stands. I want to design my play experience with my friends, to create and find that emergent gameplay together, but I can't, so I that's why I don't play Minecraft as much anymore. That's why it's not as fun anymore. So, TL;DR, thanks, for helping me realize that with your video. It's much appreciated. And it anyone actually sees this comment, and relates to it; if you "get" it, I'll just say- I hope we can all dream together again someday
I just remember me and my brother fighting each other in Mario Kart Wii's Ghost Valley. We would each claim a row of item boxes and throw bananas and fake items at each other until we got bored.
Deepwoken is an RPG survival horror adventure/exploration roguelike soulslike with too much content for its own good. In Deepwoken, you have one extrinsic goal. You take your character, and turn it into whatever you want it to be. The world is ever-changing and vast, as the developers will constantly update, change, and add new things to the game. The sole freedom you have is your own character. There is no inherently better or worser, there are only different paths. And Deepwoken is VERY good at designing so many paths that you'd want to try out every possible combination. Absolutely none of this is required. It is completely up to your design, and how you envision your character. There is no overarching questline. You simply run around and explore. Any questline you have is started by you, whether through player or NPC interaction. Without quests, the simply dynamic of existing and living in such a world is still very much fun. Players stick around after the endgame to interact with others. NPCs frequently spawn and fight each other, monsters appear without warning and assault you. Trying to side with an evil NPC without knowing their true nature (lore-wise) will result in them betraying you and taking off one of your lives. The adrenaline rush and fear experienced when being hunted down by a monster at the verge of a true death (progression wipe) is unlike any other. And even after that, there are so many ways to make your character powerful or specialized to a certain thing. We keep playing. Even after thousands of hours, we keep playing. The constant updates and player/NPC/monster interactions that almost always mesh with each other to create a chaotic, unimaginable, and unique experience constantly draw players back into the game. There is an exception to almost every rule in this game, if you can find it. What NPCs tell you is not always true, what is observed may not be the entirety. The combination of different paths allows for players to even mimic characters from other media with relative ease, and some creative freedom. And there are many, many paths that focus solely on player-on-player interaction, that literally have nothing to do with NPCs or monsters. The opposite is true as well. Like this, every person who has ever played this game contributes to the overall story being told, piece by piece.
I feel this, i have played minecraft a ton over the years. but i'm not a super creative builder or anything, so i usually get bored by the time i get to the end since i run out of progression. Although i've probably spent a large chunk of those hours just exploring, seeing what's to be seen, finding the perfect place to make a base, which is a more intrinsic goal, compared to just setting up base at spawn
Wow, the reading of the final passage of the game really drove the point home. The only kind of exposition you ever get is explicitly informing you that this whole story was formed by your intrinsic motivation first and foremost. The End itself was begrudgingly added because folks who craved internal goals kept begging for it. Well, I hope that passage got through to them.
This is probably why I was never able to get into Minecraft. I never get to the point where I get to make my own story. Always too busy creating an oversized farm so I stop constantly dying from hunger, or just having fun exploring randomly generated areas. Though often time I'll make a staircase to the bottom of the map, and just endlessly look for diamonds at diamond level until the server shuts down. I've only been to the nether a couple times. Then I try to ghast proof it with cobblestone so it's easier to explore the nether. My playthroughs have never gone past the nether stage. So I've never been to the end. (outside that one time someone showed me after beating the dragon already). I've wanted to make sky islands, and there was one time I tried to make a coastal town, but I never got done terraforming to really do anything special. I'm just trying to get one place set up, and then I can play learning the other minecraft mechanics more so I can get creative, but I never get that far in any playthrough. Little bit of a vent, but gosh darn, I wanna get in on the fun that almost every friend I've ever had, has had fun with.
omg i swear this video brought a tear to my eye, its becoming rarer and rarer to find people who truly understand what minecraft is and should be, yes minecraft is a fundamentaly instrinsic experience, tbh as i grew older i came to see minecraft as less of a game and more of an engine, a program, not unlike other artistic software. minecraft is a pocket of potential, but you must know what you want and have the motivation to continue to truly unlock it, thats also why i think mods/datapacks/plugins are so important for it too, i generally stay on the side of mojang as i berlieve they are mostly doing a good job and even thought they arent as big as their contenporaries, they still have a lot on their plates, i just wish people didnt make and popularized such unresonable demands without even knowing what game they are playing.
Wow that part about Jeep Tag made me realized I did something similar! I would play in the Lego Indiana Jones 2 hub world with my friends just messing around for hours I'd say along with creative burnout, another driving force for getting bored is having goals that are too hefty, I've been playing on the same minecraft world for 11 years now, and my to do list is massive, but most of those goals are things that would take a very long time to do. The point about terraria is also really poignant, like once I beat moon lord, terraira is done, I pretty much always stop playing, but minecraft doesn't really have that barrier
I love Minecraft because... because it feels so peaceful and stable. You can come back to it a long time after and everything you loved will still be there. Nothing ever changes too much. Same grass, same stone... same freedom to build anything you can possibly imagine.
honestly i think *less* extrinsic goals would do better for the game. back when the game was simpler, we played to make things, to make cities, towers, parks, ships, tunnels, castles, whatever. progressing through tool tiers was a means to an end, the end being the building of what we wanted to build. now theres so much to "get", so much to obtain, so much to mine for and so much to set up, that it feels like i focus more on that than creativity. to be honest, i wish the only things that felt mandatory to build were a wheat farm and a mob farm. now youre at a loss without a villager trading hall, villager breeder, creeper farm, etc. on top of that you gotta start hunting down netherite too. it feels like it takes my focus away.
I fixed my own burnout with minecraft (and videogames in general) by accepting that its ok and valid to use cheats and other tools to improve the gameplay experience. I find that forcing myself to do super difficult stuff isn’t rewarding at the end, mainly because i only finish the quest or task for the sake of finally moving on. I currently enjoy switching between creative and survival frequently. I rebuild villages with way more detail than i probably should, explore the world and find places i wanna go to and then i switch to survival and continue to play the game “normally” I like to use the creative modes tools to make the world around me pretty and nice but i never cheat myself items or decorate my own house with things i didn’t actually craft and source in survival mode. I also enjoy playing without mobs most of the time so i just play with the peaceful setting enabled amd switch to easy when i need mob loot or something
weirdly enough i dont find minecraft replayable at all. nothing annoys me more in games than not having a concrete objective to follow, so i always lean into more linear games with lots of clear extrinsic goals. i havent picked up minecraft in forever because every time i do im just burdened by the knowledge that there's so many distractions strewn about ready to paralyze me with indecision. adventure maps on the other hand i greatly enjoy, though i feel like that's stretching what counts as minecraft's own merit
Adventure maps are arguably their own unique games, utilizing Minecraft as the game engine. They can have linear progressions and extrinsic goals, with a much more controlled and premeditated presentation than conventional Minecraft gameplay.
The things described in this video are basically the same things i love when playing Bethesda game studios games. It's not about the story, or the combat system, or the looting. It's about the intrinsical goal of telling my own story. And to those i do also keep comming back, even if the questlines have no more surprises for me.
Recently, I have been playing MC again, but this time, for a reason I think I have identified, I have been playing consistently for the past month and a half, as compared to the more typical week or so, before I get bored. The reason, is that I keep setting a goal, like I need x amount of resource to complete a project I have in mind, so I need to set out to get said amount of resource. Often that's through creating farms, but I need resources to make farms, so I continuously make farms to make more farms, to make more farms. I think you have correctly outlined what about MC makes it boring, but addicting.
This was an incredibly touching and introspective video to watch and think about how I interact with my creative outlets. Especially your analysis of the end poem, thank you
i don't ever come back to play minecraft because its boring as stated. there has been one exception, and that was to play in a friends SMP, but beyond playing with friends it is not fun. I go into a world, I punch a tree, get tools, mine stone, get more tools, mine iron and coal, get more tools, maybe build a shelter and get some food, and then there is nothing to do beyond that. if i continued to play and set goals like "im gonna make an incredible home" for a month straight, I'm not progressing in anything and I'm wasting time. minecraft a bad game, but of course that's just how sandbox games work.
Excellent video. I'd like to add that a new design principle the developers have added is "Minecraft shouldn't be clingy", which fits perfectly with the thesis of this video.
I don't think people place enough value on boredom. We've become so conditioned to avoiding being bored that it's easy to forget that being knee deep in boredom can be what causes us to do the things most valuable to us. I mean... I can say that my primary hobby, which is being a musician, is something I started doing only because I was bored and had time. If I hadn't have been so bored, I probably would have just kept doing the same old thing and never started anything new. That was almost 10 years ago, and because of literally an impulse choice I made when I was bored one summer, I now have a hobby that will command my attention for the rest of my life.
Would existence/addition of extrinsic goals suppress cultivation of intrinsic goals? What's your opinion on Trial Chambers or Ancient Cities - can Minecraft be a complete game for both the players that want some extrinsic goals and players who do not, or do such "adventure" updates detract from Minecraft as a sandbox? Why?
I seriously don't understand how people get bored of Minecraft, I've been playing since I was 7 years old and I just now started even playing multiplayer about a month ago. I am just able to hop on every day and build whatever just comes to mine first. I've, built massive castles and wizards towers to futuristic modern Redstone houses. The craziest thing is that I don't even play with mods often. I sometimes hop on java but I like playing with a controller more so I just use vanilla bedrock edition. I just feel like I've never completed everything I want to do in the game and if I run out of ideas (which has only happened about once every 3 years) I'll just start a new world and do something I haven't done before. I still have so much I haven't done yet like being able to pvp well enough to win the majority of fights or build a massive slime block flying machine. I know that this is probably like super rare and that not a lot of people that have been playing Minecraft for over 10 years feel this way but I just cannot understand how people can say that there is not anything more to do in Minecraft
Someone made a video about the end music once and how it's almost intentionally immersion breaking. At some point it starts to sound like a broken record, reminding you that this world you find yourself in is just artificial. It's almost as if the game wants you to stop playing.
This video is absolutely perfect, I've adored minecraft since 2014, I was 6 then. I only got access to java edition in 2016, but I've never really been able to put it down. Sure, as this video shows perfectly, interest will ebb and flow. But I'm 15 now and still adore the game, even if some of the updates change it. (I actually am not bothered in the slightest by new updates, I think all new content is wonderful.) I've modded the game, played on servers, used datapacks, made a texture pack or two, and there is still more I'd love to do. I recently got into the habit of giving myself the goal in every world to reclaim an ancient city, cleansing it of the sculk and fixing the place up. It's a good long term project, and on a server it can be done with any number of people. Person-made goals is what makes minecraft a perfect game, in my opinion, regardless of the updates and playerbase.
If you want some extrinsic goals in Minecraft without changing the game very much, I recommend the Blaze and Caves Advancements datapack. It basically just adds hundreds of advancements for players to complete.
I'm not sure why, but the thumbnail of a classic village lamp in a superflat world gave me huge nostalgia. Great video, as usual.
thanks!
Is it it a bad thing that i instantly recognized that as a village lamp in the thumbnail?
@@mr.manguyfellowwhat else could it be lol
Might be the art style
The fact it was a village lamp made me click
Probably one of the greatest times I've had in Minecraft lasted for almost 2 and half years on a small invite only survival-roleplay server.
Everyone, which started with around 10ish players, was forced to come up with other stuff to strive for. It being a partial roleplay server a lot of it was medieval based, so there were farms, bakeries, markets, religion, and so on. At the end everyone in the server had their own story, their own plotlines, some were heralding war heroes, some were great poets, and some were beloved builders or explorers.
It started out with a 1000x1000 or so border, with a castle in the middle. People built houses, personally I built a large tower, before moving in with a small group who had made a fort. As the server grew, so did the history, there were expansions, there were wars, religions rose and crashed, entire kingdoms formed just to be consumed by a neighbouring kingdom. At the end the server spawn had moved two or three times to different kingdoms, with some laying completely empty after having been abandoned. These weren't small villages either, these were huge cities with some 50-70 players at that point. So much history and stories, 99% of which is left out as it could fill a trilogy of books.
At the end, due to less and less activity we decided to shut the server down, not before killing the ender dragon as an event of course. But it was the best 2 years I've had, and a lot of good memories and friendships formed because of it. Maybe one day I'll have the pleasure of experiencing something similar.
please if you ever have time, make a video or a text about the experience. I would love to read/watch something like this. 👍
@@jamesbildsten7841 I agree it would be awesome.
I think of taking screenshots since some months, because I lost everything from the past about minecraft. If I remember well it was on a hard drive that I had erased, thinking I saved everything before realizing that I missed a lot of things, that were definitely lost then.
But now I want to record most of it. I have a small server with a friend, and it was so cool showing him how his base looked at the start.
I'm thinking of making a public one and inviting players. Just to have a chill experience, and build some stuff together. Nothing crazy, maybe some vanilla minecraft or something like the Better Than Adventure mod.
That trully seems like a great time spent.
@@AGKyranThat sounds like a cool idea.
A lack of boredom is one of society’s biggest weaknesses now. It’s odd to think about, but it seems that boredom is actually a great driving force and increases creativity and motivation. It lets you think and process your thoughts and feelings. We have a survival drive and confuses boredom for doing nothing when you should be focused on getting food, shelter, procreation, etc. So we don’t allow ourselves to slow down and appreciate the moment, especially where there are endless forms of entertainment at our fingertips, in our pockets, hanging on the wall, sitting at a desk, etc. Boredom is strange because people would rather electrocute themselves or harm themselves than suffer through boredom for too long. Yet boredom allows those who live too much in their head to appreciate their environment, and those who live too much outside of their head to be contemplative, self reflective, and burn less energy focusing on what’s around them. Minecraft seems to be a cycle of boredom, then creative inspiration, then motivation to accomplish that task, then boredom once again. A cycle that we probably need to spend more time applying in our daily lives. God knows that I struggle with boredom and motivation. If I actually took the time to act on my creative impulses, I’d have far more to brag about, to appreciate about myself, to chase away depression and self doubt, and overall just to live for. Minecraft presents boredom in the most enjoyable way possible, and it works wonders. There’s a reason that no matter what other games come out, I will always go back to Minecraft periodically.
Minecraft's Multiplayer is so successful, I think, because it allows players to share the "designer" role. As you've said Minecraft requires players to design their own experience, and that takes from a finite pool of inspiration.
On a server, one player can act as the designer for many players by encouraging a social idea or goal. These social ideas also inspire them to be creators while playing. Once the designer burns out, the next player might have since gained inspiration or creative energy, and can now assume the role.
I think this one reason why servers tend to last longer than singleplayer worlds.
Also, multiplayer gives you a way to have moments of joy where you share your creations, and experience fresh creations that can surprise you.
@@CBMX_GAMING This is very true, I think for many in the real world the inspiration to create art comes from the social activity of sharing it. This leads to more inspiration for multiplayer minecraft
and maybe streaming a singleplayer world is more fun than playing offline for similar reasons, since the chat could help inspire the player while they're playing
I had a feeling of transphobia though
@@JamesWagner-vv9iztf do trans people gotta do with it?
I think Minecraft has a big nostalgia factor for a lot of us too. We played it so much as kids, and now that a lot of us who grew up with it are full grown adults, we get to revisit a part of our childhood. It's comforting to come back and play it every now and again. Another great video though, your animations look sick!
There's also my generation. I was already mid way through college when minecraft came out. And i get pretty much the same experience and nostalgia. Gotten similar sentiments from even older folks.
In some ways it was transphobic
@@JamesWagner-vv9iz get out
@@Niyucuatro I was about 23 when I started playing Minecraft, so probably a bit older. I can't remember the exact year, but it was between 2010 and 2012.
And yep. There's this nostalgia, I remember so many fun adventures, so many different builds and people I met and liked to talk with.
Back in the days... Now it would be difficult to play online. Mostly because I'm roaming around reddit, discord, youtube, all that stuff. And everyone I see speaking about the "golden age" of Minecraft does in english. My native language is french, and it seems people in france weren't affected by this wave of nostalgia. Maybe it wil come back, who knows.
But for now it feels so weird speaking to english people in voice chats. I'm kinda good at writing english, but my pronounciation is horrible. I struggle to understand accents.
It's anyway awesome to see how many people are attracted to old versions.
@@AGKyran From Spain myself, so i can relate.
Though when it comes to minecraft i've never gotten into playin in servers. It has been mostly singleplayer for me. With a private server for a coop Better than wolves run once.
Never thought I'd be literally almost brought to tears about the End poem.
ok soyboy, make way for us chads🗿🗿
True, same on my side.
this is absolutely the BEST take of any "Minecraft is boring/dying" video I've ever experienced. Bravo good sir.
My goal in every world is like this:
-Get wood
-Get stone
-Get iron
-Build a house, a cow farm and a sugar cane farm
-Get 5 diamonds
-Get 16 obsidian
-Get fortune and mine all the ores you have found before
-Raid the fortress
-Raid the bastion
-Get netherite
-Find the stronghold
-Beat the dragon
I find it quite interesting how Minecraft's golden age was when there was barely any content in there. However, that didn't take the fact that every element in the game was well utilized and iconic. You could just buy a plushie of everything, a cow, a sheep, an enderman, because each and every one of those elements were essential to the gameplay's core, and tried to give something unique to the player. As well as this, there was more Minecraft animations and let's plays from different youtubers, because the point of them was to see how they would react to these different elements of the game, giving it a better sense of a sandbox game, where the player could roam free and think of whatever he wanted with these specific elements. However it is as if overtime, with the implement of new mobs and content, the game has achieved a point of saturation, where there is a defined line from what direction to go when you start a new world. Hopefully find a village (which is easier to spot now than other versions), and go from iron to diamond to netherite, always keeping in mind that progression.. that necessity for the content which we now feel chained to. Maybe Minecraft was best left with minimal updates and just left to the modders. Sure, Minecraft might have seemed more boring back then by the lack of content, but it still invoked a creativity in many that it is lacking today.
I've barely even started the video and am already giving a point of view on this topic. Damn. It really made me think. Good work 👍
Also I'm too lazy as to just delete everything I've written up to this point.
Maybe you liked to play Minetest (which reminds alpha/beta era), because this game just a base for mods and "games" built in game
I am coming back after years and playing a world with my new GF, and I'm unsure if she's noticed but I'm refusing to go to the nether. Get as much enjoyment and development out of the content before expanding to the next level. Artificial limiting.
I don't think the community's lacking in creativity tbh
I think that the real problem is that Minecraft has expanded to the point where, if you want a more linear, extrinsically motivated game, you can have a half-decent one in the base game, without custom maps or mods - but only a half-decent one, and one without too much replay value. So some people go the easy road and reach the end without learning about the tools they need to forge their own path from there. When you've beaten the dragon enough times that there's no challenge in it, mastered elytra flight and gotten full netherite a couple times, you need to either pick a different playstyle or choose from one of a wide variety of mods, maps or servers, and the game itself never tells you that.
I call it the slopification of minecraft. To much stuff has been added without consideration for the balance and flavour of the old stuff. like flooding some prefectly nice chips in ranch and molten cheese. It has become slop.
I know you probably get these comments a million times but I LOVE how many videos from small creators I get now, with their own niches and styles, I kill for your pixel art style and how you don’t make this video scream for “watch me!!! Please don’t click off!”
I only have one Minecraft world. It's a sci-fi/fantasy kingdom built entirely by me. I started it in Summer 2019. Every few weeks, I hop on and do some menial task, like extending a road, or building more houses. It quickly gets boring, despite the sheer scale and grandeur of what I've created, because there is no goal. I will never be finished. It's just me in this world devoid of others, slowly building a kingdom with no occupants. It's very lonely.
my main Minecraft world is just a lot of repetitive projects in order for expansion of my base and domain I want to change the world and make it unrecognizable.
@@foreverlikethestarssI'm currently remodeling the capital city. I built it with mostly stone bricks, and it just became oppressively grey. Now I'm replacing that with various quartz blocks and wooden features. It's going to take a looong time lol.
@@lars1588 quartz blocks are beautiful i need to get a piglin or a villager trading system so i can use them more often instead of flying around in the nether for a couple hours
@@foreverlikethestarssThis is in creative mode. I couldn't imagine trying to build my world in survival. It's simply too massive and complex. The amount of mining that would've been necessary would be enormous.
@@lars1588 i need to use creative more often i am helpless when it comes to actually building 😭
Great video. It puts into words what i felt but couldn't explain.
ok but what if we added tons of useless bloat maybe that will make it fun again
hmm yes surely that will do the trick
i see it less as useless bloat and more as inspiration and new tools with which to create. newer blocks added to the game have granted so much opportunity for building that simply didn't exist before. my favorite thing to do is to make nice interiors, which simply wouldn't be possible on the same level with the previous limited block set.
1:08 "Goals are either explicitly given to the player or are created by the player themself based on what they would like to achieve."
Or, like in Rainworld, they're vaguely hinted at and it's a lot of fun trying to figure out what you're actually supposed to be doing-- the goal is not known by the player during their first playthrough, but becomes apparent when you actually do it, and having to figure out pretty much everything is part of the fun.
The developers of Minecraft have been very careful not to reveal the entirety of their design philosophy, but I remember they did reveal to the players one rule that they absolutely cannot break: “if something happens, it is the player’s fault. Sure a creeper can blow up your base, but you chose to engage with that creeper, or you were willfully ignorant of it’s presence. Or the wither could destroy the entire world, but the wither cannot exist without the player summoning it. The only thing they could think of that was out of the player’s control was lightning strikes burning down their house sometimes, but they fixed even that with the lightning rod item
I really never bothered reading the end poem. But the excerpts you read touch something deep inside of me
a couple days ago when i beat the ender dragon, i made it a harmless goal to read the ENTIRE end credits scene, well little did i know most of the end credits scene was filled with the actual credits and i had to sit there for over an hour and just read everything.. it felt so rewarding to reach the end poem
next time you beat the dragon be sure to turn music on and read the whole poem
This is the best channel I've found, you should be recommended to more people,
You stole wattles profile picture XD jk lol u good 😎❤
I created a world where my objective is literally plant wheat until i get bored, no more, no less, also some progress so i can plant it fast, and better
Ok, but I fundamentally disagree with the idea that a game can be either have intrinsic or extrinsic goals. Every game needs extrinsic goals, otherwise it’s by definition not a game. Yes, you can add your own intrinsic goals, but at that point you are playing a different game entirely.
For an analogy, the simple act of playing with Lego is not considered a “game.” Yes, you can add rules to it that make it one, but those rules are not inherently a part of the design of Lego. Minecraft as a product can be considered a game because there are extrinsic goals, at least in survival mode. If that mode didn’t exist Minecraft would be more of a toy or an application than anything else.
Furthermore, Minecraft understands this pretty well, and there are a _ton_ of extrinsic goals. The biggest flaw in your analysis is assuming that an extrinsic goal needs to be something as major as a boss fight, when in reality it can be anything. Getting the wood to make the tools you need, for example, is an extrinsic goal. So is getting iron and diamond, getting to the nether, finding a fortress and killing blazes. Each one is an extrinsic goal that allows the player to do more and more things, including their own intrinsic goals. To this extent, it’s not unreasonable to wish that the game had more of them.
The essence of a game involves a goal, something restricting the player from achieving that goal, and the implementation of meaningful choices for the player to make that affects how well they can achieve that goal. Minecraft is a brilliant game because it does all three aspects incredibly well, _especially_ the latter. It’s one of the rare instances of a game giving you an immense amount of choice and it actually working out, unlike something like Breath of the Wild where the player choice is almost completely meaningless.
Now that’s not to say that your overall point isn’t correct or that intrinsic goals can’t be a part of the mechanics that lead to extrinsic goals, but it’s absolutely important to note that intrinsic goals by themselves inherently are not a part of game design.
The Minecraft analysis is on point as always, but wow what an amazingly edited and well composed video. You are really developing your craft! Keep up the good work
Easily my favorite video you have made so far, the anticipation was killing my old bones but this far exceeded any expectations I could have had, such an authentic video that formats thoughts minecraft fans have somehow never bothered to explore as deeply. Also I loved the whole jeep tag portion!!!!! You'll always have my continued support for your content, you are a king to be relished on youtube
ok dooly doyle
old bones, interesting
Minecraft’s open nature is it’s biggest positive.
Minecraft's open nature is it’s biggest negative.
That is my personal take on the game.
this may be the first good minecraft essay ive ever seen. bravo
Your writing and pacing is fantastic!
definitely staying around to see where you go :D
I experience this cycle of heavy engagement and sudden abandonment (sometimes dropping it for good) for most interests in my life so I didn't realize this was a universal experience when it came to Minecraft. It's interesting, though, and it does make a lot of sense.
What a documentary, i hope your channel blows up man
As a minecraft addict who hasnt taken a long break, and thinks about it even when on a short break I have realized as an ADHD autistic person that I am not extrinsic /goal/ oriented at all. The idea of completing goals in a new game like breath of the wild, stardew valley, and others make me feel overwhelmed and like I just dont want to do what the game "wants" me to do. I love it
Calling out the Sims series for having the same effect is so true. I want more games like Sims 3/4 and Minecraft that I play for like 1 week a year, every year
the easiest way to not get nearly as bored of Minecraft is to simply keep playing in the same world, how do you expect to use all of the new features and spark your creativity if you are spending all of your time reclimbing Minecraft's tech tree.
But when you have gotten everything, you will have nothing to do, nothing to gain except to build, an that gets repetitive real fast.
Wow, this might be the only Minecraft essay I 100% agree with, every word you said resonated with me greatly. Amazing job!
Same. Minecraft gets boring not because it is boring but because you no longer have inspiration
bro forgot the mention that mods double the average time you play without burnout. and with lots of mods makes the games playtime go from a week or so playing to months or years.
Minecraft is never a game for long-lasting play. I think you should leave it when you get bored playing it. Wait a few years and come back to it, then pick up your memories and love for it again!
This is the best video essay about Minecraft ive seen this year.
And quite frankly, you express the same feelings I have regarding this game and creating your own goals.
Awesome work man 👍
Alright bro how many mojang credits did you get with this video?
jokes aside, I actually do agree with your view on intrinsic vs extrinsic goals. my sibling and I used to play a very similar game to the tag car game you mentioned, so I feel we're bit of kindred spirits.
The problem you neglected to mention is that, minecrafts systems are rubbish. And they get worse and more bloated with every single update. Every other sandbox game you showed has better, more intricate and more well thought out systems than mc. Especially zelda. It's no excuse for the mc devs to sit on their asses and not add new meaningful features.
A while ago I was trying to create a minigame involving minecarts. And it was so infuriating. Nothing worked as expected. The rails were annoying to place and work with. The minecarts kept glitching out or randomly stopping/reversing. The tracks wouldn't switch if they were in a certain orientation. And so many other glitches and bugs in this one system. Imagine. And this system doesn't even interact with many other systems. Compare this to Terraria, where the devs lovingly ensure that everything works as it should. Or zelda where the devs intricately built every system to interact with every other to a T. And you start seeing the problem.
You also kinda skewed the data in favor of minecraft. That graph you showed includes third party counts like mods and minigame servers that the mc *game* can not take credit for. Furthermore as seen on online discussions. A lot of people who revist mc are not doing so for the game, but for the nostalgia of times they had while playing their friends. I'd argue that if minecraft was a single player only game. We wouldn't be seeing these bouts of re-visitation nearly as frequently.
omg your pixelart is so good!
thank you!!
@@tekqgs you did great it looks incredible buddy 😎❤ also don’t mind the dark bad ending immature reference comment XD 😊❤
Me whos been in my Minecraft "phase" for 2 years ☠️
If y'all want to enjoy Minecraft longer, create bigger goals. Ive been making a massive fucking map for the longest time that as I create I realise how much I can add and improve older sections. I am constantly playing mc BECAUSE of that one single creative world, and the several others that I can fall back to whence I finish this one.
honestly for some reason i never get bored of minecraft i've been playing on the same world for almost a year and i just don't run out of ideas this is easily my favorite game of all time.
speaking of jeep tag, me and my friends and brother used to roleplay in l3ft 4 dead versus, survivors and infected rolepaly. it was so fun
Join the parasite hive it is beautiful join us it is great join the hive it is beautiful join join the hive.
those lines where they say "dreamed" hella ties in with my ancient creators theory, what if steve is dreaming and there is no end, nether or wither or zombies or skeletons its just steves endless imagination
For me, I never be bored of this game. From my first play on my father's phone when I built a pyramid on superflat (1.9) to this day. I always gonna make something, neither it is a minigame to goof with my friends or just an experiment. But when it comes to survival... I don't really play it so much so I don't have any professional opinion. And also one guy said in the comments that the torch on the thumbnail is nostalgic. He's right. And omg keep up the good work Tekqgs!
I only come back to this game to play modded. Base game Minecraft does not keep pulling me back, time and time again, as Terraria does.
I have sunk and am still sinking countless hours into both modded and "vanilla" (quality of life + very targeted content like auto crafting tables). But the experience is vastly diffent. In Terraria and modded Minecraft, you are always restarting with a fresh world and like mentioned in the video, primarily chasing after goals others set for you.
The world on the "vanilla" server I'm playing on with a small handful of friends is over 10 years old now, and I intend to keep hosting it for many years to come. This permanence helps a lot with motivation for those big and satisfying self made goals. Of course there are times of inactivity too. But coming back to work on something new feels much less boring / exhausting than progressing through the same game for the 50th time and stopping after the dragon/elytra/netherite or whatever you consider "beating" the game.
Thats just the thing, vanilla, and literally like every game, thrives off of playing with friends. I hardly believe it stands on its own. @FakeDomi
One thing I want to mention that a lot of players don't really think of is, if you've hit a creative burnout but don't want to stop playing and want to keep your world to build in later, you could always turn to mods for new extrinsic goals! There's no rule stating you cannot start modding your primary survival world after playing in it for a long time in vanilla (so long as you create a backup before doing so you should be fine, always create backups of your save before updating to new versions and before installing mods, THAT should be an unspoken rule) I would 100% install Twilight Forest or something and implement it into my world if I felt like I wanted something RPG-like to do and I'd also end up using the Twilight Forest assets in builds after the fact!
I would never have thought id see half life and minecraft in the same video
I liked how he used halflife as a contrast to Minecraft. The core philosophies are basically completely opposite, one free form and one on a rail. And yet, they’re both amazing games.
typically i’ve played year round for almost 13 years round and of course i’ve taken breaks and lost and gained interest overtime but with the most recent updates being kinda boring (IMO) i just feel like my inspiration is slowly dying :P
I try new things and as a builder I have so many new blocks to work with however the world just feels so empty and I wish I was given MORE reasons to build. More locations, a reason for these locations, etc
My favorite part of the end poem is how it feels like an invitation to stop playing the game. A game that goes on forever. A game that will always be there to continue. It's so refreshing
0:45 that "sine-wave" interest is how my interest in gaming in general has gone. And I almost exclusively play different kinds of creative / strategy games, where your intrinsic goals make the gameplay experience. Makes sense.
I’ve play Minecraft almost every other day for the past 7 years, I truly don’t understand how people could become bored. Infact at times I feel frustrated when my friends seem seemingly bored from things that we planned out and wanted to do.
Mods, mainly. Being exposed to so many other possibilities not even remotely available in the base game caused me to find vanilla horrifically boring.
Thank you for sharing such an interesting point of view on this topic! I never really tried to analyze my experience with mc and it always confused me why at some point I just did not feel like playing anymore, but watching this video suddenly made me feel self aware, in a good way. I feel I needed to hear this. ❤
I like that when I am done and go through my creative burnout, I can come right back to where I left everything off without a change, and just pick my projects back up with fresh new ideas and experiences that I have learned from my time away.
Considering that I started playing Minecraft when I was 6 and I am now 17, my minecraft worlds have grown and developed with me.
bro loves half life soundtracks a bit too much dawg(i love them too)
Kelly Bailey knocked it out of the park for sure
3:00 This reminded me so much of that time I played that one 3D cab driver game and I had the most fun while just drifting around and speeding through the city and not picking up people while my car gets so beat up and doors start opening up from all the hits while I keep on swerving
I've had lengthy discussions with a couple of my best friends on why we seem to be unable to commit to the mc server I was hosting. It seemed to always boil down to the lack of extrinsic motivators. Those of us with seemingly infinite intrinsic motivators, people who've been playing these kinds of creative games most of their life are able to "hold on" for much longer, but the burnout is way worse. Like, I'm big into redstone, and a friend of mine is big into building massive Japanese temples. She can't do storage tech or automation, and I suck at building nice things, so we work together a lot. I think collaboration is the backbone of Minecraft, and is why I don't play singleplayer anymore (except to test stuff in a creative testing world).
Unfortunately, I had to shut down my server. Running costs and zero players isn't exactly a good thing, so we all went online couple days ago to have a grand send-off. I opened up a little server museum filled with maps of everyone's bases, a progression map of the spawn village (my place), and little trinkets/items with incredible stories behind them. It's sad, but that's Minecraft. For as long as I have the world file saved and backed up, we can come back at any time. There's no expectations or pressure, and that's why I still play this game even after over a decade. W game.
"Minecraft's not boring. It's you that are boring."
that's what i get from this video
My friends and I playing tag with goat simulator is a memory I'll never forget
we had the most fun back then on a LAN-Party when we were playing HalfLife Deathmatch and Malte was having like 4 times as many points as the next player, so we decided to turn it around and the player with the least points wins. our goal was to find some explosive and blow ourselves up before getting killed by Malte and without scoring a kill on any other player.
Sadly you didn't mention mods as an experience altering minecraft, but i guess it would make the video too long and stay a little from main point.
That said I can't imagine playing modern minecraft without mods. I have started playing it around beta 1.6 and I consider it my golden age of minecraft when I was teenager, game was frequently updated, watched mc youtubers, played on custom maps, I regularly read minecraft news-site and engaged in various minecraft servers (though I never could stick to one server for long). Years passed and I still have never gotten Elytra and like you said my phases of playing minecraft are too short to get any meaningful progress. I just keep making new world, playing some and coming back years later with a new world. This reduces repeatability, because early game is pretty much always the same. Without modpacks I couldn't play minecraft anymore, because at this point there is nothing new exciting for me and some mods like Create are amazing.
Most my other friends find Minecraft boring and rarely play more than an hour or two
Me and own friend could go for 12 hours straight and have played on the same server for over 2 years straight, simply because we made such intrinsic goals (create mod progression, building multiple cities, Alex’s mob discovery, etc)
It’s amazing
I used to burn out so often but something changed now where I have kept the same world and regularly played it for over a year now slowly but surely making massive builds
growing so far from minecraft feels sad knowing that all of the things you said was very true i was bored becuz i got nothing to build i was bored becuz nothing nor something was new, ive built many structures i was bored to all from it, and then its gone my creation was built back then 2015 when i was 9 years old used to have minecraft create alot of worlds it used to be "pocket edition" you woulnd't imagine how i was creating funny structures some better some worse, i just realize now minecraft could be boring and also exciting like coming back on java with my moms laptop is quite exciting i mean the boredness the emptiness between how long you play naturally exist now i feel like ive been INTO it back then now i just kinda hop back in spent for weeks and leave it for months to come.. i just wanna let yall know that it is natural to be bored it has ability to our imaginative to be gone nothing nor has left to it. it may be never as it was but you're heart was filled with amazing moments that's all thank you...
I love the detail in your grandparents basement showing that they are packer fans.
This video made me realize, or perhaps made me remember, why I fell in love with Minecraft and why I spent so much of my childhood playing it. These days, I'm much the stereotype of the person who returns to Minecraft once a year for maybe two or three weeks, and I'd long since wondered why. What gives? I wondered; why is a game that encapsulated my childhood no longer so fun to play? Is this just what it means to grow up? In a sense, I think I was right in that assessment, but I just didn't know why. Most importantly, I never stopped to think if that's necessarily how it had to be. The one detail I'd missed when thinking about the difference between then and now was my friends. Hopping on my computer right after school to play Minecraft with my online friends for the entire rest of the day and night and even some of the next morning are some of the happiest memories I have the pleasure of retaining. Playing Minecraft together, making up stories- kingdoms and empires and religions and in-jokes and entire worlds. It may be a bit sad to say but I don't think I've ever been happier than in those moments during all those years. But, as all things do, those times passed. We got older, we grew apart, we fought, disappeared altogether without another word or trace. When I first started playing Minecraft I would play every day with a small handful of friends, which gradually became over a dozen, and then over two dozen- now I still only talk to 2. Even then, it's not as often as I would like. We don't play games together at all anymore, we rarely voice chat. Rarer still we'll watch a movie or short anime together. I have a few other, newer friends I've made over the years of course but we're all adults, they all have jobs and/or go to school, they have responsibilities, significant others, most aren't like me and actually have friends IRL. They can't sit on the computer all day playing Minecraft anymore, the few times I convince someone to set up a server, few can spare the time to really get into like I remember, often hardly anyone's schedules intersect to have everyone on the server playing together like the good old days. And even when the stars align, everyone's so tired, so exhausted, they can't bring themselves to do anything other than just idly build stuff they think is cool. They're too mentally exhausted to come up with kingdoms and gods and legends and lore. They're too tired to dream.
I could probably whip up some cool ideas for a Minecraft world myself, I'm more than capable of dreaming up all manner of myths and legends, empires and sweeping histories, but personally, what's the point if I can't share in that process with the people I care about? Or at the very least with others who have the time and interest. I'm rather shy, even online so perhaps it's more than a tad my own fault for not joining up on public servers and seeking online communities for this but still, the point stands. I want to design my play experience with my friends, to create and find that emergent gameplay together, but I can't, so I that's why I don't play Minecraft as much anymore. That's why it's not as fun anymore.
So, TL;DR, thanks, for helping me realize that with your video. It's much appreciated.
And it anyone actually sees this comment, and relates to it; if you "get" it, I'll just say- I hope we can all dream together again someday
youve become one of my favorite channels. so excited for the next video
I just remember me and my brother fighting each other in Mario Kart Wii's Ghost Valley. We would each claim a row of item boxes and throw bananas and fake items at each other until we got bored.
Deepwoken is an RPG survival horror adventure/exploration roguelike soulslike with too much content for its own good.
In Deepwoken, you have one extrinsic goal.
You take your character, and turn it into whatever you want it to be.
The world is ever-changing and vast, as the developers will constantly update, change, and add new things to the game.
The sole freedom you have is your own character.
There is no inherently better or worser, there are only different paths.
And Deepwoken is VERY good at designing so many paths that you'd want to try out every possible combination.
Absolutely none of this is required.
It is completely up to your design, and how you envision your character.
There is no overarching questline.
You simply run around and explore.
Any questline you have is started by you, whether through player or NPC interaction.
Without quests, the simply dynamic of existing and living in such a world is still very much fun.
Players stick around after the endgame to interact with others.
NPCs frequently spawn and fight each other, monsters appear without warning and assault you.
Trying to side with an evil NPC without knowing their true nature (lore-wise) will result in them betraying you and taking off one of your lives.
The adrenaline rush and fear experienced when being hunted down by a monster at the verge of a true death (progression wipe) is unlike any other.
And even after that, there are so many ways to make your character powerful or specialized to a certain thing.
We keep playing.
Even after thousands of hours, we keep playing.
The constant updates and player/NPC/monster interactions that almost always mesh with each other to create a chaotic, unimaginable, and unique experience constantly draw players back into the game.
There is an exception to almost every rule in this game, if you can find it.
What NPCs tell you is not always true, what is observed may not be the entirety.
The combination of different paths allows for players to even mimic characters from other media with relative ease, and some creative freedom.
And there are many, many paths that focus solely on player-on-player interaction, that literally have nothing to do with NPCs or monsters.
The opposite is true as well.
Like this, every person who has ever played this game contributes to the overall story being told, piece by piece.
I feel this, i have played minecraft a ton over the years. but i'm not a super creative builder or anything, so i usually get bored by the time i get to the end since i run out of progression.
Although i've probably spent a large chunk of those hours just exploring, seeing what's to be seen, finding the perfect place to make a base, which is a more intrinsic goal, compared to just setting up base at spawn
Wow, the reading of the final passage of the game really drove the point home. The only kind of exposition you ever get is explicitly informing you that this whole story was formed by your intrinsic motivation first and foremost. The End itself was begrudgingly added because folks who craved internal goals kept begging for it. Well, I hope that passage got through to them.
I used to have unlimited goals in Minecraft, but after school, college, work, it's all gone
This is probably why I was never able to get into Minecraft. I never get to the point where I get to make my own story. Always too busy creating an oversized farm so I stop constantly dying from hunger, or just having fun exploring randomly generated areas. Though often time I'll make a staircase to the bottom of the map, and just endlessly look for diamonds at diamond level until the server shuts down.
I've only been to the nether a couple times. Then I try to ghast proof it with cobblestone so it's easier to explore the nether. My playthroughs have never gone past the nether stage. So I've never been to the end. (outside that one time someone showed me after beating the dragon already).
I've wanted to make sky islands, and there was one time I tried to make a coastal town, but I never got done terraforming to really do anything special. I'm just trying to get one place set up, and then I can play learning the other minecraft mechanics more so I can get creative, but I never get that far in any playthrough.
Little bit of a vent, but gosh darn, I wanna get in on the fun that almost every friend I've ever had, has had fun with.
omg i swear this video brought a tear to my eye, its becoming rarer and rarer to find people who truly understand what minecraft is and should be, yes minecraft is a fundamentaly instrinsic experience, tbh as i grew older i came to see minecraft as less of a game and more of an engine, a program, not unlike other artistic software. minecraft is a pocket of potential, but you must know what you want and have the motivation to continue to truly unlock it, thats also why i think mods/datapacks/plugins are so important for it too, i generally stay on the side of mojang as i berlieve they are mostly doing a good job and even thought they arent as big as their contenporaries, they still have a lot on their plates, i just wish people didnt make and popularized such unresonable demands without even knowing what game they are playing.
Wow that part about Jeep Tag made me realized I did something similar! I would play in the Lego Indiana Jones 2 hub world with my friends just messing around for hours
I'd say along with creative burnout, another driving force for getting bored is having goals that are too hefty, I've been playing on the same minecraft world for 11 years now, and my to do list is massive, but most of those goals are things that would take a very long time to do.
The point about terraria is also really poignant, like once I beat moon lord, terraira is done, I pretty much always stop playing, but minecraft doesn't really have that barrier
I love Minecraft because... because it feels so peaceful and stable. You can come back to it a long time after and everything you loved will still be there. Nothing ever changes too much. Same grass, same stone... same freedom to build anything you can possibly imagine.
honestly i think *less* extrinsic goals would do better for the game. back when the game was simpler, we played to make things, to make cities, towers, parks, ships, tunnels, castles, whatever. progressing through tool tiers was a means to an end, the end being the building of what we wanted to build. now theres so much to "get", so much to obtain, so much to mine for and so much to set up, that it feels like i focus more on that than creativity. to be honest, i wish the only things that felt mandatory to build were a wheat farm and a mob farm. now youre at a loss without a villager trading hall, villager breeder, creeper farm, etc. on top of that you gotta start hunting down netherite too. it feels like it takes my focus away.
Your channel is amazing! I love it! Can't believe you are a small creator, considering the quality of the videos
minecraft players will do anything but say their game is imperfect
That's a good thing
@@hhff8534 how
underated asf , tf yt DO SMTH, BOOST THIS MAN
i swear i can read that end poem again and again and always break down
i played minecraft for years, i never got an elytra in a legit survival world
most of what i did as a kid, playing skyrim, was imagine stories in my head and act them out as my characters.
2:20 Wait, you're saying that what my brothers and I did on an old monster trucks Nintendo 64 game wasn't out of bordem!?
I fixed my own burnout with minecraft (and videogames in general) by accepting that its ok and valid to use cheats and other tools to improve the gameplay experience. I find that forcing myself to do super difficult stuff isn’t rewarding at the end, mainly because i only finish the quest or task for the sake of finally moving on.
I currently enjoy switching between creative and survival frequently. I rebuild villages with way more detail than i probably should, explore the world and find places i wanna go to and then i switch to survival and continue to play the game “normally”
I like to use the creative modes tools to make the world around me pretty and nice but i never cheat myself items or decorate my own house with things i didn’t actually craft and source in survival mode.
I also enjoy playing without mobs most of the time so i just play with the peaceful setting enabled amd switch to easy when i need mob loot or something
weirdly enough i dont find minecraft replayable at all. nothing annoys me more in games than not having a concrete objective to follow, so i always lean into more linear games with lots of clear extrinsic goals. i havent picked up minecraft in forever because every time i do im just burdened by the knowledge that there's so many distractions strewn about ready to paralyze me with indecision. adventure maps on the other hand i greatly enjoy, though i feel like that's stretching what counts as minecraft's own merit
Adventure maps are arguably their own unique games, utilizing Minecraft as the game engine. They can have linear progressions and extrinsic goals, with a much more controlled and premeditated presentation than conventional Minecraft gameplay.
thats because you have no life.
That last section was so beautiful.
you deserve more subs imo
The things described in this video are basically the same things i love when playing Bethesda game studios games. It's not about the story, or the combat system, or the looting. It's about the intrinsical goal of telling my own story. And to those i do also keep comming back, even if the questlines have no more surprises for me.
Recently, I have been playing MC again, but this time, for a reason I think I have identified, I have been playing consistently for the past month and a half, as compared to the more typical week or so, before I get bored. The reason, is that I keep setting a goal, like I need x amount of resource to complete a project I have in mind, so I need to set out to get said amount of resource. Often that's through creating farms, but I need resources to make farms, so I continuously make farms to make more farms, to make more farms. I think you have correctly outlined what about MC makes it boring, but addicting.
This was an incredibly touching and introspective video to watch and think about how I interact with my creative outlets. Especially your analysis of the end poem, thank you
i don't ever come back to play minecraft because its boring as stated. there has been one exception, and that was to play in a friends SMP, but beyond playing with friends it is not fun. I go into a world, I punch a tree, get tools, mine stone, get more tools, mine iron and coal, get more tools, maybe build a shelter and get some food, and then there is nothing to do beyond that. if i continued to play and set goals like "im gonna make an incredible home" for a month straight, I'm not progressing in anything and I'm wasting time. minecraft a bad game, but of course that's just how sandbox games work.
i love your voice it's so soothing
also i like this perspective on burnout
it is the necessary death that allows Minecraft to live
i know this is kinda off topic but a game with the idea of tag but with cars sounds strangely fun
Very heavy “a tribute to minecraft” vibes
Excellent video. I'd like to add that a new design principle the developers have added is "Minecraft shouldn't be clingy", which fits perfectly with the thesis of this video.
I don't think people place enough value on boredom. We've become so conditioned to avoiding being bored that it's easy to forget that being knee deep in boredom can be what causes us to do the things most valuable to us. I mean... I can say that my primary hobby, which is being a musician, is something I started doing only because I was bored and had time. If I hadn't have been so bored, I probably would have just kept doing the same old thing and never started anything new. That was almost 10 years ago, and because of literally an impulse choice I made when I was bored one summer, I now have a hobby that will command my attention for the rest of my life.
I love the halflife background music, 10/10
Would existence/addition of extrinsic goals suppress cultivation of intrinsic goals? What's your opinion on Trial Chambers or Ancient Cities - can Minecraft be a complete game for both the players that want some extrinsic goals and players who do not, or do such "adventure" updates detract from Minecraft as a sandbox? Why?
I seriously don't understand how people get bored of Minecraft, I've been playing since I was 7 years old and I just now started even playing multiplayer about a month ago. I am just able to hop on every day and build whatever just comes to mine first. I've, built massive castles and wizards towers to futuristic modern Redstone houses. The craziest thing is that I don't even play with mods often. I sometimes hop on java but I like playing with a controller more so I just use vanilla bedrock edition. I just feel like I've never completed everything I want to do in the game and if I run out of ideas (which has only happened about once every 3 years) I'll just start a new world and do something I haven't done before. I still have so much I haven't done yet like being able to pvp well enough to win the majority of fights or build a massive slime block flying machine. I know that this is probably like super rare and that not a lot of people that have been playing Minecraft for over 10 years feel this way but I just cannot understand how people can say that there is not anything more to do in Minecraft
This video is great, the most I loved was the pixel art editing and the dialogue writing.
Someone made a video about the end music once and how it's almost intentionally immersion breaking. At some point it starts to sound like a broken record, reminding you that this world you find yourself in is just artificial. It's almost as if the game wants you to stop playing.
This video is absolutely perfect, I've adored minecraft since 2014, I was 6 then. I only got access to java edition in 2016, but I've never really been able to put it down. Sure, as this video shows perfectly, interest will ebb and flow. But I'm 15 now and still adore the game, even if some of the updates change it. (I actually am not bothered in the slightest by new updates, I think all new content is wonderful.) I've modded the game, played on servers, used datapacks, made a texture pack or two, and there is still more I'd love to do. I recently got into the habit of giving myself the goal in every world to reclaim an ancient city, cleansing it of the sculk and fixing the place up. It's a good long term project, and on a server it can be done with any number of people. Person-made goals is what makes minecraft a perfect game, in my opinion, regardless of the updates and playerbase.
If you want some extrinsic goals in Minecraft without changing the game very much, I recommend the Blaze and Caves Advancements datapack. It basically just adds hundreds of advancements for players to complete.