One thing I love about the Internet is how easy it is to learn new things. As a media student, I have a huge interest in Web Development. No only does the Internet offer (what seems to be) an endless supply of website examples, but it also offers an overwhelming amount of tutorials on how to create Web pages. One of the most popular (and great for beginners) is W3 Schools, a tutorial based website created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). With the Internet, you can learn almost anything you can think of.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Second Life or Second Beginning?
A popular topic of discussion in Media and Cyberspace is the game Second Life which tries to virtually replicate your ideal life. The ethical discussion here is whether an ideal virtual life is better than real life. What I’d like to discuss though, is a new game that replicates something interesting: a new beginning.
Welcome to MineCraft, the in dependant game that took the Internet by storm in 2010. The ironic thing is, it did it without even being finished. The game came out in its Alpha testing form, and by the time Beta was out, it already had over 1M sales.
MineCraft, essentially, replicates the beginning of time. You’re simply placed in a randomly created world that’s completely natural, and as a human, you’re free to do as you’d like. However, you must follow simple rules based on real life. For example, the first thing you must do is cut down a tree with your bear hands in order to make tool out of wood. From there on you’re free to mine and craft your way through life.
What strikes me as interesting is the animated style of the game. It’s extremely cubed and pix elated. This is opposite to most First Person Games which try their best to replicate real life. In Plato’s critique of poetry (the main form of entertainment in his time) he argued that it entertained false realities and obstructed one’s self-realisation. Later, artists like Brecht began to realize that as long as people were distanced from believing their entertainment was reality, it was helping their self-realization. I think MineCraft has this effect. The pix elated style puts no doubt in your mind that you’re playing a game. With that said, as the sales have shown, the addictive nature of video games is very present in Minecraft.
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