⛏️ Minecraft

I believe Minecraft can be defined as the modern game (for better or worse) that develops potentially infinite complexity from simple premises. In a good way, obviously: complexity impresses and rewards those who seek it, but the title remains playable for anyone.

At first it’s making “houses” that are 4x4 holes under the ground, but later it becomes creating titanic installations, purely aesthetic or even totally functional - let’s not forget that Minecraft, with its redstone, is Turing-complete. And in the end? Well, it will never come to an end…

…WIP. For other information that is not totally subjective, for now there is Wikipedia.

My story

I discovered Minecraft when I was maybe 7 years old, because another kid had it on his tablet at after school. I remember that he had built several large buildings, with decorations and everything. I was blown away practically instantly, because I had never seen any game that was remotely close to this one, even though at the time we were in the very first alpha versions of Minecraft Pocket Edition, which had very little content (less than Minecraft Java alpha!).

It was difficult to get the application, for reasons relating to my general use of Android at the time, but I finally managed to get it on my Galaxy Player, and then on my break-in tablet. At first I had the demo, needless to say it wasn’t good because progress couldn’t be saved upon exit, and so playing was pointless. Then, somehow that I don’t even remember, I managed to find the APK of the full version.

From there, every hour of play was a new discovery, or a new self-imposed goal accomplished. I started building strange buildings that were difficult to navigate, with intricate passages, that if I wanted to do today I wouldn’t even know where to start. Due to a whole series of events, I lost the worlds I had on the tablet (which were nothing special, in fact I don’t even remember them well), but those of the Galaxy Player are still there today. Here are some photos of what was my major at the time: https://pixelfed.uno/p/octo/299639948389257216.

Shortly afterwards I learned, thanks to an application that I don’t remember whether I discovered it by chance on Google Play or was recommended to me, of the existence of thematic maps created and shared by other players online. I lost some time on them, especially on the parkour ones: with the touch controls (and at the time no crouching!) they quickly became torture, but when you manage to make the difficult jumps and move forward it’s always nice.

On the PC I had at home at the time, there was no way to start Minecraft, for who knows what obscure reason; I imagine ancient video card and/or video drivers. At the end of 2014 I then tried to run it on what was at this point my new Windows tablet (still broken, but in different ways than the Android one), and somehow it started, but it ran too slow to be playable. Too bad I didn’t know at the time that I could try lowering the resolution or running an older version to get more performance. When 2 months later, now in 2015, the new PC arrived at home, I don’t remember why but I didn’t even try to run Minecraft. Sadness. At the end of the new year I then got the laptop, and I put Minecraft there, and I wore it out, sure enough I wore it out!

I started there both playing offline and on some Italian servers. A few months later, when I bought a legitimate account of the game, I was also able to try globally renowned servers such as Hypixel, and others that I don’t remember now, because today they are totally irrelevant or possibly even dead!

It was on PC that I started seeing big things with redstone, because MCPE at the time was still in alpha and relatively barebones: a lot of elements were missing. Who knows where the hell I saved my first superflat world made there, with all the useless constructions and experiments! I should look it up.

Online, I immediately started testing minigames on servers: SkyWars, BedWars, Hunger Games, PvP FFA, a few minor non-violent ones. On BedWars at a certain point I end up spending so many hours in a row over the months that my performances actually become good and I often win the games, but if I tried to play it again now (and I tried again), I would realize how much rust I have accumulated.

I then also gave a chance to multiplayer game options structured in the long term, and not as minigames in games: creative battles, classic survival, but above all SkyBlock, that was epic stuff.

Then there were other things in between, between MCPE becoming Bedrock Edition, better in some things and (still) worse in others, time spent on Minecraft Console Edition (the old version before Bedrock supplanted it) with its minigames integrated which were really nice. When I got a new Nintendo 3DS XL in the summer of 2019, I started playing Minecraft on that too, which was more convenient for me than playing with touch controls on a smartphone (for when I’m on the move), and it continues to this day.

Now there are alternating months in which I open Minecraft almost every day, and others (definitely more frequent) in which I completely forget that it exists. Almost 3 years ago SpaccCraft was born - the third edition, if we want to be honest towards those other two worlds in which we exaggerated a little too much and did literally smash, but basically we have to since “SpaccCraft” it comes right from there - and now that too has declined. The server works, but it runs practically empty, no one plays and I can’t complain too much about it, as first of all I don’t find the time to do it.

Take a look at the SpaccCraft website, there’s a bit more concrete stuff to see, and a few ruminations about my whole life.