Saturday, August 10, 2013

Video Games Dominate

In this article by the MIT Technology Review, begins by talking about the dominance of the game Minecraft. The article states, "the profits it’s generated—$86 million in 2012 alone—rival those of the world’s largest entertainment releases." The game is programmed using Java code. We learned about this class and the article explains the reason for this is the programming language emphasizes "speed and lightness." The game Minecraft may not look as life like as one would expect with its Lego-like box animation. The article explains how the game is able to creatively enter the minds of what users want from a game. The ability for uses to see a "birth, death, and rebirth" in the game hooks them. But all video games can draw a player in, but one key aspect that sets Minecraft apart is its encourage sharing of the game. The game allows for communal construction projects. The game's goal is also more user defined. This is interesting to me because I am not a video game player but these ideas seem very different from what I would traditionally think a video game could offer to its users. The ability to share and work on each others worlds and have the goal of the game be more user defined allows for people to get lost in the game and see it more as a world than a simple "end-goal" game.

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