[Sandwich]

"Watching" the devlopment of a game could be interesting...or boring.
It's not like you have any menaingfull impact on game creation anyway. Acress to early builds? You get to play a buggy game again and again, never getting to finish it because of crashes and whatnot, and by the time a finished product rolls out, you're tired of it and never play it.

Yes, because you never played MineCraft after version 1.0, right?

[Phantom Hoover]

minecraft increasingly lost the plot as it neared and passed release, though, it's a case study in How Not To Do It

[Sandwich]

minecraft increasingly lost the plot as it neared and passed release, though, it's a case study in How Not To Do It

What are you talking about? What plot?

[Phantom Hoover]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lose_the_plot

[Sandwich]

Ok, what was their objective from the outset? Notch wanted to make a game? Check. He wanted to make an open-world blocky game? Check. He wanted to somehow actually make tons of money off said game? Check. How did they lose sight of the original intention?

[Luis Dias]

I am also curious regarding this loss of plot that I am 100% ignorant of.

[Phantom Hoover]

Well... as development went on, it became clear that Notch didn't really have any overall creative vision for the game beyond 'you can mine and craft and it's all a kind of fantasyish environment with survival elements' (and neither did anyone else at Mojang for that matter), and increasingly new features were drawn from mods/fan pandering (like pistons, dogs, booster rails) or from half-baked ideas that never really went anywhere (literally all the RPG mechanics). The released version of Minecraft was if anything less 'complete' than a lot of the beta versions, and as far as I'm aware things haven't really improved since then. I do kind of harbour a personal resentment about this, because Minecraft had incredible potential and it didn't really live up to much of it.

[Luis Dias]

Yeah Minecraft is indeed the definition of failure. Just look at it.

[Phantom Hoover]

Yeah Minecraft is indeed the definition of failure. Just look at it.

just like how into darkness was a great film because it made a bunch of cash, right

[Flipside]

Actually, I'd say the number of people who play it regularly is a better indicator. It's an incredibly popular game, so it must be doing something right.

[Phantom Hoover]

are you serious about this

lots of people play cod too, are you going to leap to its defence if people start criticising its design

Edit: urgh, this is going nowhere. OK look, I did and do enjoy Minecraft! But I think a lot of its appeal comes from the core gameplay alone, and that the game's development beyond that was directionless and shallow, and that its phenomenal success is as much a factor of it being in the right place at the right time as it being particularly well-made.

[Flipside]

No, but if someone says something that I feel is somewhat erroneous, I WILL continue to point it out, or did you think that you are allowed to criticize and no-one is allowed to defend it?

If you don't like Minecraft, I'm fine with that, but don't act as though anyone who DOES like the game must be totally wrong and are not allowed to defend themselves. I don't like COD, but some people do, thinking that what defines a 'good' or 'bad' game is just your personal opinion of it only works with regards to yourself, trying to apply that to everyone is a false start.

[Luis Dias]

I always regarded Minecraft as a virtual lego in the internets. People, especially youngsters, love it for that.

I never saw any plot that it missed. Perhaps by not trying to be what it couldn't be and just being the simple thing it is is precisely its brilliancy.

Into Darkness may well be a bad movie, but I also never said it "lost the plot". I was disappointed by it, but that does not give me the right to reify my wishes into something that was supposed to happen and never did.

[Phantom Hoover]

If you don't like Minecraft, I'm fine with that, but don't act as though anyone who DOES like the game must be totally wrong and are not allowed to defend themselves. I don't like COD, but some people do, thinking that what defines a 'good' or 'bad' game is just your personal opinion of it only works with regards to yourself, trying to apply that to everyone is a false start.

I didn't do any of that; I criticised the way Minecraft was developed, and for my troubles I got some petty snipes from you and Luis for daring to speak ill of a game that lots of people bought!

Luis: 'lost the plot' is a turn of phrase, it has nothing at all to do with the actual plot of the game. MC certainly is pretty great as 'virtual lego on the internet', but the devs wanted it to be more, they tried to make it more, and I think it's perfectly fair to criticise its failings in being more.

[Luis Dias]

Yes yes I was speaking of "losing the plot" the way you intended. They might have had their ideas but they correctly dismissed them.

[Phantom Hoover]

No they... didn't. They really didn't. What was the entire complex of shoddy ideas that was the Adventure Update and release if not an attempt to move MC beyond the simple but fun premise of block-shuffling?

[Flipside]

I didn't do any of that; I criticised the way Minecraft was developed, and for my troubles I got some petty snipes from you and Luis for daring to speak ill of a game that lots of people bought!

So when you say something it is 'criticism' and when we say something in response to that claim it is 'petty snipes'

Yeah, I see where this is going...

[NGTM-1R]

So when you say something it is 'criticism' and when we say something in response to that claim it is 'petty snipes'

He did actually offer criticism of the game, though he did not lay out a reasoning for a few posts, which is a typical failing of Phantom.

On the other hand it's equally true that any accusations "you just say X because you don't like the game!" or "you're doing the same thing" are very much unsustainable right now as Phantom has clearly elucidated what he meant and it can be engaged with on the level of actual criticism.

Rather than, you know, ad homs.

[Flipside]

[qupte]With regards to Minecraft, I don't think there ever was a 'plot' any more than Dwarf-Fortress, Gnomoria or any other rogue-based game, part of the fun aspect of the game is the complete lack of 'paths' that you need to follow.[/quote]

You mean like that from my comment of several posts ago? But then, who expects anyone to actually READ a thread these days on here?

[General Battuta]

You're misreading 'lost the plot'. He doesn't mean a plot like a story. He's using this idiom http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lose_the_plot