Minecraft Forums

My computer gaming experience mostly pre-dates the whole idea of storylines. When I got started playing computer games, there were no stories behind them. There's no storyline to chess, or checkers, or Scrabble, and game developers treated computer games just like real-world games, only they could do more things with them. The one exception was adventure games -- you know, text adventures, HIT TROLL WITH SWORD. Although the original didn't (it was just an excuse to stick a bunch of puzzles together), some of those were closer to interactive novels than games, and there was every gradation in between. So I didn't develop as a gamer expecting someone to tell me a story every time I played a game. I played games because the game was fun ... is there a story to Tank Battle? Rogue? Lords of Conquest? Does anyone care? Gradually games grew stories, and like cinematic graphics and orchestral sound, they became something to show off to the reviewers -- something other than gameplay the companies could use to sell the games with. You know why novelizations of games are almost universally junk? Because the stories are, 99% of the time, lame. But you throw a lame story, and some second-rate music, and some so-so graphics ... and some pathetic gameplay ... into a package and call it a AAA game, and reviewers will check off features, and buyers will be awed and impressed and buy it ... and then quit playing it, a month later, because it just isn't fun. If they want a good story, they'll read a book. If they want good music, they'll put on a CD (or fire up the iPod). If they want good visuals, they'll watch TV. And if they want good gameplay ... well, it's awfully hard to find good gameplay, because it's so totally subordinated under things that look impressive for the first fifteen minutes and make for good reviews in game magazines.

That's where Minecraft is different. The graphics are nothing to write home about; it's all blocks. The music ... well, I turned it off a year ago. And there is no story. But the game is incredibly fun to play. Read that again: the game is incredibly fun to play. That's why tens of millions of people are playing it, and will continue to play it. It's all about the gameplay, not the graphics (simple), music (limited), or story (nonexistent). This is something you don't get in games anymore: a game created to be fun, not just impressive.

What would happen if the developers added some kind of story to Minecraft? It would necessarily limit your options. What you could and couldn't do would be constrained by the story -- everything would have to be looked at in light of whether it would fit into the story or not.

If, as a random example, Steve was shipwrecked, you'd always have to spawn in an ocean biome. There would have to be places you couldn't get to, because otherwise, Steve would just make a boat and go to one of those places and he'd be home. You couldn't have a world 8x as large as the real one that has no other human beings in it, no ships, no ports, no nothing, and have a shipwrecked Steve. So Minecraft as we know it would be impossible. The gameplay would be subordinated to the story.

Then, consider themed servers. What story could possibly encompass a prison server, a factions server, a skyblock server, and a minigames server, all at the same time? Any story would have to, could only, be the story for one flavor of Minecraft. Basic survival, let's say. So by giving that the sanction of a developer-written storyline, and by changing the gameplay as necessary to work within that storyline, that would be declared the "real" Minecraft, and all the other things people do -- all the themed servers, all the gorgeous builds, all the crazy stuff -- wouldn't be "real" anymore. You'd be telling tens of millions of people they're not playing the "real" Minecraft, just some lesser version.

You want a story? CREATE ONE. Write your own. Go to fanfiction.net and select one of the five thousand stories players have written. Get together with a friend and swap stories -- each of you writes one, and the other person's MC world uses it for a backstory. Get creative, here. It's fun.

But the last thing Minecraft needs is someone else -- some developer -- saying "The game isn't this, or that, or any of the other things you want to do; it's only this." That's exactly the opposite of what Minecraft is all about.