I have played Minecraft!

I have played Minecraft.  I would have to say it is some of the best gaming dollars I ever laid out; up there with the likes of Doom and the Fallout games.  It is ingenious in its concept and execution, and it is only in an alpha stage.  I do have to wonder if it is the sort of game that will end up in perpetual alpha stage.  It is after all, largely the work of one man, and while the depths of genius are more or less untenable, there are hard and fast limits on how much work one man can do.

All concerns aside, however, what we have on our hands is a sheerly brilliant game.  It is one part Dwarf Fortress, one part Garry's Mod, and one part Lego.  The graphics are a mix of rudimentary and refined, with true 3-D environments to explore, albeit simple ones made of uniform square blocks bearing the crudest of sprite art.  That art, however, shares functional brilliance with other severely limited games, such as the early Super Mario games, where smart character design led to a recognizable, proportionate sprite that became a cultural icon.

Unlike Dwarf Fortress, which rivals Ashton-Tate's Dbase for command complexity, Input in Minecraft is streamlined to such an extent that it becomes a game one can quickly play with muscle memory; any task the player may need his avatar to perform are performed with either a right or a left click, and a simple inventory.  For such limited means, the player has an extreme degree of control over his environment.  With a few exceptions, everything in view can be demolished, and nearly all of it can be placed again, according to the player's whim and the few simple rules of physics the game imposes on it.  For instance "solid" materials do not obey the laws of physics, and remain where they are placed indefinitely, unless destroyed, while fluids and loose materials such as sand will spill and fall. 

A recent update to the game introduced some simple items that vastly expand upon what can be done, all without adding complexity to the interface.  A new type of material allows simple electric circuits to be made, which can be as simple as turning on a light or detonating dynamite, to as complex as the creation of a full arithmetic unit -the basic building block of the modern, multi-purpose computer.  What remains to be seen is how deep these simple materials will eventually be able to affect the core game-play of exploration and construction, for while the circuitry is ingenious, besides creating elaborate display pieces, the circuits do not immediately make easier the tasks the player undertakes, as do most of the other discoveries.  For instance the first discoveries are the most meaningful -the shapes of tools, the first stones to make strong tools, uses for coal, smelting, and the higher metals.  All these things greatly increase the ability of the player to explore more efficiently and gain more resources.  The circuitry, however, as it stands, remains a fascinating, yet not immediately useful toy.  That said, ingenious players have done impressive things with it, and new uses are being discovered.  It doesn't detract from the game in any way, however, as the "Lego" element in the game encourages creation for its own sake, and the more materials available to do so with increase the enjoyment to be had in such creations.

Minecraft is hours of good fun, and, at press time, costs a scant ten Euro.  The purchase of such a license is indefinite, and entitles the purchaser to full rights for the final release, which will cost more.  So it is worth it to buy it now.  I would even say with conviction, that, at present, even if the game never passes the beta stage, it is worth your money.  The potential for fun that exists in the game as it is now is so high that the price of admission is agreeable, and the discount for the eventual retail product is simply icing on an excellent cake.

What Became of Build Quality?

I love technology, new and old.  However I love the old and the new for decidedly different reasons.  Once upon a time, almost everything was very well built.  Old VCRs and home audio equipment had metal cases -often quite thick, and the controls were built to take a lifetime of use.  Now most video disc players (and VCRs if you can find them) are made of flimsy plastic.  If you are lucky and find a unit with a decent housing, the controls will probably be cheap microswitches, and the internals will certainly be nothing compared to those of just twenty-five years ago. 

Certainly there is some advantage to the modern viewpoint that every corner should be cut; you can buy DVD players for less than the price of a nice meal for two, but the unit itself may not last very long.  Good luck getting it serviced, too.  Sure, you can pick up another cheap unit, probably for not much more (Or even less) than the cost of that service, but what if you liked that particular unit's feature set, or look (some modern electronics are incomparably ugly).  You've no choice but to bin it and start over, since such cheap units aren't made to be serviced in the traditional sense.  The case isn't much better even for brand name merchandise, for which the service literature is often unavailable, and when it is, the parts the technician needs to set it to rights are either unavailable, or represent such a large fraction of the price of a new unit that it's not likely to be worth your time or his.

Take for instance my old Sony Betamax VCR.  It's got all the signs of good quality -it's metal, heavy, and name-brand.  There are some compromises for cost, but they work out well, since the particular model was lauded by Consumer Reports as the best consumer VCR they ever tested.  If you want to service it, the individual circuit boards tilt out on hinges, and everything that is adjustable has a label.  If an individual component has failed, it can be replaced as a module, whereas the last modern VCR I tried to service had everything, including the head drum, on the same PCB, and there were no internal adjustments to tweak if the mechanism got out of alignment or wore down with age. 

Now I have a VCR even older than that, from the first generation of consumer VCRs from the early 1970s, and it represents the other end of the spectrum.  It's mind-numbingly complex and unfathomably heavy, but it's so easy to work on, partly because everything is so large and can be observed in operation.  It's circuit cards are edged with metal for strength, and tilt out on wire hinges that have hold-opens like trunk lids, so they don't swing around while you work on them.  It was, however, also so expensive that few people bought them for home use, and they were relegated to industry and to people with specific need (The main character in the TV show "Coach" has such a VCR; very useful in his profession).  The Betamax and its kin, however, found their way into thousands of homes and supported a thriving industry of cassette sales, rental, duplicating, and stimulated other industries, such as amateur movie-making, pornography and other niche markets, as well as boosting Hollywood itself with a new source of revenue. 

What I'm driving at here is that somewhere between the throwaway merchandise of today, and that 70-pound bulletproof U-Matic deck that cost more than a used car is a compromise.  A piece of merchandise that can be serviced properly and economically, can withstand years of use, and yet is cheap enough that anyone who wants one can reasonably expect to buy one.  Unfortunately the mass market that drives technological innovation doesn't want to attain this balance right now, even though with modern design techniques and assembly it would be even easier than when Sony took a decent stab at it with their Betamax decks. 

There is something telling in the fact that I've seen three modern air conditioners come and go in the past five or so years, but the two I have that I bought secondhand, one from the 50s and the other the 70s, continue to operate flawlessly and deliver more satisfying results than the modern units did, and none of them, not even the ridiculous Kenmore with its sold-state thermostatic control, are anywhere near as complex as a video recorder. 

Let's Talk Tech

In case you haven't guessed from the title, this post is about technology and my opinions on it.  Some of these are pretty subjective, but such is the nature of opinion. 

We've come a long way in a short time.  My grandmother was born just seven years after the Wright brothers flew their clumsy, underpowered aeroplane on the dunes of Kitty Hawk, and she died having seen men use what was learned on those dunes to circumnavigate the Earth, fight several wars, unleash the fiery power of the atom, travel into space and to the moon, and launch satellites that allow us to communicate as we do here now, and to perform a myriad of other useful tasks.  I'm not particularly old but I'm already seeing what was the science fiction of my childhood become the reality I live in. 

A man can lose an arm and have it put back on again, or, should it be lost or damaged beyond repair, he can be fitted with a replacement that can take signals from his nerves and even give him feedback like his natural limb did, all while being insensitive to discomfort and untiring.  My nation's Navy recently deployed laser weapons to defend against missiles -laser weapons!  This does the heart of the Sci-Fi fan good.  While these are minority cases, they show just how far we have come, and let us wonder wide-eyed how far we will go. 

Will the latest "Flying Car", newly approved, finally give us what so many of us, numb to the tiny portable phones that let us call anyone on the planet and the massive, Gibsonian computer network we use right now, what has always seemed the symbol of "The Future"?  Or perhaps will they simply prove an amusing novelty for the few who can truly use them, and peter out after a few hundred are made, just like all the previous attempts at blending the automobile and the aeroplane?  We shall see.