Speaker 1: Get in techt with technology with text stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com either everyone, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Jonathan Strick and I and we've got a topic
Speaker 1: that you guys are really gonna dig. Did you do
Speaker 1: that pun in the first the first episode about Minecraft?
Speaker 1: I don't know, because I didn't listen to it before
Speaker 1: the show, but I probably did so. So way back
Speaker 1: when Jonathan and Mr Chris Pollette did an episode about Minecraft,
Speaker 1: and it has been suggested by essentially the Internet that
Speaker 1: we do another one. Yeah, it turns out that people
Speaker 1: love this game so much that one episode is not enough.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think there are plenty of people out
Speaker 1: there who would just like it if we had mind
Speaker 1: stuff instead of text stuff. But we're not going to
Speaker 1: do that. But we are going to update that old
Speaker 1: podcast because, as it turns out, back then when Chris
Speaker 1: and I corded the episode, neither of us had really
Speaker 1: played around with Minecraft at all. We had watched some
Speaker 1: videos on YouTube, we had read up on it, we
Speaker 1: had done our research, but we hadn't actually played it.
Speaker 1: And so at that point in time, it was still
Speaker 1: in beta, the official version had not been released. They
Speaker 1: have been taking pre orders, but there, but the official
Speaker 1: version had not come out yet, it was still just
Speaker 1: a beta program. And um yeah, it just turned out
Speaker 1: that it was to us to Christen myself, it was
Speaker 1: like Pokemon, something that we could research but didn't really understand.
Speaker 1: And and I do want to say I have actually
Speaker 1: not played Minecraft, so so Jonathan has at this point
Speaker 1: since he is the expert. However, I will I will
Speaker 1: go ahead and be up front. I have played Minecraft
Speaker 1: on Xbox three sixty, which all die hard fans of
Speaker 1: Minecraft and even casual fans. No, is a much more
Speaker 1: simple version of Minecraft than the one you can find
Speaker 1: on PCs and Max. But we'll we'll get into all
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah. Yeah, it's you know, we really wanted
Speaker 1: to do another at so because the Minecraft culture has
Speaker 1: become such a thing. It's you know, I mean for
Speaker 1: a game that was that was only released in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine as sold over thirty million copies. You know,
Speaker 1: they have a merge deal with Lego. It's an independent game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of No one was ever expecting this to
Speaker 1: be this big of a thing, certainly not the man
Speaker 1: who who programmed it. But it's funny because the Lego
Speaker 1: thing to me just means it's gone full circle, right,
Speaker 1: because when you look at Minecraft, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: explain what Minecraft is to someone who has never played it,
Speaker 1: you're like, well, it's blocks, and you put the blocks
Speaker 1: together and then you form bigger things that are kind
Speaker 1: of blocky, like, oh, so it's like virtual Lego and
Speaker 1: kinda it's kind of like that, but there there's so
Speaker 1: much more to it, right if you can make the
Speaker 1: legos do stuff, combining them in special if you were
Speaker 1: to get the Robotic Lego set and then merge it
Speaker 1: with say the Lord of the Rings Lego set, and
Speaker 1: the magic worked, but now there are actual legs. Yes,
Speaker 1: and there were zombies. You have to put the Walking
Speaker 1: Dead Lego set, and I'm pretty sure there's not one,
Speaker 1: but but you know, I'm sure there are zombies. There
Speaker 1: have to be zombie legos. I'm sure there have to be,
Speaker 1: but they're at least dead pirate legos anyway, So the
Speaker 1: basic game. We're going to cover what the basic game
Speaker 1: is so that those of you who have never played
Speaker 1: Minecraft but I've heard about it can understand what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. So you're you go into a world that
Speaker 1: is essentially created for you. When you first start, the
Speaker 1: world gets created uh systematically where it has a distribution
Speaker 1: of resources that is different from game to game. Um,
Speaker 1: you play a little blocky character inhabiting this world. During
Speaker 1: the day, this world is idyllic. You have little piggy's
Speaker 1: and and and cowie's sheep sheep bees and doggies and
Speaker 1: caddies running around. They're not called that, you know, not caddies.
Speaker 1: It's not golf game. Um, but no, they're these animals
Speaker 1: running around. You've got beautiful forests, You've got scenic snowy landscapes, mountains, caverns, oceans,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff. And uh, when nightfalls, the
Speaker 1: monsters come out and they try to kill you. And
Speaker 1: so if you're playing it on just the classic Minecraft mode,
Speaker 1: which is also called Survival mode, your goal, at least
Speaker 1: early on is just survival. You're trying to gather materials
Speaker 1: build a protective house for you to to stay in
Speaker 1: at night so that way the monsters don't get you,
Speaker 1: and then you can explore and build out your your house.
Speaker 1: I've heard that, in fact, most players do not survive
Speaker 1: the first night. No, it's true because if you've never
Speaker 1: played Minecraft before and you haven't any idea of how
Speaker 1: to build stuff because there's there's not really there's no
Speaker 1: instruction manual. When you start playing, you have to craft things.
Speaker 1: You'd gather resources, raw materials, and then you craft useful
Speaker 1: materials out of them. Now, technically, if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: you could craft a house out of the raw material
Speaker 1: of wood. But that means that every single block of
Speaker 1: your house, and a block represents like one cubic meter,
Speaker 1: it's one meter by one or by one meter um,
Speaker 1: each block of your house would be one block of wood.
Speaker 1: So you'd have to knock down the equivalent number of
Speaker 1: trees to create a house that was the right size
Speaker 1: to protect you. Also, I imagine that that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: as strong as a house made of other Actually this, well,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be as flammable if you made it out
Speaker 1: of stone. Uh. Strength is kind of it depends. There's
Speaker 1: only one thing that really can cause huge amounts of
Speaker 1: damage to your house, and that's a creeper. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I'll talk about that in a second. But anyway, so
Speaker 1: you what you could do is by crafting, you could
Speaker 1: convert raw material wood into planks, and so one block
Speaker 1: of wood would equal several blocks of planks. Thus you
Speaker 1: would extend the usefulness of that one block of resource
Speaker 1: and be able to, you know, put down say four
Speaker 1: blocks of planks for every one block of wood. That
Speaker 1: means you don't have to gather as much stuff. You
Speaker 1: have increased your efficiency. It's teaching new lessons, mostly in
Speaker 1: how not to die. These are my favorite. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: then you can also make tools that make it easier
Speaker 1: for you to gather materials. You can make tools that
Speaker 1: let you gather other materials like stone, so you can
Speaker 1: build something out of stone if you wanted to. You
Speaker 1: can build it out of metal if you were able
Speaker 1: to find enough metal. There there are veins of various
Speaker 1: ores in the Minecraft world, and depending upon which version
Speaker 1: of Minecraft you're playing, you may have just a couple
Speaker 1: like iron ore or gold or diamonds something like that.
Speaker 1: So various metals and minerals um. If you are playing
Speaker 1: the PC version, there are a lot more that are available,
Speaker 1: so you can get like aluminum or aluminium uh, and
Speaker 1: copper and things like that and ten uh. You can't
Speaker 1: do that on the Xbox version yet, right, And there
Speaker 1: are all different kinds of combinations or recipes that you
Speaker 1: can use to put these the little bits of things
Speaker 1: into other little bits of things and create new stuff.
Speaker 1: I think that there's about a hundred and eighty or
Speaker 1: more right now. Yeah, and then there again the PC version,
Speaker 1: they're far more common sations you can make, and it's
Speaker 1: less intuitive, Like I think anyone who's played the PC
Speaker 1: version who then tries to play the Xbox version remarks
Speaker 1: and how dumbed down the Xbox version is, because, for example,
Speaker 1: if I want to craft something in the Xbox version,
Speaker 1: I really just have to have the basic materials to
Speaker 1: make that thing, and then it does a lot of
Speaker 1: the work for me. In the classic Minecraft, you have
Speaker 1: a little crafting grid that opens up, and you have
Speaker 1: to place the raw materials in a specific formation within
Speaker 1: that grid to get the output you want. So, for example,
Speaker 1: it may be that a plank and two sticks could
Speaker 1: make a wooden axe or wooden pick axe or woulden shovel,
Speaker 1: but it all depends on where you place them within
Speaker 1: that grid on what you get. Fortunately, that's not the
Speaker 1: case for the Xbox version, so I don't have to
Speaker 1: remember all that. As for the other modes, just really
Speaker 1: quickly the other basic modes you can play in this game,
Speaker 1: there's creative. Creative just means that you can build and
Speaker 1: it's just it lets you go crazy and do what
Speaker 1: you want without needing to protect yourself from monsters at
Speaker 1: the end of the day or gather materials. You actually
Speaker 1: have all them. It's like you have an infinite supply
Speaker 1: of everything that's in the game. So then you can
Speaker 1: build whatever structure you want if you wanted to. You
Speaker 1: could build a world and then allow other people to
Speaker 1: come into it. So because you can create a server
Speaker 1: so that other people can play within your world, and
Speaker 1: that way, you might use the creative mode to create
Speaker 1: a very interesting world for them to inhabit and potentially destroy,
Speaker 1: depending upon what levels of permission you give the other
Speaker 1: players and whether or not they're heads. Yeah, there's you're
Speaker 1: always going to get a big MENI head. There's also
Speaker 1: the hardcore mode, which is terrifying to me. Hardcore is
Speaker 1: that if you die, that's it. Uh So, for example,
Speaker 1: if I create a world and it's self contained, I
Speaker 1: don't have it connected to the internet. I'm just playing
Speaker 1: by myself, but I'm playing in hardcore mode. If my
Speaker 1: character dies, it deletes the world. So all the work
Speaker 1: I've done, I might have made the world's largest castle
Speaker 1: in Minecraft, and trust me, that's always one of my goals. Um,
Speaker 1: but if I die, I lose it, it's gone. I
Speaker 1: can't retrieve it. If it's multiplayer and you die, you
Speaker 1: get ejected from the server and banned, so you can't
Speaker 1: rejoin the game. Uh, it just gives you a message
Speaker 1: saying sorry, you're banned from the server. Technically, the administrator
Speaker 1: could allow you back in, but it would require some
Speaker 1: work on the administrator's part to delete some uh some
Speaker 1: bits of code within the server world. So most people
Speaker 1: I don't think would go through the trouble um. And
Speaker 1: then finally you have adventure mode. And an adventure mode,
Speaker 1: people who come into your world are not allowed to
Speaker 1: destroy blocks unless they have the proper tools for that
Speaker 1: particular block. So, for example, for a block of stone,
Speaker 1: they would have to have a pickaxe. Normally, in the game,
Speaker 1: if you punch something long enough, it'll break. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: some materials are harder than others and thus take longer
Speaker 1: to punch to break, Like if you are talking about Obsidian,
Speaker 1: I hope you packed a lunch, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in adventure mode you cannot do it unless you have
Speaker 1: the right materials. Well, that gets pretty tricky because most
Speaker 1: materials have at the very base of it would if
Speaker 1: you don't have an ax, you can't chop down wood.
Speaker 1: So when you start off an adventure mode, you can't
Speaker 1: even gather the most basic materials, so you have to
Speaker 1: kind of adventure around in the world to find stuff
Speaker 1: that can protect you. Once night comes and the monsters
Speaker 1: come out, then if you encounter things like chests, you
Speaker 1: might find the basic tools you need to do some
Speaker 1: more gathering, and then you can finally start to play
Speaker 1: the game as if you were playing in survival mode.
Speaker 1: So those are your four basic modes keep in mind,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about this later in the podcast. The
Speaker 1: the community around Minecraft has created so many different modifications
Speaker 1: or just mods for the game that these are just
Speaker 1: the basic ways of playing. There are dramatically different experiences
Speaker 1: on Minecraft based upon the way people have modified the
Speaker 1: game and given it different skins or different behaviors, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about some of those a little bit later on.
Speaker 1: So that's your basis for the Minecraft games. It's an
Speaker 1: incredibly simple concept that gets more and more complex as
Speaker 1: more features have been added into the game over the
Speaker 1: course of its lifetime, and also as more players have,
Speaker 1: as he said, created these mods that have you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a really self developing community, which is pretty fascinating. Uh.
Speaker 1: Do you want to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: man who started at all? Marcus person Yes, I was
Speaker 1: about to say, I didn't look up any of the
Speaker 1: the pronunciation, so I'm glad you did because I looked
Speaker 1: at your notes and I saw that you had some
Speaker 1: fonetics in there. Um, Now is it? Is it moo young?
Speaker 1: Is the name of his company? Will get into it,
Speaker 1: but yesu Yang, I think, But yes, I always go
Speaker 1: Japanese Young. Sorry, but yes, so Marcus person Um better
Speaker 1: perhaps known on the internet as not Yeah, we'll go
Speaker 1: with Notch for the rest of this podcast. Really, he's
Speaker 1: a thirty four as of this podcast in October. Um
Speaker 1: grew up in Sweden, if you could not tell from
Speaker 1: our mispronunciation of his name, Um, and Uh learned learned
Speaker 1: to use a family computer when he was very young
Speaker 1: at commodore. Yep. He his father was a railroad worker,
Speaker 1: and so I guess he probably got some appreciation for
Speaker 1: the basis of Minecraft just from from being the son
Speaker 1: of a railroad worker. Uh. Grew up playing various bootleg games,
Speaker 1: and I was particularly fond of a legit version of
Speaker 1: The Bard's Tale. I think that was the first one
Speaker 1: that he owned. It was the first game he bought
Speaker 1: with his own money. And I can appreciate that because
Speaker 1: I also owned a copy of The Bard's Tale and
Speaker 1: also enjoyed when he was a child playing all playing
Speaker 1: around with some of the programming codes that they used
Speaker 1: to publish. In the back of programming magazine. Yea, he
Speaker 1: talked about how his sister would read out the code
Speaker 1: and then he would type it into the computer, and
Speaker 1: that sometimes he would make a mistake, and he realized
Speaker 1: that if he made a mistake, the program would behave
Speaker 1: in a way it was not intended, and he, rather
Speaker 1: than getting frustrated over this, felt a sense of power.
Speaker 1: It's a huge rush. Yeah. He worked in Webb Design originally.
Speaker 1: I think a few of his teachers had kind of
Speaker 1: pushed him more towards graphic design. Yeah, he wanted to go.
Speaker 1: He knew at a very early age that he was
Speaker 1: interested in game program Yeah. He and his he and
Speaker 1: his buddies in school. When he was a teenager, he
Speaker 1: became a group of h He joined a group of
Speaker 1: kids who were all interested in programming. They we're using
Speaker 1: a tar e st computers at that point, trying to
Speaker 1: outdo each other, and he knew that that's kind of
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do. He wanted to develop games,
Speaker 1: but his teacher said, maybe you should go into graphic
Speaker 1: design instead. There's this whole web thing that's taking place.
Speaker 1: If you were a web designer, you can make huge
Speaker 1: amounts of cash. And so he went into web development.
Speaker 1: And then something happened, something big happened. Well, I I
Speaker 1: believe he quit to become a game designer. He was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, never mind, I'm going to follow my
Speaker 1: dream and and quit his job, tried to become a
Speaker 1: game designer, and the dot com crash happened. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: when the dot com crash happened, it wiped out jobs
Speaker 1: across the board on a global scale. We think of
Speaker 1: it here in the US as a largely US centered thing,
Speaker 1: but this was a global events um So he was
Speaker 1: out of work for a couple of years, but finally
Speaker 1: got into a web game company, working programming in Flash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he built around thirty games in Flash and also
Speaker 1: pursued programming in other ways. He was really interested in
Speaker 1: learning how to make very small efficient programs, sort of
Speaker 1: how can I use the least amount of code to
Speaker 1: achieve the thing I want to do? So this is
Speaker 1: not necessarily the same pathway that hackers take. Hackers will
Speaker 1: often say I want X result, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: do whatever I can to get to X result, which
Speaker 1: means your code might be work, might work, but it
Speaker 1: might not be very elegant. He was looking at ways
Speaker 1: of making it a very small and compact program so
Speaker 1: that it's very portable. You can you can use that
Speaker 1: code on multiple devices or multiple machines that have different
Speaker 1: levels of complexity, so that way you don't you know,
Speaker 1: you're not limited to just well this this program works,
Speaker 1: but you better have the hardware that can chuggle longer elds.
Speaker 1: It's never going to be satisfying experience. Um. This was
Speaker 1: right around the time we're getting up towards the late
Speaker 1: two thousand's, when he had been working at this company
Speaker 1: for a while. He had been designing flash games, and
Speaker 1: he came across a game in two thousand nine called
Speaker 1: Infino Minor. Right. Yeah, you and Chris had talked talked
Speaker 1: about this one on the previous podcast. Yes, so in
Speaker 1: Phinno Minor. If you were to just read a basic
Speaker 1: description of infinom Minor, he might say, hah, this sounds
Speaker 1: hauntingly familiar because it was a block based game, a
Speaker 1: multiplayer game where it was a sandbox game, and you
Speaker 1: could mind things and build stuff with the stuff you mind,
Speaker 1: you would gather materials and build objects, and so it
Speaker 1: sounds a lot like Minecraft. Well, that's no mistake. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of the the inspiration behind Minecraft. Now,
Speaker 1: there are many things that Minecraft does that infinom Minor
Speaker 1: didn't do and was never intended to do. So I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that Minecraft is a copy of infinom Minor,
Speaker 1: but you can see where inspiration was also. I believe
Speaker 1: something happened to infinite Minor. Oh yes it did so
Speaker 1: E Electronic Industries. Electronics Industries launched in phinom Minor kind
Speaker 1: of in a beta mode in the spring of two
Speaker 1: thousand nine and after a month discontinued support. So, the
Speaker 1: original the original goal of infinom Minor as a player
Speaker 1: was that you would go down in a team. You
Speaker 1: have a team of players, you would play against other
Speaker 1: teams and your goal was to mind certain types of
Speaker 1: materials and then bring those back up to the surface
Speaker 1: and you would accumulate points. But a lot of players
Speaker 1: I found that it was much more satisfying to mine
Speaker 1: materials and then build stuff, not to go for this
Speaker 1: whole point related game aspect, but to use it more
Speaker 1: as a true sandbox. So that's kind of what gave
Speaker 1: not the inspiration of well, you know this, people are
Speaker 1: using this game in a way that it wasn't intended
Speaker 1: to be, and the support for the game has gone away.
Speaker 1: What if I made a game that from the start
Speaker 1: was meant to be what people were turned ning in
Speaker 1: phinom Minor into. And furthermore that you know, no one's
Speaker 1: going to cut support off too, because I read it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so you know, the the infinom Minor product kept
Speaker 1: on going for a while because the company ended up
Speaker 1: uh making the code completely open source so anyone could
Speaker 1: download it, which meant that suddenly lots of people were
Speaker 1: running in phenom Minor on their own machines and changing it.
Speaker 1: But there were so many changes to infinom Minor that
Speaker 1: it lost cohesion. It was no longer a unified platform,
Speaker 1: so there wasn't enough there to be to have a
Speaker 1: community to stay around it. Right it was, there's so
Speaker 1: many different niche versions of infinom Minor that you couldn't
Speaker 1: have a community anymore. So Minecraft took a slightly different approach,
Speaker 1: and he began to develop Minecraft starting right around well,
Speaker 1: according to according to the Minecraft site, on May tenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, that's exactly when he started to develop Minecraft.
Speaker 1: And he decided to switch from being a full time
Speaker 1: when developer and game developer for for this other company
Speaker 1: to part time, so he scaled back his work hours.
Speaker 1: He still was an employee with this company, but he
Speaker 1: the other half of this time was spent developing Minecraft. Uh,
Speaker 1: and things moved really really quickly. Yeah, the game would
Speaker 1: release later that year in two thousand nine. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: beta version came out. In fact, the beta version. For
Speaker 1: a long time, people began to wonder if Minecraft was
Speaker 1: a Google product because it was in beta for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. But but the meant that people could
Speaker 1: actually play the game he was working on, and that
Speaker 1: you know, you could even do pre orders as early
Speaker 1: as June nine, he had started developing on May tenth.
Speaker 1: June thirteenth, he begins to accept pre orders for the game.
Speaker 1: He releases those early builds of the game for testing
Speaker 1: over the next two years, and he would keep on
Speaker 1: updating them, adding in new features throughout those those two
Speaker 1: years as he was preparing the game for its gold release.
Speaker 1: Right as of the podcast, the game had not come
Speaker 1: out of beta yet. Yeah, that was when we were
Speaker 1: still wondering if it ever would come out of beta.
Speaker 1: And actually it wouldn't take much longer, but before we
Speaker 1: get to that. On June one, that was Nacha's birthday
Speaker 1: and also the day that he quit his job, his
Speaker 1: his day job and started devoting everything full time to Minecraft.
Speaker 1: That's right. So June one, two thousand and ten, big day,
Speaker 1: big day for Notch where he was ready to take
Speaker 1: the plunge the Minecraft project, which he originally thought was
Speaker 1: going to be fun but not a huge success. He hoped.
Speaker 1: His biggest hope was that would be successful enough to
Speaker 1: fund his next game idea, which he didn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: at that point. He was just hoping that, well, this
Speaker 1: this project will bring in enough money for my fun
Speaker 1: and maybe and over six million people had downloaded it
Speaker 1: in the first year, so that's when it was the
Speaker 1: realization came with Wow, this could be the big money,
Speaker 1: this could be the game. Well, we'll we'll move on
Speaker 1: into the rest of the timeline in just a second,
Speaker 1: but before we get too carried away, I want to
Speaker 1: take a quick break to thank our sponsor. Alright, So
Speaker 1: we left off at notches birthday on June one, when
Speaker 1: he had made the big leap, cutting his uh, his
Speaker 1: job and now focusing full time on Minecraft. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know the next day I have is in do
Speaker 1: you have anything else? I do? Not now? Okay, So
Speaker 1: March second, two thousand eleven, Notch announces development for a
Speaker 1: new game called Scrolls. Scrolls was a game that was
Speaker 1: kind of the brainchild of both Notch and another member
Speaker 1: of what would become his company, Moo Young. Um. But
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's kind of a combination of a board
Speaker 1: game and a card trading game, kind of like Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering meets war gaming. So you would have a
Speaker 1: strategy element on where you placed things in the game
Speaker 1: as well as kind of this card based system. Although
Speaker 1: they're called scrolls within the game, which means that I
Speaker 1: would be terrible at it, but I'm sure lots of
Speaker 1: people enjoy it in many ways. Meanwhile, he uh not
Speaker 1: was figuring that, you know, this was all becoming more
Speaker 1: work than he was really willing and able to do
Speaker 1: by himself, and so he founded a company. This this
Speaker 1: movie Young that we've been talking about a little bit, uh,
Speaker 1: that was at some point in mid and has since
Speaker 1: then hired a team of maybe about twenty people or so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's someone who's in charge of fun to work mostly
Speaker 1: on Minecraft, honestly. Right, there are a couple of other products.
Speaker 1: There's scrolls, and then there was one other one that
Speaker 1: they announced, but we'll get to that because it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of a sad story. Um. In June, our first
Speaker 1: episode on Minecraft came out. Just just just to give
Speaker 1: you give you a concept of when in the timeline.
Speaker 1: This was in November, the first international convention for Minecraft happened.
Speaker 1: That was in Las Vegas, and it was aligned with
Speaker 1: the release of Minecraft officially. In fact, in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: that was a huge year from Minecraft. In August of
Speaker 1: that year, they released a pocket edition for Experience Play,
Speaker 1: which was it was an exclusive deal to Sony, but
Speaker 1: the exclusivity only lasted a very short while. By October seven,
Speaker 1: it had expired, and so on October seven, eleven, they
Speaker 1: released the Pocket Edition of Minecraft, which is really meant
Speaker 1: for mobile devices, is a simplified version of Minecraft that
Speaker 1: you can play on mobile devices. It's currently available for
Speaker 1: iOS and also andreft. The October seven was when it
Speaker 1: came out on Android, and then on November seventeenth this
Speaker 1: when it came out for iOS. And on November eight
Speaker 1: that's when Minecraft had its official release. Keeping in mind
Speaker 1: that people have been playing this game for two years already, uh,
Speaker 1: they in various stages and and for a while. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think you can still get Minecraft Classic for free,
Speaker 1: which is based upon the original code for Minecraft. The
Speaker 1: new game. The game that actually you can purchase it
Speaker 1: varies depending upon where you are in the United States,
Speaker 1: around twenty seven dollars or twenty six a five something
Speaker 1: like that in the US to buy a copy on
Speaker 1: PC um. But the Minecraft Classic one is free to download.
Speaker 1: Um there they are two different games, really, And then
Speaker 1: the Xbox version of course has its own pricing. And
Speaker 1: while it hasn't happened yet, and I kind of wrote
Speaker 1: this later in the timeline, but I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and say it. Uh, the PlayStation four and the Xbox
Speaker 1: One will both also have Minecraft on them um PlayStation four.
Speaker 1: That will be the first time anyone on the PlayStation
Speaker 1: platform who didn't have an experience could actually play this game.
Speaker 1: So I expect the numbers will continue to explode. Um.
Speaker 1: The game has been incredibly popular. I was really I
Speaker 1: was at the the Microsoft press release at E three
Speaker 1: this past year, and uh, the Xbox One press release.
Speaker 1: One of the games they showed off was Minecraft. I mean,
Speaker 1: among all of these really high graphics, crazy sound, all
Speaker 1: of this, you know, big staff, and then Minecraft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it got a huge response, just big cheer from
Speaker 1: the audience. I'm like, never before have giant one meter
Speaker 1: blocks looked in higher fidelity than right now in fidelity
Speaker 1: and knows the wrong word I should say resolution, but
Speaker 1: at any rate, it was. It was amusing to me
Speaker 1: to see the the massive power of the Xbox One
Speaker 1: compared to the Xbox six anyway, being used to do Minecraft. However,
Speaker 1: that being said, again, the differences between the Xbox version
Speaker 1: and the PC version are pretty vast. Like, the Xbox
Speaker 1: version is much smaller, the individual worlds are smaller than
Speaker 1: the the PC version. So for example, if you start
Speaker 1: in your spawn area and just walk in a straight
Speaker 1: line from where you started. Eventually you hit the end
Speaker 1: of the world. Uh. In the Xbox version, it takes
Speaker 1: place much more quickly than it would in the PC version,
Speaker 1: and in fact, in the PC version, it would continue
Speaker 1: to try and generate the world. And one of the
Speaker 1: problems that the earlier builds of Minecraft had was that
Speaker 1: if you went beyond a certain point, it ran out
Speaker 1: of computer memory, and so you would have these big
Speaker 1: gaps in the world, and they used to refer to
Speaker 1: that area as the end. It's now a goal for
Speaker 1: you to journey to the end. It's actually part of
Speaker 1: the the end game of Minecraft, if you want to
Speaker 1: think of it that way. And it's kind of funny
Speaker 1: because it's one of those things that sort of popped
Speaker 1: up as a result of just the limitations of the
Speaker 1: game itself. But like I said, the Xbox version much
Speaker 1: more limited. I expect the Xbox one the world's will
Speaker 1: be larger. They just recently increase the size within um
Speaker 1: uh the Xbox three six version. I noticed because I'm
Speaker 1: currently building a tower in my quest for the Biggest Castle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm just building a skyscraper because my castle's
Speaker 1: I get to a point where I burn out. So
Speaker 1: now I'm building a a ten by ten actually I
Speaker 1: guess it's technically eleven by eleven tower, and it's currently
Speaker 1: I think thirteen stories tall and each story is three
Speaker 1: meters tall. So if you want to help me build
Speaker 1: my tower, look for John B. Strickland on Xbox Life
Speaker 1: because I'm on there all the time. Guys. Anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: so that was a big tangent. Let's get back into
Speaker 1: the timeline. Yes, So, by the end of eleven, Notch
Speaker 1: had stopped working on Minecraft, and in December he was
Speaker 1: you know, I when he speaks about video games, he
Speaker 1: reminds me a little bit of Sidmyer, and I mean
Speaker 1: a because he just sounds like a really nice dude
Speaker 1: and be he is so passionate about creating games, about
Speaker 1: the actual developer programming part of it, and is a
Speaker 1: little bit disinterested in in the fame side of it,
Speaker 1: and and also in the in the hoopla part. I
Speaker 1: mean I it seems like he gets very frustrated. And
Speaker 1: he's got a really great blog on Tumbler that all
Speaker 1: um reblogs and stuff from, even though it's like from
Speaker 1: two years ago, it's just really great, uh you know where,
Speaker 1: And he just he just talks about getting to this
Speaker 1: point where he was like, I love programming, I love
Speaker 1: of talking about programming, and I'm really disinterested in having
Speaker 1: anyone give me feedback on my programming when it's at
Speaker 1: such a basic stage, because it's it's just a total
Speaker 1: buzz cat. There's actually I've got some great quotes from him.
Speaker 1: Uh but yeah, like he's he said specifically to that
Speaker 1: end that he feels the pressure to repeat the success
Speaker 1: of Minecraft, and that the fact that Minecraft succeeded so overwhelmingly,
Speaker 1: so saying that it went above and beyond his his
Speaker 1: expectations is there's that's such an an understated way of
Speaker 1: putting it. Because he's made a hundred million dollars from
Speaker 1: Minecraft and Minecraft merchandizing. I mean when I first saw Minecraft,
Speaker 1: I never would have imagined that merchandizing would be a
Speaker 1: big deal. But it's a huge deal. Yeah, in twelve alone,
Speaker 1: he would earn over a hundred million dollars on mine.
Speaker 1: Hundred million dollars. So he has the freedom to do
Speaker 1: whatever he wants, and that part is great. He loves
Speaker 1: that part. The party doesn't love so much is that
Speaker 1: because Minecraft was such a huge success, that's what people
Speaker 1: expect from him. Now they deal in another huge success. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they want they expect another Minecraft. So that puts an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of pressure on him to develop something that's
Speaker 1: as good as Minecraft is, whereas he wants he wants
Speaker 1: the freedom to be able to develop whatever he likes
Speaker 1: and not the pressure of, oh, it has to meet
Speaker 1: these certain expectations. Because once you have those expectations there,
Speaker 1: that puts parameters on what you can build. Because if
Speaker 1: it's something that just interests you and you really want
Speaker 1: to do it, but no one else really gets it,
Speaker 1: then you just you're setting yourself up for lots of
Speaker 1: criticism as people like, this is not what I wanted.
Speaker 1: I want you to build another Minecraft that's not Minecraft.
Speaker 1: It's just as good as Minecraft. And and you know,
Speaker 1: for example, when you're the kind of dude who just
Speaker 1: unto himself, creates a website that lists all of the
Speaker 1: natural numbers in existence and then tweets about it too.
Speaker 1: You know, your one point three million followers, maybe you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you've got other stuff going on. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's the guys. The guy's rain works
Speaker 1: in really interesting ways. And and being beholden to an
Speaker 1: audience about and especially a very large, very vocal audience.
Speaker 1: I can understand his frustration. Um and and you know
Speaker 1: so so in everything was really ramping up that year.
Speaker 1: The three sixty version of Minecraft was more played than
Speaker 1: Call of Duty Modern Warfare. Yeah, it hit Xbox Live
Speaker 1: Arcade and then it exploded there. And there are some
Speaker 1: great shows that are Minecraft oriented, uh Chad from this
Speaker 1: Weekend Tech has a YouTube series about Minecraft. The Rooster
Speaker 1: Teeth guys have let's plays and let's build set in
Speaker 1: Minecraft that are entertaining and hilarious. In fact, they even
Speaker 1: Gavin Free of Rooster Teeth created the most ridiculous thing
Speaker 1: he created. Oh Gavin, So he created a basic structure
Speaker 1: that was an obsidian block, and then four gold blocks.
Speaker 1: He mined all this gold. And you know, when you
Speaker 1: mind gold, you didn't have to refine it, and you
Speaker 1: get gold bars. Then if you have enough gold bars
Speaker 1: can make a gold block. He mined and refined all
Speaker 1: this gold. They were they wanted the gold for another reason.
Speaker 1: They wanted to use the gold to create circuits to
Speaker 1: power a mine cart track. They were they were trying
Speaker 1: to get an achievement in the Xbox version of the game,
Speaker 1: where you have to travel a certain distance on a
Speaker 1: on a rail car and then you unlock the achievement,
Speaker 1: which meant they needed gold. But Gavin took all the
Speaker 1: gold and made gold blocks out of it instead of
Speaker 1: using it to actually make these power right, so he's
Speaker 1: being a bit of a troll, which is kind of
Speaker 1: what Gavin does. And uh, he then created the subsidium.
Speaker 1: They put an obsidium block down and then uh four
Speaker 1: gold blocks and called it the Tower of Pimps. That
Speaker 1: is that became its name, the Tower of Pimps, and
Speaker 1: then now has become a thing in the Rooster Teeth
Speaker 1: games where they compete and whoever wins gets the Tower
Speaker 1: of Pimps. That weekend. They've actually got a three D
Speaker 1: printed version of the Tower Pimps that goes from one
Speaker 1: person's desk to another as they battle over it. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out that the Notch must watch Rooster Teeth.
Speaker 1: The people must watch it because um, they incorporated the
Speaker 1: Tower of Pimps in a secret part of the tutorial
Speaker 1: world of the Xbox three sixt version of Minecraft. If
Speaker 1: you play the tutorial world and you know where to look,
Speaker 1: you can find a pre built tower of pimps there. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is again kind of showing
Speaker 1: how they value that community that has grown up around
Speaker 1: the game, where people who make something that resonates with
Speaker 1: an audience, they acknowledge that it's not one of those
Speaker 1: games where you put it out there and then you
Speaker 1: just you divorce yourself entirely from it and then you
Speaker 1: go do something else. Yeah, the company Muang was big
Speaker 1: enough as they were included in this total patentroll lawsuit
Speaker 1: along with like Electronic Arts and Square Enix um over
Speaker 1: over paid Android usage. Yeah, some sort of it was
Speaker 1: either in game payments or something along those lines. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but I mean, you know that's that's a pretty
Speaker 1: huge sign of of you've made it. You know you've
Speaker 1: made it when you get sued, when you get targeted.
Speaker 1: I hope I never made it. Not. Also that year
Speaker 1: was presented with a special award from the British Academy
Speaker 1: of Film and Television Arts Video Game Segment uh in uh.
Speaker 1: He also during this time was also working on a
Speaker 1: new game called Zero Times Tend to the Power of
Speaker 1: C which was supposed to be that the Zero Times
Speaker 1: Tend to the Power of C was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a coding error within the confines of this game that
Speaker 1: causes the entire human race to go into cry genic sleep,
Speaker 1: and when they wake up, it's eons later, and the
Speaker 1: universe has changed as a result because so much time
Speaker 1: has passed, and it's another it's another sandbox kind of game,
Speaker 1: you're it's it's also very sixteen bitten blocky. Exploration was
Speaker 1: a big theme, as is trading, but as of August
Speaker 1: of this year, um it is no longer in development.
Speaker 1: Notch said that he had uh had stopped developing the
Speaker 1: game and did not have any aspirations for it to continue.
Speaker 1: It's actually been taken over though, by a fan group
Speaker 1: that calls themselves Projects trillic And, and he's basically given
Speaker 1: them his blessing. Yeah, they're from what I understand, they're
Speaker 1: trying to create essentially the game he was building, but
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily using the code that he had developed,
Speaker 1: so they're they're they've got the same end goal, but
Speaker 1: they're taking their own pathway to get there. Meanwhile, UH
Speaker 1: Minecraft kept on keeping on. In February eleven, two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: it launched on a new platform, one that we just
Speaker 1: got access to because I think we think we have
Speaker 1: access to this. I think this is one of the
Speaker 1: things that's sitting on your desk, the Raspberry Pie twelve.
Speaker 1: It came to the Raspberry Pie the Minecraft Pie addition,
Speaker 1: and it's available for free download on the MoU Yang's blog.
Speaker 1: We should fire that thing up. Yeah, I was just saying, like,
Speaker 1: let's fire up the Raspberry Pie download that because it's
Speaker 1: meant to be an educational tool for novice programmers. It's
Speaker 1: actually it's not necessarily meant just for entertainment, but to
Speaker 1: learn how to program and using that as sort of
Speaker 1: another platform on programming. All right, Well, it's Java based,
Speaker 1: and I've heard that actually a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of kids are getting into programming through Minecraft onto themselves,
Speaker 1: and not only just uh programming, but also circuitry, because
Speaker 1: you can build circuits within the world of Minecraft, and
Speaker 1: you can even build the you know, you can think
Speaker 1: of them as macro processors, not micro processors, because they
Speaker 1: span entire fields within the game of Minecraft. But you
Speaker 1: could build a working calculator in Minecraft using all the
Speaker 1: basic electronic components that you can create or mine in
Speaker 1: the game, which you know, I've seen some of the
Speaker 1: videos of people who have done this, where you know,
Speaker 1: you hit a switch and it creates a very simple
Speaker 1: computer algorithm that follows very basic rules. But it's of
Speaker 1: an equation for you or you know whatever that yeah, whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever it's designed to do. Yeah, and piece of music
Speaker 1: or yeah, yeah, I've seen those two where they set
Speaker 1: up the various music blocks and set up the circuit
Speaker 1: so that it plays a specific tune. It's a level
Speaker 1: of understanding of this game that is really surprising to me.
Speaker 1: But it also means that people are learning the basics
Speaker 1: of electronics as well as the basics of programming, uh,
Speaker 1: through this one game and it and it can inspire
Speaker 1: people in other ways to we'll talk about that in
Speaker 1: a second. One of the interesting things that I read,
Speaker 1: and I know you read the same piece, it was
Speaker 1: a there was a piece in the New Yorker about
Speaker 1: Notch that was quite good. Yeah, that was great. I
Speaker 1: thought I had it written down. Uh. It was written
Speaker 1: by Simon Parkin. It was published in April. I'll see
Speaker 1: if we can remember to link it on social. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's an excellent article. And in that Notch is
Speaker 1: quoted as saying, I don't want to feel like I'm
Speaker 1: in charge or anything. Of course, it doesn't really work
Speaker 1: that way, because we all know I'm the founder. But
Speaker 1: I try to have a studio where people go to
Speaker 1: make games for the fun of it, not just because
Speaker 1: some investor has said we have to make money. And
Speaker 1: that kind of boils down to his basic philosophy. And
Speaker 1: it's very similar to sid Meyer, this idea that I
Speaker 1: love to build things. I love to make games. I
Speaker 1: love to make things that are fun to play, and
Speaker 1: that's my motivation. It's a huge games games where you
Speaker 1: get to decide what the story is, what your motivations are. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are games where there's not necessarily a pathway that
Speaker 1: you have to follow. You can take one of a
Speaker 1: billion pathways. Now, Minecraft does have kind of an endgame.
Speaker 1: I had mentioned it before that there are three basic
Speaker 1: worlds in in the in the original version of Minecraft.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind there are mods out there that have
Speaker 1: all sorts of worlds, but the three basic worlds are
Speaker 1: the overworld, which is where you spend your time when
Speaker 1: you first start off. Then there's a a kind of
Speaker 1: Hades like region called the Nether where everything is on
Speaker 1: fire and trying to kill you. Uh, that's only a
Speaker 1: slight exaggeration. Uh, there are certain things that are not
Speaker 1: on fire, and there are a couple of critters that
Speaker 1: aren't actively trying to kill you. But there everything else
Speaker 1: is like how I feel about our new office environment.
Speaker 1: Yeah kind of. Yeah, well, I certainly think Robert's out
Speaker 1: to kill me. He's already set up his his second
Speaker 1: secondary monitor to block me off. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've noticed that. I'm sure it's not personal. No, it's
Speaker 1: just so he has a semi cubicle through himself. Uh,
Speaker 1: I love you, Robert anyway. So that you know, there's
Speaker 1: the overworld, the nether and then there's the End that
Speaker 1: I mentioned before. That's where Enderman come from. Enderman are
Speaker 1: these kind of creepy characters that are three blocks tall.
Speaker 1: They're the the tallest regular characters you would encounter in Minecraft. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also are not aggressive unless you look at them.
Speaker 1: If you look at them and you look above their legs,
Speaker 1: essentially they become aggressive and we'll try to kill you.
Speaker 1: They can also teleport, so they're tricky critters to defeat.
Speaker 1: But if you go to the end, which is where
Speaker 1: the Injerman supposedly come from, you can encounter the Ender Dragon.
Speaker 1: The Indo Dragon is enormous and deadly and probably requires
Speaker 1: multiple people ganging up on it at once using enchanted weapons.
Speaker 1: These are all things that were added into Minecraft over
Speaker 1: the course of the game. Obviously, when it first started,
Speaker 1: you didn't have ways of enchanting items and you didn't
Speaker 1: have dragons flying around. But if you defeat it, then
Speaker 1: you get a little um, you get a story that
Speaker 1: unfolds that's supposedly very beautiful. I have not read this
Speaker 1: story because I have not defeated the Indo Dragon, and
Speaker 1: I refuse to watch a video and see it for
Speaker 1: myself until I have done it. So I'm waiting until
Speaker 1: I get to a point where I feel like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's give this a shot and let me get like
Speaker 1: at least three or four other people who want to
Speaker 1: throw their lives away and and take on the Indo Dragon. So, uh,
Speaker 1: there is an end game in the game in that sense,
Speaker 1: but you never have to play it that way if
Speaker 1: you don't want to. There's no reason for you to
Speaker 1: go after that goal if it doesn't interest you. Um.
Speaker 1: And we've seen some interesting uses of Minecraft in ways
Speaker 1: other than just as a game. Right, It's kind of
Speaker 1: a semi official educational tool. It is being taught in schools. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's being used as a tool in various applications. So
Speaker 1: you've got some where it's like city planning, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of how do you how do you lay
Speaker 1: out a city so that it makes sense? And they
Speaker 1: use Minecraft as the basic building blocks for that. Literally.
Speaker 1: There are other ones where it's just teaching teamwork, where
Speaker 1: you throw a group of students in a newly developed
Speaker 1: world and say, all right, here are the basic thing
Speaker 1: or what what basic things do you need to do
Speaker 1: in order to survive? What? How do you prioritize those steps?
Speaker 1: How do you delegate who does what? How do you
Speaker 1: actually achieve your goals? And so that's another way, or
Speaker 1: even just as a motivator. I read about it being
Speaker 1: used in a in a in a foreign language class
Speaker 1: and that you know, the student that the teachers like
Speaker 1: find you guys can play Minecraft, but you have to
Speaker 1: speak entirely in this language that you're learning in order
Speaker 1: that's it's the only way you can communicate, communicate via
Speaker 1: text or you can talk to each other, but you
Speaker 1: have to speak and write in this other language that
Speaker 1: you're learning UM, which is great because it turned you
Speaker 1: into this. You know, it's an immersive environment where you
Speaker 1: have to communicate in order together. So that was I
Speaker 1: thought a very clever way of using Minecraft. Uh. There
Speaker 1: is an organization called Teacher Gaming which runs Minecraft e
Speaker 1: d U, which is a tool designed to help teachers
Speaker 1: incorporate Minecraft into lesson plans. UM actually has a special
Speaker 1: build of Minecraft where you can sign in as a
Speaker 1: student or a teacher and can create specific goal oriented
Speaker 1: tasks UM and encourage things like communication and teamwork. I've
Speaker 1: read about a lot of gamer parents who have played
Speaker 1: with their children are set up servers for their children
Speaker 1: so they can play in a safe environment and um.
Speaker 1: Another example of that is Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth,
Speaker 1: who talks about playing it with the son and then
Speaker 1: that's in fact how he got introduced to Minecraft and uh,
Speaker 1: and now it's a big part of what Rooster Teeth does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so uh. And of course he was not the only
Speaker 1: person in the company to have played the game. Gavin
Speaker 1: also had an unfair advantage in those early games because
Speaker 1: he knew what was going on, whereas everybody else was like,
Speaker 1: how do I make an axe? So the car. What
Speaker 1: does Gavin do with that knowledge? He builds the Tower
Speaker 1: of Pimps. Yeah, so, um, you know, knowledge is power people,
Speaker 1: then with great power comes great something or other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That there was a frolicking motion by the way that
Speaker 1: that I really felt got lost in. It was Lauren
Speaker 1: doing the frolicking, but not Jonathan. I do not frolic cavort.
Speaker 1: I'm not a frolicker. I'm a covorder. Um. And so
Speaker 1: there are other interesting mods. I saw a mod where
Speaker 1: you can build and maybe this isn't even a mod,
Speaker 1: but I don't play the PC version, so this is
Speaker 1: this is brand new to me. But you could build
Speaker 1: a rocket and then actually go from the world of
Speaker 1: Minecraft to the Moon, which I just blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is incredible, and that it also
Speaker 1: involved a lot of the materials that occur in the
Speaker 1: PC version but not in the Xbox version. So I
Speaker 1: saw it. I was like, well, there's no way for
Speaker 1: me to do this right now. I could always go
Speaker 1: out and buy the PC version, but then that means
Speaker 1: I have to learn. There was there's a mod that
Speaker 1: you guys talked about in the original episode that was
Speaker 1: of the Starship Enterprise. Yeah, I was a guy who
Speaker 1: had who had gone essentially into creative mode and wanted
Speaker 1: to make a to scale one to one version of
Speaker 1: the enterprise like that you can get in and like
Speaker 1: crawl around and being a Jeffreys tube and you could
Speaker 1: you could explore the various text And this was the uh,
Speaker 1: the n c C seventeen o one, so not the
Speaker 1: not the not the later enterprises. We're talking original series
Speaker 1: enterprise and an update on that story. Over over that enterprise,
Speaker 1: mod Millang got hit with a season desist from Universal
Speaker 1: Studios to to which not was Paramount Picture sexually. Uh,
Speaker 1: I read Universal videos that I'm willing to go with
Speaker 1: either UM and it would to which Notch replied, like,
Speaker 1: it's it's like sending a letter to Adobe because someone
Speaker 1: drew a copyrighted image and photoshop right. He's like, like,
Speaker 1: I built the tool, but I didn't build that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And put Putt, which is actually a brand name of
Speaker 1: of UM, also has sent a season desist and further misunderstanding,
Speaker 1: it's the same, you know, the same sort of thing
Speaker 1: as Safe Harbor with sites like YouTube. Right where YouTube
Speaker 1: is offering people the platform to you can upload videos,
Speaker 1: YouTube itself is not responsible for the material inside those videos.
Speaker 1: It does have a responsibility to act when those videos
Speaker 1: violate intellectual property, But how do you do that when
Speaker 1: someone has just built the enterprise on a server that
Speaker 1: they own. You know, essentially you have to serve that
Speaker 1: to that season desists to the person that built it,
Speaker 1: not to the company that provided the tools. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we we've seen lots of other interesting builds besides that.
Speaker 1: And I talked about how these mods are, uh pretty popular.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of different skins that you can
Speaker 1: get for um for Minecraft, not just for your character.
Speaker 1: You can put give your character a different skin, some
Speaker 1: of which are based upon other popular games. They have
Speaker 1: Halo skins, so if you want a little blocky master chief,
Speaker 1: you can make one. Although although Nottch did write a
Speaker 1: really nice I I linked this on Twitter today because
Speaker 1: I was just so impressed with it, a really nice
Speaker 1: post about how Minecraft is genderless, um that that your
Speaker 1: natural avatar. You know, at some point started being called
Speaker 1: the Minecraft guy because he's kind of blocking and dude
Speaker 1: ish and and that and that's yeah. Well, someone I
Speaker 1: think someone asked not at some point, oh what's the
Speaker 1: dude's name? And he was like Steve, and I think
Speaker 1: that's how that one got started. Um. But but that
Speaker 1: you know, all all the animals and minecraft are genderless.
Speaker 1: They can all make little babies with any other animal
Speaker 1: that if you get it, and babies were really new
Speaker 1: for the Xbox three sixty not that new now, but
Speaker 1: I remember when it uh like if you you can
Speaker 1: make animals be receptive to the mood of love by
Speaker 1: giving them food, and um, so you can tame them
Speaker 1: sort of. You can. You can lead them into like
Speaker 1: a fenced area and then and then fence them in
Speaker 1: and if you feed them, they're they're like they have
Speaker 1: little hearts appear over their head. And as long as
Speaker 1: you have two of that kind of animal, you're good
Speaker 1: to go. There's gonna be babies popping up soon. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's no like, there's no fifty fifty chance
Speaker 1: that you accidentally put two of the same gender because
Speaker 1: there they're this non gender gender and and that you're
Speaker 1: in you know, and that also your avatar is technically
Speaker 1: non gendered. Yeah, and so so you know, skins are great,
Speaker 1: but right well, and they also have skins that overlay
Speaker 1: the entire world, not just your character. So you get
Speaker 1: there's like one specifically for the Xbox three sixty where
Speaker 1: you can uh do a mass effect texture overlay, so
Speaker 1: suddenly the world looks like, you know, a mass effect world,
Speaker 1: and all the all the structures look different, all the
Speaker 1: materials look different. You have to relearn what everything is actually.
Speaker 1: I're like, what is this? Oh, that's what Iron looks
Speaker 1: like now. Um. They also have one recently added to
Speaker 1: the three sixty that is more of a plastic look,
Speaker 1: so it looks kind of like the actual Lego Minecraft set.
Speaker 1: It's very very plastic because there are textures on those blocks,
Speaker 1: but they're very simple textures. So you can get these
Speaker 1: different skins that make them look totally different. And that
Speaker 1: Those are two examples that are actually found on the
Speaker 1: Xbox three sixty one where you can purchase them, but
Speaker 1: there are countless user generated skins and mods out there.
Speaker 1: I Uh, I'm really impressed by the community that's grown
Speaker 1: up around Minecraft, and it's a very young community too.
Speaker 1: This is one of those games that really resonated with
Speaker 1: a young audience where you know, kids who have that
Speaker 1: natural curiosity to learn how things work and to build
Speaker 1: things and to exp barament. This was a playground for them.
Speaker 1: To use that kind of that kind of inclination, and
Speaker 1: it really encouraged people to do that. So that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I think we've seen so much
Speaker 1: incredible innovation. Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that all
Speaker 1: goes back to just not being an awesome dude and
Speaker 1: and wanting people to have that experience of being able
Speaker 1: to create and play and make up their own minds
Speaker 1: about what the game is agreed. And so I'm always
Speaker 1: curious to see if this kind of philosophy will trickle
Speaker 1: out to other developers. I think that there are some
Speaker 1: developers that will want to try and capitalize it based
Speaker 1: on the fact that it was such a huge success.
Speaker 1: So in other words, from not just perspective, they be
Speaker 1: coming at it from the wrong wrong motivation right there,
Speaker 1: coming at it from the motivation of what can make
Speaker 1: us a lot of money, not what is going to
Speaker 1: make a compelling gaming experience. And it's it's certainly not
Speaker 1: that this kind of world has never been seen before
Speaker 1: in gaming. I mean, you've you've got lots of sandbox
Speaker 1: kind of things out there, but but yeah, you know, this,
Speaker 1: this it just resonated. It was one of those things
Speaker 1: that that was uh just just complex enough to be compelling,
Speaker 1: but not so complex as to be infuriating, and perhaps
Speaker 1: just at the right time when I think there was
Speaker 1: a high level of frustration with some of these really
Speaker 1: big names in games that were coming out with these
Speaker 1: laborious like like kind of overwrought, kind of overdone, or
Speaker 1: or like the eighteenth sequel to a game, whether where
Speaker 1: that just didn't seem to be any kind of innovation
Speaker 1: or nothing new. It was a it was a new
Speaker 1: maybe like a new skin on an old game, and
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of new gaming elements, but this was
Speaker 1: something that was very different from everything else that was
Speaker 1: out there. So yeah, it's uh, you know, I will
Speaker 1: not ever make another game that will resonate as much
Speaker 1: as Minecraft. I don't know. I say, we let Notch
Speaker 1: build whatever the heck he wants to build, and whether
Speaker 1: or not it's as successful as Minecraft, it'll probably be awesome.
Speaker 1: It doesn't Yeah, it doesn't matter, you know. He he deserves,
Speaker 1: I think, the opportunity to play around and and not
Speaker 1: be badgered about what the outcome is going to be,
Speaker 1: because you know, he's already made an incredible game. Let's
Speaker 1: give the guy some space to do what he does best,
Speaker 1: you know, so hey, Notch, if you're listening, we're with you, buddy,
Speaker 1: all right. So that kind of wraps up this discussion
Speaker 1: about Minecraft. I hope that fulfills all the deep driving
Speaker 1: needs of all of our Minecraft fans out there who
Speaker 1: have been begging for us to do another Minecraft episode.
Speaker 1: I always showed them the link to the old Minecraft episode.
Speaker 1: He said that's not enough. So um, I hope this
Speaker 1: is enough at least for the time being. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about some other topics in future episodes, but hey,
Speaker 1: we need your help. We need your help to decide
Speaker 1: what future topics we're gonna talk about. So you need
Speaker 1: to write into us and tell us what you want
Speaker 1: to hear about, as long as it's not Minecraft, yes,
Speaker 1: smart Alec. And the way you do that is you
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Speaker 1: of those is text Stuff hs W and Lauren and
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