Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting over across from me, playing with his blocks is
Speaker 1: senior writer Johnathan. Pretty women out walking with gorillas down
Speaker 1: my street. From my window, I stare while my coffee
Speaker 1: goes cold. Look over there, where here comes Minecraft. That's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna talk about, all right. It was my
Speaker 1: my MPR version, and it's Minecraft. It's good. We have
Speaker 1: had so many requests, mainly on Facebook from fans who
Speaker 1: really wanted us to talk about Minecraft. Um and a Minecraft,
Speaker 1: in case you do not know, is a game that
Speaker 1: on its surface seems pretty simple, but as you learn
Speaker 1: more about it, you realize that this is actually a
Speaker 1: pretty incredible and complex game. You just if you look
Speaker 1: at it, just based upon the graphics and the the
Speaker 1: the basic idea of what you're supposed to do, you
Speaker 1: would say, oh, there's nothing to this, but oh contrair,
Speaker 1: I would say to that person, So let's talk about Minecraft.
Speaker 1: So Minecraft started right around May tenth, two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: so it's just over a year or two years old
Speaker 1: when we record this podcast. Yes, actually, I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: you're taking it directly from the Minecraft website, which is
Speaker 1: under about the game. Minecraft is developed by Marcus Person.
Speaker 1: It's been under developments. It's about May tenth, two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: So that's that's his best guess. Yeah. So yeah, Marcus
Speaker 1: actually was inspired, at least according to his website, to
Speaker 1: do Minecraft because he'd been playing this another sort of
Speaker 1: similar game called in Finny Minor, which I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: was Wasn't that the the guy who came out of
Speaker 1: the Earth right at the end of The Incredibles, No,
Speaker 1: that's the under Miner. No. Actually, it was a game
Speaker 1: about mining elements from the Earth and you were, I
Speaker 1: guess the planet. The idea was that you would you know,
Speaker 1: dig out certain elements and you would get credit for
Speaker 1: the stuff that you dug up um, which actually sounds
Speaker 1: kind of cool. I had never heard about it until then.
Speaker 1: That was actually under development for very very short period
Speaker 1: of time from what I read, and as a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, it was only out for a couple of months,
Speaker 1: and apparently a person had played it and liked the game,
Speaker 1: and then when it went away, he said, I'm going
Speaker 1: to do something similar. Yeah. And and the concept of
Speaker 1: mining in games is not a new one. I mean,
Speaker 1: you've got you've got games, especially like multi massively multiplayer
Speaker 1: online games that have had some sort of mining and
Speaker 1: crafting uh capacity in them for ages. So games like
Speaker 1: Ultima Online and ever Quest and World of Warcraft have
Speaker 1: had similar kind of of concepts. Minecraft though, does this
Speaker 1: in a very simple way. Like again, if you look
Speaker 1: at the the graphics, if you haven't never seen it,
Speaker 1: I do recommend you check out some videos. There's plenty
Speaker 1: of them on YouTube. Um. They're very blocky graphics, very cartoonish. Um.
Speaker 1: They seem pretty simple. But again that kind of is
Speaker 1: a uh it's deceptive because the game mechanics underneath are
Speaker 1: actually pretty complex. Yeah. Actually, when I when I first
Speaker 1: heard somebody request this, um, and I wasn't familiar with Minecraft,
Speaker 1: immediately well, I looked. I looked it up, and I
Speaker 1: only looked at some screenshots I didn't really understand, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, I mean, if you're building stuff
Speaker 1: with blocks, that kind of reminds me of Lego Digital Designer,
Speaker 1: which is sort of a CAD system for working with legos.
Speaker 1: And I heard somebody just now, one of the Minecraft
Speaker 1: fans groaning and saying, no, well, no, it's not exactly
Speaker 1: like that. It's just not even remotely like that. Well,
Speaker 1: it's remotely like if you just look at it on
Speaker 1: the surface, though, you that might be what you would think,
Speaker 1: so exactly. In general, in Minecraft, what you're doing is
Speaker 1: you're using various kinds of blocks to build structures and
Speaker 1: environments in a virtual three dimensional environment. You are playing
Speaker 1: the part of a little avatar in this and um.
Speaker 1: And then if you're playing the beta version, which is
Speaker 1: the version that actually is getting updated and is changing
Speaker 1: over time. It depends on when you're when you listen
Speaker 1: to this, because as of recording that it's in beta. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who knows. By the time this this publishes, it may
Speaker 1: have a full version out. But what happens is that
Speaker 1: during the daytime, you're safe more or less. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can fall off of of a cliff and die,
Speaker 1: but more or less you're safe, and you can do
Speaker 1: things like mine for resources, and you can mind for resources,
Speaker 1: not just through mining like digging, you can also get
Speaker 1: resources by attacking, say a sheep and gathering wool um. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not an uncommon game element. Yeah, it's in
Speaker 1: a lot of this game mechanics in a lot of games.
Speaker 1: But then what happens is at night, the monsters come out,
Speaker 1: and uh so what you ideally, what you do is
Speaker 1: you use the the resources in the virtual world to
Speaker 1: create uh structures for you to stay safe in at night,
Speaker 1: while you also continue to build more complex um elements.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing to me about Minecraft is not
Speaker 1: just that you can build a castle, let's say, but
Speaker 1: you can build a castle of different materials. It's not
Speaker 1: You're not limited to like this is your block, this
Speaker 1: is you know, you use this block to build things.
Speaker 1: You know, it's and you might have different colors of blocks,
Speaker 1: but they all have the same properties. That's not the
Speaker 1: case with Minecraft. Minecraft. You actually can create blocks that
Speaker 1: have unique properties. And according according the website, yeah, there
Speaker 1: there are seventy seven different types of blocks at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I according to the Minecraft WICKI yes, I also visited
Speaker 1: that from my research, they have you can think of
Speaker 1: they have recipes, all right, that's what you get, Like
Speaker 1: the recipes you have of combining various resources within the
Speaker 1: game and what the outcome is. Yeah. So like, if
Speaker 1: you have a block of type A and a block
Speaker 1: of type B, you can combine them to create a
Speaker 1: block of type N. Yeah. And in this case, they said,
Speaker 1: there are currently one and forty four recipes. So let's say,
Speaker 1: let me let me scroll down and find it's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. So if you think about it, um, if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with the game, you think about it,
Speaker 1: you have elements, um, like for example, uh, sodium and oxygen,
Speaker 1: yeah you could, you know, and hydrogen. You can combine
Speaker 1: them to make elements. I mean, yeah, I'm I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: You can combine them to make molecules of different something
Speaker 1: else using a scientific sort of it's more on a
Speaker 1: it's more on a macro scale. But like here's an example.
Speaker 1: Let's say you want to build a pick ax. Okay,
Speaker 1: so if you wanted to build a pick ax in Minecraft,
Speaker 1: you would need as your your ingredients and your recipe.
Speaker 1: You would need some sticks, which you can also create
Speaker 1: through wooden planks. But you need sticks plus a wooden
Speaker 1: plank or nudan a sticks plus cobble stone or sticks
Speaker 1: plus iron ingets or sticks plus golding It's or sticks
Speaker 1: plus diamond gems. So the wooden plank, cobblestone, ironing, it's golding,
Speaker 1: it's or diamond gems would serve as the actual um,
Speaker 1: the actual pick part of the pickaxe, like they pick
Speaker 1: in the ax as opposed, then the stick would be
Speaker 1: your handle. Now you would ask you and you might
Speaker 1: ask yourself, well, why would I even bother trying to
Speaker 1: to find a diamond gem or create a diamond gem
Speaker 1: if I could just make a pickax using a stick
Speaker 1: and a wooden plank. Well, the tools in Minecraft have
Speaker 1: a limited number of uses, and so if you're gonna
Speaker 1: use a pickax to mind more materials, uh, the number
Speaker 1: of uses that pickax has is dependent upon what the
Speaker 1: pickax itself is made up of, right, So if you
Speaker 1: use a softer metal like gold, it wouldn't hold up
Speaker 1: as well as something like iron, which is tougher. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So if you are going for if you're going for
Speaker 1: a really long term tool that you want to be
Speaker 1: able to use over and over again, you want to
Speaker 1: use the stronger materials, which are of course harder to
Speaker 1: get in most cases of course. So uh, it's it's interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a part of your strategy is that, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: how much effort do I want to take in order
Speaker 1: to get the raw materials I need to make a
Speaker 1: tool so that I can get more raw materials? Well,
Speaker 1: it depends on how fast you need to work before nightfall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it also depends on what your eventual goal is, like,
Speaker 1: uh uh, you know, do you want to create something
Speaker 1: that is is functional? Do you want to create something
Speaker 1: that is decorative? Do you want to create something that
Speaker 1: is both? Do you want to create something that is
Speaker 1: innovative that no one else has managed to do yet? Um?
Speaker 1: If you want to do that, You're going to have
Speaker 1: to really start working soon, because I've seen some pretty
Speaker 1: incredible stuff made in Minecraft. Now talking about incredible stuff
Speaker 1: made of Minecraft. There are two versions of the game
Speaker 1: that are out in the wild. There's the Beta version,
Speaker 1: which is the one that keeps getting updates and gets
Speaker 1: new elements added into it over time, and then there's
Speaker 1: the classic version. Now, Classic you can think of as
Speaker 1: kind of just a giant sandbox. Yeah, you can go
Speaker 1: in and build or destroy if you're one of those
Speaker 1: kind of people, to anything you like within a game
Speaker 1: on a server. So you can actually have a game
Speaker 1: of Minecraft playing on a server and invite the people
Speaker 1: you know to come and play Minecraft there or build
Speaker 1: on Minecraft there. And if you're using the Classic system,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about monsters hunting you down
Speaker 1: and killing you. It's really just a place for you
Speaker 1: to play and build stuff. Now, granted, you don't have
Speaker 1: all the materials available to you that you would in
Speaker 1: the beta system because again Classics not getting updates, so
Speaker 1: it's gonna have, you know, the the amount of resources
Speaker 1: you have is set Classic, it's fixed changes, so that
Speaker 1: doesn't hasn't stopped people from creating some pretty amazing objects
Speaker 1: in Minecraft. We've seen a few just we watched some
Speaker 1: videos if you oh gosh, it's been a few months now,
Speaker 1: but I remember seeing one where someone created a globe
Speaker 1: of the Earth and it was huge, an enormous globe.
Speaker 1: I mean not to scale because that would have been
Speaker 1: a little too much, but yeah, it was an enormous
Speaker 1: globe and it was fairly accurate. It was missing a
Speaker 1: few blocks because there were some vandals who showed up
Speaker 1: and destroyed some of the blocks. And you do get
Speaker 1: that occasionally if you have your your creations on a
Speaker 1: server that has got a very open policy. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get some jerks in there. It's just the way the
Speaker 1: world works, unfortunately, not unlike real life. Yeah, just like
Speaker 1: real life. But yeah, I remember seeing that globe and
Speaker 1: it was really impressive, and it had a hole at
Speaker 1: the very top of the globe where you could go
Speaker 1: to the very top and fall down. And also, in
Speaker 1: Classic mode, you don't die if you fall off a cliff,
Speaker 1: so because the the the focus in Classic mode isn't
Speaker 1: the game element where you're trying to stay alive and
Speaker 1: and flourish. It's all about creating. So uh yeah, and
Speaker 1: this version you you could actually go inside the globe
Speaker 1: and see what was on what they had built on
Speaker 1: the inside, which was also kind of cool. But then
Speaker 1: there was another one I showed Chris that I thought
Speaker 1: was really neat, which was a person who was trying
Speaker 1: to build a scale model of the starship Enterprise in Minecraft.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing. We should actually check and see if
Speaker 1: that's been updated, because we looked at it months ago
Speaker 1: and it was. It wasn't a pretty good like, it
Speaker 1: wasn't finished by any means, but it was going along
Speaker 1: pretty well. And this was a guy who was actually
Speaker 1: trying to create these enterprise based off of plans from
Speaker 1: various Star Trek source books and uh, including all the decks.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just that he had the shell of
Speaker 1: the Enterprise there. He wanted to build it so that
Speaker 1: you could actually go inside and explore the Enterprise as
Speaker 1: if you were a crew member, which you know, for
Speaker 1: geeks like me, that's pretty amazing. It's a painstaking process
Speaker 1: to get that much detail in there. Though. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember that he had created some way where he created
Speaker 1: sort of like a macro where he had built the
Speaker 1: frame through some weird means and then was able to
Speaker 1: import that into Minecraft. I don't remember the details. I
Speaker 1: remember it's in the video, though, that that was pretty
Speaker 1: neat that he wasn't he didn't have to do it
Speaker 1: block by block in other words, which would take I
Speaker 1: don't know how many hours. Even so, even with that
Speaker 1: that added element in where he had been able to
Speaker 1: build a lot of it automatically, it was still just
Speaker 1: the the kind of like the skeleton of the Enterprise.
Speaker 1: It wasn't everything by any stretch of the imagination, but
Speaker 1: that that's pretty phenomenal, And like I said, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of of cool examples of people who have
Speaker 1: built some amazing structures out in Minecraft. But that's even
Speaker 1: that's just the beginning. Um, have you seen any of
Speaker 1: the Minecraft roller coasters. There are various ways to build
Speaker 1: roller coasters in Minecraft. You and actually build rails or
Speaker 1: the ones I've seen a lot of are the not rails,
Speaker 1: but are their waterways. So you build like essentially a
Speaker 1: giant water slide, and you create an enormous uh structure
Speaker 1: that is going to be the is gonna be really tall,
Speaker 1: so that gravity, the gravity of the virtual world can
Speaker 1: pull the water along, and then you create a little
Speaker 1: boat to ride in, and then you can just ride
Speaker 1: on down the whole length of the the water slide.
Speaker 1: And I saw someone who created one that was uh huge.
Speaker 1: I mean it took hours to write all the way
Speaker 1: down and it went essentially like the equivalent of what
Speaker 1: it would be to write a water slide from New
Speaker 1: York to Georgia. Is crazy. That's impressive now, yeah, and
Speaker 1: also would be you have to pick a real particular
Speaker 1: time of year for that to work out. But anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: even then, these elements that's still just scratching the surface.
Speaker 1: What has truly blown my mind is the fact that
Speaker 1: within Minecraft all these different objects that you can build.
Speaker 1: Among them are not just the transportation things, but the
Speaker 1: mechanism recipes. Now, mechanism recipes allow you to create electronic
Speaker 1: components or or electronic component analogs within the Minecraft world.
Speaker 1: Well yes, but how could you possibly do that, Well,
Speaker 1: they have designated they being you know, the creator of
Speaker 1: the game has designated certain objects to have particular UH
Speaker 1: features that are equivalent to electronic features. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the red Stone torch. No torches, normally they doesn't just
Speaker 1: generate light, you know, they're not they don't do anything
Speaker 1: else like that. But red Stone torch what it does
Speaker 1: is it constantly sends an electrical charge or can be
Speaker 1: used as a receiver transmitter when connected to the side
Speaker 1: of a block, and can also be used for low
Speaker 1: level lighting. So if you just want some low level lighting,
Speaker 1: you could do that. But if you want to use
Speaker 1: it as a switch, you could You could create a
Speaker 1: you know, it creates this electrical charge, then you create
Speaker 1: a pathway for that electrical charge to go down. You
Speaker 1: can also create uh levers and buttons um, you can
Speaker 1: create little note blocks. You can create a dispenser which
Speaker 1: is used to hold and shoot out items in a
Speaker 1: random ortar UM. You can create what's called a redstone repeater,
Speaker 1: and that is uh uh used in circuits as a repeater,
Speaker 1: de layer or a diode. And so you know, you've
Speaker 1: got these basic elements that are used in electronics UM
Speaker 1: and if you put them into Minecraft in the proper way,
Speaker 1: you can actually create very simple computers. I've seen people
Speaker 1: who have created calculators. I've seen people have created uh
Speaker 1: an actual computer by building enough of these circuits together
Speaker 1: so that it does computation. You can give it a
Speaker 1: computer problem and it will work it out. UM. I've
Speaker 1: also seen people use the music generating blocks, and you know,
Speaker 1: there are ways where you can adjust the pitch and
Speaker 1: tone of the block. Maybe it's just the pitch may
Speaker 1: not be the tone, but you can adjust the pitch
Speaker 1: of the block makes when it's activated. And then by
Speaker 1: creating the right set of circuits so that the electricity
Speaker 1: flows in a particular uh direction and order, you can
Speaker 1: create music. You put all enough of these blocks around
Speaker 1: and it will start playing in sequence depending upon the
Speaker 1: pathway you have built. Using these these virtual circuits, you
Speaker 1: can create a music synthesizer, or you can actually create
Speaker 1: a an automatic song, so you know, you you become
Speaker 1: obsessed with that new pop tune. You end up figuring
Speaker 1: out what notes that pop tune plays. You create it
Speaker 1: in Minecraft, and it's this enormous like it's a landscape.
Speaker 1: You're actually looking at a landscape that represents a song,
Speaker 1: and then you hit a little switch and it plays
Speaker 1: the song up. And then you put it on YouTube
Speaker 1: and everyone criticizes you for it. Yeah, and then eventually
Speaker 1: you have uh Sony Music contact you until you to
Speaker 1: take it down because it's infringing copyright exactly. And then
Speaker 1: you say this is transformative, and then there's a big
Speaker 1: legal lawsuit and then Jonathan has a meltdown because of
Speaker 1: we're getting off track. Yeah. Actually our long time listeners
Speaker 1: have heard that before. Um So yeah, the the game itself,
Speaker 1: I mean, the essential components you'll find in the the
Speaker 1: creative game, the uh the one that's set forever and ever,
Speaker 1: you know, just learning how to to get around in
Speaker 1: the environment. Um. But if you want to to uh
Speaker 1: play Minecraft yourself, um, it's not hard. You you will
Speaker 1: need to pay to get into the beta though, which
Speaker 1: is less than than you would pay for the final version. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone has actually said with the
Speaker 1: final version of we cost, but the game has been
Speaker 1: so successful that Notch as he's known, has been able
Speaker 1: to look into the possibility of hiring some people to
Speaker 1: help him out with development, which is pretty cool. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know you would need to do that if
Speaker 1: you were you were going to do that. But once
Speaker 1: you get in, then you start to learn more about
Speaker 1: the environment that he's uh creative for you. Now we've
Speaker 1: mentioned that there are many many different kinds of of
Speaker 1: core blocks, and then you can use them to buy
Speaker 1: to build other things. UM. You'll also find that when
Speaker 1: you move around that you have, you know, you'll see
Speaker 1: things like food, which you can actually craft yourself, depending
Speaker 1: on what it is that you want to eat, I
Speaker 1: guess uh. And food of course converts into health in
Speaker 1: the game, because yeah, there are all these monsters that
Speaker 1: are out there and they can hurt you or you
Speaker 1: can get hurt if you fall too far that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Um, And you can you can create weapons
Speaker 1: and armor as well to help protect you against monsters.
Speaker 1: You can also use create vehicles to get you around. UM.
Speaker 1: Like I said, with the rails, you can create mind
Speaker 1: cart rails, and that's essentially what I was talking about
Speaker 1: with the roller coasters. But what you'll encounter when you
Speaker 1: travel around other than environmental things like that and the
Speaker 1: things that you build are mobs. And those are the
Speaker 1: different kinds of other creatures that you're going to find
Speaker 1: as you travel around in Minecraft. Now, mobs, uh could
Speaker 1: be good or bad or neutral. Um, sort of depends
Speaker 1: on what you're short for. Actually, it's probably mobs because
Speaker 1: it is short for mobile according to the Minecraft wiki,
Speaker 1: So pardon my mispronunciation. Everyone calls them mobs. Really yeah, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: because I mean that's that's the term that's been used
Speaker 1: in uh and various various games, not just not just Minecraft,
Speaker 1: but any any Normally it's used for monsters, but it's
Speaker 1: any uh, any creature that's being controlled by the game itself,
Speaker 1: not being controlled by a player. Yes, okay, um, well
Speaker 1: you can. You can team up with a wolf if
Speaker 1: you want to. You might run into pigs, sheeps, sheeps.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm I'm just hungry like a wolf.
Speaker 1: You can also run into pigs or sheep about the
Speaker 1: sheeps in the fields, the sheeps in the fields, the cows, chicken,
Speaker 1: I don't like you anymore. But then you have some
Speaker 1: some creepy stuff out there. You might run into zombies
Speaker 1: or skeletons or spiders. Yes, although these are all blocky,
Speaker 1: yes it is. It is kind of funny because you know,
Speaker 1: if you think about something like World of Warcraft, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about creatures that have been designed with a
Speaker 1: huge polygon count so that they are they render you
Speaker 1: have to have a great graphics card to render this realistically,
Speaker 1: so and and lots of memory and a high powered
Speaker 1: processor or you know, reasonably high powered processor to to
Speaker 1: render this so that it looks real. I mean, these
Speaker 1: these creatures are round dish, they have you know, skin,
Speaker 1: they drool when they open their mouths. They have lots
Speaker 1: of points of articulation as well. Yes, so for example,
Speaker 1: and the reason why I bring that up is I'm
Speaker 1: watching a video about Minecraft right now and it's hilarious
Speaker 1: watching the little man run around because he has no knees,
Speaker 1: like you know, the legs are just straight, so when
Speaker 1: they run, there's just these straight sticks that move back
Speaker 1: and forth. And you think, well, look at how sophisticated
Speaker 1: some of the other games on the market look right
Speaker 1: now compared to this and then you wonder how could
Speaker 1: this be so popular? And I think the answer to
Speaker 1: that is the gameplay is really really advanced, and it
Speaker 1: gives you so much freedom to do various things, and
Speaker 1: it's such an outlet for creativity that people have really
Speaker 1: taken off with it, right. I mean, it's not like
Speaker 1: you know other games where you get to play in
Speaker 1: a world, but that not that world isn't your world, right,
Speaker 1: And I'll take this as an aside um, and I'll
Speaker 1: I promise to keep it short. But if you think
Speaker 1: about it, it's sort of like the we intruding on
Speaker 1: the Xbox three sixty in the PlayStation three because people,
Speaker 1: a lot of people who were the the hardcore gamers
Speaker 1: at the time that WE was introduced. We're saying, how
Speaker 1: can Nintendo compete with a processor that won't even do
Speaker 1: full Tinity lines of resolution? You know what? We have
Speaker 1: these big screen TVs and and they you know, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna look as good. It only has you know,
Speaker 1: DVD level resolution seven hundred twenty. And that it turns
Speaker 1: out that the gameplay UH and using the WE remote
Speaker 1: was innovative enough and cool enough for so many people
Speaker 1: that they bought it even though it wouldn't do as
Speaker 1: higher resolution as you could do with these other machines.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what works for Minecraft, is that
Speaker 1: the gameplay, uh is sometimes ignored in favor of um
Speaker 1: really hot graphics with all kinds of things and enormous worlds.
Speaker 1: But if the gameplay isn't there, the game isn't going
Speaker 1: to do as well. And Minecraft, being an independent game
Speaker 1: developed you know, initially by one person, is doing amazingly
Speaker 1: well because of the gameplay and because it's got you know,
Speaker 1: you have certain simple elements and then there's an underlying
Speaker 1: complexity of the world that just makes it irresistible to
Speaker 1: some people. Yeah, and um, I mean it's it's gotten
Speaker 1: so big now that there's there's a real community around
Speaker 1: Minecraft and they've all been sending us comments on Facebook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just like it's not just people who are
Speaker 1: playing Minecraft. There are people who are getting together to
Speaker 1: do big events, like there's the Minecraft Con. Minecraft Conn
Speaker 1: is taking place in Las Vegas, or at least that's
Speaker 1: I think that that's one of the choices that they
Speaker 1: were looking at, um. And so it's the I don't
Speaker 1: think it's set in stone yet. I think that that's
Speaker 1: according to the World of Notch, which is the official
Speaker 1: blog for Minecraft. That's the that's the main choice right
Speaker 1: now is Las Vegas. But then there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are saying, hey, but I want to go
Speaker 1: to I want it to be closer to where I live,
Speaker 1: so put it, you know, somewhere else. Um. And so
Speaker 1: they're talking about like the post bility of it being
Speaker 1: a this this convention of Minecraft players who all get
Speaker 1: together and and share notes essentially about things that they've
Speaker 1: created and ideas that they have, uh, both for what
Speaker 1: is possible in the game right now and what might
Speaker 1: be possible in the future. Um. There are new elements
Speaker 1: being added to the game all the time, including things
Speaker 1: like environmental elements. So it's not just a static world
Speaker 1: that only has daytime and nighttime. Um. There's there are
Speaker 1: more elements to it than that. But I wish you'd
Speaker 1: never shown me that BBC video with the animals nighttime, daytime,
Speaker 1: nighttime anyway, Steve, Um, Yeah, it's a it's a an
Speaker 1: interesting phenomenon to me. I'm wondering. You know, you mentioned
Speaker 1: the connection to Nintendo, at least as far as gameplay
Speaker 1: is concerned. What I'm wondering is if they can if
Speaker 1: Minecraft can avoid the pitfalls that Nintendo fill into, which
Speaker 1: is that Nintendo had a problem in that people would
Speaker 1: adopt it really quickly. Casual gamers adopted the game. But
Speaker 1: one of the issues about casual gamers is they're not
Speaker 1: the kind of gamers who will go out and buy
Speaker 1: the next game as as frequently as hardcore gamers do.
Speaker 1: Like casual gamers, they don't play the game games as
Speaker 1: often as frequently. So they might have a collection of
Speaker 1: four or five games, and that's good for them. They're
Speaker 1: fine because they don't play it that frequently. They're not
Speaker 1: getting tired of it, or they may just forget about
Speaker 1: the the system entirely and it just kind of sits
Speaker 1: off to the side. It doesn't get played very much. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the problem with that is that Nintendo doesn't
Speaker 1: have an ongoing stream of revenue because they're not selling games.
Speaker 1: And part of that issue, players might argue is that
Speaker 1: Nintendo kind of hurt when it came to compelling games
Speaker 1: for the Wei. There just weren't as many of them
Speaker 1: out there as there were for the other systems. According
Speaker 1: to some gamers, I happen to be one of those,
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying I know that there are other
Speaker 1: points of view out there too. Um, but if Minecraft
Speaker 1: can avoid that where you you don't have people suddenly
Speaker 1: lose interest or maybe not even suddenly, but gradually lose
Speaker 1: interest and then the game just kind of suffers for it.
Speaker 1: If they can avoid that, I would really be curious
Speaker 1: to see what comes out of this game in the
Speaker 1: next couple of years, because what it really tells me
Speaker 1: is that there are some incredibly creative people out there
Speaker 1: who are really really good at thinking outside the box.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to use that, but then I realized
Speaker 1: it was too late. The cube outside the cube and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, if you want to really
Speaker 1: see what's possible in Minecraft, just go to YouTube and
Speaker 1: type in Minecraft, and you're gonna see dozens and dozens
Speaker 1: of videos, some of which are you know, some of
Speaker 1: them are going to be those typical little videos where
Speaker 1: you watch it and like, I don't even see what
Speaker 1: the point of that was. But there are other ones
Speaker 1: that are really really impressive, where people have built these
Speaker 1: complex mechanisms where you hit a switch on one side
Speaker 1: of the map and a door all the way on
Speaker 1: the other side. Of the map, but these maps can
Speaker 1: be enormous. Us. Uh, door on the other side of
Speaker 1: the map opens and you think, wow, that's you know,
Speaker 1: it took a lot of work to create that. Now
Speaker 1: you might also ask what was the point of that?
Speaker 1: But you know, that's another element I would I would
Speaker 1: be curious to see if they start building into in
Speaker 1: things like creating a device that that triggers something essentially wirelessly.
Speaker 1: Like you create a transmitter and a receiver and they
Speaker 1: are unique to one another, so only one transmitter will
Speaker 1: activate a specific receiver, and then you put that receiver
Speaker 1: on a device where when the receiver receives a signal,
Speaker 1: it triggers an electrical electric chain of events that will
Speaker 1: cause something to happen. I thought would be a cool
Speaker 1: thing to add in there. Yeah, definitely. What will it
Speaker 1: help you fend off the spiders? Um? I was thinking
Speaker 1: of a thing that when you hit a switch, then
Speaker 1: across the room, uh, funky Town would play, and Spider's
Speaker 1: love of dancing to funky Town, so you could actually
Speaker 1: distract them long enough to squish them. There are records
Speaker 1: in Minecraft, and you can put them into a jukebox. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can build a jukebox and play and play music,
Speaker 1: which again I find that fascinating. Um So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to see there. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of games, indie developed games that UH have provided a
Speaker 1: good launching pad for other series or for the career
Speaker 1: of a developer. I think it's safe to say that
Speaker 1: um not is probably doing is it's probably going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of attention out of the Minecraft phenomenon,
Speaker 1: because I don't think it's even remotely close to being
Speaker 1: extinct at this point. I think it's still on the
Speaker 1: rise and will be sure. Yeah, I mean it's right now.
Speaker 1: I would say it's still kind of a fringe thing
Speaker 1: that Minecraft hasn't reached UH full blown UH awareness in
Speaker 1: the market. Um it's more so than when I first
Speaker 1: discovered it ages ago, but it's one of those things
Speaker 1: that I think it's still kind of a relatively small
Speaker 1: community of the potential community this game could have. So
Speaker 1: I'm sure that over time we're gonna see even more
Speaker 1: people discover and adopt this game and create even more
Speaker 1: amazing UH creations in this world. And not to mention
Speaker 1: the fact that you know you're gonna keep seeing the
Speaker 1: world itself evolve over time, and you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: you You'll have to be more creative because the game
Speaker 1: will become more and more difficult to uh to navigate
Speaker 1: if you don't engage those creative muscles in in the
Speaker 1: old noggin. So yeah, I definitely think that this is
Speaker 1: something that that UM has a lot of room to grow.
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's something that you could see on consoles,
Speaker 1: perhaps um as something you can download um you know,
Speaker 1: or or maybe even acquired by one of the major developers.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Again, I just heard some of the Minecraft
Speaker 1: fans out there who prefer yeah, no, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it bears some similarity to some
Speaker 1: other games that kind of got the strong community around them,
Speaker 1: like a little Big Planet. It reminds me a lot
Speaker 1: of that as well. So I could definitely see the
Speaker 1: potential for for our consoles to be interested in it, uh,
Speaker 1: although depending on the executives for those consoles, right, because
Speaker 1: if the executives are all tied up about graphics and
Speaker 1: and uh that kind of element, like I wanted to
Speaker 1: look really really good, it has to look state of
Speaker 1: the art, they might not be able to get past
Speaker 1: the fact that these characters are much more blocky and
Speaker 1: almost comedic really in their appearance. Uh, but that that
Speaker 1: simplicity is deceptive, like we've been saying. So maybe there's
Speaker 1: some executives out there who can look past the blocky
Speaker 1: aspect of this game and see it for what it
Speaker 1: really is, and then yeah, who knows, you might be
Speaker 1: able to get a cool version on one of the
Speaker 1: console games. Although the problem you have there is how
Speaker 1: do you host the worlds? Do you host the world's like,
Speaker 1: do you have it where you would be able to
Speaker 1: create servers like you can and Minecraft, or would everybody
Speaker 1: share in the same big virtual world, because then you
Speaker 1: would have the troll problem becomes enormous, you know. Or
Speaker 1: maybe you have a region in that world that's just
Speaker 1: yours and you can give keys to the people that
Speaker 1: you like and they can come and check out your stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, these are problems that I
Speaker 1: would be thinking of, because I wouldn't I would hate
Speaker 1: to spend a lot of time and creativity and building
Speaker 1: something and then come in and lug in the next
Speaker 1: day and just see that some some jerk had gone
Speaker 1: in and totally taken out half of it. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at you jerks. You know who you are.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, yeah, I would never have expected
Speaker 1: Angry Birds to do as well as it has and
Speaker 1: be available on all the different platforms it is, especially
Speaker 1: since it is many people say, a clone of a
Speaker 1: different game. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to say
Speaker 1: the name out loud or else. It's summons them the birds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the pigs, No, maybe a coincidence. Does you know Minecraft
Speaker 1: has pigs? There you go. It's all part of a plot.
Speaker 1: Is it's a swine plot? All right? Well, the way
Speaker 1: this wine flew, you know, I was about to say
Speaker 1: that's the weird thing about Angry Birds. It's not the
Speaker 1: swine that flew. Anyway. We're gonna wrap this up because
Speaker 1: we're getting a little loopy in here. So you guys,
Speaker 1: if you have another specific topic you want us to
Speaker 1: talk about, and uh, and if you have not seen Minecraft,
Speaker 1: I do urge you to check it out. It is
Speaker 1: pretty neat, neat, you know, it's it's especially for people
Speaker 1: who like to build stuff. It's neat for you guys.
Speaker 1: So all you guys out there who love legos and
Speaker 1: things like that, check it out because it's got a
Speaker 1: lot of potential, but if you have a specific topic
Speaker 1: you would like us to cover, you can let us
Speaker 1: know on Facebook and Twitter are handled. There is Text
Speaker 1: Stuff hs W, or you can send us an email.
Speaker 1: That address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com and Chris and I will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.
Speaker 1: The house Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived. Download it
Speaker 1: today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you