Mechanics as Metaphor - II: Creating Narrative Depth - Extra Credits
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2024
- Great games always rely on interesting gameplay mechanics to convey narrative, but it does require a development team and publisher who trust the player to think about the experience. Hand-holding players throughout a game will not do much to advance our medium. (---More below)
You can play Loneliness here.
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(Original air date: August 15, 2012)
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I played it like a kid in a park running through flocks of pigeons. I had a wonderful time.
Same, but then I got sad that I couldn't catch any of them.
I played by avoiding them because I didn't want to disturb the pigeons.
Man it’s been years since I played loneliness. I played through the game much like my boy up there dead, with the exception that I consider the squares to be representations of people, but I didn’t care if they excepted me or not, so I treated them like pigeons in a park.
I look forward for this generation to reach their senior years and talk about the video games of their youth. The idea of a grandma/pa boring his/her grandsons with their memories about Mario sounds so appealing to me XD
Old Me: Back when I was your age, we didn't have fancy 3D graphics. We had 16-bit sprites and 2D environments! Then 3D came along and we had bad camera and...O.K., 80 years later and we still keep getting crappy 3D cameras. And why can't they stop making the darkness too dark?! Well, at least graphics have gotten so good that they focus more on gameplay again. You know, there was a time when there were too many crappy games with gorgeous graphics floating around. Those were some dark days...
RyuTora2808 I want do one too. OLD ME: When I was your age we had to sit in a smoky casino while our parents gambled away our video game budget on video poker, just so we could play the new fighting games, AND THEY WERE ALL UNBALANCED AS SHIT, my brother kept doing that god damn thousand slap of E. Honda's... MY OLD BROTHER CUTS IN: You hypocrite, once you learned to do the windmill kick you refused to tell me how... BACK TO ME: Yeah but I used other moves, unlike you!... Then the argument devolves into a nap time for us grandpa's, but at the last minute I spring awake and shout, "AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY!!!"
+Arturo Gutierrez Old Me: Back in my day, we had good, fun, meaningful games, like Mario and Zelda, that weren't just the exact same stupid, bad game again and again! Well, I hope that with better graphics people will think of the damn gameplay and make interesting ideas like Pikmin happen. And why the hell have he not gotten good 3-d cameras, or gotten rid of too much darkness? I'm going to take a nap now, but when I wake up you better be ready for me to force you to play one of the good bleeping olds!
The fact that these videos were posted 11 years ago and still continue to teach some of the most interesting things about creating games, is just so wonderful.
"Arrow keys to move. Wait for the end screen."
I loved the Loneliness game, but from the moment the first group fled, I thought of the dots as pigeons, even though my dot was a person. Actually, not even as pigeons, because I have literally coaxed pigeons to jump into my bare hands. That's because in my life people (or pigeons), when they don't greatly dislike me, gravitate to me. I've almost no experience of much of anything running away from me without comment. I'm easy to love OR hate, but my greatest ubiquitous life experience is approachability. ... So, great game for making me think of such things!
Please teach me how to befriend pigeons.
Maybe this is just because I've recently obtained and gotten obsessed with Dark Souls, but I feel Dark Souls does a great job of using it's mechanics to help drive it's message and feeling. The mechanics never change but as you play for the first time (if you stick with the game and not give up) you go from feeling weak, and scared, and powerless to feeling like a badass that can mow through enemies. then you get to the Duke's archives and suddenly you're back in powerless mode. All because mechanics and difficulty scaling. Alot of what you do with your gameplay makes you go from feeling like a lost wanderer to a brave hero, or deadly adventurer. At least, that's what I think anyhow.
Windwaker! The most regret from a game I've traded in. I think it might've been the last game I was truly engrossed in and loved... I still remember the excitement of going home to play it and even the peace & joy of turning off at night until it ended. I miss those feels...
the stanely parable...
you missed the point entirely
That game is not at all based around mechanics. 99% of the story is the narrator's script.
The Wind Waker music at the end just perfectly capped those awesome videos off for me. Made me smile :)
When I first played Loneliness, I couldn't figure out what the point was. So I started experimenting, to figure out how close I could get before everyone ran away. After watching these videos, I realized why: I'm a scientist by profession, and I was approaching this from an analytical perspective. It's fascinating that a game can show that part of someone, without them even being aware of it--and it demonstrates the validity of the concepts being discussed. Thank you for that experience, EC!
"I think it will take a radical shift in how we think about game design to create 8 hour experiences, much less 40 hour ones, without a clear and defined goal for the player."
Minecraft is a perfect example of that shift in thinking.
They actually didn't MEAN to remove the fog in the Silent Hill HD remake, the team responsible for it had no idea what they were doing and were just given a beta version of the game files that Konami happened to have (you can tell from the slightly different textures that didn't have detail applied to it, like the sign whose distances read different values and the textures that look cleaner) because the original finished product had apparently been deleted for whatever reason, and because the PS3 didn't have the same draw distance as its predecessor as well as it handling transparency in a completely different way, the fog was THERE but it was completely translucent, and barely hid anything at all.
Did someone loose their job over that deletion?
MiningwithPudding
Most of Team Silent was disbanded, so technically no... they were already gone.
Kinda partly why the files were gone
But...wait...couldn't they have played a finished retail version to get the idea of the fog's effect on the game's atmosphere and then reconstruct it on their own from the beta files...? I mean, I don't know that much about the nitty-gritty details here, but you make it seem like having to restore a film from a bad, heavily censored copy because the original negatives were destroyed...
RyuTora2808
That's pretty much exactly what happened, though. Also, the PS3 doesn't do transparency the way the PS2 does, so they COULDN'T replicate the fog in the exact same way they did in the PS2.
NotAGoodUsername360 Oh, I see...Well, that wouldn't be the first time that a newer piece of tech was totally incapable of creating the same effect as an older one. Just look at the differences between 3D CGI and traditional 2D animation...
The closest I've gotten to something like this is DayZ, where some people were fortunate enough (or unfortunate enough) to extrapolate deep meaning in human dynamics without any dictated narrative, only gameplay and other players.
I had to write a paper evaluating a video game. Well, actually, it could have been anything, but I chose a video game, specifically Fire Emblem: Awakening, because I really like that game. I think I devoted half the paper to talking about the support system and its role within the game's narrative. Without going into the detail that I went into then, I love how it uses this one mechanic to give context, meaning, and personal investment to every choice in the game.
Yay Fire Emblem!
I kind of think that Fire Emblem needs one massive improvement when it comes to realness:
The permadeath has to actually be realistic for once.
For most people, a unit death IS just an alternate lose condition. Simple as that.
You know, part of why I like XCOM: Enemy Unknown was the immidiate attachment I developed to my troops. I have ignored the game for a while, because I'm not a big strategy fan, but this personal narrative woven into the experience made it super engaging for me.
On one of my very early mission, I had the veteran soldier getting killed and two of my squad members panicking. The only one who kept it cool was the Irish girl, so I sent her to flank the enemy, effectively killing the two aliens between me and the objective. Suddenly, a generically named randomized soldier became a level-headed hero who saved the day. She got promoted and became the "leader" of my squads ever since.
My HQ was in panic when an important mission popped up, and my most skilled leader lay in the infirmary after valiantly risking her life to bring us two live specimen of aliens we have not studied before...
...
... *cough* I got carried away there. But I hope I demostrated my point.
You didn't get carried away. You've shown what we have seen from this game to be truth. This is a perfect way to tell narrative without fixed story elements.
So you want to see games that don't have a destinct narrative, no real goal but can still keep you occupied for hours. That trust the player so much there isn't even any explaination or tutorial.
How did you not notice this?
MINECRAFT!
DARK SOULS
Minecraft is not a AAA Game (Or even a high budget project), but an independant game that really exploded.
They are mostly talking about the lack of meaningful/metaphoric mechanics in AAA games.
nah there is a tutorial now duh what did you post this 2 years ago pff
Sine Mora's countdown mechanic was really fascinating me. It made me realize that the time we have on this earth is very precious. even a second's decision matters and so we must choose our goals in life wisely.
I am truly impressed with these videos and the quality of each discussion. Keep up the great work!
8 hour gaming experiences with no goal? I scoff at that. I have over 800 hours in Europa Universalis IV and there is no goal in that game.
+David Housman While that was a funny comment, I think it's not entirely true - Europa Universalis might not have a spelled out goal, and you can chose many things yourself, but the overall goal is still clear - build a functional nation. How you do it and how successful you are doesn't matter, the game never tells you "This is what you've been working for - congratulations on achieving it", but it's still what everyone is going for, and very directly so.
Minecraft technically has a goal (fight the ender dragon), but almost no one listens, yet people set their own goals: build a house, make a farm, etc.
+R. pizzamonkey I still think the end and ender Drago were solely included that Notch could say, "hey, our Game has an end :D"
xD
+R. pizzamonkey That came long after the boom. It's unrelated to the core of the game, and didn't realy add that much to the experience, unless you are going for a "How much can I survive,and with how little?" approach.
Alexandre Boutaud Valarini As I said, nobody uses it anyways, but there are still player-made goals
love that last one, of talking about it for years :)
omg, that means your art style made me empathize with the characters. wtg making it fit together :)
And the outro music has given me the HUGEST smile.
As much as I tried, I couldn't help but feel that "Loneliness" was a bird chasing simulator.
I love the ocremix you used at the end! It's one of my favourites.
I love these guys.
In my mind they, along with the Game Overthinker, are some of the best game-related internet commentators out there.
It's just such a shame that the internet seems to be the only palce where serious discussions about vidoe games and their culture seem to take place.
Something came to mind from watching this. Start a game, short sound clips over black screen showing you that something happened to you, then you wake up with no memory, and the objective to get your memory back is never actually stated, so you can do anything. Something like that in an open world game would be awesome, I think.
2:28 reminded me of the time I played Thomas was alone
Yes Loneliness and Thomas Was Alone heavily reminded me of one another, although in Thomas Was Alone, as is true for the Stanley Parable (linearly in Thomas and non-linearly in Stanley), narration is at least half of what gives your action meaning and weight, where in Loneliness it's *only* in the game mechanics
I feel like Day Z is a start towards the "No Goal" aspect they were talking about. Games where there isn't some Win condition, there's no endgame, it's just survival.
I mean, it's "story" could basically be seen as the true horrors of the end of the world. Lack of Food, Mistrust, etc.
Would you agree that Minecraft fits in there as well?
Jacob Silver I think it would Jacob, seeing as how the only story is what you impose. I mean, going to The End is not necessary and doesn't really change the game so much.
My personal story is that I'm a reincarnating harbinger of destruction. But I think a lot of people play that way lol
Jacob Silver That might also be what they meant about how Minecraft signals great things to come for the game industry.Players are more willing to create their own stories, and work a little bit for rewards.
The video was about to end, I was about to get up and do something else, and then the final soundtrack sounded an alarm in my head. The legend of Zelda is majestic!
Your outro music hit me right in the nostalgia.
I'm stunned, completely schocked. I can't explain what's going through my mind after playing that game and getting all this info. it's astonishing.
AHHHHHHH That end music makes me so nostalgic.
the very end of the prequel of final fantasy 7 had such a moment. The story told you that you are going to face an army you can't win. So the set up a battle for you, you couldn't win. In the cut scene afterward i was crying!
I was tearing through the game
(i went to all the groups)
+jupoawp Same.
Loneliness said "wait for the end" so I did and nothing happened.
Congratulations, you played yourself.
I am so greatful that I was born in an era that developed games in such different manners, so that I as consumer can explore them thoroughly :3
I have to agree with you. When I first played Minecraft, I was confused as to what to do but after I experimented a little, it was less about a goal to complete and more about what I could do with what I have been provided by the game.
the wind waker theme at the end consumed me in magic. I fking love that game.
I totally forgot the name of this game, but it was something that came out in the really early days of the XBLA indie marketplace. It basically taught you a series of button sequences and other controller manipulations and gave you a set amount of time per level. At the end the creator wrote out a statement explaining how the game was essentially about how people choose to use their time and how life steadily becomes more complex as we grow up. It blew my mind the first time I played it.
Those rooms in Portal still give me chills...
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is another excellent example that's come out since this video was released.
Inside leaves SO MUCH to the imagination like how you are saying, and It works GREAT!
Wenoblade Chronicles comes to mind: the narrative is all about how you can seize your own destiny and the future is what you make it; in the game there is a mechanic where you'll have visions of the future, usually an enemy attack, and then your given a bit of time to deal with it. It still relies heavily on dialouge and cutscenes to tell it's story, but hey, it's a step in the right direction.
Check out Dwarf Fortress. That game has no explicit goals and has immense amounts of gameplay and one of the best communities ever as a result of the creativity and imagination in inspires.
Excellent choice of outro music this week guys.
Good memories with BioShock. That game was incredible. Great episode! Keep up the good work!
Dat ending music, though. ^_^
Such feels. That's still one of the best Zelda games!
Great video! The music at the end was an awesome treat, too. Where did you find that excellent version of the song?
What makes Flower a game? To me, it's that I was part of the journey. I was in full control of the experience, and I felt a need to explore this experience.
Gameplay-wise, I simply think they did a lot with the mechanic at hand and that they did a good job basing the story around it. (Flowers dreaming of making the world more beautiful, consequently making their city more beautiful.) It's not a special or deep mechanic per se. It's just well implemented and integrated with the story.
I love mechanics as metaphors! Great episodes-Thanks!!
Just one of the many reasons Antichamber is my favourite game of all time.
gears at 0:21 won't work.
I guess the "Loneliness" game was lost on me, and I was part of the 5%. I just assumed that your block was some sort of repellent for the others, like magnets of the same charge repelling. I never even slightly personified them or considered myself isolated.
I thought the music was a good bit of evidence no?
Dargonhuman Despite your opinion on the music, it still told you that something unhappy was going on. You can't really deny that.
Dargonhuman I've played the company of myself but I hadn't heard of I saw her standing, thank you for the recommendation! Although they're are great games, they are a little different in nature in the fact that the message in the mechanics of those games isn't dynamic, in the fact that the way you play it doesn't have any significance to the message. This differs from Loneliness as explained in this video. But yeah, from a critical stand point, you're totally entitled to your opinion; but from a developer's analysis of games (not saying I'm a dev) you can't ignore the potential and novelty of the idea this game presents.
the point -among others- was to make you sympathize with the findings of the creator while in korea. for me, depression is a very real and terrifying thing, as is the idea of loneliness. both of these ideas/feelings are nearly perfectly summed up in this game, between the sound design and the scattering of the blocks. plus the fact that your block cannot actually interact with any others also lends to one of the fears of depression, and one of the things that is most debilitating about it.
When I was playing Loneliness, it felt like I had a disease and everyone knew it. I mostly thought this when people ran away from me and faded away if I touched them. And then when the screen began to get fogged up and there were less and less people, I kinda thought we were the only ones who survived an outbreak of something dangerous. However while playing, I did relate the game to being alone at highschool.
no worries man, and I completely agree with you on everything except the "end" part. Though they call it the end, nothing really ends. You return home and you have a dragon egg. Other than that nothing really changes. But outside of that i completely agree with you.
When I noticed the blocks, I started to wonder if there was some kind of meaning behind the story. As I ascended, the shapes the blocks formed made two distinct shapes for me, a Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. It defiantly invoked though, even if I had to be pushed to think about it and for that I think it deserves kudos.
Hooray for ThatGameCompany!
Amen.
The game "Deathloop" comes to mind. I've never seen such explicit hand holding.
KSP - hundreds of hours with no goal, just tools and a whole solar system to use them.
That version of manipulation is great (and, if you look at one of my earlier comments, you'll see it's a practice I endorse) but many films and games manipulate you in the sense that they forcibly try to put emotion on you. Many games just say "This person is your friend. Now they are dead. Oh no." The rest of the game then acts on this supposed sadness. That's not misleading to make a point (such as you said), that's presenting a sad situation and thinking that it will cause sadness.
You told us all the big twist, I'd advise against doing that in future.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is a good example of this. The game starts as a decent tactical game, but as you progress, the balance slowly slips away as a parallel to the world of the game.
Grateful for the Dr. Horrible reference.
Video games can use the mechanics as metaphor without being pretentious. I think one game no one mentions that uses mechanics as metaphor without coming off as pretentious is the Harvest Moon series. There isn't enough room for me to explain it here but I can tell you now that while the game may seem like a simple Farm-life simulator there is a deep narrative going on behind it that can really invoke emotion into a player who is allowed to be engaged within the experience.
I love how minecraft is an exception to practically every video of yours XD
Not really. The lack of a clear goal in favor of allowing the player to discover their own shows how a sense of agency is valuable in real life. If you think of Minecraft as a task that must be completed, it is no fun, but if you think of it as a chance to explore and create something from your own mind, it is awesome.
A lot of these describe Minecraft to a tee.
Steve Neiman Yeah Minecraft is like ultimate RPG. You have to kill the dragon but the way to do it is all yours
Maciej Czajka You don't even have to kill the Enderdragon, it's completely optional.
1337er Wildhead True but killing enderdrragon launches end of the game- Enderpoem and stuff. Its also only long term goal in the game. You are right its optional, but for me is kind of methaphor too. You can fulfill your mission but you dont have to. In ultimate rpg even this can be a choice
I was reluctant to play Loneliness when this game was mentioned last week.
Today, it took me three minutes to play it.
I understood what loneliness meant. And all it took was a black box in front of a white screen to show something I too am facing in my life.
Strange, isn't it?
Good grief, that "Loneliness" game had to be the most depressing thing I think I've ever played
IMO, Dishonored did this kinda well with the whole chaos system, which I at first thought merely impacted the amount of enemies and such, but as I played through it, I realized it changed everything from the narrative (the *way* the story was told) to how characters react to me as a person. I was not a murderer, thus they didn't treat me as one.
I have to show my Elder Scrolls fanboy right now. The free roaming exploration, with the option to pursue a pre-determined quest path rather than the requirement to do so, makes it so much better than it would be if the same story and settings were wholly railroaded. Hell, since Daggerfall their stated intent has been to let players use their world to build up their own story, using Tamriel and their plotlines as a backdrop.
minecraft is a game that doesnt' hold your hands. it gives you a platform to play with, and lets you figure out the rest. many people who aren't used to this think many different things, but its the challenge of surviving in the immediate enviroment that pushes that first day, and after that, each subsequent days the difficulty factor rises, yet falls at the same time. its quite a great game.
:43 Dr. Horrible?
Really nice episode, by the way!
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is another great example, and the best part is that it was probably unintentional. The balance of the game as you progress matches that of the world. Square Enix may be known for it's stories, but it's mechanics tend to fall short, so such a perfect integration was probably by accident.
but the game Loneliness has a goal that is clearly demonstrated by its mechanics. the goal being to move forward for better or worse and you can see that in its framing and movement function in which you cant move to the side and encouraged to move forward by your limited vision to going back.
i might be wrong on this but i think that the pause function in FTL and the VATS system in fallout 3 is an example of this. both of theese games have something in common. they exist in rather brutal worlds that a simple individual is given the task of saving. they are in large part about making you feel small and vounerable because everything is bigger than you, bigger ships, bigger guns, bigger enemies and so on and so forth. however they also contain an element of mastery of that world. when i could blow up a ship in teen seconds flat or pick of super mutants with two shots i felt like i was taking control of the situation. in particular when i was shut out of vault 101 a second time after getting rid of officer makc i found myself thinking: meh. the wasteland is more of a home to me now. and this balance between supression and mastery is woven into the pause and vats functions. when you are doing badly they are a reminder of how even with the ability to pause time and lock all your weapons on the enemy there are still battles you will never win because you are small and they are big. but when you are in control they remind you of how you have taken up the reins of your own destiny and shown the world whoos'e boss
Will you do apps you may not have tried? (Android, and iOS)
In Portal 1 I did not find the tiny "cake is a lie" room until playing the special stages.
I found it more to be an experience about accepting your own flaws, and choosing your own path to overcome them. For instance, I started out looking for friendship in every group. Then I began to wonder if it was me pushing them away, and not the other way around. So I avoided them for a while. But then I decided that even if that was the case, anyone truly wanting to be with me wouldn't be put off. So I joined every group, regardless of whether they left. But then the ending ruined that for me.
I noticed some of this with the current version of Kerbal Space Program. There is no campaign mode set yet, just the sandbox mode, and with that, it gives you total freedom to build your missions any way you see fit. You could make simple capsules, a fleet of rovers, a megalithic orbital station, or habitats on any of the moons or worlds you are given. Now, I don't know if this was intentional or not, but it sure as hell sucked me in
Most people see the dots as people because it is implied in the name of the game. Loneliness is a feeling. Particularly human. Implanting that word in our minds makes us introspective and consider that the dots are now lonely like we get.
So it was communicated whether intended or not.
I really think that, without name. Hell, even without text at the end, people would still personify characters. I've shown this game to non-english speaking people without saying a word about the game before. And asked them what they experienced, and they all thought of the controlled pixel as themselves and the other pixels as other people.
The way I looked at this game was that if I interacted with people I was hurting them so I started to avoid groups when I could and made sure I didn't hurt anyone else, or maybe I'm looking too deep into this.
Amnesia: the dark descent has some puzzle moments like that, too, quite a lot in fact
the vanishing of ethan carter pretty much gave exactly the kind of game that extra credits were asking for here!
Love your content. Keep up the good work!
Windfall Island Music. :D Hell yeah!
A few days ago I did see an interview with a developer from Borderlands 2, where he stated that the first game's story was told very poorly. (True, since I didn't even knew there WAS a story) And then he went on about how they have drastically improved the story-telling for the second one - by showing it in cutscenes. I lol'd. Literally.
Really awesome videos! I find them very interesting. Things i didn't even think of... I subscribed! XD
Ok thank you for your answer :)
I did not feel the same at all, but I understand your point of view.
Minecraft. Minecraft doesn't have a goal. And you know what? I love it, I've been playing it for two years now, and am still not bored. Much longer than any other game I've played.
I remember playing Halo and trying to save all of the marines. I'd grow emotionally attached to them and revert the checkpoint if they got killed. I'd give them the best weapons I could find. Oh yeah, and that one time in Halo 3 I'd do a glitch to keep Sgt. Johnson alive and somehow I got him all the way to the frigate. I kind of wish there was an alternate ending if he was alive by the end.
I did the same things with Halo Wars and Starcraft, especially on some of Starcraft's more particular use map settings maps like Raccoon City where you could rally up a very limited number of survivors and your goal was simply to survive for an hour. When some of these survivors were wounded, I'd move them to the back of the group so they could avoid taking damage. It really bothered me when they got themselves trapped and overwhelmed by the masses. I might as well have had a moment of silence.
right at 4:28 he leads into the statement with "... how to overcome in the AAA world..." and I agree that Indies can be included in the idea, though other than minecraft I can't think of any other way to make it happen . . .
Lol, my ability to enjoy Loneliness was kind of hampered by the fact that I didn't know what its title was while I was playing it, so I had no idea what those squares were meant to represent. I was actually avoiding them because they were disappearing when I scattered them, and I thought that I was destroying them.
The fog may have been born from a tech limit, but it became a part of the games mechanics. Our primary sense, what we use to interpret the world around us the most is our sight. So, areas where visibility is low are unsettling. Part of horror is being unsettled. The original devs knew this and ran with it. The devs that made the HD remake (it WAS a different team, btw) saw exactly what you're seeing; the fog's there because of technical limitations. Limits are gone, get rid of it.
Games with narratives I like to debate passionately:
- Zelda games: every game is a story about growing up. Wether it's the loss of a certain innocence (Minish Cap) or the Greystoke like story in Ocarina of Time.
- Deus Ex: how you are insulted by your enemies first calling you a fascist, then calling you a terrorist; how the ideas presented in books alude to the feelings you get from gameplay (detective stories, breaking into apartments...); the multiple and contradictory conspiracy theories...
2:50 actually, im nostalgic for those kinds of graphics.
project zomboid has a great way of adding meaning through its mechanics, it has no story giving the player control over their own narrative. all you know is, you will die. you have to manage things like boredom, hunger, drowsiness, exhaustion, panic, and other troubling things. this game literally makes you weave your own story, and it doesn't assume you're stupid, it tells you "your hungry, maybe you should get food" but not in text, but with a icon. and getting food is not easy.
Without having played them, they probably kept light fog and the falling ash but allowed you to see further still. Keeping the fog as a visual but not as an actual visual mechanic.
The only games I've played with no clear goal to them I've experienced have been Paradox Entertainment's crusader kings franchise.
the rooms in portal were not in fact inhabited by a test subject, the writings as a were ravings of one of the scientists
to travel throughout the space of the game and explore the concept of true alienation. I agree that AAA games cant easily be that general but it can be done. It is, however much easier to incorporate this into games. (Watch the episodes again to find out how, im running out of characters.)
I'd agree with you if you were specifically talking about earlier versions of minecraft. The later updates added a bunch of in-game goals and objectives and ultimately I'd say the game suffers for it. The ending, the food bar, even the achievement system which specifically tells you you can upgrade your tools take away from the game because they make it less open ended and free. All the adventure and discovery of minecraft just feels like a grind now because of it.