Mine Craft is Your Craft (Sayyae)

## Introduction

The world is rapidly changing today and video games are becoming way more popular than ever before. This new medium is taking story telling to a whole knew level. A level of interaction and making your own story along the way. When people think about literature they think about something well know such as How to Kill a Mocking Bird. However, that is not all there is to this, literature is defined as something more simple. Literature defined by dictionary.com is "writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays." or in other words it means anything you write with meaning. Video game are something that most people have a hard time considering Literature or even art. Video games are in fact art for many reason that can easily be proved with the right information under your belt.

### Gameplay

Minecraft is a sandbox game that lets your imagination be the limit."Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. At first, people built structures to protect against nocturnal monsters, but as the game grew players worked together to create wonderful, imaginative things." Breaking these blocks that make up the game are at first simple as using your fist. As the game progresses you can craft items such as the pickaxe, axe, and shovel. These tools help the game go by fast by allowing to break the blocks faster than using your fist and in some cases allow you to break blocks that your fist aren't strong enough the break on there own. Once you collect the block that you want to get you have the ability to place them where ever you please to build different structures. Most people start by building themselves a home to live in and store all there items at. After a while the itch to build comes back though and you want to go build even more different and crazy buildings. People have gotten really creative with this and have even made things such as full scale cities!

## Remediation

In the terms of Humanities Remediation is something that has done from one medium to another over time. When the game Minecraft first came out it was only for the PC. It was first released on PC on May 17, 2009 in Alpha version. When a game is in alpha this means that it is not the full game that is being released. It is one of the first versions of the game made and the game developers usually warn the user before buying it that it will most likely have bugs and problems while they are playing. The full game wasn't actually released on PC until November 18, 2011. Because of the success that Minecraft was having they released a Android version of the game for people to play on their phones and tablets on October 7, 2011 with the IOS version following in its foot steps a month later.

The phone versions of these games were supposed to be a big hit. However, most every Minecraft player was disappointed to find out that the mobile edition of the game is many (even today) updates behind the game on the PC. Trying play a game such as Minecraft on your phone was no easy take, the controls were awful.

### Consoles

A couple months later something big happened to Minecraft, it had finally come to the consoles. On May 9, 2012 it came to the Xbox 360. This made the game available to a lot of people that didn't have access to the game before. Since it was a fairly hard game to run on a PC, the Xbox 360 was the best option for most people that wanted to play it. The Xbox 360 ruled the Minecraft day for quite some time on console, mainly because it did not come out on

another console for over a year and a half later. On December 17, 2013 Minecraft finally came out for the PlayStation 3. If you were getting a new console you didn't have to wait very long, because this time Minecraft came out for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on October 14, 2014. The game has continued to grow and grow with its fan base and has sold well over a million copies of the game. Soon the last console to get Minecraft will be the new Wii U. It is rumored to come out on December 17, 2015 just in time for the Holidays.

It seemed like every new system that Minecraft came to only made it bigger, you'd see it blow up even more than before, It was everywhere. Minecraft made a huge impression, now it is hard to find someone that doesn't know what Minecraft is let alone someone that has never played it. As the game got bigger some and more stuff has come out to keep the fans happy. You can get all kinds of different merchandise from shirts, to lego building blocks, to torch lamps, to almost anything you can think of!

### Minecon

There is even a MineCon now which is a convention that Mojang holds for all the fans the fans to come to here about all the new releases for the game that year. They also have "tons of panels, lots of exhibitors showing off cool things they are doing with Minecraft, and a bunch of interactive attractions during the events." There is also a huge party one night for everyone that goes! While of course keeping them entertained with different shows with the makers of the game and concerts like Deadmau5. They also receive in game items that you can only get by going to the convention that year.

## Authorial Intentions

Authorial Intentions are usually what the creator of the game intend for the game to be like compared to what the community actually does and thinks about the game. However Minecraft is a little different, it is a sandbox game. Sandbox games are meant to be experienced differently by every person that plays them. He just provides you with what the game, but the intentions are something that are up to you. That is the best part of Minecraft you can just do whatever you feel like doing.

### Building

Building in Minecraft is the most common thing to do. If you play to play survival you are dropped in the middle of an open world that is never ending and beautiful. However, at night you have to deal with Monsters such as spiders, skeletons, zombies, and creepers. If you don't want to spend your time trying to fight off these creatures all night long you need to build something that can hide in overnight so you don't die and lose all of your items. The most common thing to start with is a house. As you progress in the game however you can get into building crazier things such as huge churches or even cities if you have high ambitions. There is a different mode you can pick when starting up a world called creative. Creative mode allows you to fly around freely and to not get hurt by the different monsters in the game. You can also pick any block you want and put it in your hand to build with. If you are looking to just build different things without having to go look for them throughout the map or without the risk of dying this is how you want to do it.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to Minecraft especially when it comes to online play on different servers. You can join different games that people have made within the game of Minecraft giving you many more options to

### Online Games

choose from. A crowd favorite that most people jump on when a open game is available is "survival games." This is a game meant to copy the popular series the hunger games. You are put in a arena with 23 other player and lose the ability to break blocks. Everything you need such has weapons and food are hiding around the map for your to find and assist you when coming face to face with other players. The last person standing is the winner of survival games.

Adventure maps are something has taken Minecraft by storm. Adventure maps are maps that have been made by the community that has been made to tell a story. They are like adding a purpose behind playing Minecraft. This is really big for people that make videos on YouTube because it gives their audience something new to follow along with instead of them just watching them build something. Some of these Adventure maps get in dept making stories and maps that can take days to completely. One of the most popular adventure maps is called The Dropper, although it doesn't have much of a story. It is a map where you start are the top of a really be drop and the objective is to get to the bottom without hitting anything on your way down.

Minecraft was recently updated to add a new world classed The End. The End is a completely new world that you find inside of strongholds randomly generated throughout the world. In The End you fight the boss called the Ender Dragon, this dragon is something you need to train and be ready for once you get there. High grade armor and weapons are highly recommended to beat this boss. Once the Ender Dragon is defeated you have "Beaten" survival. However, you will spawn back into the normal world and be allowed to continue building as though nothing has happened.

## Knowledge Communities

### Community Help

The communities for Minecraft is what the game is really all about. Without it you will probably send countless hours just trying to figure the game out. When you are trying to craft something such as a pickaxe you have to craft it inside of of the crafting bench. A crafting bench is a 3x3 square that allows to put different items in those squares to make different items in the same. However, the game kind of throws you in blind and you doesn't tell you any of these recipes. This is where the community comes into play, if you want to figure most things out you need to get on the Minecraft wikia. Here you can find out how to find everything inside the game and it also tells you how to craft all the different things you need to make. The community forum has blown up because of this! It is really common for people of all ages to come on there and ask questions about the game and to figure out what to do. There is also information about many other subjects on the forum to learn about such as the recent changes to the game. It also has detailed information about all the achievements, blocks, items, biomes, enchanting, enemies, trading, and etc. in the game.

#### Mods

Something that is much more common in Minecraft than any other game that I've seen so far is that the modding community is much bigger. The maker of the game Notch once said this when asked about modding “Personally, I used to feel threatened by it as I felt it challenged my “vision,” but on the other hand, I also know how wonderful mods are for games. We decided to just let it happen, and I’m very happy we did. Mods are a huge reason of what Minecraft is.” The modding community has been a huge factor in Minecraft, since so many people in the game use them to improve their gaming experience. A lot of the new features that have been added to Minecraft as a normal thing to happen in the game were once mods that you had to add yourself! This just shows how much the modding community had made an impact on the game!

#### Online Communities

One of the best ways to experience Minecraft is with other people playing with you. The online communities are very involved and willing to help you along the way. Playing alone in a game like Minecraft can be peaceful and exciting at first, but after a while it can get scary and difficult. The best way to make a game like this have a little more spunk to it is to play online. You can even have mods online that make it a lot better experience! One of the most common mods is a mod that adds currency to game. This allows you to sell items that you have collected for in-game money that you can spend on other items that players have collected. It's a whole new factor to the game that changes it for the better.

One of the newest features to Minecraft that we haven't seen in any other game yet is the ability to play cross platform. Now if you are a PC player you can play with the people that have the game on the Xbox One. The only thing that is needed for this to happen is for the PC player to have the new windows 10 and the new windows 10 edition of Minecraft to play with their Xbox One friends. This brings two different communities together for the first time!

## References

1. ↑ Dictionary for Literature
2. ↑ Gameplay
3. ↑ MineCraft Wiki
4. ↑ MineCon
5. ↑ Mineplex Survival Games Server Forums
6. ↑ Minecraft Wiki
7. ↑ Notch's Quote