this one might be a bit disjointed; i have a lot of thoughts and i don’t necessarily know that they’ll be linked together comprehensively.
so, hytale released into early access just a few days ago. i’ve been playing it, and it’s been a lot of fun! the world is beautiful, the variety in mobs and blocks is amazing, and the movement mechanics are incredibly fun. it’s mind-boggling to me that hytale’s early access possibly has more content than minecraft did six years into its production cycle.
it makes me think a lot about minecraft, in fact. not to sound rude, but it makes me particularly think of all the ways minecraft is lackluster in this modern era of gaming.
it’s not that minecraft is a bad game - i won’t personally say it’s a good game, because my tastes and my standards have changed. i don’t personally enjoy minecraft any more. i very much used to! i was one of the early players, way back in 2011, when i was 11 years old. it was a lot of fun then, when i was young and new to video games. an endless world where i could build whatever i wanted?! amazing!
but as the years have gone by, minecraft has stagnated. they add “new content” but it feels like they’re sticking fat back on the meat. is it a survival game? is it a sandbox game? is it a nature preserve? is it a horror game? it seems that minecraft itself - the developers at mojang - cannot settle on one theme for the game. it used to be fun, but nowadays everything feels needlessly complex and overwhelming.
minecraft tries to be many things, and in my opinion, i think it fails at most of them by and large. some people may read this and go “bu bu but- but- the modding scene! you can turn minecraft into anything!” and to that i say: how good is a game if the only way to enjoy it is to mod it beyond recognition? is minecraft really that good if you can only have fun with a 250+ piece modpack? when was the last time you played vanilla minecraft on its own for more than a couple of days at best?
minecraft doesn’t promote itself as a survival game, and it doesn’t lean into any survival aspects. you have health and hunger but that’s really it. there are soft elements of fantasy, but it’s more of a backdrop to the world than something that’s actively in your face about it being fantastical.
minecraft is the discount art set of the gaming world. minecraft is the twenty dollar case of art supplies that you buy for a kid that says they want to do art - the one with cheap pastels, cheap oils, some off-brand acrylics and pencils and waxes and erasers. it’s not bad! it’s a great, simple way to let someone experiment and see if they want to get into it more. it’s not too risky to drop money on if it turns out you don’t like it.
but for most people - and definitely for anyone who would be experienced or “professional” - it’s plainly not the right quality. very rarely would you catch a top-tier artist still using a cheap walmart box of art supplies - as they grow their skills and their interest, they want and need better tools.
and the better tools - the better games - the ones that improved on minecraft? the ones that leaned into the aspects that minecraft only treats as a flavor? in my eyes, those games are vintage story and hytale.
minecraft is a sandbox with a canvas of blocks to build what you want and a framework to modify the game how you want. vintage story and hytale were both started as minecraft modifications; the Vintagecraft mod, which pushed the survival aspect harder, and the hypixel server, with all of its minigames and modifications. both of these people felt restrained by the cheap collection of supplies that minecraft gives you, and they separated themselves to create their own games that blast minecraft out of the water.
vintage story is an excellent survivalcraft game. i adore survival games; project zomboid, green hell, surrounded, dead in vinland. there’s plenty of variety to be had, and i appreciate that vintage story has carved a niche in voxel survival.
in minecraft, the extent of “survival” is “keep yourself fed.” there is no temperature mechanic or hydration or really anything beyond that. vintage story, on the other hand… not only do you have to manage hunger, but there is a built-in nutrition system. it’s not just “eat food, get health,” it’s “if i want maximum health regeneration, i need to make sure to balance my nutrition so i get max meat, vegetables, fruit, and dairy.” there’s temperature - you need to start a fire or there’s a chance you’ll die of frostbite.
aside from the inherent survival mechanics, of literally having to keep yourself alive, vintage story also requires you to engage with the world. you don’t just build a crafting table and then you can make all of your tools - no, you have to explore and find clay, so you can make clay molds for your tools. you need to explore and find copper and tin and zinc and melt them down in a crucible and mix them in the right percentages to make metal alloys. the world itself is built on a realistic temperature scale; the further north you go, the more cold biomes you find. the further south you go, the more hot and humid it gets.
vintage story succeeded minecraft’s halfhearted attempt at survival. when i was eleven, vintage story was what i imagined minecraft could’ve become. nowadays, i feel disappointed when i try to play minecraft - if i’m in the mood for a block building game, i usually opt for vintage story instead.
there’s something to be said about the appeal of survival. it’s a recurring game genre - it’s not uncommon for people to enjoy it. there’s the social commentary to be had about people’s want to go back to basics, to be free of the system and to be free to live how they want. it would be exhausting, but at least it would be rewarding - to not have to answer to a boss, not being scared of being evicted, only being afraid of the elements and having to tangibly figure out how to cope with your situation.
i think it’s a pretty even divide between people who turn up their nose at the difficulty of it, people who have grown accustomed to the luxury of capitalism, the comfort of fancy beds and cute clothes and having pre-made food, as opposed to the people who do fantasize about living off the grid, foraging for resources, and establishing themselves. realistically, i couldn’t survive well on my own in the wild - i have a lot of health and mental issues that make me struggle to eat in the first place. it’s almost definite that i would starve if i tried to live off the grid.
but video games offer a different way to indulge the same fantasy. you can load into a world teeming with life - plenty of animals to hunt, and plants to forage. resources to pick up and cobble tools together with relative ease, as opposed to how difficult they would be in real life. a gamified challenge. a way to explore the freedom that you don’t have access to - a world where none of these systems exist, or if they did, they’re long gone and destroyed. there are no bosses or cops or politicians to control you or dictate how the world will work.
and, on the other hand…
as opposed to the idea of thriving in a world designed to kill you, the concept of building from the dirt until you have tools and a house and an armory to back you up, there is the other end of the same kind of fantasy - except, well… fantasy-coded. this might even be more popular than the survival fantasy - i mean, there are dozens, hundreds, probably even thousands of games built on the fantasy worlds of elves and dwarves and dragons. final fantasy; baldur’s gate; dragon quest; atelier ryza.
rather than being a powerless, perhaps even nameless person, fighting against the tide of survival… you are powerful, in a similarly lordless world. hytale fulfills this end of the fantasy that minecraft only suggests to you. even with the simplest tools and weapons, you feel powerful. the way your sword or your mace moves conveys a sense of energy and impact even if they’re low-tier.
it’s further facilitated by the movement mechanics present in the game. as opposed to minecraft’s slow 1-block jump and 4/bps walk speed, hytale has you moving faster and jumping higher. you jump two blocks high, and if you tap space again, you can haul yourself up a 3-block incline. the spike of mobility absolutely helps solidify this sense of power and control - especially when you become familiar with the physics of the game and figure out how far you can really move.
it’s not so much about being free from a system that exhausts you - it lends more into a sense of excitement and wonder. you are powerful, you are swift, and the world is laid out before you. it beckons you to explore and find riches and armor yourself up to face its challenges, because you know you will surmount them. they are incredibly similar, but it comes down to how you interact with the environment.
rather than struggling and feeling scared of the animals and other creatures that are stronger than you and bigger than you… even if you are small, you are in a world overflowing with resources of every kind, ripe for the taking. even if a challenge can’t be undertaken at the time, you know it’s just within your reach. nothing can stop you, in the end. this is your world, and one way or another, it will bend to your will.
it’s an incredibly fascinating dynamic to reflect on and realize. that some people fantasize about being powerless in a way to carve their own path, but in the opposite ideal with the same goal, other people fantasize about being so powerful that nothing can stop them from carving their own path.
some way or another, it seems that everyone dreams about freedom.