I can recall exactly three games that have had a tremendous impact on my life. The three games were Grand Theft Auto:, League of Legends, and Minecraft. I chose to talk about Minecraft. The difference between the other games is that I regret spending so much time and money on League of Legends without getting much out of it. Of the three, only Minecraft still continues to impact me to this day in a mostly positive way because of all the lessons I’ve learned from it. The other two games helped enhance my Minecraft experience.
Minecraft is a blocky, family friendly social sandbox games that revolves around mining and crafting. Players are able to harvest the resources around them such as coal and wood and iron and craft it into weapons or minecarts. Players are able to build with almost every block they pick up. This made Minecraft a highly creative game as players were able to design almost every with blocks and show them off to other players. It was a perfect game for me.
League of Legends and Minecraft basically came out at the same time. My friends were very split between League of Legends and Minecraft, so I chose to play both. I was a major pirate at the time, and only played pirated copies of Minecraft, which meant I could not play online. This also meant that my primary choice for online gameplay was League of Legends. Although League of Legends was very fun, I was getting not much out of it. I did get some satisfaction of working as a team, but it was frequently killed by the general negativity of the players. I did not always enjoy the competitivity of the game, especially because I was bad at it. Also, not all of my friends played League, and if they did, we didn’t always get on at the same time and play together. It felt like a repetition of the same movements over and over again. Minecraft was fresh. At first, it was nowhere as exciting, so I disregarded it for a long time. I slowly learned tricks from my other friends who were very good at the game. I still did not enjoy the solitary experience, and in fact it was almost creepy to play alone. The release of cracked servers changed all of that. Players with pirated copies were able to log into massive servers and play together.
In the beginning of my Minecraft adventures, most servers didn’t really appeal to me. One significant event would change my entire gaming experience. A player invited me into his Minecraft home. I was a lost amatuer Minecraft player. I did not feel at all like I belonged to any of these massive 200 player servers where everyone seemed to know each other. I would have soon left the server, never to return if it wasn’t for a simple gesture. That was the first of the many lessons I have learned from Minecraft. A simple act of kindness can go a long way. As I stayed at his house during nights when monsters roamed the land, I decided to build a small underground dirt hut for myself. That’s when I had my first neighbor. Even in real life, I have never interacted with any neighbors, or even ever had a sense of community. Any gathering I went to, I felt like an outcast. The only thing closest to a community I’ve had was my church where I was frequently bullied. Minecraft was the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere.
As I enjoyed my time on this server, I invited my friends over to play. My Minecraft friends gladly got on as my League of Legends friends took some extra convincing. We set up a small village near our house. With the inclusion of mods comes a greater chance of bugs. We of course used this to exploit as much as we could. We quickly found ways to rack up a large amount of money quickly, which forced the server to redo their economy system. We were opportunists. We work well with our community until we finally had a chance to exploit it. From this I knew I should not become a politician because I knew I would be extremely corrupt.
Another value I learned from Minecraft was the most important one. The value of hard work. People have been begging the moderators to become a moderator. However, they made it clear that begging for mod would never get them mod status. I quickly understood this and never asked for mod. Instead, I got to know the server staff very well and showed them how dedicated I was to the server. I would show off my Photoshop skills on the server website where I fulfilled many graphic requests. After 2 years on the server, the administrator and owner of the server finally gave me moderator status. It was never a primary goal of mine, as I was only interested in helping the server be better and more fun. This was exactly how I determined how I promoted somebody. I never liked the people that showed off how helpful they were being and those that frequently requested moderator status. Instead, I liked those who quietly helped the community in ways. Some offered help and shelter to other players, some helped build, and some were mayors of their little towns. These people showed me that they had what it takes to both help and lead a community, and was not doing it just for the position. Just work hard and you will be noticed for your work, don’t try to get people to notice your little work that you have done.
The first thing I did as moderator was create games and mazes for the server to play. I hosted many public events and allowed them to compete for prizes. The server loved this very much. It was unlike most of the previous moderators that do their own things and only acted when complaints arise. I understood very on that people don’t log into a Minecraft server to solely play by themselves. I fostered the community as much as I could. I felt that I was only simply taking advantage of the game that Minecraft was. I realise now that I was being a game designer.
I wanted to create as many public spaces as possible so players could meet together and socialize, which only I was interested in doing. I created public markets and public malls. I was creating experiences that I enjoyed for the players. This was where I really learned about myself and my game design ability, which was that it was still limited. I would not be able to create these games without help of my friends and the community, where I learned how to successfully organize a team for events and get them to work together. Management of a game was a skill that came out of this experience.
I was working on a big project, but I needed help. That’s when I did something that was controversial. I gave secretly gave my friends special privileges such as the ability to spawn items. We would go around the server and completely destroy the economy by spawning things that we were not supposed to. I found many exploits in the moderation system, and took advantage of it as much as possible as I knew I would do. Yet, I had the funness of the server in mind as I kept working on big projects for the server to enjoy. I also tried to help new players as much as possible because I knew how important that initial experience was. Just as I felt invited the first time I logged in, In my view, I did everything for the greater good, aside from stealing from players to increase our personal banks. This is an important political lesson as well. When in power, no matter how good you are, the temptation to exploit is always there. I took full advantage of it. I was soon banned from the server for these exploits, causing nearly 3 years of work to go downhill. The server soon died after I left as none of the other moderators cared too much about the server. It was a sad experience to go through, but I’m glad I learned so much out of it.
Digg & Dagg 