Minecraft: More than just playing with bricks and pickaxes

User Wordworks Experiment of the Minecraft forums recently posted up a lengthy explanation for an experiment he conducted with 30 volunteers using a limited Minecraft map. Minecraft, as you may recall, is a game of survival set in a world of blocks that can be collected and used for a variety of purposes.  Most Minecraft worlds are unlimited, the game literally fills in the world as you explore it, so you'll never find the end of the world.

But what if you imposed an artificial limitation of size and set 30 players loose on your world?

This

That barren, post-apocalyptic pit is the result after 2 months of play.

For this experiment Wordworks applied a few rules to his server:

• World chat was discouraged (world chat, for those unfamiliar, is a text messaging system that allows everyone logged into a server to see the message), but 3rd party communications were encouraged to foster the forming of factions/guilds on the server. 
• To ensure fair play the server was only available when all players were online to play.
• The space for the world was limited to a 350x350 (blocks) square of the world, blocked off by bedrock. 
• The players were told “Never leave the bedrock walls”
• The players went in without any knowledge of what the experiment was about

 According to Wordworks, "Some players realized the challenge at hand immediately, but most were unaware of how devastating the consequences of their actions would be." Devastating, as in the results when a limited pool of resources is quickly erased either by use, or by player calamity.

Clay was gone within 3 days, and trees became scarce within a week, being one of Minecraft's main resources used for buildings and tools and generally being able to progress through the game.

Soon several factions formed and began interacting with each other.

• The Brotherhood
• The Merchant's Guild
• The Axe
• The Dwarves
• and a pair of players nicknamed the "Dick-ass Griefers"

At first, Wordworks reports, the groups "co-existed peacefully with minor fights over trees and saplings," But that would change quickly. A nether portal was constructed (presumably for everyone to use, the poster doesn't make that clear) and quickly dismantled by The Brotherhood for use in their structures.

The remains of the Nether Portal

 Soon strip mining for resources and all out warfare commenced between the groups, as resources began to dwindle, particularly by the exploits of the Dick-ass Griefers. Foretelling the inevitable, the pair built themselves a floating oasis of the one resource essential to survival, dirt with grass  on it. Then they set themselves to systematically eliminating that resource from the map, as their supply of food was protected by a water ladder with a toggle switch, they could simply cut off contact with the rest of the world with a simple switch and be safe on their floating island of dirt.

Eventually, the other groups started banding together out of simple survival. The will to play had been lost by the 5th week, and Wordworks ended his post with a few simple questions and a statement:

The experiment was up before more testing could be done, but I ask you. If the walls were torn down one day and the players were free to the unlimited resources of Minecraft how would they react? Do you think they would work together and try to keep all the resources balanced or would they play the same way without regard for their environment or each other? Though in Minecrafts infinite world it would be impossible to destroy everything, do you think the disaster would slowly re-occur? I think this experiment has been a successful statement on the human condition and human interaction with the environment.

 The correlation he draws here is pretty easy to grasp, in a world with limited resources our nature, as humans, isn't to co-exist with each other or to be good stewards of our environment, but to attempt to profit, as The Merchant's Guild attempted, to isolate ourselves, as The Dwarves did, to take and hold what we can, as The Brotherhood did, or create chaos and anarchy as the Dick-ass Griefers did.

But in the end when simple survival is at risk, we can work together to achieve a common goal.

I think this experiment shows both some of the best and worst in humaninty. The best being our ingenuity and ability to come together for common goals, sometimes altruistically, and the worst being all the things previously mentioned above, our selfishness as a species.

What I also think this experiment proves is that gaming and games have evolved from simple interactive entertainment and even surpassed art as an interactive litmus test of human nature. Whatever the game the choices the players make are their own, even in those games that are linear in nature. FPS games can ask the player if they would shoot innocents in cold blood, as in the "No Russian" level of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and games like Minecraft can put a player in a myriad of different conflicts. Art can make you question and think, games can make you act. 

An episode in stupidity, and ignorance in reporting rears it's ugly head

The New York Post reported Saturday on the arrest of one Humza Bajwa on charges of second-degree robbery and larceny for pulling a fake gun in an attempt to steal 4.7 billion in RuneScape gold currency. That's fake currency people. FAKE.

Bajwa, the gamer version of a crack addict.

But that's the counter-reality to our living reality, and dismissing it out of hand would only serve to further the perception outside of gaming culture that "geeks" don't operate on the same plane of existence as the rest of society. But beyond attempted robbery (which really should be the charges here, but I suspect, since the law is slow to keep up with modern issues and technology, that he's been charged with assault) there's more going on under the surface here.


The whole incident comes across as like a bad spy novel.


For most online MMO's, the buying and selling of the in-game currency for real world money is frowned upon if not outright banned, but that's the primary motivation behind this incident, Bajwa was going to buy 4.7 billion gold from one Jonathan Dokler with his real world $3,300. Pretty standard fare right? Most transactions of this nature would occur within the online sphere via Paypal or some other money transferring system. But here's where it start to go bad tv drama episode:

Instead of transferring the money online, Bajwa allegedly wanted a face-to-face meeting — and Dokler sent his Fordham pal David Emani to collect the cash

Ok, so we've added an agent of the "dealer" and a clandestine meeting in a college library in New York. Let's take a step back for a moment, and look at this situation. I don't know about you, but I've got red flags going up everywhere already. Dude wants to buy your gold (a bannable offense). Flag One. And doesn't want to transfer the funds online but instead asks for a face-to-face. Flag Two.

Already I'm thinking this is a pass situation. But it gets better:

Emani told The Post that he met Bajwa in the school library on July 11 — and had a feeling something was wrong.

“He was transferring money from one envelope to another envelope, and I got a glimpse of it and it looked fake,” Emani said. “I was on the phone with John, and I said, ‘Don’t do it. It looks fake.'"


Toss in a sudden "I have to go" excuse, most likely from the "oh shit they're on to me" reaction on Bajwa's part, and you've got Flag Three.

No, seriously, just drop it.

But Dokler bravely pushes on, and arranges a meet the following night between his agent and Bajwa, undoubtedly hearing the sound of over $3k rustling on his bed while he waves his arms in it in his head. Instead his buddy gets a fake gun pulled on him, which he takes for the real deal.

Well said there Red

He gets a BB pulled on him, which, I dunno about you, but I think it would be pretty obvious from the size of the hole in the barrel that it wasn't a real gun. I mean, it could put your eye out or something...

goddammit kid

But there's more to this story, beyond the idiocy exhibited by all parties involved and the clear psychological issues with Bajwa, there's the mainstream media's perception of gamers and gaming. Right off the bat they're using the dismissive words like "magic" and "geek" to describe the in-game currency and the players, respectively.

Really? Are gamers still relegated to that basement-dweller image? Where everything they do is seen as childish and immature? Apparently so, at least in the eyes of the NY Post wrtiters.

Of further concern is the damage to the image of mature gamers that, like me, frown upon this sort of behavior not just because of it's social relevance but it's relevance to our hobby. Bajwa was called an addict several times during the post, but is that really accurate? I don't know personally, but it warrants attention from the medical community as well as the gaming community. How much is too much? And where do we draw the line between what is an acceptable behavior in an attempt to achieve gaming goals (particularly with MMO's) and what isn't.

Dokler says he's only selling the gold to finance his college career, but that's clearly part of the problem. Personally I think he needs to be brought up on charges as well as Bajwa, but unfortunately the legal system has not caught up with the current situation with online games and their currency.

And as long as we have people outside of the community continuing to spread the stereotypes of those who enjoy the hobby, I don't think it ever will.