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Comment by Dylan16807 | Hacker News Reader

"sandbox game" really stretches the meaning of the term game. I'm not saying that minecraft is bad, I'm saying that what it has is not "gameplay".

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So SimCity, Rollercoaster Tycoon, Euro Truck Simulator, The Sims, etc aren't games either? Since they too are sandbox games that let the player direct the experience.

Frankly I would love to know what your definition of the term "gameplay" is because it seems unique. To me any interactive medium contains gameplay mechanics, even point-and-click adventure games do, hell even some BluRay menus could be described as having "gameply."

I even think Google's easter egg "zerg rush" (google it!) is a game and has gameplay.

You can tell if you're doing well at simcity, rollercoaster tycoon, and the sims. (I don't know anything about euro truck simulator.) Zerg rush is all about how many zerglings you kill and how much of the page is still alive. In minecraft it's all about what you feel like building and there's no objectively doing well or badly. It's hard to make a thriving sim city, it's trivial to make a giant sculpture in minecraft.

I'll put it succinctly: The main source of fun in minecraft (without mods) is the same as the original creative mode. Creative mode is a pure building-blocks toy and not at all a game. The parts of minecraft that you can call a game are unimportant compared to what's actually fun.

You can tell whether you're doing well at Minecraft if you're still alive, creepers haven't exploded in your face, and you're not starving. :D

That said, you can always play Creative mode and/or Peaceful difficulty if that's your style.

>you're still alive, creepers haven't exploded in your face, and you're not starving By that metric if I dig a hole three blocks down and cover up the top I'm doing well. Minecraft just isn't something with important objective progression. It's about doing what you want and having fun. The survival elements are mostly a thin veneer on what creative mode is. The important part of minecraft is not anything that you could call a 'game'.

You know there's a whole thing in Minecraft now where you can kill a dragon which triggers an "end screen", right? And to get to that point there is traditional game grind stuff, of collecting stuff to get equipment to get to the place where you get the stuff to get the other stuff? And there are even achievements? And that the player has health and armour?

I don't care that you don't like a game, but you're wrong and should feel bad. :p

I know that got added. In terms of time spent it's pretty much a side quest. The only thing you need to grind to get there is ender pearls, and you can easily collect them a minute or two into the game if endermen happen to spawn. You don't really need any equipment either. A wooden bow should suffice.

I do like minecraft, but the idea that the end screen represents any kind of progress wrt what you spend 95% of your time doing is ridiculous.

On SimCity and that, Will Wright tends to think of his creations as toys rather than games.

'hell even some BluRay menus could be described as having "gameply."'

Which should be a pretty sure sign that "can be described as having gameplay" isn't that meaningful.

(The problem with arguing semantics on the internet is that everyone starts obsessing about technicalities. Quake, SimCity, Minecraft and Blu-ray menus, all qualify as technically being games. And so technically qualifying as being a game is clearly irrelevant to anything interesting. It is obviously not what people usually mean by "is it a game?" and such.)

Using physical associations, think less of a "game w. rules/goals" and more of a "toy" - many great videogames actually function more like toys.

What is gameplay?

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