Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There’s not a lot of structure to vanilla Minecraft’s multiplayer. You build, you admire, you take a giant isometric screenshot and admire some more, then you discover creative mode and TNT. Then you restart the server and promise to never do that again (unless you’re 2b2t, then you just keep on going). Then someone mentions mods, and you get lost looking for something to give the game scope. There’s nothing wrong with vanilla, but if you’re looking for a server that turns the world into a more interesting place to explore, and eventually claim bits of your own, take a look at the CivCraft server.
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I should do a series of gaming mashups, but I fear Minecraft would make up 90% of the content, with the occasional visitation from Garry’s Mod. And I am far too lazy for such a thing. So instead of looking for them, I’ll just amble through servers until something strikes me as worthy. And so I was ambling through the public space of Hypixel’s server, which is actually a collection of servers tied together by a lobby, when I spotted a sign saying Quakecraft. I left the impressive lobby area, which is worth visiting even if you don’t pass through to the other servers, and into the strange world of Minecraft deathmatch.
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Mojang’s collectible digital card / turn-based strategy game Scrolls has been fairly quiet, publicly at least, since sort of winning, sort of losing their battle with Bethesda over the right to use a common English word. No longer, though – after an extended private alpha period, they’re going to put the beta on sale late next month. As with Minecraft, it’s a chance to pay less but receive an unfinished game – though it will of course receive all the updates right up to (and presumably beyond) full release.
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I think I’m right in saying that we all often worry about how Minecraft could possibly make any money. The poor folks at Mojang must be starving, freezing and wearing each other’s skin as thermal underwear by now. How many more developers must die before Notch comes up with a business model for his absurd, costly vanity project?

But what’s this? Now there is a new way for Minecraft to earn a buck or two. Mojang are planning to introduce Minecraft Realms, a paid monthly subscription service which allows the easy creation of private, controlled servers. The main aim of this is apparently to help parents keep their kids safe when playing Minecraft together online. And for said parents to pay $10-15 a month, of course.
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As RPS’ resident agricultural specialist, I feel that it’s my duty to inform you of Stardew Valley – but not for the reasons you might think. You see, my illustrious farming career didn’t begin with existential breakdowns among paradoxically lifeless fields. Oh no. Once upon a time, I tilled soils in far more colorful lands. Say what you will about its squat race of doe-eyed denizens and console-rooted nature, but Harvest Moon was kind of revelatory. It paired gradual, intoxicatingly tangible farm growth with human relationships to wildly compulsive effect. So now someone’s basically shoveling Minecraft’s exploration and customization on top of those things, and my mouth has morphed into a viscous waterfall of desire. Which is also the name of my upcoming Soap Opera. But anyway, details after the break.

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How we had hoped to see Pat Garratt enjoying a hearty feast of broiled denim and shallow-fried zipper, but it was not to be. The editor of VG247 last year swore to eat his own trousers in the event Minecraft man Markus ‘Notch’ Persson made good on his talk of funding a sequel to Double Fine’s Psychonauts. Alas, Persson has recently confessed that such a thing is not currently possible/desirable, as Double Fine’s estimated $18 million budget for the game was beyond even his mighty means (or, at least, what he considered to be a lucrative investment of his mighty means).
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People amaze me. I look at Minecraft and see a terrifying leafy, deserty, landy, watery blank slate. I’m as creative as a one year-old, and most of my acts destructive and sad. I am still rubbish at the damn game. I don’t have the brain to look at Minecraft and end up with a mod that adds a fully working basketball game to it. The people that made this are, to me, the Harlem Globetrotters of Minecraft. They’re spinning things on their fingers and wearing short shorts while chewing bubblegum. They probably majored at Globetrotter University in razzle dazzle Globetrotter calculus. I am jealous.
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The secretive world of Minecraft snapshots, the semi-official weekly updates that Mojang puts out to test the updates, delivered a doozy of an update last week. It supports animated textures. The theory goes that people will use the textures to animate small blocks. So you could have fizzing fire crawling along a Redstone circuit, or maybe a you could use it to animate a powered circuit, like the frightening magic picture above. Cool, huh? Of course, some people have to take it too far.
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