Minecraft (in English)

Read in an article about Minecraft:

"We're thrown into the world (as Heidegger would say), a senseless world that doesn't need us to exist and in which we're free to do whatever we want. The first experience of Minecraft is the absolute freedom of man in a godless world. Because, you see, most video games presuppose a god who judges us and rewards us with rank, points or access to further levels. Minecraft is perhaps the first atheistic FPS. Devoid of teleology, Minecraft's worlds only take on meaning in the relative experience of each player. One person will make sense of the world through the libido sciendi that makes him explore the world and its subsoil; another will indulge in the libido dominandi and build himself a castle from which to dominate the world. But everyone is free to give the world the meaning they wish. In this fundamental relativism, we find an echo of Lovecraft's personal philosophy."

Indeed, Minecraft throws us into an infinite world (literally, almost: I've just read that the game's surface area is equivalent to eight times that of planet Earth), overwhelming even by its sheer size, and menacing, if you choose survival mode: night falls incessantly, the days fly by, and as soon as darkness returns, monsters prowl – zombies, spiders, skeletons, with terrifying sound effects. During the day, you keep hiding, digging for minerals, chopping wood and trying to build a shelter.

Minecraft is the opposite of adventure: no beginning, no end, and even less of a moral; nothing uplifting, nothing instructive (except about nothingness, loneliness), nothing joyful – it's a game that, for a whole host of reasons I won't go into, seems to me to be very much in the spirit of our age: nihilistic and survivalist.

One of the first words that came to mind when talking about Minecraft with a friend who's an addict himself (and who doesn't agree with me at all, as everyone projects their own psychological and moral issues onto the games they play) was the adjective "humiliating".

Humiliating to see myself reduced to the survival, fear and paranoia that the game conjures up with incredible ease. Humiliating to be nothing in this infinite universe. Humiliating to see myself teleported, by the most advanced means of technical civilization, into a state of complete destitution and vulnerability (whereas Sapiens on Amstrad took us on a journey into prehistory, with its violence but also its poetry – something totally absent here). It's the opposite of adventure, yes, and the opposite of gaming, even – like Second Life.

Playing Minecraft has been a deeply unpleasant experience for me so far: even if I set the difficulty to the lowest level, i.e. no monsters at all, I find that I'm still neurotically breaking rocks and building impregnable fortresses, under the ground or high up, diverting watercourses, struggling on, waiting for night to fall, this starless night with no source of light for those who don't have torches in their inventory – hopeless. A completely obsessive, autistic activity that no longer even has a purpose, since the need for survival has disappeared – I'm only realizing this now, after several days.

So I've decided to approach the game from a different angle: difficulty at zero, no attempt to build anything. I'll be a "pure spirit" traveling on the surface of the world.

To make this world my own by simply denying the existence of danger, fear and necessity. To deny the night.

I also note that on a collective scale, since there is a multiplayer mode, resistance is being organized – that of the spirit, of the human, of civilization. I don't think anyone really wants to play Minecraft the way it is when it opens. And I'm quite fascinated by this phenomenon: a game of survival, in a blank, unforgiving, mute space, which gradually becomes a multi-player world where a civilization, cities, an economy and a social hierarchy emerge (as on Minefield, where you can become a citizen of an authentic city, get a job, put your money in the bank...).

Somewhere between Second Life and an RPG, Minecraft is changing its nature, and that's great news. Godard said that dolly shots are about morality; I think gameplay is too. Video games confront us with metaphysical and moral universes, and it's important to make a choice, as in "real life", between what we accept and what we don't accept.