Blog Revisited: "6 Reasons Why I Think Minecraft Is Overrated"

In November 2022, I published a blog titled "6 Reasons Why I Think Minecraft Is Overrated". In that blog, I listed six different reasons I disliked Minecraft. However, to my surprise, it was almost instantly met with negative reception after release, with quite a few people pointing out their own opinions on the game and the blog. In response to this, I changed the blog's visibility to "unlisted", but it turns out that hasn't completely stopped people from coming in and throwing negative reviews at it. Now, nearly three years later, I finally feel like revisiting that blog and trying to give a better opinion on the most popular video game of all time.

Let's start with this first part:

"Most modern video games have modern resolutions, like 720p, 1080p, or even 4K. What about Minecraft? Well, it's PIXELATED. Every single block is composed of pixels that are large enough to be visible to (and distinguishable by) the naked eye. And what about the skybox, is it any better? Of course not! Clouds have straight edges and sharp angles, the sun is square, and the moon and its phases are so poorly recreated. Needless to say, these graphics are no match for those of most other video games of the modern times."

As several people pointed out in the comments, this is supposed to be the way Minecraft looks - not because it can't be high-res, it just doesn't want to be. In other words, it's a matter of design choice, not a lack of capability. Revisiting this part, I can only say that I don't like this type of graphics. They don't suck - they just aren't my cup of tea.

Moving on to the second part, related to crafting:

"Crafting is an essential part of Minecraft, and it's unavoidable if you want to make progress in the game. However, the recipe system is very beginner unfriendly. To craft an object, you must put the correct ingredients on the crafting table, but exactly what's needed to craft each object is completely undocumented in the game and very hard to remember. This adds to people's ever-increasing difficulty to remember things, affecting their productivity in real life."

I am by no means a die-hard fan of Minecraft, and I haven't played it much, so it doesn't come as a surprise that there's certain aspects of the game I know nothing about. In this section I mentioned a lack of a crafting guide, but people told me in the comments that you can either search it up or use a sort of "recipe book" available in certain versions of the game. Sorry for being blind.

The next part is related to physics in Minecraft:

"As you probably know, all objects near the Earth's surface have gravitational forces exerted on them, which cause them to fall towards the ground. This scientific law does not apply in Minecraft (for most blocks, at least), so it's possible to create "floating" blocks in the game. While this may come in handy from time to time, it does not accurately reflect what happens in the real world, and therefore physics are pretty much non-existent in Minecraft."

I admit that I was being too picky here. As people said in the comments, loads and loads of video games don't follow the laws of physics, and no one really cares about it. Minecraft isn't a simulation game, and they're not aiming for 100% realism.

The next reason has to do with timekeeping in Minecraft:

"In reality, humans started developing the earliest calendars as soon as their civilization dawned. What about in Minecraft? Well, you don't have an official calendar to follow. In fact, not even the day number is shown! Therefore, if you want to know how many days (or weeks, months, years) you've spent in the game, you must keep track of it manually, which can be tiresome and prone to errors. In addition, the fact that you must stay below the ground when mining makes this process even more difficult and error-prone."

Several people pointed out that there is a day counter in Minecraft, which is displayed by pressing the F3 key. Previously, I had never used or even heard of this feature, because again, I don't play a lot of Minecraft. Sorry for being blind again.

Moving on to the next part:

"We play video games because we want to achieve something in them in order to give ourselves some bragging rights. Can you do that in Minecraft? Yes you can, but the objective may be hard to discover. To win the game, you must defeat the ender dragon. However, some players (especially beginners) are completely ignorant about this, and as a result, they just play the game on and on without a real goal. What's the point of playing a video game if you don't even have an objective to achieve in the game?"

I was talking total nonsense here. Many video games don't have an objective - think The Sims 4 and Euro Truck Simulator 2, two of my favorite games. People also mentioned in the comments that this is what a sandbox game is - no objective, just play endlessly. These games are fun in a unique way, even if you're not aiming for anything.

(Also, this is probably unrelated, but fun fact: games without a goal are technically toys, not games.)

Last but not least, the final reason:

"Believe it or not, I actually have thought about playing Minecraft for years and years without stopping, and I did my best to make progress towards it, but I failed. The game itself is just boring. It's the same thing over and over again: get stuff, make something out of it, then get more stuff. And like I said, there's no real objective. The map may be large (huge, in fact), but it's incredibly hard to travel across it to get the best experience and the scenery quickly gets repetitive."

Well, what game is not boring if played continuously for long enough? I also said that Minecraft is "the same thing over and over again", but does that mean all other games aren't? Isn't your own life the same thing over and over again? Those are just a few of the many reasons that this argument is untenable. Also, does Minecraft really get boring that fast? I think I might need to put a question mark on that upon revisiting this part.

That blog was without a doubt one of the worst things I posted on JetPunk in the past few years. I don't remember exactly what my real intention was, but I think I was just trying to say that I didn't like the game. True, I didn't like Minecraft, and I still don't enjoy it much by now. But some of the arguments I made in that blog were either totally nonsensical or simply not defendable.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who gave constructive criticism to the blog, including ItzIngenious (aka MiecraftMan), Neodymium and BautyArg. This "revisited" blog would not have been possible without you.

Thank you for reading.