

Minecraft experiment devolves into devastating resource war - SuperChihuahua
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/21/minecraft-experiment-devolves-into-devastating-resource-war/

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sp332
There is some indication that this was a hoax:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/yh1ip/closed_map_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/yh1ip/closed_map_experiment/c5vokln)

~~~
Zimahl
I agree with hoax just due to the fact that there's a lot of fail in this
article.

First, grass doesn't matter. Wheat matters, and you don't need grass to grow
wheat. For those that don't know, you need to eat or you'll die and wheat can
be used to make bread. But there's plenty of stuff to eat, including renewable
zombie flesh.

Second, while there are a few blocks that aren't renewable, there are plenty
that are. Wood and cobblestone are completely renewable. And a lot of blocks
aren't renewable but never used up. You should have just as much dirt in the
world when you end as when you begin, unless it gets blown up by creepers or
thrown into lava.

And you hardly need to build on a mountain and then cut away the mountain.
Just build up and outward.

Eventually you should end up with people using only wood tools and be
completely out of interesting materials. It would just be boring at that
point.

~~~
eridius
Wow, you actually need to eat now? Minecraft sure has changed since I last
played it. Back then, food was only used to restore health, and even then I'd
usually just strip bare and jump off a mountain to respawn.

~~~
Zimahl
The change was that you no longer eat to renew health, you have a food bar
that when full, or close to full, results in you being able to regenerate
health. Doing nothing doesn't cause you to lose food points, but walking,
sprinting, mining does and at various levels (sprinting burns more food than
walking).

At first the food mechanic was a little annoying but it has added a nice touch
to the game. You tend to be a little more careful than before and you have to
devote a little more time to food resources. But this is slightly configurable
based on the difficulty setting as well.

~~~
eridius
Neat. Maybe I should try the game again. Although this doesn't really solve my
primary problem which is I never really had any good idea as to what I should
actually do in the game, besides build a random house on some random hilltop
and admire the view.

~~~
jere
>I'd usually just strip bare and jump off a mountain to respawn.

You'll be pleasantly surprised to know this is more of a viable option than it
used to be. It's quite hard to fill up your food bar once empty, but quite
easy to jump off a cliff to reset it.

>I never really had any good idea as to what I should actually do in the game,
besides build a random house on some random hilltop and admire the view.

I think everyone has this question. I tried to solve it by setting personal
goals for myself:

1\. build a complex redstone circuit; here's one of mine:
<http://youtu.be/qnd9l2_qrF0>

2\. craft a map (which can only be filled in by exploring the surrounding
area) and fill it in completely

If you decide to try to "beat" the game, be warned that it's rather boring and
anticlimactic. Probably the coolest part is it forces you to explore the
"Nether".

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jballanc
True or not, the outcome described here is so typical, so ordinary that it
even has a name: "Tragedy of the Commons".

You can read more here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons>

~~~
Dylan16807
That kind of comparison doesn't work because you can't get a tragedy of the
commons situation in minecraft. All you really need is wood and stone, trees
regrow extremely quickly, and stone is effectively infinite.

~~~
nrlucas
"Within a week, trees were in short supply."

If you're implying minecraft in general, then yes. Otherwise in this
particular case, resources seemed to be all finite.

~~~
Sukotto
The following things are "infinite" if you forbid exploration into new areas:

* Water

* Lava Flows (Sources are finite)

* Wood/charcoal: if you have enough saplings and dirt.

* Cobblestone: if you have lava and water in the correct arraignment

* Wheat: if you have enough seeds and dirt

* Fish: if you have water

* Neutral-Monster items: for those monsters you can breed if you maintain the habitat

* Aggro-monster items

I believe that's it

~~~
jlgreco
There are a few random others. Apples should be infinite, since they come from
trees. Other plant-ish things as well, like melon or pumpkin, provided you
have any in the first place.

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debacle
Seems very embellished. From what I know of minecrafters, it's very likely
they would have flattened the ground, set up a tree farm, and starting
communally building within the first hour or so of play.

The only competition would have been for highly scarce materials, however the
other key point is that it's trivial to make another nether portal once you
have access to the nether.

~~~
stephengillie
The claim that "the other team tore down the portal to use in their castle" is
ridiculous. No veteran minecrafter would destroy a nether portal just to use
it in their castle wall. If anything, they would just make the portal _into_
the castle wall.

~~~
sukuriant
Or torn out a single segment and them opened another portal, thereby creating
two portals in the Nether and another whole portal worth of obsidian... that's
just my experience with portals from many many months ago, though.

~~~
stephengillie
You're exactly right - as long as the portal was rebuilt far enough away (or
take down the first portal), it's literally a way of generating more
(obsidian) blocks in the world.

Or work with a friend, have that person take out the portal's nether entrance,
then just restart the normal portal = boom, 14 more bricks.

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milesskorpen
I'm wondering what kept people playing ... sounds like a recipe for mass
desertion, unless they were paid / forced to play / something else. I imagine
it was something else, which might also explain the end result. This doesn't
seem to be the natural order of things.

Also, I wonder how large this box is. Given the size of the griefer base in
the image, the whole 'world' seems pretty small.

~~~
reustle
It was 350x350

~~~
Groxx
350x350 would keep 30 people busy for what, a couple hours? Certainly not
weeks.

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ssdsa
How can the "griefers" operate from their floating base? How are they able to
leave the floating platform to get to the ground and back? And why couldn't
the players of the other guilds simply take the same way up onto the floating
base?

~~~
daveid
In Minecraft you can swim up a stream of falling water. The griefers used a
lever to open/close the stream down to the ground. I assume one of the
griefers had to stay up there and operate that lever.

~~~
Lexarius
Since everyone was always online at the same time, it would also be easy-ish
to defend the island if anyone tried to build a pillar to reach it. A bow and
convenient sniping platforms could knock attackers down. Lava-based murder
holes in the underside could be used to defend blind spots.

~~~
marvin
You could concievably lay siege to it. That would be really interesting to
watch. Seems like a minority of the players were in the griefing camp. So the
majority could coordinate an attack where they built staging platforms
successively higher, with similar attack vectors.

But this would be very hard, since the "griefers" had both lots of resources,
weapons and the advantage of the high ground.

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jfb
Whether or not this particular anecdote is real or fantasy, Minecraft seems
like an excellent platform for running studies in e.g. experimental economics.
This sort of reminds me of the plague in World of Warcraft, which although the
byproduct of a game bug, yielded actual data about the spread of epidemics.
Nifty!

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ricardobeat
Couldn't they have stepped outside the bedrock wall after building a nether
portal, or does it extend "underground"? Finding another portal in the nether
would lead you back to a different point on the surface.

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lazugod
These comments read like a game forum, rather than HN.

~~~
jewbacca
The mechanics of this game specifically, as well as the emergent social
dynamics of online gaming, are plenty relevant to this story. I can't think of
how else you could discuss it.

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droithomme
Hm. What did they do with the dirt, eat it? The idea they somehow consumed all
the dirt in the game is questionable.

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driverdan
For those interested in playing on a map like this there's now a subreddit for
limited size servers: <http://www.reddit.com/r/limitedservers/>

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maayank
"During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they
are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against
every man." --Thomas Hobbes

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eschulte
I wish minecraft had to pay royalties to dwarf fortress.

~~~
Auguste
Why? They are completely different games that share a few similar themes
(mining & construction).

Minecraft owes more to Infiniminer, but it has been its own game ever since
development on Survival Mode started.

