

Urbanisation in Minecraft - rcfox
http://crafthub.net/2011/07/22/urbanisation-in-minecraft/

======
larrik
All I could think of while reading was the old "limited life experience +
over-generalization = advice" even though there's no actual advice here.

But I mean, "The more intelligent of you reading this article have also
probably noticed something similar to my various observations." WTF?

I don't see what this has to do with real-life urbanization, either. The
architect built a city no one wanted, so they made suburbs. So what?

~~~
lotharbot
> I don't see what this has to do with real-life urbanization, either.

The problem on the server in this article isn't "urbanization", it's a failure
to create appropriate infrastructure for the task at hand.

The repeated question and answer pair of "where are the trees?" "Try the edge
of town" suggest limited Minecraft-life experience, and probably limited life
experience in general. Had they simply set up a policy of "every time you
harvest a tree, replant two saplings" there soon would have been a large
enough tree farm to satisfy all 50 players, as trees in Minecraft grow quite
fast. Had players built deep mining tunnels and used any of the common mining
techniques [0], they'd have had all the cobblestone (and various other ores)
they wanted, without stepping on each others' toes. Instead, they were so
short on resources that they felt it necessary, when fleeing their initial
city, to salvage _torches_ \-- which are quite easy to create in bulk.

For comparison, my mostly adult gaming clan runs an invite-only Minecraft
server. We've built up a ton of infrastructure -- a five-acre ranch [1], a
greenhouse, mushroom farms, tree farms, strip mines, and monster farms, so we
have easy access to virtually every type of resource. Everything is
interconnected via rail lines or portals, so material transport is not an
issue. If someone decides they'll need a lot of a particular type of material,
we set up a system to allow us to harvest that material in large quantities.
This allows us to build ambitious projects fairly quickly. This is typical of
well-run Minecraft servers.

[0]
[http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Mining_Technique...](http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Mining_Techniques#Methods_2)
[1] <http://ripminecraft.blogspot.com/2011/04/tomcat-ranch.html>

~~~
palish
Why is it fun at that point?

(Honest question. Please don't take it any other way.)

~~~
lotharbot
I think of Minecraft (SMP) as having three distinct aspects (or phases):

1) Surviving the zombie hordes long enough to set up an initial base of
operations

2) Beginning to explore and build out infrastructure

3) Building cool, large-scale stuff

I personally find all three of these aspects of the game fun. Even after
you've gotten to phase 3, you can still go back and do the same things you did
earlier; exploring caves or the nether is still dangerous even after you're
fully equipped, and you can always explore farther away and build new
infrastructure. So even if you're not particularly interested in large-scale
construction projects, you can still have fun exploring or going off on your
own and fighting zombies.

------
codingthebeach
Nice tale of emergent behaviors in Minecraft. Still, I couldn't read this part
without wincing:

"The more intelligent of you reading this article have also probably noticed
something similar to my various observations."

Say "more observant", say "the astute reader will have probably noticed", or
better yet say "more Minecraft-obsessed" but never say "more intelligent". If
as a writer you're going to assume stupidity or laziness, you MUST assume it
for yourself only. And adding the word "various" in that spot just makes it
worse. Strunk and White to the rescue...

~~~
ramchip
The author is in high school. That may explain a certain immaturity in the
writing and reasoning here.

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simonsarris
I enjoyed the article, but I don't think this person's experience is
necessarily representative of all servers, or even most. I've seen plenty of
servers where flora abounds.

In my server on the last world almost everyone kept anywhere from a few trees
to a massive garden (of trees) next to their house, if only for harvesting.

In my current server where we are building a hagia sophia -esque structure,
the outside is being made into an abundant garden of every type of plant.

In every iteration of the world on my server people have been crazy about
nature, going so far as to take all of the plants into the nether to create
"life" there.

Actually, now that I think about it, I wonder if minecraft servers differ much
between those played solely by people who live in large cities vs those who
live in less populated areas. Most of the people on my server are from New
Hampshire, and I wonder if it would look different from a server where most of
the people are from (say) Boston. Comparing such servers would be a pretty
interesting study I think.

~~~
kd0amg
_I don't think this person's experience is necessarily representative of all
servers, or even most. I've seen plenty of servers where flora abounds._

Yeah, I was just amused at his description of the initial city, since it
accurately describes a few spawn-zone cities I've seen.

I kind of suspect it's just a result of high population. Or maybe there's just
a type of SMP player who gravitates towards city-oriented servers. Either way,
on the private servers where I've played, people do tend to scatter over a
pretty wide range (rarely less than a couple hundred meters between two
people's dwellings), and most of the land remains unaltered.

------
zipdog
Having been reading on early civilization settlements, I feel an interesting
parallel to how deforestation caused some of their collapses. A core that
overfeeds on resources while overgrowing onto them will generally collapse
into its periphery. If Minecraft had a rain system, the rapid loss of woodland
would not only cause ppl to move to be closer to the wood resource, but
because the bare soil would cause flooding and topsoil loss (leading to lower
agriculture yield).

And if Minecraft had a collapse for mining under things, it might be like
industrial England when salt and coal mining altered the geology enough to
sink towns (even when the mines weren't immediately under them).

Just some associations to more complex societal and resource systems that
sprung to mind.

~~~
rcfox
Minecraft recently added rain, but I think it's mostly aesthetic at the
moment. Your thoughts on flooding and erosion might make for an interesting
mod.

Also, some things do collapse when you might under them. Namely, sand and
gravel. It might be interesting to play with making other types of terrain
collapse if there's enough weight and not enough support around. I have no
idea how difficult that would be though since I've never looked very far into
modding Minecraft.

~~~
MostAwesomeDude
There has been talk of making Bravo's rain wash away anything left exposed,
and eroding grass and stone. No code's been written, but it's an interesting
idea.

------
VladRussian
"However, most importantly, it is that people are an unstoppable force. "

well, there are several proven ways to stop the enthusiastic outpouring of
people's creativity. For example city council, zoning and ordinances.
Introduce such stuff into the game, with building permit needing 6 months to
clear the design review stage only and you'll see how "unstoppable" the force
is :)

------
zeteo
The article touches a bit on the depletion of finite resources, in a context
with very artificial mechanics (e.g., the administrator decides to spawn
monsters among player-built structures). "Urbanization" is a misnomer here.
First, all phenomena described involved at most a few dozen people, a group
size that can only evidence interactions in a small village community and not
in a real urban setting. Second, urbanization is a pretty specific term that
refers to people leaving the countryside to move to the cities.

~~~
slmbrhrt
But cobblestone, wood, and even charcoal and water are infinite resources in
the game. The problem isn't the supply of resources, it's the short-
sightedness of the players in the game that figure it's easier for them to
mine cobblestone from beneath or clear-cut a natural forest in the game with
no intention of replenishing the supplies because they don't imagine they'll
be playing long enough for it to matter.

~~~
zeteo
If they're infinite, the article doesn't do a very good job of even making
this basic point. In any case, this bears little relation to what is
ordinarily meant by urbanization.

~~~
rcfox
They're infinite in the sense that more will always exist, but you'll have to
keep walking further and further to get at them.

~~~
lotharbot
Actually, in Minecraft, you don't need to walk farther to get those particular
resources. Wood, charcoal, water, and cobblestone are all infinitely
_renewable_ resources.

Wood and charcoal are straightforward -- harvesting a tree gives you wood and
saplings, saplings grow into trees, and wood can be cooked in a furnace to
make charcoal (you can even use saplings, more wood, or more charcoal as
fuel.)

If you make a 2x2 depression in the ground and put water in opposite corners,
the remaining corners will immediately fill. You can then pull water out of
any corner, and it will immediately refill.

Cobblestone can be generated by making water and lava flows touch.

~~~
rcfox
> Cobblestone can be generated by making water and lava flows touch.

In real life, we can always make more iron (or insert other resource we might
be lacking) by smooshing smaller atoms together. That doesn't mean it's viable
source for any scale of use.

~~~
bdonlan
The process can be automated using pistons and a redstone repeater, as shown
here:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLuEO6xOM4&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLuEO6xOM4&feature=player_detailpage#t=736s)

This can produce cobblestone as fast as you can mine it, at a cost of three
lava, three iron (for pistons), and a bit of redstone dust (plus items derived
from wood, water, and cobblestone, which are all renewable resources)

There are other designs which use even less non-renewable resources as well.

~~~
rcfox
Ah, I haven't had a chance to play with pistons yet. I guess my knowledge is a
bit out of date.

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reustle
What is this restricted access junk?

~~~
jplewicke
It seems to be based off an anti-spam heuristic run by Cloudflare:
<https://www.cloudflare.com/> . The most insulting part of it is that they
offer to link to evidence of what your IP address has supposedly done, but
don't actually provide any concrete details(e.g. links to the alleged spam).

If anyone from Cloudflare is listening, your CAPTCHA submission is broken in
IE7.

~~~
cdata
I am an engineer at CloudFlare. I've got the page in question open in front of
me in IE7, but I'm not having any issues with the CAPTCHA submission. Can you
provide any additional details about the problem you're experiencing?

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prawn
I recently flew Emirates from Europe back to Australia and read an article in
their in-flight magazine about the failure of Brasilia. This story broadly
reminded me of that article. Can't find an exact copy online, but this pieces
makes a few of the same points as the in-flight story:
[http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog61/jmoersch/reality.ht...](http://www.macalester.edu/courses/geog61/jmoersch/reality.html)

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sigil
I wonder, are there economists out there setting up and studying game worlds?
Seems like a great way to run your simulation, and avoid the costs of phone
surveys / data collection.

~~~
ejames
It tends to work the other way around - a game world is set up, then
economists study it. It's difficult to set up a world just for study, because
people will not actually join and play unless it's an enjoyable game, and at
that point you're a game developer rather than an economist.

The most interesting economic work I know is for Eve Online. The company that
operates Eve has hired an in-house economist to study the game's economy and
publish periodic reports, which are available online - a quick search will
turn them up. The reports generally focus on the economic effects of adding
new content to the game - "here's how players reacted to the last patch."

~~~
sigil
> It's difficult to set up a world just for study, because people will not
> actually join and play unless it's an enjoyable game, and at that point
> you're a game developer rather than an economist.

It would be cool to see the two team up! Depending on the experiment, maybe
you'd only need level designs. I assume this has only gotten easier with
things like Minecraft.

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Raphael
Plan better.

------
godseyeview
how do u find servers in minecraft? it just asks me for an ip

~~~
citricsquid
<http://mcserverlist.net> is the most popular site for listing

~~~
lotharbot
There are also several sections of the official Minecraft forums dedicated to
finding or hosting servers.

[http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum/49-starting-up-
looking-f...](http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum/49-starting-up-looking-for-
server/)

