alone.

We’ve all experienced it we all know it’s there in the back of our minds but it’s not often that we actively think about it maybe we don’t want to admit it maybe we don’t know how to interpret it but it’s something that we all on some level understand

Minecraft is a deeply deeply lonely game despite all the landscapes the villagers the mobs and the bosses we somehow still feel very alone why is that have you ever wondered why do we get a subtle sense of isolation everywhere we go in minecraft perhaps i have an answer to that question

Join me for an exploration into why a minecraft player feels so alone The minecraft world is big it’s almost incomprehensibly big yeah we can look up the numbers 60 million blocks squared sounds so simple it’s easy to say however it’s large enough that it’s difficult if not impossible for humans to intuitively understand what that means 60 million blocks how can we think about that

The youtuber kurt j mack has a series called far lands or bust he’s been documenting his walk west in minecraft for over 10 years he’s traveled over 4 million blocks from spawn to the point where the floating point precision of the game has begun to break down

Resulting in jitters it’s one of the more impressive feats by a single person in minecraft and kurt has walked over 4 million over the course of 10 years but kurt j mack needs to walk 12 million blocks to reach the far lands in a beta version

That’s not even halfway to the border in modern minecraft and that’s just walking in a straight line even your decades-long journey to the border would only see a tiny fraction of the overall world hopefully this gives some perspective into just how large the world is it’s big enough that it’s

Effectively infinite no matter how far you walk you’ll never realistically get to the edge of the world as a player we are but a raindrop in an ocean bigger than we can ever understand no matter where we go there will always be more to discover we find ourselves in a world

Where we have no chance of understanding the complete scale and enormity but that’s just one singular world even that size is but a spec compared to the entire number of possible minecraft worlds that’s because each world is generated using a number called a seed and the number of possible seeds is also

Incomprehensibly large there are 2 to the 48 meaningful minecraft seeds which is equivalent to 14 times the number of red blood cells in a human body to put it another way if we set our minecraft world border to 16 million blocks from the center then every surface block in

The world could represent a unique seed and then some it doesn’t matter how you slice it the number of possible worlds to discover in minecraft is huger than we can ever truly understand and yet in every single game we find ourselves in one of those worlds a world

Where we can never completely experience what it is in its present state but this world is not empty as we explore we quickly realize that we are not the first ones to exist here hidden within the natural beauty of the landscape are pockets of history evidence of a long

Forgotten past their ancient ruins crumbling deep inside jungles these ruins contain bizarre traps the purpose of which is unclear there are huge underwater ocean pyramids guarded by seemingly undefeatable swimming beings but these monuments can be defeated if we found the heart of the sea contained within a treasure chest it was buried by

Some long forgotten person who was perhaps looking out for future explorers maybe these are the same people that constructed the shipwrecks or built the ruined portals or erected the massive nether fortresses the fact is that we find ourselves in a world that doesn’t explain how it got to this point

Wherever we look we see evidence of some past some rich history that hasn’t totally decayed the world beckons us to ask questions of it to poke at it and attempt to uncover its secrets who are the illagers how does magic work who created the music discs why are there

Undead enemies at every turn why are we even here minecraft doesn’t tell us the answer to any of this explicitly but what it does do is encourage us to ask questions many of my videos on this channel are based around this very idea in the deep dive

Series i look at the minecraft world and attempt to interpret what the facts mean about the universe of the game and while this can be fun despite our theorizing there’s no clear way to confirm or deny our ideas realizing that we will never truly know can be very lonely

So we don’t know the past of the minecraft world the map is so big that we also don’t ever completely know the present of the world but we must also figure out the future of the game for ourselves the world isn’t static it responds to our actions from our very first moments

We realize that the future of the minecraft world is linked to what we do we break a tree and craft a table thus teaching us about our two most powerful capabilities creation and destruction these actions are a fundamental part of the gameplay loop without them all we

Could do is wander aimlessly and then die of hunger the world becomes a canvas and in order to progress we are required to paint onto it and it’s not just parts of the world we can affect it’s everything every block can be placed destroyed or moved to any location

Within the bounds of the world this is an incredibly freeing capability but in some ways it’s also very scary every artist knows the terrifying nature of the blank canvas every writer the intimidation of the blank page every musician the expanse of silence before the first note there’s pressure that

Comes with the ability to create and with minecraft we have no choice but to do it this capability for creative expression wouldn’t be quite as intimidating if we could share it with others and that is possible in the multiplayer world the shared experience of building reduces the feelings of

Loneliness substantially but in single player it’s just us sure there are endermen who can pick up and move blocks we can communicate with villagers in the form of trading our tamed wolves can express that they like us when we feed them steak while these menial interactions can be nice it’s

Obvious that none of the mobs in the game are anywhere close to the player’s nature they will never show true creativity or affect the world in any meaningful way they simply go about their repetitive lives oblivious to the canvas in which they live to put it another way when we enter a minecraft

World we are the special one we are the one who has the most power and can do the most things the world revolves around us we interpret the past generate the present and build the future we are different we are special in some ways this is the culmination of

The loneliness problem despite the huge world the invisible lore the various creatures ultimately the game is all about us it’s all about what we do and that can be a very very scary thing but it’s also an amazing thing if we look at it another way the elements that

Make minecraft so lonely are also the elements that make it so special the infinite world allows for so many possibilities the subtle lore allows us to imagine fantastical explanations and the ability to create and destroy opens the door for amazing creations more than in most video games what the player does

In minecraft is absolutely critical there’s a reason why minecraft is so popular i think it’s because on a deep level minecraft encapsulates the unique power of video gaming as an art form it’s a game whose very nature is defined by the actions of the player everyone has a different randomly generated world

A different interpretation of the lore and a different way they’ve built their world and that’s magical minecraft is about the player what are we going to do in the game it’s not like a painting where we look at it a show where we watch it or an

Album where we listen to it those art forms are one directional the artist creates the work and the audience consumes it as is video games are not like that as a player of a game we are just as important to the artwork as the game itself it’s an inherently symbiotic

Relationship between the player and the game minecraft is one of those special games that understands this relationship so while things may feel lonely i believe that those very things are what make minecraft a uniquely potent video game few other games implement these elements in quite the same way and i

Think we subconsciously recognize this it’s why minecraft is the most popular video game of all time because nothing else understands the fundamentals of gaming itself quite as deeply perhaps one day a better example will come along but for now minecraft holds a special place in the young history of video games

Or maybe it’s just lonely because the music is sad but what do i know Thank you so much for watching this video i’ve been thinking a lot about why minecraft connects with me over the past couple of months and that’s led me to make this video please remember that this is just an opinion i’m very excited to see your responses in the comments

Did this connect with you or did you interpret the loneliness differently as always you should definitely come to the rg and discord server if you wish to discuss this more we have a great community there and i’d love to hear your voice oh and if you like this video

Subscribe it really helps me out we will go ahead and end with that this has been rgn thank you so much for watching and i’ll see you all in the next video have a great day