Mine, all Mine

If you're stuck at work or someplace where you have internet access and not much to do, and have a couple minutes to waste, I suggest you take a quick peek at Minecraft. It really only takes a couple minutes to learn, it runs in Java in your browser, and it has a simple concept: Shape the world.

There are apparently multiplayer and "survive the zombie apocalypse" modes, but I haven't tried them. I like just clicking it open, seeing the world it randomly generates for me, and then sculpting it a little bit until I've made a comfortable place to live in it.

It's not a very advanced game and the graphics are obviously terrible, but it has a large following. There's a really simple reason why: It allows players to change the world they live in, and create something instead of just destroying it.

I remember the people at Blizzard talking about FarmVille and, citing its popularity, saying that they needed to change their game to incorporate more things in WoW that people could obsess over like in FarmVille. Well here's another hint for you. Over 280,000 people have actually paid for the full version of this simple, terrible block game just because they are able to create something original instead of only killing things.

Focus on the content, the creativity, and the contributions players can make. Give them some control over their appearance, behaviors, and environment, or they will seek it elsewhere. It's more important to many of them than good graphics, or they wouldn't bother with games like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress.

Asus High

How's this for price/performance?

• Core i7 720QM / 1.6 GHz
• RAM 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
• HDD 500 GB + 500 GB 7200 rpm
• DVD±RW / DVD-RAM
• Mobility Radeon HD 5870 w/1GDDR5 SDRAM
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• 17.3" Widescreen TFT 1920 x 1080

$1,599.99

Praise Elune and Pass the Ammo

Lately I haven't been blogging much because I've been contributing a lot of photoshops to brewcrewball.com and sharing comments about the baseball season, which for the Brewers is circling the drain at this point. It's been a fun season, but football is here now, and with the colder weather, a return to more frequent video gaming.

Cataclysm is coming! I have my beta sub for Cataclym, giving me an inside look at the new content that will be released for World of WarCraft this holiday season, and so far it looks fun as hell. Everyone and their emo sister will be playing a werewolf (Alliance gets Worgen as their new race), but for my money the Goblins (Horde) are where it's at. Oh man, the selfish storylines and grouchy emotes have me to a T, if there was ever a race built for a cynical old man like myself, this is it. Fun!

Also, I've been splitting my gaming time with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. The guys at work here play it on the X360, and that's a more pristine environment than the PC, where hackers run wild. Aside from that, it's a lot of fun to zone out with a sniper rifle behind an old junk car on a map somewhere and plunk baddies. I don't need to role play, I don't need to learn complicated sequences, just shoot the other guy before he gets you.

And rumor has it that the sequel Black Ops will be out in November and be hosted on dedicated servers, eliminating the hackers who are running wild with MW2. Lots of fun on the horizon this holiday season... and almost time to buy a new gaming rig too.