Minecraft competition brings fights and fist bumps to the Sydney Opera House
If ever there was an event specifically designed to send the regular Sydney Opera House clientele into a near-fatal frenzy of monocle popping, it was this one: a video game festival hosted at Australia’s most famous cultural icon.
But whatever misgivings one may have about Minecraft at the Opera House, when I arrive the mood is buoyant.
Children weave in and out of bollards, cleaving the air with plastic pixilated swords, taking selfies with giant cardboard renderings of pigs, llamas and box-headed humans. More still stand in line to meet the “celebrities of Minecraft” – a concept that would be impossible to even begin to explain to someone 10 years ago. Others are marshalled into groups, waiting side stage in the concert hall to take part in Australia’s first Minecraft tournament.
The parents take in the scene with an air of contented bafflement.
Their confusion is understandable: on the surface, Minecraft as a popular game, let alone an international phenomenon, is hard to explain.
Created by Markus “Notch” Persson in 2009, Minecraft is what’s known as a “sandbox” game – a genre typically defined by an absence of clear goals or win conditions, and an emphasis on creation and free-play. In Minecraft you are born without ceremony or context into a world made up of blocks. These blocks can be mined and placed in any configuration the player desires, and for this reason the game is often described as an environment where you can build “anything you can imagine”.
To a degree this is true, although it does suggest that the collective imagination of the hive mind is overwhelmingly preoccupied with creating enormous effigies of Super Mario. In the past, players have used the game’s universe to build painstaking reconstructions of Taj Mahal, the International Space Station and – of course – the Sydney Opera House.
Australia’s first Minecraft tournament is playing out in the main concert hall. With three sessions over the course of the festival, and each session comprising seven rounds with 48 children per round, over a thousand kids will compete over the two days. At the start of each round, four dozen children are marshalled on to stage, organised through a system of coloured wristbands that, throughout the hours I am at the event, I will never understand.
The version of the game used for competition is rapid and combat-based and so this experience is less about the unchained power of the imagination and more about shoving one another into big pools of lava. There is little to no mining or crafting in this iteration of the game, and at the end of each round, the winning children are interviewed by the host, who quizzes them on their strategies, their faces projected on to a gigantic screen at the back of the stage.
According to an astonishingly fashionable kid in a leather jacket and asymmetrical haircut, the trick is to “get a weapon and run”. The host can’t fault this and asks for a high five. Leather jacket kid opts for a fist bump.
Outside the concert hall, the back foyer bar hosts banks of PCs manned (child-ed?) by dozens of kids working on a more recognisable form of the game. Block by block, like the medieval lords of yore, they build enormous garrisons, undertake large-scale agricultural projects and – possibly less like the medieval lords of yore – ward off demented skeletons with swords forged from pure diamonds. This space in the Opera House typically given over to baby boomers quaffing $14 riesling is now full of kids waiting in line (it must be said, far more patiently than I’ve seen boomers queue for riesling) for the chance to make something unique from scratch.
The popularity of Minecraft content on YouTube and Twitch is staggering: in fact, “Minecraft” is the second-most searched term on YouTube, just behind “music”. Perpendicular to the free-play area there’s another line, this one maybe 50 deep, to talk to Wyld and MrCrayfish: two celebrity Minecrafters with massive profiles on both YouTube and Twitch.
These two affable men sit behind a small table and receive their visitors one at a time, leaning in close to hear deeply technical questions from the kids. The overwhelming majority of these questions are impenetrable to the layman, and watching each and every parent nod along with their kid while one of the experts explains an insanely specialised aspect of, say, complex redstone systems, is genuinely heartwarming.
Like the game itself, the sheer scale of Minecraft’s success can be difficult to comprehend. Statistics can tell part of the story. At the time of writing, around 55 million players log into the game each month; in 2016 the game sold around 55,000 copies per day; and in 2014 it was sold to Microsoft for $1.5b, allowing Persson to retire and pursue another of his passions full-time: being insanely cross on the internet.
The lead developer and designer is now Jens Bergensten, a tall, rake-thin and bearded Swede who, throughout the day at the Opera House, will wander into the foyer to greet fans. The first time I see him he’s at the business end of a massive line of devotees, dutifully signing posters, posing for photos and answering questions.
There’s a calm awkwardness about Bergensten. It gives him an air that’s less “mogul at the helm of a multi-billion dollar empire” and more “viking who has become lost at the shops”.
The live event is meant to reflect the ethos of the game, I’m told by the COO of Mojang, Vu Boi, who has travelled with Bergensten to the event. Just as there’s no one way of playing Minecraft, there’s no one way to experience the day.
He’s not wrong about this, but there’s something else too: the game itself is the second-most perfect encapsulation of the seamless meeting of “high” and “low” art that I can think of (the most perfect being the time that Salman Rushdie became addicted to Super Nintendo). Bringing a video game to the hallowed sails of the Opera House is a neat expression of that philosophy.
Minecraft competition brings fights and fist bumps to the Sydney Opera House
‘Minecraft: The Island’ Blurs the Line Between Fiction and Gaming
The protagonist of Max Brooks’s new fantasy novel doesn’t have a name, a gender or even normal human appendages. Instead of hands, the narrator has clumsy, flesh-toned cubes, just one more weird feature of the strange and unsettling world where the story unfolds, where everything — the sun, clouds, cows, mushrooms, watermelons — is composed of squares.
For the uninitiated, the setting may seem bizarre and disorienting, but Mr. Brooks isn’t writing for novices or lay readers. He’s writing for a very particular tribe: die-hard devotees of the video game Minecraft.
“Minecraft: The Island,” which was released this month by the science fiction and fantasy publisher Del Rey, represents an unusual experiment in multiplatform brand extension. It marks the first officially sanctioned novel commissioned by Mojang, the Swedish game studio behind Minecraft, as the company seeks new ways to capitalize on the game’s enormous popularity. (To eliminate any doubt about the company’s consent, Mojang’s name and logo appear twice on the book’s cover, which bears the bland endorsement, “Mojang Official Product.”)
Unlike most video and computer games, Minecraft doesn’t have clear-cut objectives or levels to ascend. Instead, it’s more like an elaborate digital Lego set that allows players to build whatever they like, designing their own castles, skyscrapers, underground bunkers and booby traps.
The open-ended nature of the game is a big part of its appeal. Since its release in 2011, Minecraft has sold more than 122 million copies and now has 55 million active monthly users. The game’s user base exploded so rapidly that in 2014, Microsoft bought the company for $2.5 billion.
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As product spinoffs go, a series of novels seems like a natural step for Mojang, which already has a wildly successful publishing line of gaming manuals. (A feature film is also in the works, at Warner Bros.) Since 2013, the children’s publisher Scholastic has published 10 Minecraft titles, which have 25 million copies in print. On Amazon, there are thousands more unofficial titles that fans have self-published, including entire novels set inside the game.
“We had been thinking about fiction for a long time but wanted to make sure that it didn’t take away from people’s experience of the game, because everyone plays in a different way,” said Lydia Winters, Mojang’s brand director.
But commissioning a brand-approved Minecraft novel posed unique creative and commercial challenges. How do you create a story with a beginning, a middle and an end out of an open-ended game? And would gamers bother to pick up a nearly 300-page novel about Minecraft, when they could be spending their free time playing it?
Mr. Brooks — a cheerful, enthusiastic paranoiac who is obsessed with survival strategies, zombies, apocalyptic scenarios and plagues — wrote the story as a first-person, Robinson Crusoe-esque narrative, featuring an initially hapless character who is stranded on a strange island and has to build shelter, find food and fight off zombies and giant spiders, all features that exist in the game.
When Mojang approached him to write a Minecraft novel in fall 2015, Mr. Brooks already had a track record as a best-selling author. The son of the actor Mel Brooks and the actress Anne Bancroft, Max Brooks turned to fiction after a brief and unremarkable career in comedy writing, which included a stint as a writer for “Saturday Night Live.”
After he was fired from the show, he started writing chillingly realistic zombie fiction and found his calling. Two of his previous books, “World War Z” and “The Zombie Survival Guide,” have collectively sold more than 3.5 million copies, and “World War Z,” a faux oral history about the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, was adapted into a feature film starring Brad Pitt.
Other successful authors might have brushed off an invitation to write a video game tie-in novel, an unabashedly commercial genre that some say amounts to little more than elaborate product placement. But Mr. Brooks happens to be an avid Minecraft player and jumped at the opportunity. He was determined to write a story that mirrored the experience of playing the game. He developed a plot that conformed to the Minecraft universe so closely that someone reading the book could recreate the narrative within the game and play along.
“I war-gamed out everything,” Mr. Brooks said in a recent interview from his home in Los Angeles. “My biggest fear was that somebody tries to play out my book and finds out it won’t work.”
In the process, he may have also created a strange new entertainment category, one that hovers somewhere between fan fiction, role-playing games and literature — a novel set in a game, that can itself be played within the game.
Like reverse adaptations of movies and TV shows (see, for example, novels based on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “CSI”), novels based on gaming franchises have long been a lucrative niche within the publishing industry.
Publishers have been releasing novels based on popular video games for decades, hoping to capture a slice of the medium’s huge fan base. Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, has published fictional series based on games like Halo, Doom and World of Warcraft, and has millions of copies of its video game tie-in novels in circulation. Other publishers have built fictional franchises based on games like Gears of War, Starcraft, BioShock and Tomb Raider.
“Especially with teenage boys, it’s one of the only ways we can get them to read,” said Keith Clayton, the associate publisher at Del Rey.
To market its Minecraft novel, Del Rey has been assiduously courting players. The project was announced with fanfare last year at Minecon in Anaheim, Calif., a fan convention that drew 14,000 people. Del Rey is promoting the novel within the game’s platform, with a digital replica of the island Mr. Brooks created, which players can explore. They are also advertising on YouTube, where videos of people playing the game have become a popular subgenre.
Mr. Brooks, 45, began playing Minecraft five years ago, after a family friend showed him how the game worked. He began playing regularly with his son, who is now 12, and was immediately sucked in by the creative possibilities of the game.
When Mojang asked if he would be interested in writing a Minecraft novel, Mr. Brooks was so enthusiastic that he wrote a full draft before his contract was even completed. For the most part, Mojang gave him freedom to write the story however he wanted. The company’s only instructions had to do with the protagonist’s physical appearance.
“They were very hands off when it came to the story, but very hands on when it came to inclusiveness,” he said.
Mojang wanted to make sure that any Minecraft player could pick up the novel and imagine himself or herself in it. The company even commissioned two different versions of the audiobook, one by a female narrator, Samira Wiley, and another by a man, the actor Jack Black, so that listeners can choose a narrator of either gender.
Keeping the character’s identity ambiguous wasn’t too hard: Because the hero is stranded alone on an island, with only animals and other ghoulish creatures to talk to, Mr. Brooks was able to avoid using gendered pronouns.
Mr. Brooks concedes that the novel, which is geared toward 8- to 12-year-olds, might not hold much appeal for those who are unfamiliar with the game.
The plot was created for players, and perhaps parents and grandparents who want to understand the game’s appeal, Mr. Brooks said.
Above all, though, Mr. Brooks wrote it to satisfy his own creative impulses.
“Honestly, at the end of it all, I wrote it for me,” he said. “I’m a fan first.”
‘Minecraft: The Island’ Blurs the Line Between Fiction and Gaming
Chernarus map from Arma 2 and DayZ beautifully recreated in Minecraft
If you’ve got the urge to spend a few hours running around Chernarus today, you don’t need to boot up Arma 2 or DayZ. Now you can do it in Minecraft, thanks to map-maker Criand who has recreated the entire map in beautiful—and incredibly accurate—blocky glory. Here’s a big gallery of images to scroll through, (I’ve posted a few shots below as well) and there’s a trailer above.
In a Reddit post, Criand says the project began in 2014 and took an estimated 1800 hours to complete. It really shows: the detail is amazing, the various cities, towns, roads, airfields, castle ruins, and landmarks are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent a good amount of time in Arma 2 or DayZ. There’s even an interactive zoomable version of the map.
The Chernarus map isn’t currently available to download, though Criand says it will be “eventually.” In the meantime, there’s a server you can join (no mods required) to check it out, run around, and kill some zombies using the IP play.mcraftz.com.
We’ve launched the PC Gamer Club, a membership program that offers ad-free browsing on this site and a bunch of other benefits including a digital subscription to PC Gamer magazine, monthly game keys, access to our private Discord server and more. For all the info, visit club.pcgamer.com.
Chernarus map from Arma 2 and DayZ beautifully recreated in Minecraft
Minecraft for Xbox One and 360 Patch Details
4J Studios released details of the Content Update 48 patch for Minecraft: Xbox One Edition and Title Update 56 for Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. Included are the normal bug fixes and game changes associated with most patches. New content includes a new Glide track called Canyon, a new Biome Settlers 2 skin pack, and new Terracotta layers added to Tumble. The full patch notes are below.
- Added Canyon, a free Glide track.
- Added Biome Settlers 2 Skin pack.
- Added Terracotta and Glazed Terracotta layers to Tumble.
- Improved performance in Solo Glide when restarting the level (particularly with split-screen spectators).
- Totem of Undying now also applies Fire Resistance II.
- Fixed some areas where it was possible to escape from Battle maps or Glide tracks.
- Fixed a bug where players were unable to milk a Cow in Creative Mode.
- Fixed a bug where players were being teleported back to the Nether portal shortly after arriving in the other dimension.
- Fixed a bug where broken Banners wouldn’t stack with crafted Banners.
- Fixed a bug where Wheat, Ladders, and Banners were not correctly spawning in Woodland Mansions.
- Fixed a bug where Monster Spawners in Woodland Mansions were Pigs instead of Spiders.
- Fixed a bug where the Item Frame icon appeared when holding a Map.
- Fixed an incorrect death message when players were killed by Zombie Villagers.
- Fix for custom names of Mobs not being shown in death messages.
- Fix for being unable to unlock “Sniper Duel”.
- Fix for being unable to unlock “Camouflage”.
- Fix for MCCE #5183 – Player can kill a tamed Parrot with PvP disabled.
- Fix for MCCE #5062 – Farmer Villagers only plant one seed after harvesting a whole crop of seeds from a field.
- Fix for MCCE #4103 – Time spent on the Pause menu when under water counts towards the “Free Diver” trophy.
- Fix for MCCE #3112 – When trying to throw food, Villagers throw it in the wrong direction.
- Fix for MCCE #5219 – Two types of Bone Block with different pictures.
- Fix for MCCE #4989 – Zombie Villager Spawn eggs are the wrong colour.
- Fix for MCCE #5261 – Flower hitbox is displaced.
- Fix for MCCE #4897 – Beds explode when TNT Explodes is disabled.
- Fix for MCCE #4954 – Mobs can’t move with a block above them.
- Fix for MCCE #3010 – Constructing an End portal in a certain method can lead to the End Portal being created next to the portal frame.
- Fix for MCCE #5292 – Only regular Skeletons spawning in the Nether.
- Fix for MCCE #5151 & MCCE #5208 – Item frames don’t show the custom name of their items.
4J Studios did not release any patch details for any other version of Minecraft that have achievements.
The Xbox One and 360 patches are rolling out now.
4J Studios Explain How They Got Minecraft On Switch To Work In 1080p When Docked
4J Studios, the people who are responsible for getting Minecraft over to consoles, have recently spoken to TIME about how they bumped up the performance for Minecraft on Switch; allowing players to play the game at 1080p whilst docked. 4J Studios’ CEO, Richard Reavy explained:
“We did spend some time analyzing our GPU usage and optimizing things before we did this move as well,” he says. “We needed to spend some time looking at the fill rate and being more careful with that, just because of the number of pixels in 1080p. We kind of knew we could do the optimization and we would get there with the performance. But yeah, ultimately, the fundamental problem was switching resolution.”
Reavy goes to on to talk about how each different version of Minecraft has a custom interface to suit the resolution of the console it’s being played on. Switching between docked and undocked mode at any given time could have caused some issues so the team got to work on bringing us an update.
“Every interface seam is handcrafted by our art team to suit the exact resolution of the console it’s on,” says Reavy. “We wanted to make sure the transition was really slick, and that the user wouldn’t notice anything, like it taking seconds unloading one user interface system for another,” he says. “And also because you can dock and undock your console at any point, it can be quite problematic that the user could switch the console at a really inopportune moment.”
4J Studios Explain How They Got Minecraft On Switch To Work In 1080p When Docked
NBC is now using Minecraft to explain who owns the moon
You ever really think about the moon? More specifically, have you ever thought about who owns it? It’s actually a very complicated matter. Fortunately, NBC Left Field is here to break down the basics, complete with illustrations and animations, all of it rendered in Minecraft.
Launched last month, NBC Left Field is a “social video unit” that “aims to reinvent storytelling for viewers who primarily get their news from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram,” according to Variety. It features content from journalists around the world, and while some of it is obviously lighthearted—like, for instance, this—it does dig into more difficult topics too, such as a military summer camp for kids in Ukraine, or the challenges and risks facing coal miners in the US.
Microsoft apparently wasn’t involved in the creation of the video, as a rep said the Minecraft team had no comment on it. “But I learned some new stuff about the Moon today!” the rep added. I’d call that a pretty good outcome.
Switch Minecraft’s 1080p patch improves more than just resolution
Minecraft on Switch is one of the best uses to date of Nintendo’s hybrid design, delivering a complete rendition of the classic game with full four-player functionality – even when undocked and gaming on the go. But its launch was marred by two factors: a lacklustre 720p resolution even when docked with your HDTV, along with noticeably jarring performance drops in split-screen mode. Developer 4J Studios promised that it would look into a full 1080p upgrade and it has duly delivered – and not only that, despite the 2.25x boost to resolution, performance in some split-screen scenarios is improved too.
The 1080p Switch upgrade is understated in 4J Studios’ patch notes, hidden in a line of bug fixes. It’s the only visual upgrade listed too. According to an interview with the Time website, CTO Richard Reavy says that “everything else is unchanged at present. We really just wanted to make sure jumping up the resolution wouldn’t cause any problems.” Indeed, at launch, Microsoft confirmed that switching resolutions on the fly between Switch’s docked and undocked modes caused issues with the HUD. But on patch 1.06, clearly 4J Studios has overcome the problem, and it all just clicks together.
As you can see in the video and the comparison zoomers on this page, Minecraft’s stark visual style benefits enormously from the resolution upgrade, bringing it right up to our level of expectations for the launch code – and despite compromises in other areas, it even compares fairly well with PS4’s 1080p image too. Native full HD resolution pays huge dividends for anyone using a 1080p TV: we’re no longer at the mercy of Switch’s scaler, and users get a true 1:1 pixel match from the console. And as you’d expect, even the menu overlays run at 1080p.
Everything you need to know about patch 1.06 for Minecraft on Switch. It’s a good one!
For a game like Minecraft, a resolution boost is deceptively useful. Of course, this title takes pride in its simplicity, with low res textures used to build a world of blocks. But this jump to 1080p has a big benefit for greater, long-distance views of the land. Looking over your creations at range, the upgrade is impossible to ignore when directly compared to 720p imagery, taken from the launch version of the game. A surprise bonus here is that texture filtering also gets a boost on Switch, with the higher resolution increasing the pixel sample range: this means you get clearer, cleaner surfaces at a tight angle than you did before.
So it’s all gain so far, but are there any sacrifices to get these results? Well, the good news is that the game’s render distance is still set to the same level as before, at between 11 and 12 chunks while docked, while the world size stays at the medium 3072×3072 block setting. As a result, pop-in kicks in at the exact same points as you move through the world. And really, there’s no other visual changes to speak on. The good news is that it was already an acceptable setup on Switch, and nothing is compromised to give the GPU more fill-rate to achieve the resolution bump.
Again, Richard Reavy is quoted on the Time website, explaining extra optimisation is to thank for this. The main point holding the team back from 1080p was the matter of transitioning to and from the dock, but with that fixed, Switch can unleash more of its potential here. It’s understandable that keeping everything at 720p made life easier for the launch, but now we have the update, there are no obvious issues changing between the two. Barring a quick re-rendering of the world’s block layout while docking, it’s a seamless jump between each.
Ok, so what about frame-rate? Interestingly, our test route on the tutorial stage shows no major issues in holding 60fps. Bearing in mind Switch was running nicely at 60fps – even outperforming PS4 at 1080p – it suggests there must have been a lot of headroom to work at 720p originally. That untapped fill-rate is now finally being put to use effectively, and impressively you still get a mostly locked 60fps in solo play. There’s a case where we see a lengthy drop to the mid-50fps region – around 2-3fps lower than the original patch. But even in a complex, built-up area like this, there’s not much to suggest performance gets any kind of noticeable downgrade. This is exactly what we wanted, with stuttering also noticeably decreased next to our original tests.
From the solo standpoint, it’s an excellent showing. Better still is the turnout for Switch in split-screen while docked; on the original patch this had a range between a hard lock at 40fps at times, right up to 60fps. The locking to 40 and 60 here may suggest a double-buffer form of v-sync, which in effect creates the erratic frame-rate reading on our graphs and noticeable frame-time stutter. But moving to patch 1.06 something has clearly changed; the average frame-rate is slightly higher, and while it stays between 40 and 60fps, performance is smoother overall and motion feels less disjointed as a result. In fact, this even benefits Switch in the portable mode, and the hard switches between 30fps and 60fps are gone in the areas we originally encountered them – and yes, split-screen mode is still rendering at full 1080p.
Improved image quality and better texture filtering are the crux of the story here then, but the good news is that it comes at little to no cost in terms of performance. In fact, for split-screen gamers, it’s surprising this extends to an actual improvement in frame-rates in addition to the resolution boost. In the meantime, this Minecraft patch goes down as one of the more radical visual upgrades we’ve seen on Switch. 720p to 1080p without some form of compromise isn’t trivial, but 4J Studios deserves kudos for making it happen.
Switch Minecraft’s 1080p patch improves more than just resolution
Review: ‘Minecraft’ for Nintendo Switch Is the Best Version Yet
What we talk about when we talk about Minecraft for the Nintendo Switch should be as simple as this: It took the Kyoto purveyor of mustachioed plumbers and barrel-chucking gorillas years to get Minecraft on the Wii U, but all of two months for it to find a home on Nintendo’s new flagship console-handheld.
Minecraft is available on the Nintendo Switch eShop for $30 as I type this. Having tooled around with it (versus nearly all of Minecraft‘s other incarnations), I can say it’s arguably the finest iteration of Swedish studio Mojang’s magnum opus yet.
No one save Nintendo, Mojang and Microsoft (which bought Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014) knows why it took until December 2015 to bring a Nintendo system into the fold. Nor, had the game arrived sooner, would it have been enough to fire the Wii U’s failing engines. But Minecraft, which debuted in 2011, presently thrives on everything from iOS and Android to Linux and Raspberry Pi. It’s the second-bestselling game in the world by wide margins after Tetris, a game that arrived in 1984. Anyone with a viable platform not working full bore to deal it into their catalogue is surely leaving briefcases of money on the table.
Read more: The best ways and places to find a Nintendo Switch
To be clear, Minecraft for Switch’s allure has more to do with Switch than Minecraft. The Switch, you’re probably tiring of hearing (especially if you’re still trying to find one), goes wherever you do. Drop it in its dock and Minecraft is on your TV, where it’s all but analogous to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions. Pluck it from its cradle and it’s in your hands, the experience undifferentiated save for its shift to the Switch’s smaller 6.2-inch screen.
The significance of there now being a continuous TV-mobile version of Minecraft can’t be overstated. At the risk of offending tablet apologists, Minecraft on smartphones and tablets is a wonderful experience marred by poor controls. This has nothing to do with Mojang or Minecraft. It’s the baked-in shortcoming of any 3D first-person 360-degree control scheme yet devised for a multitouch device that lacks discrete buttons and control sticks. What makes Minecraft for smartphones and tablets so compelling is convenience. The console versions have the opposite problem: perfect controls tethered to television boat anchors.
Enter Minecraft for Switch, which to be fair isn’t the utmost version in all dimensions. It offers world sizes up to “medium,” or 3,072-by-3,072 blocks, a massive upgrade from the Wii U’s 864-by-864 “classic” perimeter, but notably shy of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s 5,120-by-5,120 “large” world frontiers. Like all of the console versions, which are developed and maintained by Scottish independent 4J Studios and not Mojang, it can’t interact with the Java or C++ versions that currently colonize PCs, smartphones and tablets (and that Mojang’s Jens Bergensten told TIME last November 2016 the C++ version “will eventually be the main engine and also the main game version”).
Though it includes the colorful Super Mario-themed world previously exclusive to the Wii U version, it’s missing a few features that I assume will appear down the pike. Like language selection (the PS4 and Xbox One versions support more than a dozen others, the Switch version only supports English), game chat during online play (the Switch doesn’t yet support voice chat), viewing Leaderboards or inviting friends (you can see other friends’ sessions and join those, but can’t manually wave them over to yours). Minecraft for Switch also currently lags behind its console peers, lacking recently added features like “Amplified” terrain, or the “Glide” mini game. I asked Microsoft about the latter and was told an update due by the end of this month should bring the Switch version more or less up to par.
But in every other meaningful way, this is what I’ve been wanting from Minecraft for years. It glides at a silky smooth 60 frames per second in the dock, though Microsoft confirmed to TIME that it runs at 720p in both docked and handheld modes, a minor disappointment and one I’d love to see reconciled with an optional 1080p at 30 frames per second toggle. Shift to split-screen, be it two, three or four-way, and the frame rate remains rock solid. [Update: Microsoft notes that Minecraft‘s 720p docked/undocked resolution isn’t a question of system power, but stems from issues currently experienced shifting from one resolution to the other when docking/undocking. It’s possible, albeit not confirmed, that Minecraft for Switch could hit 1080p docked down the road.]
In handheld mode, the game looks crisp and gorgeous on the Switch’s 720p screen, the only compromise being a drop in render distance that’s most visible if you’re surveying potential seeds from on high in Creative mode. Performance is still fantastic here, the exception being large jungle biomes, where the frame rate appears to drop by half (I’d wager 30 frames per second, though still on the side of acceptable). No, you can’t pop the Joy-Cons off and swivel them 90 degrees for impromptu two-player shenanigans, a la Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. But given the absence of secondary triggers on each Joy-Con when used discretely, this was probably a fait accompli.
The argument for Minecraft on Switch comes down to two words: continuous playability. If you prefer gamepad to keyboard/mouse or touchscreen controls (as I very much do), you’re stuck with either the Windows 10 or console versions. If you prefer portability, you’re stuck with either the smartphone/tablet or (less impressive) PS Vita versions. In both instances, the idea of continuous play is either impossible or involves tradeoffs. (You can shift between Pocket and Windows 10 interfaces playing in a Realms world, for instance, but you need an Internet connection, and then you’re still having to shift between a gamepad and touchscreen.)
With the Switch, the tradeoffs vanish. Screen real estate aside, you’re having the same experience on an airplane, subway, or in a remote wilderness tent as when docked to your TV. Minecraft is already the finest thing I’ve experienced in this medium, the answer I’d probably give to the one-thing-you’d-want-on-a-deserted-island question. And thanks to Switch, it just got an order of magnitude better.
Review: ‘Minecraft’ for Nintendo Switch Is the Best Version Yet
We Just Learned How Minecraft Can Do 1080p on the Nintendo Switch
Minecraft for the Nintendo Switch is about to look dramatically better when connected to televisions, and it’s thanks to the cautionary diligence of its console handlers that we’re seeing it now, a few months after release. The game shipped on May 11 locked in both handheld and TV mode at 720p, pushing on the order of about a million pixels. After the update, it’ll run at 1080p in TV mode, and push over twice as many pixels.
How’d they do it? Microsoft told TIME in May that the reason for the lower resolution involved “issues currently experienced shifting from one resolution to the other when docking/undocking.” The company passed along speculation from 4J Studios that 1080p might be attainable, but it couldn’t promise anything.
I just spoke with 4J Studios CTO Richard Reavy, and it turns out the issue of getting Minecraft for the Switch to 1080p involved double and triple checking the interface — and a bit of performance optimization. (4J develops all console versions of Minecraft.)
Reavy tells me the game needed further optimization to handle 1080p comfortably, but that the studio was confident it could make that happen given sufficient time.
“We did spend some time analyzing our GPU usage and optimizing things before we did this move as well,” he says. “We needed to spend some time looking at the fill rate and being more careful with that, just because of the number of pixels in 1080p. We kind of knew we could do the optimization and we would get there with the performance. But yeah, ultimately, the fundamental problem was switching resolution.”
More specifically, switching the user interface at different resolutions. Reavy tells me the user interface on each of the console versions — besides the Switch, they include the PlayStation 3 and 4, PS Vita, Xbox 360 and One, and the Wii U — have custom user interfaces. “Every interface seam is handcrafted by our art team to suit the exact resolution of the console it’s on,” says Reavy. Everything through May ran at a fixed resolution. But when the Switch arrived, 4J Studios had to grapple with its signature feature: transitioning dynamically between different resolutions without hiccups or pauses.
“We wanted to make sure the transition was really slick, and that the user wouldn’t notice anything, like it taking seconds unloading one user interface system for another,” he says. “And also because you can dock and undock your console at any point, it can be quite problematic that the user could switch the console at a really inopportune moment.” This explains Microsoft’s delay in rolling out the feature between May and now: 4J Studios simply wanted the time to thoroughly vet the user interface while changing resolution at any point while playing the game.
For now, 1080p is the biggest technical revision. The draw distance is still a bit lower than on PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, you’re limited to “Medium” world sizes (3,072-by-3,072 blocks versus “Large,” which supports 5,120-by-5,120 blocks) and you don’t get the checkbox to create “Amplified” terrain. “Everything else is unchanged at present,” says Reavy. “We really just wanted to make sure jumping up the resolution wouldn’t cause any problems.”
Those differences may fade when, later this fall, Minecraft for the Switch transitions to the much more versatile and scalable “bedrock engine” that currently runs on Windows 10, iOS and Android devices. And it’s at that point things get really interesting, because Microsoft and Nintendo will be doing something that has no industry precedent, allowing Xbox One, iPhone, Windows PC and Nintendo Switch owners to play together in a single, seamlessly backend-unified ecosystem.
We Just Learned How Minecraft Can Do 1080p on the Nintendo Switch
Chernarus map from Arma 2 and DayZ beautifully recreated in Minecraft
If you’ve got the urge to spend a few hours running around Chernarus today, you don’t need to boot up Arma 2 or DayZ. Now you can do it in Minecraft, thanks to map-maker Criand who has recreated the entire map in beautiful—and incredibly accurate—blocky glory. Here’s a big gallery of images to scroll through, (I’ve posted a few shots below as well) and there’s a trailer above.
In a Reddit post, Criand says the project began in 2014 and took an estimated 1800 hours to complete. It really shows: the detail is amazing, the various cities, towns, roads, airfields, castle ruins, and landmarks are instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent a good amount of time in Arma 2 or DayZ. There’s even an interactive zoomable version of the map.
The Chernarus map isn’t currently available to download, though Criand says it will be “eventually.” In the meantime, there’s a server you can join (no mods required) to check it out, run around, and kill some zombies using the IP play.mcraftz.com.
We’ve launched the PC Gamer Club, a membership program that offers ad-free browsing on this site and a bunch of other benefits including a digital subscription to PC Gamer magazine, monthly game keys, access to our private Discord server and more. For all the info, visit club.pcgamer.com.
Chernarus map from Arma 2 and DayZ beautifully recreated in Minecraft
Yes, Microsoft is still working on a ‘Halo’ TV series
Remember the Halo live action TV show Microsoft announced way back in 2013? Unlike Spartans that never die, it sure felt like the project’s been dead for quite a while. The tech titan told AR12Gaming in an interview, though, that it has never stopped developing the series and that it’s still working with Steven Spielberg and Showtime like it said years ago. 343 Industries, the Microsoft Studios subsidiary in charge of the franchise, said it’s merely taking its time to ensure that the final product can meet fans’ expectations.
AR12Gaming reached out to Microsoft to check on the project’s status, considering it’s been a while since we’ve heard anything about it. Not to mention, Microsoft has cancelled a bunch of projects within the past few years, including Xbox Entertainment Studios and Xbox Fitness. Unfortunately, the company remains as secretive as ever and has yet to reveal any juicy info about the show, such as when we’ll finally be able to watch it.
Here’s the Microsoft spokesperson’s full statement:
“Progress on the Halo Television Series continues. We want to ensure we’re doing this the right way together with a team of creative partners (Steven Spielberg and Showtime) that can help us build the best Halo series that fans expect and deserve. We have no further details to share at this time.”
‘Pokémon Go Fest’ issues refunds after tech problems ruin event
After an up and down first year of existence, the Pokémon Go Fest was supposed to be a triumphant event where players could work together in news ways and earn unique awards. The event unfortunately suffered as cell networks and the game’s servers couldn’t keep up with the strain, preventing many attendees who had traveled from around the world from participating. Niantic Labs CEO John Hanke was actually booed when he appeared at the event, and later in the day the company announced it would refund attendees for their ticket costs, add $100 in PokéCoins to their accounts and give them the Legendary Pokémon Lugia.
The issues, and Niantic’s inability to deal with them before they derailed the event, recalled many of the problems Pokémon Go has dealt with since its launch. Incredibly popular right out of the gate, the game suffered with significant instability for months, and still occasionally has problems preventing players for logging in now. It’s the first augmented reality game with participation and appeal on a massive scale, but putting its most hardcore players through a day like yesterday is just another strike against it, even as the money continues to roll in.
- Double Stardust
- Double Candy
- Double XP
- Increased Pokémon encounters
- Reduced hatching distance
- Reduced buddy distance
Also, beginning today, Legendary raids have been unlocked, featuring Lugia as well as Articuno monsters. They will be joined “soon” by Zapdos and Moltres.
‘Pokémon Go Fest’ issues refunds after tech problems ruin event
Watch the nostalgic trailer for Spielberg’s ‘Ready Player One’
After no shortage of hype, Warner Bros. is finally ready to show what Steven Spielberg’s take on Ready Player One is all about. The studio has released the first trailer for the adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel, and it’s clear that the flick is playing up not just the book’s disjunction between a dystopic real world and VR, but the endless references to pop culture of decades gone by. Some of them are patently obvious in the clip — you’ll see a famous time-traveling car and a certain giant robot — but some are of the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it variety. Take Duke Nukem in the epic battle above, for example.
The preview is a whirlwind tour that focuses more on the spectacle of the OASIS’ virtual world than the story, which isn’t surprising when the movie isn’t slated to premiere until March 2018. It’s big on slam-bang action scenes (such as a gigantic virtual race) more than anything else. As such, we have some unanswered questions: how closely does it hew to the tale of Wade Watts and his quest to win James Halliday’s final game? How much will it lean on spectacle versus tackling the broader concepts of the novel? It could take months before we have a better sense of that, but it’s apparent that the visual style is at least on point — it’s easy to see why people would flock to the spectacle of the OASIS given a real world devoid of adventure.
Watch the nostalgic trailer for Spielberg’s ‘Ready Player One’
Overwatch’s principal designer explains endgame statistics cards
Ever wonder how the statistic cards shown at the end of an Overwatch match are generated? You’re not alone. That’s why Overwatch principal designer Scott Mercer stepped in on the game’s forum to explain the process.
Earning a card on the Overwatch endgame screen means you earned the most of that statistic across all players. “Even if you have gold medals for eliminations on your team, if a player on the enemy team has more eliminations then they are eligible for the card and not you,” Mercer wrote. “This rule is in place because if someone else ever got a card and you had more of the stat in question, the system was considered to be broken.”
So that explains what the original poster complained about—always getting a card for assists, yet never for kills or healing. Likely, someone else had earned that statistic, but the player in question still did well enough to be commended in another way.
“The display of statistic cards are not tuned differently based on the hero you are playing,” Mercer added. “If I was to tune eliminations to show up more, I can’t do it just for Zenyatta. It would also affect Soldier: 76 or any of the other heroes.”
Likewise, tuning defensive and offensive assists to show up less for Zenyatta would also impact Mercy, he added.
Assists for Zenyatta work in two ways: Players get a defensive assist when the Orb of Harmony or Transcendence heals a teammate when they eliminate an enemy. An offensive assist is counted when the enemy eliminated had the Orb of Discord on them. “The statistic has nothing to do at all with whether you are on offense or defense during your game,” Mercer said.
Both have “nearly identical” weighting, however. If a player is never seeing a defensive assist card, it’s probably because there’s another support hero—on the player’s team or the enemy team—that has an easier time getting defensive assists. An Overwatch hero like Mercy is a good example: She’s always got her beam on someone.
Though the statistics cards listed at the end of an Overwatch match don’t really add up to anything—it’s just a display of how well you did—it’s still nice to understand the process behind how cards are generated.
Overwatch’s principal designer explains endgame statistics cards
‘Minecraft’ novel by ‘World War Z’ author is now available
As strange as it sounds, Minecraft got the novelization treatment, and the final product is now out for purchase. The good news is that the Mojang team put Microsoft’s millions to good use by commissioning Max Brooks, author of the apocalyptic zombie novel World War Z. Minecraft: The Island apparently tells the story of a hero who got stranded on a mysterious island and ends up unraveling its secrets.
When the book was first announced, Mojang’s Marsh Davies described it as a “cuboid Robinson Crusoe, but madder: a hero stranded in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar rules, learning to survive against tremendous odds.” In the book, the cuboid hero will face hunger, the elements and, yes, zombies that roam the island at night.
Del Rey, the publishing house in charge of the project, called the book the launch of a series when the partnership with Brooks was revealed, so this might be the first of many. If you’re curious and looking for something to read for the weekend, you can get a copy right now from Microsoft’s Books store.
There’s already a Doomfist cosplay at SDCC 2017
Well, that was quick.
Before new Overwatch hero Doomfist even arrived in the live game—he arrives on July 27—he’s already got a cosplay on display at San Diego Comic Con. For the convention, which runs all weekend, Blizzard worked with costume designer Henchmen Studios to create the whole look.
The costume took six weeks to construct, and that’s working with a team of 14 people, according to Kotaku. The pieces include leatherwork and 3D printing. And the gauntlet itself? It weighs 15 pounds. Henchmen Studios worked hard to get every detail just right, but there’s one true test—is cosplay Doomfist able to shoot bullets out of his knuckles?
Blizzard hired a model from Toronto, “caviar_bleu“, to don the costume. And he’s got a hard job ahead of him for the rest of the weekend, carrying about 15 pounds of mechanical fist.
The developer is going all out for SDCC 2017, releasing new merchandise and participating in a wealth of panels. For Hearthstone, Blizzard even opened up an ice cream shop right outside the convention. SDCC runs until July 23.
Australia learns that low gravity isn’t the best place to fight in the Overwatch World Cup
Don’t make Winston angry, or he’ll knock you out of the space station and into the depths of low gravity on Overwatch’s new map, Horizon Lunar Colony.
That’s exactly what Australian national Overwatch team tank Ashley “Trill” Powell, playing Winston, tried to do to Italy’s Tracer player in the map’s low gravity area during their Overwatch World Cup group stage match. But in space—as the commentator jokes—no one can hear you scream: And that worked in Italy’s advantage. Trill managed to knock Italy’s Tracer out the space colony’s doors and into the edges of the low gravity area, but her Blink ability was enough to pull her back to safety.
From there, all Winston could do was wave.
While most of Italy and Australia’s Overwatch players were fighting on the point, Winston got caught outside when backup—Italy’s Solider: 76—came in to relieve Tracer. By then, Trill accepted his fate and tumbled into the abyss.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen the low gravity area in a professional Overwatch tournament, though. In June, LuxuryWatch Red used the low gravity area to get closer to the capture point without taking fire from Meta Bellum during OGN Overwatch Apex’s Challenger Series.
And it worked. Using the unconventional flank, LW Red was able to capture the first point on Horizon Lunar Colony within seconds.
But moving back to the Overwatch World Cup, it wasn’t all bad for Australia. The Horizon Lunar Colony space mishap was not indicative of Australia’s overall play in Group C. Even without Trill, Australia managed to hold Italy on Horizon Lunar Colony’s first point to secure another point. Australia kicked off its home turf Overwatch World Cup debut with a massive showing, taking all four points on the first day of group play. Australia now leads Group C, followed by Sweden, Portugal, and Italy.
Over in Group D, Finland leads with a 4-0 record, followed by Japan, who upset Spain in a 3-1 series. A team full of players mostly unknown to an international scene, many expected Spain—which is packed with professional and former professional players—to perform better. Spain sits in third, with Vietnam rounding out Group D in fourth.
Overwatch World Cup Sydney begins again at 8pm ET on July 21. (That’s 10am AEST on July 22 for those local to Australia.) Sweden will take on Italy first, followed by Australia versus Portugal, Finland versus Spain, and Japan versus Vietnam. You’ll be able to catch all the action on the Overwatch Twitch stream.
Australia learns that low gravity isn’t the best place to fight in the Overwatch World Cup
Overwatch fan recreates Doomfist in Minecraft with all his abilities and it’s incredible
Overwatch’s newest hero is already pummeling polygons in another game.
Minecraft has a dedicated community of players building out Overwatch in the block-based world. So it’s no surprise to see that one of them has already made a Doomfist.
It only took Minecraft creator McMakistein one week to model the new Overwatch hero and recreate his abilities in the game using more than 400 Minecraft command blocks. “The first thing in my process is always making the models,” McMakistein said on Reddit. “Once they’re done, I then program a running animation and just the visual appearance in general.”
The abilities get created one-by-one after that. He’s able to get it all done so quickly because hero mechanics are usually pretty similar, so he’s able to reuse code from older characters. Doomfist in Minecraft has all the same abilities as he does in Overwatch—Hand Canon, Seismic Slam, Rocket Punch, Rising Uppercut, and ultimate ability Meteor Strike.
Like with in Overwatch, your ultimate ability meter needs to be filled up to 100 percent to use it. The best part, though? You can import Doomfist into your own game using McMakistein’s work. The command is available on his site. The video explains how to get everything to work.
He’s also uploaded other heroes, like Genji, Hanzo, and Tracer, but it’s unlikely we’ll be able to see two teams of six in action on a Minecraft-based Overwatch map.
“It’s not possible with the scale I’m making these characters at,” McMakistein said. “Even one character produces a considerable amount of lag. Having 12 different characters active at once would kill the user’s computer.”
Overwatch fan recreates Doomfist in Minecraft with all his abilities and it’s incredible
Minecraft: Story Mode Season 2, Episode 1 review
Available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC, iOS and Android
While it was pretty astonishing that we got a Minecraft-inspired Telltale experience to begin with, here we are in 2017 and the developer has unleashed the first episode in a second season entitled Hero In Residence. The concept itself remains as strange as it did when it was first announced, but by that same token, the franchise is still oddly entertaining and filled with personality.
The most enjoyable aspect of Minecraft: Story Mode is that it’s clearly aimed at a younger audience. This does mean adults may struggle to get into it – as you’d assume – but if you’re a Telltale connoisseur then this feels like a well-earned vacation. All the usual tropes from the studio are apparent, of course, so you’ll be making decisions and weaving your way through a somewhat unique plot. However, the ramifications are so light and what you’re asked to do so fluffy that you can’t help but have fun with it.
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Kicking off more or less directly after the end of season 1, where returning hero Jesse and friends have defeated the Wither Storm, you’re tasked with getting back to normal. Or, at least, as normal as being a giant block-faced person can be. Naturally, this doesn’t last long when a new threat emerges in the form of a neighbouring town known as Champion City with its leader Stella.
The plot never becomes too out of hand or overly complicated in the way of Batman: A Telltale Series, but this is the reason it’s so easy to play. It’s nonsense, at the end of the day, balanced out by some bizarre characters and ridiculous sub-plots that ensure the pace never lets up. It’s quite clear the developer understands its audience here and that having even an ounce of downtime probably isn’t what they’re looking for.
This doesn’t mean it goes overboard or bombards you with too much, because it doesn’t. Hero In Residence simply keeps events ticking over so that when you’ve reached the end of episode 1 – which takes around two hours or so – you’re more than ready for more.
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A big reason it works is the well-written dialogue and voice acting. There’s nothing here that’s going to be winning a comedy award, but it’s so keen not to take itself seriously that it’s open to everyone. Given that a large portion of people playing are probably going to be parents with their children, in the same way families will always head to the cinema to see a Disney movie, the whole thing is just very well pitched. You sit down, fly through an easy-to-understand and accessible story then sit back and wait for episode 2.
This is apparent in how Minecraft: Story Mode sets itself out, too. A lot more stripped back than other efforts that seek to introduce new combat options or complex mechanics, this is Telltale’s model in its most basic form – there isn’t that much to think about. Even the odd puzzle isn’t particularly taxing – but surely that’s the point, and a reason to nod proudly in the studio’s direction. This isn’t about pushing the envelope or turning Minecraft into something it isn’t. It simply exists to tie into a franchise that’s now bigger than life itself.
It’s a similar result in terms of the aesthetic. Countless times in the past titles from the developer have suffered terrible technical issues, which affect proceedings far more than they should. This isn’t the case here, mostly because we’re using that cutesy Minecraft look. It’s not hard to replicate a blocky aesthetic, and because of this fact everything looks really rather pleasant – especially the animations used on our band of would-be warriors.
It’s just all so stripped back and simple, and knowing you’re not about to be smacked in the face with serious visual or audio flaws is most definitely welcome. Even the soundtrack follows suit, reproducing the light-hearted tone the franchise is known for. You’ll have it in your head for days.
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All-in-all, then, Minecraft Season 2 has started off in very much the same vein as the first, but that does mean similar problems are apparent. Given that such things are intentional, it’s hard to pick holes, but if you’re looking for something deep and gritty then you shouldn’t give this a second’s thought – you’re barking up the wrong tree entirely.
This is akin to a hand-holding adventure than any kind of serious challenge or deep experience, and if you approach it as such you’ll be sorely disappointed. It’s cookie-cutter gaming at its most sweet, a way to expand Mojang’s universe to new territories and probably make a load of money in the process. It’s well put together and decent while it lasts, but that’s about as much attention as you should give it. When it’s over, it’s over.
There’s no doubt the Minecraft community will enjoy this as intended, and the fact it’s made it back for a round two will be all the information some need before jumping in, especially since the world has been established now. You just get to go on another journey with a cast of characters you recognise and understand. It doesn’t even matter if you haven’t played the original – there’s nothing here that you couldn’t figure out on your own.
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With that said, this is Telltale light, ticking the necessary boxes and ensuring that putting smiles on people’s faces is the number one priority. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but take it aboard before you make any decisions.
Verdict
Minecraft: Story Mode Season 2, Episode 1 is a nice return for the series as it continues to be as light and easy as before. The perfect next step for families who love Mojang’s absurdly successful creation.
We regret to inform you that you can’t vacation at this beautiful tropical ‘Minecraft’ resort
Minecraft players come up with some pretty creative creations, but this one in particular makes us wish we could live inside Minecraft, even just for a week or two.
Redditor FamilyCraft shared their own Minecraft rendition of a tropical resort, a stunning plot of land complete with palm trees, pools, and architecture reminiscent of Dubai.
Take a look at the tantalizing Minecraft resort posted on Imgur:
Don’t you just want to slip on your sandals and book your plane ticket right now? There’s even a helipad there.
Of course, its beauty partially comes from the add-on texture packs that brighten the colors and up-res the water and sky. Here’s the same resort in vanilla Minecraft:
Still impressive, from a creative standpoint. FamilyCraft said they were inspired by the Aperion Hotel project in Dubai.
The entire project took about one week with work being done by three or four active players and three or four more part-time players.
We regret to inform you that you can’t vacation at this beautiful tropical ‘Minecraft’ resort