One of the things I like about Minecraft is that it isn’t structurally adversarial. Most conventional multiplayer games are fundamentally about outperforming another player.
Even when a game is not explicitly violent, I think there is a compelling argument to be made that it continues to shape the player’s perspective as to how the world is and ought to be. Mario Kart is no different from Call of Duty in this regard; both share triumph over others as their win state, whereas Minecraft offers at least the possibility of a (practically) infinite world that is purely cooperative.
I often like to think that the afterlife is something like a big Minecraft server, where our wills have been perfected such that the idea of competitive strife never even crosses one’s mind, and all there is to do is expand into a horizon of possibility. Naturally this makes me very unpopular at LAN parties.
It's interesting to me, the shift I've had to co-op games over the years (both board and video games). With one group of friends, we play exclusively cooperative games, whereas another only wants to ever play competitive games. For me, co-op is just so much more relaxing. It's also far more social, whereas playing competitive games the socializing usually happens outside of the game itself. You can definitely be over-competitive in cooperative games too though.
Unless the game designers specifically accounted for it, cooperative games can rob the autonomy of less confident players. One overbearing player can hijack the whole game. To them to win the game as designed it feels correct to do.
In competitive game it's possible the less skilled player may never win (not true for party games), but at least only they are personally invested in their win so no one can righteously take over.
One of the things I like about Minecraft is that it isn’t structurally adversarial. Most conventional multiplayer games are fundamentally about outperforming another player.
Even when a game is not explicitly violent, I think there is a compelling argument to be made that it continues to shape the player’s perspective as to how the world is and ought to be. Mario Kart is no different from Call of Duty in this regard; both share triumph over others as their win state, whereas Minecraft offers at least the possibility of a (practically) infinite world that is purely cooperative.
I often like to think that the afterlife is something like a big Minecraft server, where our wills have been perfected such that the idea of competitive strife never even crosses one’s mind, and all there is to do is expand into a horizon of possibility. Naturally this makes me very unpopular at LAN parties.