Thereâs a PlayStation mural outside of E3. It features PS mainstays in boats, a parody of this George Washington painting. I was picking out who was who with a friend. âItâs Infamous guy! Itâs Claire from Resident Evil! Itâs⊠a basketball player!â Then a security guard walked up. âI only recognize one of those characters,â she said.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back, there was a generic Minecraft avatar. âThat one,â she said, squinting ever so slightly. âHeâs from Minecraft.â
She didnât play a lot of games, she confessed, but she knew a blurry Minecraft man from a mile (or, er, several feet) away.
After a day of shooting, stabbing, and witching, it kinda put everything in perspective for me. Donât get me wrong: I like a lot of the hardcore triple-A games at this E3. I think The Witcher 3, Batman: Arkham Knight, and Metal Gear Solid V look incredible, but I canât even count the number of people Iâve met this yearâall over the place, not just at E3âwhoâve said, âI donât really play video games much, except for Minecraft.â Kids, adults, grandparents.
Sometimes I think theyâre missing out. But only sometimes.
Itâs crazy, especially given that Minecraft was once a totally-unknown indie game with awful graphics and bugs galore. It made its name on an insidiously powerful idea alone. Now itâs a household name in a sense that few games truly are. It occupies a rarefied space alongside Mario and (unfortunately) Angry Birds. I canât remember the last time I met someone who didnât know what it is.
Even then, it kind of amazes me that a mere, entirely silent symbol of that is more instantly recognizable than a literal armada of characters Sony and other developers have meticulously written and rewritten, designed and redesigned. Sorry Nathan Drake. Sorry Infamous bro. Sorry Watch_Dogsâ Aiden Pearce, your gun and phone cocked and at the ready, even at sea. You might be made of more polygons than Minecraft manâs entire world, but you just donât have the reach.
People like to create. People like to explore. Minecraft lets you slice and dice cube creatures (and cube trees and cube mountains and cube cattle) to your heartâs content, but violence isnât really the core of it. Itâs a game of elbow grease and ingenuity, teamwork and creativity in numbers. Whether youâre sticking it out as the Denizens of the Night threaten to reduce your wavering mud hut to beautiful nothingness or teaming up with somebody else to build a castle in the sky, itâs a game of thoughtful imagination first and foremost.
Meeting that security guard was a wake-up call for me. E3 has a way of absorbing you, whether youâre playing along at home or (and especially) if youâre trudging your way through the belly of the beast. She reminded me that E3 represents an increasingly small nicheânot a bad one, necessarily, but one thatâs changing and growing verrrrrrry sloooooooowly. E3 is one of the gaming industryâs biggest stages, but the gaming industryâs about a lot more than most of the things Iâm playing here. Heck, even Sony is, what with its increasing focus on colorful indies.
Also, letâs be real: a whole lot of video game characters are pretty boring. But thatâs another discussion for another time.
Minecraft might be the loneliest game at E3 if youâre hanging out at Microsoft and Sonyâs booths, but itâs in good company, well, pretty much everywhere else ever. Why? Because itâs a little bit magical in its own way. I imagine Iâll shoot, stab, and witch plenty more bad guys in my time, but you can only be so memorable if all you really are is a glorified weapon. A lot of people would rather a paintbrush than a gun.
The sun dimmed around us as the security guard asked about each character, what sorts of games they represented. My friend and I gave our Expert Opinions on everything from Watch_Dogs to The Last of Us to old-school Resident Evil. âYeah, those sound alright,â she said as she slowly sauntered away. I guess she had better things to do.
TMI is a branch of Kotaku dedicated to telling you everything about my adventures in the gaming industry (and sometimes other offbeat and/or uncomfortable subjects). Itâs an experiment in disclosure, storytelling, interviewing, and more. The gaming industry is weird. People are weird. I am weird. You are weird. Why hide that? Letâs explore it.
