Back in the early 2000’s, things were a lot simpler. Schools taught using textbooks, the internet was in its early stages, and most importantly, Minecraft’s worlds weren’t 80% ocean. 

Minecraft is the definitive best-selling video game of all time, with over 300 million copies sold worldwide. Its full release in November of 2011 is a period nearly every kid who grew up in the early 2000’s will remember. Its infinite world generation leads to infinite possibilities, which in my opinion, leads to (not so) infinite problems. 

If you’ve somehow never played or heard of Minecraft, it’s basically a game where you have the freedom to do whatever you want. Build a house, create an empire of potatoes, or survive the harsh nights. Whichever direction you choose, has infinite other directions after it. 

First off, why exactly was Minecraft so popular? The sandbox1 genre of gaming wasn’t really anything new. Sandbox games like GTA 4 and The Sims 3 released around this time and didn’t see much popularity compared to Minecraft. Minecraft surely had to have something that made it stand out from its competition, right? 

Stand out it did. Minecraft was available to play on nearly anything that had a screen. Within Minecraft’s first year of being released, it was available on the four most prominent gaming platforms at the time, these being the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Phone/Tablet, and Computer. The Xbox 360 specifically released a free trial of the game on its Xbox Arcade that came with the console, so along with the multitude of ways to try Minecraft, a lot of people were able to experience the game completely for free. Later, Minecraft’s influence expanded to other gaming platforms like the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS. 

Minecraft was also popular because of its uniqueness. As mentioned before, the sandbox genre of games wasn’t very popular in the early 2000’s compared to action titles such as Call of Duty. Minecraft truly defined the sandbox genre, establishing what a sandbox game is, and should be. This being infinite creativity. In games like GTA and The Sims, sure you have creativity, but it’s limited to getting a high wanted level or raising a family. Creative, sure, but restrictive. Minecraft allows the player to do and play however they’d like, and with its multiplayer compatibility, the possibles were nearly endless. Exploring the infinite world, fighting enemies, building incredible structures, Minecraft has almost limitless activities to partake in and is one of, if not the most, repayable games of all time.

So why did I mention Minecraft has problems? I just spent the last two paragraphs praising it to death, so what are my problems with this near “perfect” game? The answer; the recent updates. But before I talk about the updates, the biggest problem everyone agrees on are the mob votes. Every year Mojang, the developers of Minecraft, host a vote on where the community can favor one of three mobs2 to be added to the game. Why? Just add all three. Mob votes only create divisions in the community and make people upset when their mob doesn’t win. Add all three.

Now that that rant is out of the way, bad updates. The rest of this article will be 100% my opinion. I know of a lot of people who love the recent updates, but I personally would like to bring light to the issues I have with them and how I might improve them.

It all started when Mojang began the “overhaul updates” back in 2018, where they would take an existing biome3 in the game, “change it up,” and add new things to it. The problem I have is what they added, or lack thereof. Now these updates are not all bad, far from it. The 1.13 update, aka the aquatic update (ocean overhaul) for example, added the trident weapon which is one of the coolest and most unique items to this day, as well as the sunken ship structures. But the rest of the ocean update however, not so much.

The ocean update made the ocean biomes bigger, way bigger, unreasonably big. To the point where, as I said in the introduction, the worlds are 80% water. This is an exaggeration, in reality it’s closer to 40-50%. But these large oceans wouldn’t be a problem if they served a purpose. The only thing they added that was noteworthy is the trident, as mentioned before. The rest of the update only made the oceans bigger and added coral reefs and sea pickles to make up for the size. Sure, the reefs look cool, but they serve zero purpose whatsoever, and their textures are too abstract to be able to use for a lot of build projects. Don’t get me started on sea pickles. At least coral looks cool and can be used for some abstract builds. The only purposes sea pickles serve are severely outclassed by other items. Sea pickles can be used as a small light source. Torches or sea lanterns are  far easier to obtain and produce more light. Smelting sea pickles can get you lime dye. Just go pick a lime flower from the ground.

Another example of a disappointing update for me was update 1.16, aka the Nether4 Update. Similar to the aquatic update, there were some good things that came from this update. These changes include the piglin mob, and the Bastion Remnant structures. These two are great for the game, with things that different types of players can enjoy. The piglins are suited for the speed running community and the Bastion Remnant structures are for the building community. These two, however, are – in my opinion – the only good aspects. Now that sentence probably just awoke something inside a lot of people who play Minecraft, as I didn’t mention netherite ore.

I believe netherite ore is bad for the game. Mainly because of the concept of power creep. Power creep is something a lot of modern games struggle with, specifically RPG gacha games such as Honkai: Star Rail, where each update releases something more powerful than previously added content, instead of improving said previous content. I think it’s lazy and unhealthy in the long run.

Diamonds specifically have been the king of gear since the game came out, and now a new ore is released that does fundamentally the same thing. Sure, netherite tools mine faster and the armor blocks more damage, but the biggest difference between previous ores such as stone, iron, and diamond, was that they each mined different blocks. Stone couldn’t mine ores, and iron couldn’t mine obsidian. You needed diamond tools to mine certain blocks. Now with netherite there is no real reason to go for diamonds as in some cases netherite is easier to obtain than diamonds. And I’m sure eventually Mojang will make another ore that’s better than netherite, and the cycle will repeat until the balance of the game is completely messed up.

I haven’t even touched on the Caves and Cliffs or The Wild updates, and I won’t for the sake of this article not being four thousand words. But essentially these updates, as well as many others that came out after 2018, suffer from the problems I mentioned earlier.

Now, how can Minecraft improve? First off get rid of the mob vote, that’s an obvious one. But what else? The first thing I think is to actually improve older content. Changing the world generation of an existing biome is a start but add more mobs that can only spawn in specific areas. Right now, the basic fifteen or so mobs can spawn everywhere, and there are very few exceptions such as fish in the ocean or mooshrooms on the mooshroom islands. New stuff is great, don’t stop adding it, but there comes a point where there is so much content that some gets outdated and less flourished than the newer content.

Another, and perhaps the biggest change Mojang can employ in my opinion that would improve future updates, is don’t change too much. This obviously contradicts what I literally just said four sentences ago, but the concept of changing, and improving are both very different. Don’t change the fundamental things that make Minecraft, Minecraft. The aquatic update and the caves and cliffs update both changed the ocean and caves so much that they are completely unrecognizable from their previous iterations. The iconic tunnel-like caves are now massive, massive caverns where you can’t see the ceiling. And the oceans are so large the render distance of the game can’t keep up most of the time.

This entire article is of course my opinion. There are millions that love the new updates, and that’s completely fine. However, a lot of the problems I mentioned before such as power creep and changing the fundamentals, will negatively affect Minecraft in the long run. Minecraft has been on an unfortunate decline since its revival back in 2019. And if Mojang wants Minecraft to continue growing and defining childhoods, it must be careful with its updates.

1 A genre of video games where the player has the freedom to do anything within the games limits, with no real goal or objective to complete.

2 A creature within Minecraft that can either help or attack the player. For example, a pig, zombie, or villager.

3 Almost exactly the same as a real-life biome. An area that is classified by its unique blocks and terrain. Examples being the forest biome, mountain biome, and desert biome.

4 An alternate dimension within Minecraft that’s fiery and dangerous for the player to explore, but required if they wish to beat the game.

Sources: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Java_Edition_version_history https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Nether_Update https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Update_Aquatic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft