Gender in Minecraft

notch:

[Keep in mind I am no longer the lead developer on Minecraft, Jens is. This post is about what I thought about back when I was making it]

If it wasn’t for the fact that the default Minecraft character is referred to as “Minecraft Guy” and that I once jokingly answered “Steve?” when asked what his* name was, Minecraft would be a game where gender isn’t a gameplay element.

The human model is intended to represent a Human Being. Not a male Human Being or a female Human Being, but simply a Human Being. The blocky shape gives it a bit of a traditional masculine look, but adding a separate female mesh would just make it worse by having one specific model for female Human Beings and male ones. That would force players to make a decisions about gender in a game where gender doesn’t even exist.

All the other mobs in the game are genderless and usually exhibit the most prominent traits of both genders. Cows have horns and udders (even if I’ve later learned that there are some cows where the females do have horns), and the chicken/duck/whatevers have heads that look like roosters, but still lay eggs. For breeding, any animal can breed with any other animal of the same species.

Obviously, I’m not saying this is a good way to deal with gender in all games, as the better your graphics are, and because of how quickly the human mind tries to identify the gender of other humans, you are going to have to make a decision as a developer about gender, but I felt we could get away with it in Minecraft.

There’s no point to this post. I just wanted to clarify, so there’s an official word on it.

Also, as a fun side fact, it means every character and animal in Minecraft is homosexual because there’s only one gender to choose from. Take THAT, homophobes!

* I do regret using masculine terms to talk about the default character. These days I try to use the up-and-coming use of “they” as a genderless pronoun.

MC 1.3 Update Prerelease!

weplayminecraft:

View the entire list of changes here.

Download Client: .jar
Download Server: .jar / .exe

This update looks amazing

Anonymous asked: what's your favorite game?

Guessing anons’ secret identities ;)

But, uh, seriously? I’m a massive fan of the Halo, Fable, Bioshock, Pokémon, Portal and Assassin’s Creed series, and naturally Minecraft is amazing, as well as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

I also really enjoyed Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, which was an original Xbox game that I think never got the recognition it deserved for the story, graphics, soundtrack and control system.

My favourite ever game though? It’s a tough question, but it’s between Portal 2, Bioshock and Minecraft. The story lines of Portal 2 and Bioshock are genius, and few games match Bioshock’s atmosphere and its ability to question the player’s thoughts on morality while Portal 2 offers a lot of fun and thinking, which I absolutely love, but I’m willing to bet that Minecraft has more re-playability than almost any game out there, which is augmented by the modding community and the constant updates and improvements.

It’s VERY close, but my favourite ever game is Portal 2.

Minecraft 1.2

mcupdate:

+ New jungle biome
+ Added ocelots
+ Added cats
+ Added iron golems
+ New AI for mobs
+ Tame wolves can have puppies
+ Villagers will have children if there is room in their village
+ Added rare drops for mobs
+ New items and blocks
* New map height limit (256 instead of 128)
* Doors have been updated so that double-doors work better with redstone
* Many other minor tweaks and fixes
- Removed Herobrine 

(via lazcraft)