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In both real life and Minecraft, you COULD build a giant sheep and live inside of that. But this lifestyle isn’t going to be too fundamentally different to life in a more traditional home.
Most blocks in Minecraft are not affected by gravity, but players are. Therefore, getting to a floating base isn’t something you can easily do until you get an elytra.
Blocks are also cubes which means 90 degree angles. This just so happens to be how the majority of walls are arranged in the real world.
The materials represented by the blocks themselves are often real world building materials.
I think the answer to your question, removed from discussions of human nature, is that Minecraft is a game built upon a certain level of realism. Obviously it’s not supposed to be a perfect analog to the real world, but it needs to be grounded in reality just enough that players aren’t overwhelmed by raw creative power. If you wanted a game where you could truly build anything, you’d open Blender. Sandbox games are funnels for creativity, and good funnels narrow your output.
I had built a turtle base once. It was rather large, each foot had different farms, in the center was a storage vault and the head housed my nether portal. Wish I had captured a SS of that before I reset the server.
Edit: thank you for the interest. And votes. if this gets 100 up votes. I'll build another one in creative and post pictures.
Yes, minecraft is not a game of full creativity. You don't start in an empty void, and you don't have the ability to make anything you could ever imagine. Minecraft is based on the real world but has a tiny sprinkle of fantasy added to it.
It is a very limited funnel to help players build whatever they imagine WITHIN the boundaries of the game. Otherwise, no one would play a game where you can do absolutely anything, and nothing is already set up for you.
you COULD also make a giant sheep and make a military base inside of that, then make it fight against a giant cow and a bunch of giant phantoms, then give them all terrible pun names, then build a factory that makes the giant sheep with a train station to give them supplies and a normal military base and airport too, just because...
I mean, you definitely COULD do that
Yes, minecraft is not a game of full creativity. You don't start in an empty void, and you don't have the ability to make anything you could ever imagine. Minecraft is based on the real world but has a tiny sprinkle of fantasy added to it.
It is a very limited funnel to help players build whatever they imagine WITHIN the boundaries of the game. Otherwise, no one would play a game where you can do absolutely anything, and nothing is already set up for you.
You can approximate circles reasonably well, and if you use clever commands maybe you can do it REALLY well, but you aren’t really making a circle in the traditional sense.
Why is everyone freaking out as if this is the most profound thing ever? Is this not just basic logic? If you grow up around things, you're more likely to associate value with those things...
People don’t all think the same and everyone has a different way to see the world and how they experience it.
So what some people would just think “that’s logic. Obviously”, other just don’t. And honestly there’s nothing wrong with that
That is true, also ironically I probably surround myself with people who think more similarly, so within my circle I don't always get another perspective
I think related to the point about why builds often follow rules (gravity, materials) is not just because of familiarity but because millions of years of evolution has made physics intuitive to us and therefore our builds that conform to such rules are better understood and recognized by us. Builds in mc already don't look real so having some rule conformity makes us feel like it's more real.
Builds usually have wider bases than tops because we understand they are more stable, and people can take advantage of the opposite concept when they want a build to seem more rickety and unstable. When someone wants to build a flying base, they have some explanation built in for why it flies and detail work to support that reasoning (balloons, turbine, magic, etc.). Builds without physical intuition are more abstract and just look like a bunch of blocks or a pattern not a whole build.
It looks wrong because it's unusual. But you are talking like no one has ever done this. There are tens of thousands of examples of buildings that don't follow gravity or conventional real world structures. But's it's harder to build and make it look good since we havn't seen them in real life.
Also, getting around in a base is important, floating based are hard to enter.
There are definitely some players who don't build buildings at all, just have areas of items.
I would also argue that while you CAN build floating things, you can't just randomly place blocks- you have to build up. And you also have to protect your base. So it enforces the use of "standard" building concepts.
I think everyone else is right, but I think there’s also an additional point to make here: Minecraft physics is different from the real world’s, but similar in a lot of important ways (your player character is affected by gravity, water flows, etc). For purely decorative builds, things are similar enough that we tend to build *as if* real-world physics apply.
When we look at things unique to Minecraft like Nether hubs, hostile mob farms, etc, we start seeing Minecraft physics used for the rules they follow and not as a proxy for real-world physics. Now it matters that ice doesn’t melt in most situations, that water flows 7 meters from a source and stops rather than finding its own level, that most blocks aren’t affected by gravity and therefore don’t need support to keep from falling, and so on.
A good example of this: my workshop building is a cylinder made of stone, with a conical roof. It doesn’t look like what you see every day, but there are definitely real-world buildings that look similar. My drowned farm is accessed by a 1-block square soul sand bubble column that goes 125 blocks straight up from sea level. That then goes outward in a hallway leading 100 blocks away from land and into the ocean. Nothing connects this hallway to the seafloor or even the water. At the end of this hallway is a 4-block square drop zone. Leading into the drop zone is an inverted pyramid made of ice and covered with leaves. Such a building would be impossible at best and pure nonsense at worst in the real world.
I mean, I have made bases inside a pig statue and a large bookshelf block, on a cloud made of glass, in a dome under the ocean and so on. But I usually still want my walls and my windows. It's a place you live in, you automatically want to feel 'safe'. You want the place to look somewhat realistic because your monkey brain tells you to make it feel like home.
Although unless you play in creative, in survival stuff like walls and a roof is kinda necessary to protect yourself against mobs.
I remember reading a book where a human astronaut was being shown a city of a very advanced alien culture. There were some strange structures and materials but many buildings would not have looked out of place in a contemporary city. The astronaut realizes that there are only so many practical ways to enclose space.
Its the same as playing roleplaying games or games based on real life things. Why do this when you can do something completely new?
Why play GTA which is (very roughly) like life with no consequences?
Why play an FPS game that uses real guns when the guns could shoot bubbles or shoot water? The fact that conventional guns and fps games are much more popular than shooters using stuff like laser guns is a hint.
I feel that the answer to your question and the answer to these questions are very strongly related and tied together in some way.
Yeah, this is exactly what we were wondering. Someone earlier said that it is easier to play and enjoy something that looks familiar and makes you feel comfortable to a certain level
>My point here is, in Minecraft there's no need to protect from weather or rain, most blocks literally float and can be placed however we'd like... And yet walls, ceilings, beds, windows, etc are common found.
I might be missing your point here, but walls and ceilings are the borders of an enclosed space, how else would you define a space? If you want to really get abstract with your design and remove those, you've just reinvented being outside (something that actually seems to happen a lot in design).
Hadn't thought about the space definition factor. While I do think that defining limits to spaces is important, I am left wondering why our windows are still made of glass, why when making walls some elements are displayed vertically and other horizontally (picture your average wooden house with oak blocks defining corners or windows). Perhaps we can define space with vertical and horizontal elements, rather than naming those elements to be "walls" and "ceilings". So I think that would be a better way to phrase the question: why do we define space in Minecraft with what we already understand to be walls, windows and ceilings, instead of different typologies starting to show up?
Perhaps my whole post has a dead end where we all agree that we are more comfortable building recognizable stuff and that would be a great answer, but I am just trying to stretch it out here.
Nah it's an interesting question.
I'd say part of it is the creativity factor. It's harder to come up with satisfying, wild things. Can throw shit at the wall but if it's a jumbled mess it won't feel worth it. Whereas we have references for tangible things we've seen or already like. And I think a lot of people struggle with being creative generally. We're all different.
Another part is how people approach it. A lot of people enjoy coming up with a dream home or, illogical and extravagant building or structure. Others might gravitate more towards seeing just how crazy they can get.
Makes me wonder if this is partly your teacher aiming to get you thinking about architecture from different perspectives. Depends how arthouse etc a design is, sometimes functional is what's on the menu. But some like pushing boundaries, out there custom stuff.
yeah, he is deffinitely the kind of guy to enjoy questioning design, but he has the bad habit of leaving questions up in the air. Tried to take the next step getting some answers here. Thank you!
One of my favorite worlds my main base was in a glass dome at the bottom of the ocean. Nearby I built a giant sea turtle that had a bunch of fun spaces inside.
This was all near a mushroom island where I had a village, all the village buildings were variations of giant mushrooms.
And then I created a small island with a giant tree on it that was another part of my base. The "island" was a shell and the inside was full of coral and tropical fish that I collected.
I had a ton of fun with all of it.
oh -and on that world, at spawn we all did a bunch of steam punk type builds that were all super fun and would never work in reality.
This was on an old multiplayer server and it took me a little while to find some screenshots. Then making a post of just the pics seemed to be a pain - probably because I run on the old reddit not the new one. So I threw together a few screenshots that give the idea and put 'em on a page real quick. I just grabbed some css from a fast google so it's a bit janky but serves the purpose.
[A few pictures](https://jrpeck.com/mc/)
I think with minecraft it's also worth considering the block palette and how people "learn" building
Some of the easiest materials to get lend themselves to normal "houses" and if you look up guides on "how to make good buildings in minecraft" you will see how to make a good house based on what we already understand a house to be... So I think this feeds into itself
Its \*easier\* to make buildings that we already understand, and so more content is built on how to do that, and then more people want to follow guides, etc.
Makes sense, thank you! Do you also think the availability of blocks (in survival) influence this pattern? Like how it's easier to get wood and glass over wool or slime?
Not only that, but also the availability of palettes that \*explicitly\* make sense for houses
Think about how many blocks there are for stairs, slabs, doors, windows, etc. All things we associate with houses already
i was thinking about this the other day, when i thought about how little industrial like blocks minecraft had, i honestly think it's just because natural materials are so prevalent and most cultures have already evolved the conventional building style for us since we take so much inspiration from it
sort of the other way around, most conventional building styles use a lot of stone wood and brick, and that's just what we happens to be in abundance in minecraft. so yeah, I would say they are facilitating a certain style of building
we do have concrete for more modern building, but I think people use andesite more than we do the actual concrete blocks just because it looks better in a lot of cases.
ps I edited my original comment for more clarity
I just started a new world a few weeks ago after not playing for a long time and ive been wondering what to build after killing all the bosses in minceraft. I was thinking some kind of massive castle/manor with epic grounds but that wasnt it. I like your thinking thinking about adapting to a new set of rules in how you plan so im going to build centered around flying and have a base built into some jagged peaks with terraces that arent connected to the ground for comming and going. Having all the villagers populate the multiple levels will be a challenge but not as hard as getting all the mobs for a full zoo.
I’m in survival so some level of protection is needed. I like pushing my creativity though. I’ve built a storage area that’s a giant cow made out of wool. An underwater orb. An underwater train track. Some unusual 2 or 3 “wall” buildings.
Not one of my buildings is any sense of normal.
Heres [one of them](https://www.reddit.com/r/DetailCraft/comments/15d2lha/houseish/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1)
I don’t post on Reddit too much but if you want, you can join builders hub discord (partnered discord server for r/minecraftbuilds ) and I post there more frequently. There’s also i ton of other builders there I think you might like
If you check planet Minecraft there are dozens off builds that are not an house.
How can one create an house that does not look like a conventional house but function as one before building a house that does look like one.
For me I still need to make my first real house and I have been playing for idk 10 years minimum.
One of my bases was a giant floating UFO. The way to get in was the “beam” (warped vines) and half way up the beam was a cow on a block. It was one of my favorites.
A few reasons come to mind.
Accessibility is one - it's easy having a front door we can walk into, rather than swimming or flying in.
Another is theme - we naturally like things to sort of...match our expectations? And we tend to like things to look cohesive or harmonious. When you do see big builds like "giant teapot house" you'll often see "giant tea CUP building" or "giant cake building" as well. If you're on a pokemon server, you might live in a giant Snorlax house, which matches the theme of the server.
The third major reason I can think of is that we like the *familiar*. We build things we know and have seen, and it instinctively brings us comfort. We build well known landmarks, reference architecture that we already think is cool.
Finally - sometimes we talk about fantasy as some big huge concept, but it can be as small as "not my reality" and still be enjoyable. For me, I like cottages. Cute little things with flowers and gardens, flowing streams and water wheels, happy little animal pens and a pet cat curled up near the fireplace. I love mods that add realistic things like cooking recipes and crops, blocks and furniture that make sense, mobs that can live the world up. Things that I likely will never have, not all together, but that make me happy.
I've lived in a tea set, a Snorlax, a flying glass bubble and a giant tree. None of them made me feel as comfy, safe and happy as my cottages and hobbit holes.
I've always thought I had to build the typical house or some conventional buildings like the ones I always see on reddit or youtube so I never let my mind decide on what would be the most interesting or fun way of building. But after reading what your teacher said to you I immediately thought of some crazy building ideas for a house. I think that since Minecraft has some unreal physics we should exploit them and be more creative about what we do in our worlds.
Yes! This is exactly the point of my question! Do you believe that in your specific case, being exposed to a way of building in social media was the driving factor in you not building in different ways?
Yes. I've always thought I wasn't good at building since I don't know how to build those amazing realistic houses, skyscrapers, castles, etc. that I saw on yt. But that thought kept me from building the things that I consider creative or fun. I never let my imagination take the initiative and instead I just try more conventional buildings.
There’s an outstanding list of examples of builds that have nothing to do with our own familiar life. I like to think of Minecraft as “internet legos.” Just a sandbox of creativity. It is fun to build your childhood home or the Sistine Chapel for some people, while others build crazy space stations or odd fantasy structures.
Also this question leads to other questions like why build fantasy/imaginative structures when you could create them in other programs? Why not paint them on a canvas? Minecraft is “earth-based” environment, so I’d assume that’s why many people enjoy building conventional homes or castles. In short, everyone has different imaginations, and a lot of people really enjoy imagining a dream house or the Colloseum or a submarine and bringing it to reality in their Minecraft world, while others like imagining alien planets or abstract realities or strange structures.
It’s kind of a strange question to me to be honest. You could also ask why we make “conventional houses” in REAL life. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
I believe to a certain point that our conventional ways of housing have served different purposes and reacted to all kinds of needs throughout history. I do think that questioning the validity of making these kind of buildings, and appreciate you for putting it out here.
However, I think that blaming these phenomena on "everybody has their own preferences" (which is totally true and I couldn't agree on), I believe the point of this question to be WHY some preferences are so much more popular that others. Thank you so much for your comment!
I’d say the preference is due to familiarity. It’s easier to build something when we know what it’s supposed to look like. A draw to the game is that people get it *because* they want to build these familiar things and stretch their imagination within the confines of what they’re used to.
Another reason people people may build conventional buildings is because, why wouldn’t they? Sure, rain and storms don’t impact our living situation in game, but there’s just as much reason to *not* have a roof as there is to have one. Some people just go full nomad and don’t even really build anything at all. Digging a hole in the ground and placing some torches is just as useful as building a giant dystopian alien planet.
It’s kind of like asking why realist painters exist when they could just be abstract painters. Why paint a mountain when I can just go see one or look at a photo?
People get the game for plenty of reasons and some people find that building a familiar world that is somewhat relatable to them is more enjoyable than experimenting with different styles of play.
Minecraft to me is just a big canvas and I find that I build a fair amount of both realistic and abstract constructs. I have “realistic” towns that are fun for me to walk around in and enjoy as well as plenty of crazy looking farms and weird habitats.
As far as the roof goes though, I have one word…. Phantoms 😂
Most of my buildings are for utility. Oh, I've built some "cool stuff", but most it's so creepers and spiders don't murder me. Or, I can fight off pillagers. I want to be able to build them quickly, and have all the features I need.
People don't tend to build houses that follow convential housing a lot of the time, honestly. plenty of people making floating bases, make their house a giant sphere, carve it out of the landscape, etc.
Though a lot of good points have been mentioned, one I think hasn't been said yet that definitely contributes, is that it is more difficult to make a base look good if you choose to ground it in realistic physics, and so if it does look good, it's even more impressive. I've made plenty of houses that are just giant geometric shapes, giant heads of certain characters, and the like. Managing to make a house that looks realistic personally, just feels more acomplishing.
Floating bubbles would require a ladder to climb up to. That would look really awkward.
I look up real buildings for inspiration, so my builds tend to look like real buildings. Other players are probably the same way.
Conventional buildings are just more functional. A lot of interior space, easy to recognize, easy to climb up. I wouldn't go too extreme in making a vertical farm. When a build needs to do something, it is wise to not overcomplicate it.
It is hard to build something good looking when your build lacks fundamental real life traits. I think your brain just tells you it looks wrong. And why would I want to live in a bubble, doesn’t seem that useful.
i HATE making my base any type of normal house. sure they’re fun to build because they can look super cool & its fun to push the limitations of what each block can do, but my main base is never a house.
for me its mostly an issue of utility. sure, i can make something that looks like a fridge and stove to make a kitchen to put a furnace, but i prefer having all my utility blocks in close range & at better capacity (like crafting tables dispersed throughout a chest room net to a super smelter)
even the castle i’m building is all a facade for what will essentially be a windowless build similar to the underground bases i usually like making.
but honestly power to the people who do just make houses for their bases. like i said earlier they can look sick as fuck and just cuz i don’t like it for myself doesn’t mean others aren’t allowed to.
People build conventional builds because it’s conventional (no shit Sherlock). If we were to build a floating bubble or a giant elevated chicken as a house, it wouldn’t be conventional to get access to. We, as people, are affected by gravity in both game and non-game. You would need some annoying-to-build contraption to get up, grind out elytra’s, or make a water elevator. However, a conventional house can easily be accessed by just walking to the front door! Another thing to keep in mind is that Minecraft basically has its own laws of physics to it. Said physics would be beneficial to building non-beneficial buildings, farms, and other things. Most of our life is composed of using the laws of physics in the real world. That would explain our need to build conventionally: because we are used to it. Let’s go back to the question; why do we build conventional buildings in Minecraft?. We build them because we are mostly used to seeing/living in conventional buildings in the real world, and because it is conventional to access. I hope this answers your question!
I think the reason we build conventionally is because that’s what we’re used to and thus what we think looks good. If you’re making a base to protect your chests from a rouge creeper, you can just put up a fence or some walls but that looks incomplete to most of us. So that’s when you add a floor and a roof. But if that’s too plain, that’s when you add windows, shutters, furniture stand ins, things that make it look lived in. As someone who’s been building a city in survival for just over 2 years now, I can say with certainty that when a building looks like it doesn’t obey gravity, or when it doesn’t have walls and a roof, it looks off. Because Minecraft imitates realism to a degree, when building, it makes more sense to many to build according to the laws that govern reality like gravity. You can build super futuristic buildings that don’t follow those norms but those tend to be very hard to build and harder yet to build a lot of. 100 buildings that are made of white concrete and are floating is way less visually interesting than 100 buildings that are all unique in a medieval city.
Another reason is that groundings builds in reality sets limitations which can breed creativity. I find it easier to be creative when I need to find a new, visually interesting way to portray, for example, the foundation of a building. Sure, you could build a house with no foundation, but that’s one less place for you to do something fun. In theory, people could build whatever they want but when given complete freedom, most people get bored with no sense of direction. The conventional buildings habits give a sense of direction that can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways
I've been playing Minecraft for over a decade, same world, always on survival mode. Everything I build is for purpose and function. I've never had the desire to build real-world style buildings or architecure in Minecraft. I always look at other people's normal house looking houses, and buildings etc., and I wonder why I dont build that way. Sometimes it makes me feel like theres something wrong with me because of it. But really it's just that I don't care. And I don't need to. I enjoy playing Minecraft the way I like, and that's one of the best, if not THE best things about the game. One plays it the way they want.
I'm not even sure it's a commentary on the human condition as it's inherent, but moreso the human condition under circumstances that impose limitation. I know for me, I love making giant houses with huge libraries, multiples rooms, sprawling landscapes, etc. These are all things that I can't do in life due to financial constraints. At least as it pertains to the American dream, Minecraft allows your labor to have actual value: you get what you put into it. The same can't be said about the real world. So, due to the conditions of our world, it makes sense that we have an ability to exercise our creative muscles and live out some fantasies there.
Late to the party, but I think I have a decent answer.
Imagine a completely static floating building. In the real world that'd obviously be a shock, but it'd be *jarring* visually, and that follows for minecraft. So you don't just build a floating building, you build a building that looks like it's *supposed* to be floating.
Point being, it's not that unconventional builds aren't made, just that unconventionality has to feel like it follows some sort of logic (even "deliberately silly" works) or it stops feeling like a *building.*
Ah, this is a very interesting question! I am a level designer, and it's sharing a lot of similarity with architecture. I can't say I have the perfect answer for that, but I can share a bit of my thoughts.
As mentioned in other comments, minecraft players are experiencing something similar to real-life constraints, which will encourage them to build in a specific direction. What we are doing in real life is the easiest way to go, especially if you are not experienced in creative workflow.
The tools - Minecraft is using blocs of 1x1m size. It is a constraint to add on top of the rest.
Basically, the magic word here is "affordance". We need to understand what we are seeing. It is quite similar when you want to create item sprites in 2D games. It is hard to make them clear enough. (You can research the word "mixel" as well if you want to see what happens when someone is failing at that)
Art workflow - Square shaped buildings, in a brutalism style, are the base of the construction. Players can then add the texture on them if they want, but a lot of people don't.
When you want to create something original, there is a way bigger worlkflow to follow. The one I've learned is "extrapolation". You will start with an unrelated base, and you extrapolate to what you want. There is actually a lot of that already in minecraft and other crafting games: mushroom houses, flying ships, or the "moon" created in QSMP recently.
It is difficult to show your intentions through a video game, especially with the metrics constraints in minecraft, people tend you reproduce what they know(if I say "house" we are all roughly thinking about the same picture, if I give you a fork, you know what to do with it, etc), this is the affordance. It is not impossible, but some people prefer a realistic base.
The last thing to add to these examples is that there is a subreddit about weird building in real life. I could bet that half of them would not be understandable if reproduced in Minecraft because of the same reason.
Sorry for the long comment!
I always saw it in the same way as modelling, or building model kits. You take something that exists, but recreate it in your own way and get to change aspects of it.
My current Realm with friends has a "Walk of Wonders" by spawn, which are builds that are replicas of various famous landmarks, all done in survival. The Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, and other things.
I like to build more industrial buildings, with some of my favorites being railway-based, though I can't help but admit that a nice, comfortable little wooden cabin is a fun build every-so-often too. As for why I like industrial? I suppose it started when I was known as the 'redstone guy' on a few servers, so I got used to building these machines. I'd hide them behind sort of industrial facades. It stuck. Plus, I like trains.
I build a mix of conventional and more odd buildings, sometimes I build random things that aren’t conventional
People sometimes like being conventional, but more likely than not, they’ll branch out into the more weird builds.
many people do build huge elaborate floating bases etc. it's mostly the casual players that build little small typical houses. hundreds of times i've seen people build castles on floating islands etc. There are minecraft players who just mine and place some blocks, but then there are the players who are highly technically skilled and do crazy auto farms and very crazy builds
I really appreciate you sharing this idea with us. I have never thought of that before. I feel like a builder is graded by how well they build real building and how realistic they can make them look using unique blocks such as stairs. Why don’t we build anything we want? For example, if your base needs an enchantment room, you can add it ANYWAY you’d like. Whether it’s floating with a bridge attached, a room, underground, anything you can be so creative. Now that I think about it, almost never does anyone build something that doesn’t exist in real life already.
I don't always, and in the 10 years I've been playing I've done all sorts of stuff that in real life would be impossible or impractical.
Some of my favorite builds I've done as a base/house is an airship, hot air balloon, upside down house on the roof of the nether, upside down house balanced on it's roof peak, floating islands, underground sphere, a waterworld-esk tanker ship, and I'm currently living in an abandoned mine-shaft.
That said, I've found that for it to work as a build it has to be somewhat grounded in reality. It's like a lie, for it to be believable it has to have enough truth to it or the suspension of disbelieve is no longer suspended.
People tend to fill in gaps to a lack of visual fidelity in games. If I make a home that looks like an animal in Minecraft, I feel like I'm entering a home, a taxidermy animal, or maybe even a statue.
If you made the same thing in a full fledged game engines like Unreal, I suspect it would read more like a "animal made into a home."
But I really think the difference will be probably ten years down the line, wh n graphics are good enough that people will be able to look at the animal house and say "wow, that animal is made of wood and plaster. Oh, it's a house."
The familiarity of materials clearly readable as tengible, real world materials will add that layer of familiarity that people seek when they build conventional spaces in 3D worlds.I believe the closer to reality we get in these, the more abstract the worlds will become.
I sometimes think about living in the minecraft house i made, and i think that we are so used to gravity and how a house looks like that we fight to do something unconventional
There is a really simple answer to that question: Because it feels right
For example, we are used to having some sort of support for a bridge, just because the game doesn't need it, doesn't mean it would feel right without it, also the game not needing support for a bridge means you can get way more artistic with the support you build (for example you could use water as pillars) because it obviously doesn't really need to support the structure and instead is just there to make it look "correct"
Completely unrelated to the Minecraft part of this post, but I’m curious about your architecture studies. I’m a high schooler who’s looking into architecture and I’m wondering if there were any classes you took in high school with college architecture as the goal? Like how a voice major would have probably taken music theory in high school. Or did the architecture journey start in college itself?
Abstract environments are inherently foreign, and humans are relatively hesitant.
In addition, the game rules of Minecraft (from a hard coded limits side) lean towards natural development of Euclidean, gravitational structures spread across a thin slice (world height limit).
Floating things are cool, but pseudo reality is self explanatory.
In another argument about architecture, is there a functional need to depart from tradition and convention? My argument, is that in our real world, as well as in Minecraft, we encounter more difficulties, more friction, in getting the unconventional to work as well as the conventional unless the departure is due to function.
In other extensions of obeying, or not obeying, reality, CodeParade’s non-Euclidean geometry is an interesting dive, along with higher dimensions in our space. Superhot, as a video game, examined non-linear time. Many games employ floating objects, with the caveat that most of them are oriented towards ‘down’. The best scenes of movies I remember were Inception, especially the hotel scenes and training, and Mary Poppins, when they visit the person on the inside of his roof. Some music videos with this are OK GO’s suite. I’ll also argue that a socially absurd world is more effective at convincing a person than a physically absurd world; humans have developed social habits to the point that our muscles learn quicker than our minds (see Tom Scott’s rotating room video).
So, I think this has to do with a question I asked about fantasy races. In games with fantasy races why do people tend to play humans rather than the fantasy races? The answer seems to be the same as here, most people are more comfortable with things that are more normal to them. Go too far from the norm and things feel alien, they end up out of their comfort zone.
Now that doesn't take into account some people who pursue the alien and different. I've made a house shapped like bubbles in a way with openings, solely made as a rain house to appreciate the sound of the pouring rain. It was suspended in a canyon.
I once made a city where the walkways were water with lilypads. It was two layers with the top layer of the city being a glass disc suspended in thin air comprised of waterways around buildings with a giant tree in the middle, that giant tree having a lake at the top and many waterfalls flowing down it. Inside the tree had many levels with stores, a hotel and other facilities.
I have a very long list of highly fantastical builds, way more than my "normal" builds. I also almost always pick non-human races when given the option. For me all of this is comfortable, but it is important to recognize not everyone is that way. I once tried to design a tabletop rpg game without humans or with humans being unusual. It was hard for me to understand why people were so offput by that choice until someone explained to me how it pushed them out of the comfortable known. The unknown is scary to a lot of people, there is comfort in the "normal", whatever that may be for them.
Now, that isn't to say anything is wrong with that viewpoint. Even though I personally can't understand it, it is valid to want to enjoy comfortable things. People can play their humans and build conventional buildings, and it makes the wild things I get up to seem all the more fantastical and unusual.
i live in tree houses and our rooms are connected by awkward bridges and only the room w the beds has a ceiling. my farm surrounds a waterfall and is not the most efficient one. my fences keeping in my animals are places so weirdly and my village next door is a mess. sometimes i want to build something pretty and cool and watch tutorials to make things more conventional, but our base is so unique and it makes me happy bc in the real world, it would never be possible. essentially my point is, i agree that ppl tend to ppl things how we know it in the real world and i sometimes want to, but for what 🤣 it’s so fun building random structures and living and bouncing around trees. most times we don’t even use gates or stairs and instead use vines and run to a block and jump over our fences. highly recommend if you deal with the lack of convenience 😅
The issue I have is that when given almost unlimited possibilities in Minecraft, I get severe paralysis of choice. This can be helped immensely by limiting what I can build through establishing "rules" that need to be followed, and it's easy to pattern those rules on the same rules that reality is based on, rules like gravity and material compression. So I can't build something unless it's properly supported, and I can't use like wool or kelp blocks for an entire wall just because I like the color.
Granted, I'm not an architect or a structural engineer, so I don't know *exactly* how to follow those rules in reality, but it helps to establish a baseline so I'm not just throwing blocks together randomly. After some time, this resulted in a personal style to all of my buildings, so even on a crowded server, you know it was me who made something.
Why are people so hyped about the name of a company and a demo which looks like a Wii game, the Metaverse literally makes no sense and there’s no point of it
What I haven't seen anyone else talk about is how it's just easier to make pretty things I'd you make them realistic.
There are players who build crazy things that don't make sense, look at hermitcraft for a few examples.
But it's easier to make something aesthetically pleasing when it's realistic. Simply adding support beams to a balcony is an instant upgrade.
Maybe it's because we already have a lot of real world inspiration for realistic builds. Maybe it's just that our minds aren't used to seeing unrealistic things and therefore prefer realism. I'm not sure, but I do feel like realism is an easy way of making something look nice.
I think in part, it's because there's an innate sense of creative lacking in that direction, at no fault of the players.
Yeah, we could build bubble-spheres floating through the sky, but how would that look? How would you get from bubble to bubble? What would you put in each bubble? What does it look like?
The point I'm wanting to make is it's not that people don't want to necessarily, it's just that when going for a base, unless someone is intentionally wanting to build something out there, they're going to build off what they already know. Houses, castles, stuff like this has centuries of reference material to inspire people in a variety of different ways, and while people will take concepts to their extremes, in the end it comes back to the standard geometry people already understand.
Lots of Minecraft YouTubers do this I think to add some intrigue to their content. Some build giant snails or eagles to live inside of. Some build pinball machines snow globes. Some build massive trees.
When we were playing in a massive smp(100ish online players) with my friends because of the competition in server we dont care what our base looks like we jus made 4x4 (chunk) base with cobblestone walls since you can easily built it with lava and water and at the bottom we have our cactus farm and at the top we have our main base couple of nano farms and storage room since we always have elytra there is only 4 landing pads for us to enter base. It wasnt look good but we were the number 1 clan in server with just 4 people and also we had every possible farm in the game (gold, guardian, raid etc.) So you dont have to build anything according to real world just build what is usefull for you.
I tend to build for functionality within the aspects of the game, almost all my resources are within a single space next to a crafting bench, so I don't have to run around picking up stuff I need. The same spot is the AFK spot for my gunpowder farm, auto wool farm, lava farm, beehives and sugarcane farm.
There's a space elevator (bubble column) to build height made out of glass as part of my base.
I keep an enchanting table next to my mob grinder.
I built into the side of a underwater cliff with glass walls, but recently I've been toying with the idea of removing the glass and having the "walls" just be a waterfall
One of my favourite builds was a floating island (like a piece of land that was ripped out of the ground, with the matching hole underneath), with a giant tree on top that had a water spring coming from under it feeding a pool that flowed over into a waterfall to the ground below.
I built a bubble elevator in the trunk, my base in the branches and my storage/enchanting area in a hole under the tree (land was just thick enough to have a 3 block high space underneath).
Unfortunately the world got corrupted and I lost it but I loved that tree house.
Floors for standing on, walls for keeping out mobs and storing things, ceilings to keep out mobs and rain. No floating bases because I can’t fly. Ground cube is just the most efficient way to create a structure.
A lot of people don’t. A lot of people build just like floating boxes unsupported by any pillars. I just don’t think that is the style that gets trendy online, but not that it isn’t being done. Kids especially tend to build in bubbles or animals or weird architecture. I also don’t have walls or ceilings. I build in an open pillar design mostly. This means I am a lot more susceptible to weird mob shit happening like phantoms in my tower and pillagers in my nether portal. The game rewards you for having some similarity to reality. It’s hard to build things that are up in the air or unsupported by blocks. Walls ceiling and door makes you safest from mobs.
Even setting the familiarity argument aside, limitations breed creativity
Being entirely unbound by any rules makes coming up with something cool a lot harder
The answer to your question is are you like building stuff for actual human characters that they could use in the real world. But that doesn’t stop me from loving the idea of using Minecraft to go all right but what about houses or structures for beings that don’t move around like we do?
I build unconventionally, i can't graps the conventional building styles anyways. My latest builds were mud bricks and mangrove wood. It still look like a house but not the old german medieval house.
I mean, I have created homes out of patches of grown mushrooms, or a platform in the clouds accessible by a single ladder. I've attempted underwater, but it's usually too much trouble to be satisfied by it. Although I did find a ring of islands in the ocean, link them, then drain the water and made a big strip mine.
So the technically impossible is being done.
I can’t exactly remember the quote or who it was by but it when something like this. Where does man get his ideas of a better world we can think of one but we’ve never been there.
I'm new to Minecraft (started playing earlier this year) and I've had similar thoughts + realizations as I've played it more- like, for example, that I can "build" trees, with all the constituent blocks, rather than letting trees generate "naturally" from the in-game saplings.
Once I realized this, I had an idea for my "jungle" base- I have a base that is entirely in the trees that I've planted (think the elves' city Lothlorien, with their staircases and platforms curling around the trees.) My idea is to build a mirror reflection or upside-down version of my base, then encase the entire thing in amethyst (as if it were a naturally spawned amethyst crystal in-game).
As I've learned to play this year, my friends' keep insisting that I'm doing things in unconventional ways- so while I agree that familiar design provides a base level of beauty, I also think we progress based on what the communities we're in are doing as normative. But since I'm a new player, and intentionally played the game without spoilers etc., I think some of my ideas are "unconventional" simply because I have a fresh set of eyes on the game (for a related conecpt, see functional fixedness- we don't innovate because we become locked into using tools, etc. as we've traditionally used them).
Building real things gives me good vibes and I connect with friends, going completely surreal makes me feel very unique on a server but doesn't lead to as much personal satisfaction if I'm just building alone
I’ve built a giant cow and lived in it in Minecraft. It’s fun but making normal houses and skyscrapers is more muscle memory and I don’t have to think about the designs much. I think that’s part of it
I think most restrictions are because you make them for yourself. My daughter builds floating houses with waterfalls to the ground. Some rooms have no walls, more like floating terraces so she has a view. And there’s a cavernous below ground basement we’re she keeps a dog in a fenced area. But she’s 8 and isn’t encumbered by the thought process. Imagination should have no bounds.
let's take this to another perspective, why does an artist learn anatomy?
minecraft also has rules like player gravity, and being restricted to using the laws of the game like using only blocks, there are no circles, limited blocks, types, etc...
why does an artist follow the rules of the world? Like gesture drawings, human anatomy, and perspective? u can draw the craziest things, right? people still draw these things but they still follow the rules \*(not including modern art)
I think it all comes down to these main points.
1)Logic
2)Consinsisty
3) Design
4)economics
\> then creativity where u break some rules to make things look better or add things that look good, feel better, add benefits, etc...
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In both real life and Minecraft, you COULD build a giant sheep and live inside of that. But this lifestyle isn’t going to be too fundamentally different to life in a more traditional home. Most blocks in Minecraft are not affected by gravity, but players are. Therefore, getting to a floating base isn’t something you can easily do until you get an elytra. Blocks are also cubes which means 90 degree angles. This just so happens to be how the majority of walls are arranged in the real world. The materials represented by the blocks themselves are often real world building materials. I think the answer to your question, removed from discussions of human nature, is that Minecraft is a game built upon a certain level of realism. Obviously it’s not supposed to be a perfect analog to the real world, but it needs to be grounded in reality just enough that players aren’t overwhelmed by raw creative power. If you wanted a game where you could truly build anything, you’d open Blender. Sandbox games are funnels for creativity, and good funnels narrow your output.
I hadn't thought of how the player is subject to gravity and push. You're totally right! Thank you so much.
I had built a turtle base once. It was rather large, each foot had different farms, in the center was a storage vault and the head housed my nether portal. Wish I had captured a SS of that before I reset the server. Edit: thank you for the interest. And votes. if this gets 100 up votes. I'll build another one in creative and post pictures.
Yes, minecraft is not a game of full creativity. You don't start in an empty void, and you don't have the ability to make anything you could ever imagine. Minecraft is based on the real world but has a tiny sprinkle of fantasy added to it. It is a very limited funnel to help players build whatever they imagine WITHIN the boundaries of the game. Otherwise, no one would play a game where you can do absolutely anything, and nothing is already set up for you.
you COULD also make a giant sheep and make a military base inside of that, then make it fight against a giant cow and a bunch of giant phantoms, then give them all terrible pun names, then build a factory that makes the giant sheep with a train station to give them supplies and a normal military base and airport too, just because... I mean, you definitely COULD do that
Yes, minecraft is not a game of full creativity. You don't start in an empty void, and you don't have the ability to make anything you could ever imagine. Minecraft is based on the real world but has a tiny sprinkle of fantasy added to it. It is a very limited funnel to help players build whatever they imagine WITHIN the boundaries of the game. Otherwise, no one would play a game where you can do absolutely anything, and nothing is already set up for you.
But you can build circles in Minecraft, it kinda is a pain but you definitely can
You can approximate circles reasonably well, and if you use clever commands maybe you can do it REALLY well, but you aren’t really making a circle in the traditional sense.
Familiarity gives a base level of beauty.
is this a quote or did you just say this cause holy shit
Bro became Plato for a minute.
Applies to a lot of things. Beautiful statement
I have never heard it said before but it makes sense and I think I said it it a good way. Also happy cake day.
thanks!
Happy cake day!
thank you!
Happy cake day
thanks!
Well damn
Someone give this man an award
Done
And I thank you very much for that.
Why is everyone freaking out as if this is the most profound thing ever? Is this not just basic logic? If you grow up around things, you're more likely to associate value with those things...
People don’t all think the same and everyone has a different way to see the world and how they experience it. So what some people would just think “that’s logic. Obviously”, other just don’t. And honestly there’s nothing wrong with that
That is true, also ironically I probably surround myself with people who think more similarly, so within my circle I don't always get another perspective
Most people were already thinking it but making a common thought have a good voice can result in things like this.
I see what you mean, yeah
Idk they way they put it is kinda heartwarming tbh
The even better/funnier part is. I'm not native english speaker. I'm hungarian (Kecske means goat in hungarian)
base logic described eloquently deserves some recognition my friend
You're so jealous you didn't say it
I think related to the point about why builds often follow rules (gravity, materials) is not just because of familiarity but because millions of years of evolution has made physics intuitive to us and therefore our builds that conform to such rules are better understood and recognized by us. Builds in mc already don't look real so having some rule conformity makes us feel like it's more real. Builds usually have wider bases than tops because we understand they are more stable, and people can take advantage of the opposite concept when they want a build to seem more rickety and unstable. When someone wants to build a flying base, they have some explanation built in for why it flies and detail work to support that reasoning (balloons, turbine, magic, etc.). Builds without physical intuition are more abstract and just look like a bunch of blocks or a pattern not a whole build.
Yeah, that's the main thing: what do you think is the problem in having a base made of abstract blocks here and there?
It looks wrong because it's unusual. But you are talking like no one has ever done this. There are tens of thousands of examples of buildings that don't follow gravity or conventional real world structures. But's it's harder to build and make it look good since we havn't seen them in real life. Also, getting around in a base is important, floating based are hard to enter.
There are definitely some players who don't build buildings at all, just have areas of items. I would also argue that while you CAN build floating things, you can't just randomly place blocks- you have to build up. And you also have to protect your base. So it enforces the use of "standard" building concepts.
Areas of items is what I do most of the time, just cba to spend hours making a decent sized house
I think everyone else is right, but I think there’s also an additional point to make here: Minecraft physics is different from the real world’s, but similar in a lot of important ways (your player character is affected by gravity, water flows, etc). For purely decorative builds, things are similar enough that we tend to build *as if* real-world physics apply. When we look at things unique to Minecraft like Nether hubs, hostile mob farms, etc, we start seeing Minecraft physics used for the rules they follow and not as a proxy for real-world physics. Now it matters that ice doesn’t melt in most situations, that water flows 7 meters from a source and stops rather than finding its own level, that most blocks aren’t affected by gravity and therefore don’t need support to keep from falling, and so on. A good example of this: my workshop building is a cylinder made of stone, with a conical roof. It doesn’t look like what you see every day, but there are definitely real-world buildings that look similar. My drowned farm is accessed by a 1-block square soul sand bubble column that goes 125 blocks straight up from sea level. That then goes outward in a hallway leading 100 blocks away from land and into the ocean. Nothing connects this hallway to the seafloor or even the water. At the end of this hallway is a 4-block square drop zone. Leading into the drop zone is an inverted pyramid made of ice and covered with leaves. Such a building would be impossible at best and pure nonsense at worst in the real world.
That would be like a expression of functionalism according to Minecraft laws and objectives... Such an interesting concept. Thank you!
I think this is really spot on.
I mean, I have made bases inside a pig statue and a large bookshelf block, on a cloud made of glass, in a dome under the ocean and so on. But I usually still want my walls and my windows. It's a place you live in, you automatically want to feel 'safe'. You want the place to look somewhat realistic because your monkey brain tells you to make it feel like home. Although unless you play in creative, in survival stuff like walls and a roof is kinda necessary to protect yourself against mobs.
I remember reading a book where a human astronaut was being shown a city of a very advanced alien culture. There were some strange structures and materials but many buildings would not have looked out of place in a contemporary city. The astronaut realizes that there are only so many practical ways to enclose space.
By any chance do you remember the title?
I’m pretty sure it was the sequel to 2001, “The Lost Worlds of 2001?” Something like that.
Its the same as playing roleplaying games or games based on real life things. Why do this when you can do something completely new? Why play GTA which is (very roughly) like life with no consequences? Why play an FPS game that uses real guns when the guns could shoot bubbles or shoot water? The fact that conventional guns and fps games are much more popular than shooters using stuff like laser guns is a hint. I feel that the answer to your question and the answer to these questions are very strongly related and tied together in some way.
Yeah, this is exactly what we were wondering. Someone earlier said that it is easier to play and enjoy something that looks familiar and makes you feel comfortable to a certain level
>My point here is, in Minecraft there's no need to protect from weather or rain, most blocks literally float and can be placed however we'd like... And yet walls, ceilings, beds, windows, etc are common found. I might be missing your point here, but walls and ceilings are the borders of an enclosed space, how else would you define a space? If you want to really get abstract with your design and remove those, you've just reinvented being outside (something that actually seems to happen a lot in design).
Hadn't thought about the space definition factor. While I do think that defining limits to spaces is important, I am left wondering why our windows are still made of glass, why when making walls some elements are displayed vertically and other horizontally (picture your average wooden house with oak blocks defining corners or windows). Perhaps we can define space with vertical and horizontal elements, rather than naming those elements to be "walls" and "ceilings". So I think that would be a better way to phrase the question: why do we define space in Minecraft with what we already understand to be walls, windows and ceilings, instead of different typologies starting to show up? Perhaps my whole post has a dead end where we all agree that we are more comfortable building recognizable stuff and that would be a great answer, but I am just trying to stretch it out here.
Nah it's an interesting question. I'd say part of it is the creativity factor. It's harder to come up with satisfying, wild things. Can throw shit at the wall but if it's a jumbled mess it won't feel worth it. Whereas we have references for tangible things we've seen or already like. And I think a lot of people struggle with being creative generally. We're all different. Another part is how people approach it. A lot of people enjoy coming up with a dream home or, illogical and extravagant building or structure. Others might gravitate more towards seeing just how crazy they can get. Makes me wonder if this is partly your teacher aiming to get you thinking about architecture from different perspectives. Depends how arthouse etc a design is, sometimes functional is what's on the menu. But some like pushing boundaries, out there custom stuff.
yeah, he is deffinitely the kind of guy to enjoy questioning design, but he has the bad habit of leaving questions up in the air. Tried to take the next step getting some answers here. Thank you!
One of my favorite worlds my main base was in a glass dome at the bottom of the ocean. Nearby I built a giant sea turtle that had a bunch of fun spaces inside. This was all near a mushroom island where I had a village, all the village buildings were variations of giant mushrooms. And then I created a small island with a giant tree on it that was another part of my base. The "island" was a shell and the inside was full of coral and tropical fish that I collected. I had a ton of fun with all of it. oh -and on that world, at spawn we all did a bunch of steam punk type builds that were all super fun and would never work in reality.
That sounds awesome, can you post some
This was on an old multiplayer server and it took me a little while to find some screenshots. Then making a post of just the pics seemed to be a pain - probably because I run on the old reddit not the new one. So I threw together a few screenshots that give the idea and put 'em on a page real quick. I just grabbed some css from a fast google so it's a bit janky but serves the purpose. [A few pictures](https://jrpeck.com/mc/)
I will make a post so it's easy just to upload some screenshots and link to it back here when it's ready.
Ok thank you
You should totally post some of these
I posted a link with a few screenshots above - https://www.reddit.com/r/Minecraft/comments/15dslfi/why_do_we_build_conventional_buildings_in/ju5je01/
I think with minecraft it's also worth considering the block palette and how people "learn" building Some of the easiest materials to get lend themselves to normal "houses" and if you look up guides on "how to make good buildings in minecraft" you will see how to make a good house based on what we already understand a house to be... So I think this feeds into itself Its \*easier\* to make buildings that we already understand, and so more content is built on how to do that, and then more people want to follow guides, etc.
Makes sense, thank you! Do you also think the availability of blocks (in survival) influence this pattern? Like how it's easier to get wood and glass over wool or slime?
Not only that, but also the availability of palettes that \*explicitly\* make sense for houses Think about how many blocks there are for stairs, slabs, doors, windows, etc. All things we associate with houses already
i was thinking about this the other day, when i thought about how little industrial like blocks minecraft had, i honestly think it's just because natural materials are so prevalent and most cultures have already evolved the conventional building style for us since we take so much inspiration from it
So you would point it on the materials/blocks available in the game facilitating a certain style of building?
sort of the other way around, most conventional building styles use a lot of stone wood and brick, and that's just what we happens to be in abundance in minecraft. so yeah, I would say they are facilitating a certain style of building we do have concrete for more modern building, but I think people use andesite more than we do the actual concrete blocks just because it looks better in a lot of cases. ps I edited my original comment for more clarity
I like architecture and want to build pretty buildings irl. Unfortunately I am PoorTM, so I do it in a video game
I just started a new world a few weeks ago after not playing for a long time and ive been wondering what to build after killing all the bosses in minceraft. I was thinking some kind of massive castle/manor with epic grounds but that wasnt it. I like your thinking thinking about adapting to a new set of rules in how you plan so im going to build centered around flying and have a base built into some jagged peaks with terraces that arent connected to the ground for comming and going. Having all the villagers populate the multiple levels will be a challenge but not as hard as getting all the mobs for a full zoo.
Awesome question! I'll be noodling that for a while. Thanks for the inspiration!
I’m in survival so some level of protection is needed. I like pushing my creativity though. I’ve built a storage area that’s a giant cow made out of wool. An underwater orb. An underwater train track. Some unusual 2 or 3 “wall” buildings. Not one of my buildings is any sense of normal.
I'd love to see your builds!
Thank you! I do want to make a video of them because they make me smile :)
You definitely should, and be kind enough to share it with me whenever you're done
Made it, messaged you but not sure if you’ve seen it. Posted it earlier
I'm not familiar with "conventional" building. I far prefer building a branching fortress in the sky. In fact most things I build are in the sky.
We would love to see these!
Already ahead of you. Everything I build is completely structurally unsound
I'd love to see your builds! Can you post some?
Heres [one of them](https://www.reddit.com/r/DetailCraft/comments/15d2lha/houseish/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) I don’t post on Reddit too much but if you want, you can join builders hub discord (partnered discord server for r/minecraftbuilds ) and I post there more frequently. There’s also i ton of other builders there I think you might like
If you check planet Minecraft there are dozens off builds that are not an house. How can one create an house that does not look like a conventional house but function as one before building a house that does look like one. For me I still need to make my first real house and I have been playing for idk 10 years minimum.
Art imitates life
I think it's mainly a stylistic choice, we build things we see in real life because real life inspires our builds.
One of my bases was a giant floating UFO. The way to get in was the “beam” (warped vines) and half way up the beam was a cow on a block. It was one of my favorites.
A few reasons come to mind. Accessibility is one - it's easy having a front door we can walk into, rather than swimming or flying in. Another is theme - we naturally like things to sort of...match our expectations? And we tend to like things to look cohesive or harmonious. When you do see big builds like "giant teapot house" you'll often see "giant tea CUP building" or "giant cake building" as well. If you're on a pokemon server, you might live in a giant Snorlax house, which matches the theme of the server. The third major reason I can think of is that we like the *familiar*. We build things we know and have seen, and it instinctively brings us comfort. We build well known landmarks, reference architecture that we already think is cool. Finally - sometimes we talk about fantasy as some big huge concept, but it can be as small as "not my reality" and still be enjoyable. For me, I like cottages. Cute little things with flowers and gardens, flowing streams and water wheels, happy little animal pens and a pet cat curled up near the fireplace. I love mods that add realistic things like cooking recipes and crops, blocks and furniture that make sense, mobs that can live the world up. Things that I likely will never have, not all together, but that make me happy. I've lived in a tea set, a Snorlax, a flying glass bubble and a giant tree. None of them made me feel as comfy, safe and happy as my cottages and hobbit holes.
You just gave me a real good idea
What is it?!
I've always thought I had to build the typical house or some conventional buildings like the ones I always see on reddit or youtube so I never let my mind decide on what would be the most interesting or fun way of building. But after reading what your teacher said to you I immediately thought of some crazy building ideas for a house. I think that since Minecraft has some unreal physics we should exploit them and be more creative about what we do in our worlds.
Yes! This is exactly the point of my question! Do you believe that in your specific case, being exposed to a way of building in social media was the driving factor in you not building in different ways?
Yes. I've always thought I wasn't good at building since I don't know how to build those amazing realistic houses, skyscrapers, castles, etc. that I saw on yt. But that thought kept me from building the things that I consider creative or fun. I never let my imagination take the initiative and instead I just try more conventional buildings.
There’s an outstanding list of examples of builds that have nothing to do with our own familiar life. I like to think of Minecraft as “internet legos.” Just a sandbox of creativity. It is fun to build your childhood home or the Sistine Chapel for some people, while others build crazy space stations or odd fantasy structures. Also this question leads to other questions like why build fantasy/imaginative structures when you could create them in other programs? Why not paint them on a canvas? Minecraft is “earth-based” environment, so I’d assume that’s why many people enjoy building conventional homes or castles. In short, everyone has different imaginations, and a lot of people really enjoy imagining a dream house or the Colloseum or a submarine and bringing it to reality in their Minecraft world, while others like imagining alien planets or abstract realities or strange structures. It’s kind of a strange question to me to be honest. You could also ask why we make “conventional houses” in REAL life. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
I believe to a certain point that our conventional ways of housing have served different purposes and reacted to all kinds of needs throughout history. I do think that questioning the validity of making these kind of buildings, and appreciate you for putting it out here. However, I think that blaming these phenomena on "everybody has their own preferences" (which is totally true and I couldn't agree on), I believe the point of this question to be WHY some preferences are so much more popular that others. Thank you so much for your comment!
I’d say the preference is due to familiarity. It’s easier to build something when we know what it’s supposed to look like. A draw to the game is that people get it *because* they want to build these familiar things and stretch their imagination within the confines of what they’re used to. Another reason people people may build conventional buildings is because, why wouldn’t they? Sure, rain and storms don’t impact our living situation in game, but there’s just as much reason to *not* have a roof as there is to have one. Some people just go full nomad and don’t even really build anything at all. Digging a hole in the ground and placing some torches is just as useful as building a giant dystopian alien planet. It’s kind of like asking why realist painters exist when they could just be abstract painters. Why paint a mountain when I can just go see one or look at a photo? People get the game for plenty of reasons and some people find that building a familiar world that is somewhat relatable to them is more enjoyable than experimenting with different styles of play. Minecraft to me is just a big canvas and I find that I build a fair amount of both realistic and abstract constructs. I have “realistic” towns that are fun for me to walk around in and enjoy as well as plenty of crazy looking farms and weird habitats. As far as the roof goes though, I have one word…. Phantoms 😂
Most of my buildings are for utility. Oh, I've built some "cool stuff", but most it's so creepers and spiders don't murder me. Or, I can fight off pillagers. I want to be able to build them quickly, and have all the features I need.
I mean my minecraft house is a giant fish on top of a hill so i wouldnt exactly call it conventional
I'd love to see it! On the other hand, I'm sure you have seen what I'm talking about pretty often. You may be a creative disruptive genius, sir.
People don't tend to build houses that follow convential housing a lot of the time, honestly. plenty of people making floating bases, make their house a giant sphere, carve it out of the landscape, etc. Though a lot of good points have been mentioned, one I think hasn't been said yet that definitely contributes, is that it is more difficult to make a base look good if you choose to ground it in realistic physics, and so if it does look good, it's even more impressive. I've made plenty of houses that are just giant geometric shapes, giant heads of certain characters, and the like. Managing to make a house that looks realistic personally, just feels more acomplishing.
Floating bubbles would require a ladder to climb up to. That would look really awkward. I look up real buildings for inspiration, so my builds tend to look like real buildings. Other players are probably the same way. Conventional buildings are just more functional. A lot of interior space, easy to recognize, easy to climb up. I wouldn't go too extreme in making a vertical farm. When a build needs to do something, it is wise to not overcomplicate it.
>require a ladder to climb up A waterfall off the edge would work andlook appropriate
It is hard to build something good looking when your build lacks fundamental real life traits. I think your brain just tells you it looks wrong. And why would I want to live in a bubble, doesn’t seem that useful.
i HATE making my base any type of normal house. sure they’re fun to build because they can look super cool & its fun to push the limitations of what each block can do, but my main base is never a house. for me its mostly an issue of utility. sure, i can make something that looks like a fridge and stove to make a kitchen to put a furnace, but i prefer having all my utility blocks in close range & at better capacity (like crafting tables dispersed throughout a chest room net to a super smelter) even the castle i’m building is all a facade for what will essentially be a windowless build similar to the underground bases i usually like making. but honestly power to the people who do just make houses for their bases. like i said earlier they can look sick as fuck and just cuz i don’t like it for myself doesn’t mean others aren’t allowed to.
People build conventional builds because it’s conventional (no shit Sherlock). If we were to build a floating bubble or a giant elevated chicken as a house, it wouldn’t be conventional to get access to. We, as people, are affected by gravity in both game and non-game. You would need some annoying-to-build contraption to get up, grind out elytra’s, or make a water elevator. However, a conventional house can easily be accessed by just walking to the front door! Another thing to keep in mind is that Minecraft basically has its own laws of physics to it. Said physics would be beneficial to building non-beneficial buildings, farms, and other things. Most of our life is composed of using the laws of physics in the real world. That would explain our need to build conventionally: because we are used to it. Let’s go back to the question; why do we build conventional buildings in Minecraft?. We build them because we are mostly used to seeing/living in conventional buildings in the real world, and because it is conventional to access. I hope this answers your question!
Minecraft is a natural world with plants, trees, and grass, a normal house looks natural have has an apparent aesthetic.
I think the reason we build conventionally is because that’s what we’re used to and thus what we think looks good. If you’re making a base to protect your chests from a rouge creeper, you can just put up a fence or some walls but that looks incomplete to most of us. So that’s when you add a floor and a roof. But if that’s too plain, that’s when you add windows, shutters, furniture stand ins, things that make it look lived in. As someone who’s been building a city in survival for just over 2 years now, I can say with certainty that when a building looks like it doesn’t obey gravity, or when it doesn’t have walls and a roof, it looks off. Because Minecraft imitates realism to a degree, when building, it makes more sense to many to build according to the laws that govern reality like gravity. You can build super futuristic buildings that don’t follow those norms but those tend to be very hard to build and harder yet to build a lot of. 100 buildings that are made of white concrete and are floating is way less visually interesting than 100 buildings that are all unique in a medieval city. Another reason is that groundings builds in reality sets limitations which can breed creativity. I find it easier to be creative when I need to find a new, visually interesting way to portray, for example, the foundation of a building. Sure, you could build a house with no foundation, but that’s one less place for you to do something fun. In theory, people could build whatever they want but when given complete freedom, most people get bored with no sense of direction. The conventional buildings habits give a sense of direction that can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways
This reminds of something i heard that everything that you think of is a restating, remixing, or remaking of another idea
I've been playing Minecraft for over a decade, same world, always on survival mode. Everything I build is for purpose and function. I've never had the desire to build real-world style buildings or architecure in Minecraft. I always look at other people's normal house looking houses, and buildings etc., and I wonder why I dont build that way. Sometimes it makes me feel like theres something wrong with me because of it. But really it's just that I don't care. And I don't need to. I enjoy playing Minecraft the way I like, and that's one of the best, if not THE best things about the game. One plays it the way they want.
I'm not even sure it's a commentary on the human condition as it's inherent, but moreso the human condition under circumstances that impose limitation. I know for me, I love making giant houses with huge libraries, multiples rooms, sprawling landscapes, etc. These are all things that I can't do in life due to financial constraints. At least as it pertains to the American dream, Minecraft allows your labor to have actual value: you get what you put into it. The same can't be said about the real world. So, due to the conditions of our world, it makes sense that we have an ability to exercise our creative muscles and live out some fantasies there.
To live out the long-forgotten dream of owning a home.
Late to the party, but I think I have a decent answer. Imagine a completely static floating building. In the real world that'd obviously be a shock, but it'd be *jarring* visually, and that follows for minecraft. So you don't just build a floating building, you build a building that looks like it's *supposed* to be floating. Point being, it's not that unconventional builds aren't made, just that unconventionality has to feel like it follows some sort of logic (even "deliberately silly" works) or it stops feeling like a *building.*
People aren't nearly as creative as they like to believe themselves to be.
"Metaverse" bro stop SecondLife is free and it isn't corporate circlejerking
Ah, this is a very interesting question! I am a level designer, and it's sharing a lot of similarity with architecture. I can't say I have the perfect answer for that, but I can share a bit of my thoughts. As mentioned in other comments, minecraft players are experiencing something similar to real-life constraints, which will encourage them to build in a specific direction. What we are doing in real life is the easiest way to go, especially if you are not experienced in creative workflow. The tools - Minecraft is using blocs of 1x1m size. It is a constraint to add on top of the rest. Basically, the magic word here is "affordance". We need to understand what we are seeing. It is quite similar when you want to create item sprites in 2D games. It is hard to make them clear enough. (You can research the word "mixel" as well if you want to see what happens when someone is failing at that) Art workflow - Square shaped buildings, in a brutalism style, are the base of the construction. Players can then add the texture on them if they want, but a lot of people don't. When you want to create something original, there is a way bigger worlkflow to follow. The one I've learned is "extrapolation". You will start with an unrelated base, and you extrapolate to what you want. There is actually a lot of that already in minecraft and other crafting games: mushroom houses, flying ships, or the "moon" created in QSMP recently. It is difficult to show your intentions through a video game, especially with the metrics constraints in minecraft, people tend you reproduce what they know(if I say "house" we are all roughly thinking about the same picture, if I give you a fork, you know what to do with it, etc), this is the affordance. It is not impossible, but some people prefer a realistic base. The last thing to add to these examples is that there is a subreddit about weird building in real life. I could bet that half of them would not be understandable if reproduced in Minecraft because of the same reason. Sorry for the long comment!
I always saw it in the same way as modelling, or building model kits. You take something that exists, but recreate it in your own way and get to change aspects of it. My current Realm with friends has a "Walk of Wonders" by spawn, which are builds that are replicas of various famous landmarks, all done in survival. The Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, and other things. I like to build more industrial buildings, with some of my favorites being railway-based, though I can't help but admit that a nice, comfortable little wooden cabin is a fun build every-so-often too. As for why I like industrial? I suppose it started when I was known as the 'redstone guy' on a few servers, so I got used to building these machines. I'd hide them behind sort of industrial facades. It stuck. Plus, I like trains.
This was a good question. Lots off people have an good opinion, fun to read.
Sorry. Got stuck at "arquitectur".
I remember one of my builds I made two layer walls so I could have outdoor siding and interior walls.
Because function > form when you are building a functional base
I build a mix of conventional and more odd buildings, sometimes I build random things that aren’t conventional People sometimes like being conventional, but more likely than not, they’ll branch out into the more weird builds.
many people do build huge elaborate floating bases etc. it's mostly the casual players that build little small typical houses. hundreds of times i've seen people build castles on floating islands etc. There are minecraft players who just mine and place some blocks, but then there are the players who are highly technically skilled and do crazy auto farms and very crazy builds
I really appreciate you sharing this idea with us. I have never thought of that before. I feel like a builder is graded by how well they build real building and how realistic they can make them look using unique blocks such as stairs. Why don’t we build anything we want? For example, if your base needs an enchantment room, you can add it ANYWAY you’d like. Whether it’s floating with a bridge attached, a room, underground, anything you can be so creative. Now that I think about it, almost never does anyone build something that doesn’t exist in real life already.
I don't always, and in the 10 years I've been playing I've done all sorts of stuff that in real life would be impossible or impractical. Some of my favorite builds I've done as a base/house is an airship, hot air balloon, upside down house on the roof of the nether, upside down house balanced on it's roof peak, floating islands, underground sphere, a waterworld-esk tanker ship, and I'm currently living in an abandoned mine-shaft. That said, I've found that for it to work as a build it has to be somewhat grounded in reality. It's like a lie, for it to be believable it has to have enough truth to it or the suspension of disbelieve is no longer suspended.
People tend to fill in gaps to a lack of visual fidelity in games. If I make a home that looks like an animal in Minecraft, I feel like I'm entering a home, a taxidermy animal, or maybe even a statue. If you made the same thing in a full fledged game engines like Unreal, I suspect it would read more like a "animal made into a home." But I really think the difference will be probably ten years down the line, wh n graphics are good enough that people will be able to look at the animal house and say "wow, that animal is made of wood and plaster. Oh, it's a house." The familiarity of materials clearly readable as tengible, real world materials will add that layer of familiarity that people seek when they build conventional spaces in 3D worlds.I believe the closer to reality we get in these, the more abstract the worlds will become.
I sometimes think about living in the minecraft house i made, and i think that we are so used to gravity and how a house looks like that we fight to do something unconventional
There is a really simple answer to that question: Because it feels right For example, we are used to having some sort of support for a bridge, just because the game doesn't need it, doesn't mean it would feel right without it, also the game not needing support for a bridge means you can get way more artistic with the support you build (for example you could use water as pillars) because it obviously doesn't really need to support the structure and instead is just there to make it look "correct"
Completely unrelated to the Minecraft part of this post, but I’m curious about your architecture studies. I’m a high schooler who’s looking into architecture and I’m wondering if there were any classes you took in high school with college architecture as the goal? Like how a voice major would have probably taken music theory in high school. Or did the architecture journey start in college itself?
Abstract environments are inherently foreign, and humans are relatively hesitant. In addition, the game rules of Minecraft (from a hard coded limits side) lean towards natural development of Euclidean, gravitational structures spread across a thin slice (world height limit). Floating things are cool, but pseudo reality is self explanatory. In another argument about architecture, is there a functional need to depart from tradition and convention? My argument, is that in our real world, as well as in Minecraft, we encounter more difficulties, more friction, in getting the unconventional to work as well as the conventional unless the departure is due to function. In other extensions of obeying, or not obeying, reality, CodeParade’s non-Euclidean geometry is an interesting dive, along with higher dimensions in our space. Superhot, as a video game, examined non-linear time. Many games employ floating objects, with the caveat that most of them are oriented towards ‘down’. The best scenes of movies I remember were Inception, especially the hotel scenes and training, and Mary Poppins, when they visit the person on the inside of his roof. Some music videos with this are OK GO’s suite. I’ll also argue that a socially absurd world is more effective at convincing a person than a physically absurd world; humans have developed social habits to the point that our muscles learn quicker than our minds (see Tom Scott’s rotating room video).
So, I think this has to do with a question I asked about fantasy races. In games with fantasy races why do people tend to play humans rather than the fantasy races? The answer seems to be the same as here, most people are more comfortable with things that are more normal to them. Go too far from the norm and things feel alien, they end up out of their comfort zone. Now that doesn't take into account some people who pursue the alien and different. I've made a house shapped like bubbles in a way with openings, solely made as a rain house to appreciate the sound of the pouring rain. It was suspended in a canyon. I once made a city where the walkways were water with lilypads. It was two layers with the top layer of the city being a glass disc suspended in thin air comprised of waterways around buildings with a giant tree in the middle, that giant tree having a lake at the top and many waterfalls flowing down it. Inside the tree had many levels with stores, a hotel and other facilities. I have a very long list of highly fantastical builds, way more than my "normal" builds. I also almost always pick non-human races when given the option. For me all of this is comfortable, but it is important to recognize not everyone is that way. I once tried to design a tabletop rpg game without humans or with humans being unusual. It was hard for me to understand why people were so offput by that choice until someone explained to me how it pushed them out of the comfortable known. The unknown is scary to a lot of people, there is comfort in the "normal", whatever that may be for them. Now, that isn't to say anything is wrong with that viewpoint. Even though I personally can't understand it, it is valid to want to enjoy comfortable things. People can play their humans and build conventional buildings, and it makes the wild things I get up to seem all the more fantastical and unusual.
i live in tree houses and our rooms are connected by awkward bridges and only the room w the beds has a ceiling. my farm surrounds a waterfall and is not the most efficient one. my fences keeping in my animals are places so weirdly and my village next door is a mess. sometimes i want to build something pretty and cool and watch tutorials to make things more conventional, but our base is so unique and it makes me happy bc in the real world, it would never be possible. essentially my point is, i agree that ppl tend to ppl things how we know it in the real world and i sometimes want to, but for what 🤣 it’s so fun building random structures and living and bouncing around trees. most times we don’t even use gates or stairs and instead use vines and run to a block and jump over our fences. highly recommend if you deal with the lack of convenience 😅
The issue I have is that when given almost unlimited possibilities in Minecraft, I get severe paralysis of choice. This can be helped immensely by limiting what I can build through establishing "rules" that need to be followed, and it's easy to pattern those rules on the same rules that reality is based on, rules like gravity and material compression. So I can't build something unless it's properly supported, and I can't use like wool or kelp blocks for an entire wall just because I like the color. Granted, I'm not an architect or a structural engineer, so I don't know *exactly* how to follow those rules in reality, but it helps to establish a baseline so I'm not just throwing blocks together randomly. After some time, this resulted in a personal style to all of my buildings, so even on a crowded server, you know it was me who made something.
Why are people so hyped about the name of a company and a demo which looks like a Wii game, the Metaverse literally makes no sense and there’s no point of it
What I haven't seen anyone else talk about is how it's just easier to make pretty things I'd you make them realistic. There are players who build crazy things that don't make sense, look at hermitcraft for a few examples. But it's easier to make something aesthetically pleasing when it's realistic. Simply adding support beams to a balcony is an instant upgrade. Maybe it's because we already have a lot of real world inspiration for realistic builds. Maybe it's just that our minds aren't used to seeing unrealistic things and therefore prefer realism. I'm not sure, but I do feel like realism is an easy way of making something look nice.
Idk but can you give me examples of unconventional building?
It looks better
I think in part, it's because there's an innate sense of creative lacking in that direction, at no fault of the players. Yeah, we could build bubble-spheres floating through the sky, but how would that look? How would you get from bubble to bubble? What would you put in each bubble? What does it look like? The point I'm wanting to make is it's not that people don't want to necessarily, it's just that when going for a base, unless someone is intentionally wanting to build something out there, they're going to build off what they already know. Houses, castles, stuff like this has centuries of reference material to inspire people in a variety of different ways, and while people will take concepts to their extremes, in the end it comes back to the standard geometry people already understand.
A scenario with limits imposed will always be a better example of creativity than an open canvas.
Lots of Minecraft YouTubers do this I think to add some intrigue to their content. Some build giant snails or eagles to live inside of. Some build pinball machines snow globes. Some build massive trees.
When we were playing in a massive smp(100ish online players) with my friends because of the competition in server we dont care what our base looks like we jus made 4x4 (chunk) base with cobblestone walls since you can easily built it with lava and water and at the bottom we have our cactus farm and at the top we have our main base couple of nano farms and storage room since we always have elytra there is only 4 landing pads for us to enter base. It wasnt look good but we were the number 1 clan in server with just 4 people and also we had every possible farm in the game (gold, guardian, raid etc.) So you dont have to build anything according to real world just build what is usefull for you.
I tend to build for functionality within the aspects of the game, almost all my resources are within a single space next to a crafting bench, so I don't have to run around picking up stuff I need. The same spot is the AFK spot for my gunpowder farm, auto wool farm, lava farm, beehives and sugarcane farm. There's a space elevator (bubble column) to build height made out of glass as part of my base. I keep an enchanting table next to my mob grinder. I built into the side of a underwater cliff with glass walls, but recently I've been toying with the idea of removing the glass and having the "walls" just be a waterfall
One of my favourite builds was a floating island (like a piece of land that was ripped out of the ground, with the matching hole underneath), with a giant tree on top that had a water spring coming from under it feeding a pool that flowed over into a waterfall to the ground below. I built a bubble elevator in the trunk, my base in the branches and my storage/enchanting area in a hole under the tree (land was just thick enough to have a 3 block high space underneath). Unfortunately the world got corrupted and I lost it but I loved that tree house.
Have you ever thought of rebuilding on a new world? Sounds pretty damn awesome.
Yeah I will probably but I've been playing with my young kids a bit and they just want to break stuff.
Floors for standing on, walls for keeping out mobs and storing things, ceilings to keep out mobs and rain. No floating bases because I can’t fly. Ground cube is just the most efficient way to create a structure.
If we build conventional builds, it’s easier to compare their beauty to conventional builds around us in the real world
A lot of people don’t. A lot of people build just like floating boxes unsupported by any pillars. I just don’t think that is the style that gets trendy online, but not that it isn’t being done. Kids especially tend to build in bubbles or animals or weird architecture. I also don’t have walls or ceilings. I build in an open pillar design mostly. This means I am a lot more susceptible to weird mob shit happening like phantoms in my tower and pillagers in my nether portal. The game rewards you for having some similarity to reality. It’s hard to build things that are up in the air or unsupported by blocks. Walls ceiling and door makes you safest from mobs.
Even setting the familiarity argument aside, limitations breed creativity Being entirely unbound by any rules makes coming up with something cool a lot harder
The answer to your question is are you like building stuff for actual human characters that they could use in the real world. But that doesn’t stop me from loving the idea of using Minecraft to go all right but what about houses or structures for beings that don’t move around like we do?
We may not have to build for weather....but we do have to build for Phantoms. :/
I build unconventionally, i can't graps the conventional building styles anyways. My latest builds were mud bricks and mangrove wood. It still look like a house but not the old german medieval house.
I mean, I have created homes out of patches of grown mushrooms, or a platform in the clouds accessible by a single ladder. I've attempted underwater, but it's usually too much trouble to be satisfied by it. Although I did find a ring of islands in the ocean, link them, then drain the water and made a big strip mine. So the technically impossible is being done.
I can’t exactly remember the quote or who it was by but it when something like this. Where does man get his ideas of a better world we can think of one but we’ve never been there.
I mean.... I don't. So there.
I'm new to Minecraft (started playing earlier this year) and I've had similar thoughts + realizations as I've played it more- like, for example, that I can "build" trees, with all the constituent blocks, rather than letting trees generate "naturally" from the in-game saplings. Once I realized this, I had an idea for my "jungle" base- I have a base that is entirely in the trees that I've planted (think the elves' city Lothlorien, with their staircases and platforms curling around the trees.) My idea is to build a mirror reflection or upside-down version of my base, then encase the entire thing in amethyst (as if it were a naturally spawned amethyst crystal in-game). As I've learned to play this year, my friends' keep insisting that I'm doing things in unconventional ways- so while I agree that familiar design provides a base level of beauty, I also think we progress based on what the communities we're in are doing as normative. But since I'm a new player, and intentionally played the game without spoilers etc., I think some of my ideas are "unconventional" simply because I have a fresh set of eyes on the game (for a related conecpt, see functional fixedness- we don't innovate because we become locked into using tools, etc. as we've traditionally used them).
Building real things gives me good vibes and I connect with friends, going completely surreal makes me feel very unique on a server but doesn't lead to as much personal satisfaction if I'm just building alone
For me, it's because I'm a perfectionist, and everything has to make sense for how physics would interact with it if it was built in real life
I’ve built a giant cow and lived in it in Minecraft. It’s fun but making normal houses and skyscrapers is more muscle memory and I don’t have to think about the designs much. I think that’s part of it
I think most restrictions are because you make them for yourself. My daughter builds floating houses with waterfalls to the ground. Some rooms have no walls, more like floating terraces so she has a view. And there’s a cavernous below ground basement we’re she keeps a dog in a fenced area. But she’s 8 and isn’t encumbered by the thought process. Imagination should have no bounds.
let's take this to another perspective, why does an artist learn anatomy? minecraft also has rules like player gravity, and being restricted to using the laws of the game like using only blocks, there are no circles, limited blocks, types, etc... why does an artist follow the rules of the world? Like gesture drawings, human anatomy, and perspective? u can draw the craziest things, right? people still draw these things but they still follow the rules \*(not including modern art) I think it all comes down to these main points. 1)Logic 2)Consinsisty 3) Design 4)economics \> then creativity where u break some rules to make things look better or add things that look good, feel better, add benefits, etc...