Minecraft: indie gaming phenomenon or existential daydream?

Martin Waltz's funny — and slightly tasteless — ad for Minecraft certainly seems to capture the obsessive fearlessness the game inspires in its adherents.

Minecraft – "Diamonds"

(Thanks, Riley!)

ThinkGeek's "Minecraft Creeper Creeper" is a onesie for the parent who wants his kid to look like a pixelated, somewhat abstract monster from the cult-sensation game Minecraft.

Minecraft Creeper Creeper

Gamasutra's Tadgh Kelly explains why indie gaming megahit Minecraft isn't just a fluke: among other things, because its hands-on setup, epic rawness and authentic success story resonate with computer gamers tired of bloated cinematic productions that take hours to download, install and play.

The lewd, crude, insanely funny video game review podcast ZeroPunctuation finally has a take on Minecraft — delayed due to Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw being stuck in the Brisbane flood. It is everything you'd expect: vulgar, hilarious, and insightful, and explains the Minecraft phenomenon better than anything else I've seen so far. — Read the rest

You may now how have more monsters in your Minecraft worlds [Indiegames] , should their blocky acres become insufficiently dangerous. Sick of said blocky acres? Fans of sandbox explore-em-ups can take a look at the landscape-generating tech behind forthcoming epic Skyrim. — Read the rest

Fauvist22 sez, "This is as large a pyramid as the current beta version of Minecraft will let you build. I couldn't go any higher or deeper, I tried. I'm sure one day we'll be able to go higher, but for now this is it." — Read the rest

Minecraft, the indie exploration/building title that took the gaming world by storm this fall, has left its experimental phase and entered beta. The price goes up to 15 Euros and the developers' focus moves to polish and content — and the development of a modding interface to let others add their own features to the game. — Read the rest

Part of the magic of Minecraft for me is how relaxing it can be with the right music. The choice of songs in Notch's demo videos matches perfectly with the landscape floating by, and these types of songs have set the tone for other people's videos in the future. — Read the rest

Lazcraft has completed his continued work on his Minecraft CPU project (not to be confused with theInternetFTW's remarkable 8-bit Minecraft computer project). He now has a full, working 8-bit computer made of Minecraft blocks and other gubbins, "with 8 bytes of RAM, an output register, a code-loader and the ability to branch conditionally and unconditionally." — Read the rest

Christine sez, "One of my friends has made himself a Creeper costume for this Hallowe'en."

Creator Notch gives a sneak peek at what's coming next for massively-successful indie game hit Minecraft. [RPS]

Wagner James Au sez, "Brett, who recently created the epic 8 mile Minecraft highway, has a new video, and this time, he's hacked Minecraft into a machinima platform to make this incredibly beautiful music video. To make the steady tracking shots, for example, he built a Minecraft rail system made of glass." — Read the rest

After a 24-hour server outage, the pre-release Minecraft alpha ($10) was purchased by maddened crowds every 3 seconds, earning the creator some $350,000 in one day. (Thanks, smmoulder, via Submitterator!)

Wagner James Au sez, "Working 20 hours over a few weeks, a young art student made this awesomely long Minecraft rail, and a hypnotic video to go with it."

Other World Notes: Man Makes 8 Mile Minecart Rail in Minecraft & Beautiful Timelapse Machinima to Show It Off

(Thanks, James, via Submitterator)

YouTube's TheInternetFTW shows off this arithmetic logic unit (ALU) that he's built out of blocks and chunks in the game Minecraft. It's part of a larger "Hack" computer (as described in Elements of Computing Systems).

So basically, this is a computer subcomponent that you can run around on, physically moving around and watching as it does its thing. — Read the rest

Ars Technica's Andrew Webster has a good interview with Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of Minecraft, a fun and popular zombie defense game that has made a widower of me.

"The original idea was to make a game similar to Dwarf Fortress in tone, but with a Rollercoaster Tycoon type interface," Persson explained.

I've picked up the habit of traveling abroad while I'm at home. Google Maps offers a pretty comprehensive outline of the world, so on the occasions when I'm home and feeling a bit of wanderlust, I'll look at maps. Previously, this has landed me at a church in the swamp, accessible only by boat and built on the advice of divine intervention. — Read the rest

It's hard to make a game about fighting tooth and nail to kill 99 strangers before they can kill you kid-friendly, but Fortnite seems to have managed it, even with characters like Omni-Man and Peter Griffin making appearances.

The latest season brought a wide range of unprecedented changes, but among them is a full-fledged LEGO game mode, seeing Fortnite players take on blocky versions of their favorite characters in an experience that looks very much like a plastic Minecraft. — Read the rest

2D open-world hit Terraria shares Minecraft's wild creative versatility, such as the ability to build unbelievably complicated things inside them. Behold Computerraria, a 32-bit CPU running inside the game. "Terraria inside Terraria is close!" writes the creator, who runs the "From Scratch" channel on YouTube. — Read the rest