Did you know you can hold a podcast in your off hand?
Welcome to the 200th and (kind of) final episode of NOCLIP! With it being both the 200th episode and our tenth anniversary, we figured now would be as good a time as any to finally play Minecraft, one of the most popular and the best selling game of all time, which neither of us had actually played before. Minecraft popularized the previously niche genre of survival games, captivated a huge number of people, and to some degree altered the landscape of online content creation, all while being a procedurally generated game full of blocks created predominately by one guy. Reputation of that one guy aside, it’s impressive what this once small game accomplished and the culture it developed. The simplicity of its design allows for more complexity in its systems, with hundreds (probably? Thousands maybe?) of items to craft and a huge world to plumb for resources. The game is also very self-directed, allowing for a lot of player creativity if it does leave you a little directionless at times. The world is equal parts hostile and enticing due to unforgiving enemy spawns and procedural generation, so it is up to the player to determine where and how far they want to go given their current gear and needs. We’re going to be talking about the ubiquity of Minecraft in modern culture, the ups and downs of the open nature of the game, and how Minecraft is about two inputs away from a dissociative experience.
Thank you for listening this week and for the last, shockingly, ten years. Minecraft is probably the biggest milestone type game we haven’t covered yet, and for those of you who have been playing this game for a decade or more, we probably only embarrassingly scratched the surface, so be sure to let us know in the comments or over on our Discord. We have a lot of changes coming soon, the biggest of which is that we are changing the name of the podcast (same great taste though, we aren’t changing the format or the contents), so keep an eye on things and don’t be shocked when elements of our branding change. Additionally, to celebrate both occasions, we have released a list of my top 100 games of all time, something I’ve personally wanted to do since I was a kid, so give that a read here if you’re interested! Next time, and for the first episode of Describing the Skybox, we’re going to be talking about Mouthwashing to kick off the Halloween season! We hope you’ll join us then.