Minecraft: Her Crushed Dreams

What happens when a person who has never played a building sandbox game tries it for the first time? Reality happens. The harsh reality of human nature. You would think playing with friends in a creation game would be utopia, but in truth it's more like being stuck with people that would walk all over you if it provided a softer path.

Kari doesn't play many games. She's good at Rock Band and likes to play Left 4 Dead maybe once every few weeks or so. Usually she spends her time painting or reading and watching a random Netflix movie. I thought the game would be a good fit for her so I taught her how to play around the same time all of us started playing in the multi-player server. I basically told her 3 things:

• Build during the day.
• Stay indoors at night. Monsters come out in numbers and will kill you. Inside is safe, no matter how close they are. Keep the doors locked and you will be ok.
• Stop falling from the ladder!

She took this to heart and we started playing. At night we would all go back to the safety house and we would hear noises from from the outside. Occasionally we would see a monster pass by the window or door, but we were safe. That's were Kari started to feel more confident and started approaching the door, looking closely at the monster in front of her. Then out of nowhere the door was opened and Max came rushing in! Max headed strait for another section of the house, leaving the door open and letting the zombie inside. Kari didn't know how to fight and panicked. I don't know how she did it but she was able to kick the zombie out and barely live. This was her interpretation: 

Max, the culprit of all this commotion? He had no clue as to the wrath he unleashed. When we told him later he said "Opps, sorry dude".

The next day on our second day of building we found a wolf!! The game had recently been updated with wolves that you could tame. These were rare animals and we were really happy to have found one. But we didn't know how to tame it. Feed it? Pet it? Whisper sweet nothings to its.. balls? Hey, we were willing and able. Because it was late at night in real life, we decided to call it a day but before we left, we walled in the wild wolf so it wouldn't escape. We made a dog house around him and left.

The next day the wolf was gone!

What happened? Escaped? Did it disappear after a set amount of time? Was it killed by a monster? Kari was talking all day about how she was going to tame her very first pet! We found out that feeding them bones will tame them. She was going to build a proper dog house and take it for walks daily. She was bouncing around names for the pet when we found out he was missing.  It was depressing.

The next day when we logged on we found out what happened. Max, destroyer of worlds, had tamed the wolf while we were gone and killed it while fighting monsters. He didn't tell anyone or ask for permission, even though he found it in a doghouse and he heard us on chat talking about finding the dog for Kari. Max's words in the comic are almost word for word of what he said on the wolf when we asked him:

It took two weeks to find another wolf.

Games can be so traumatizing even in the simplest of settings but that's what makes them memorable. To be able to have fun with a basic building game and share that with others can reveal the level of social skills that you have in comparison to others. Except for Max. We consider him the 5th monster in the game. Just stay out of Max's way, period!