So which is better: Minecraft or RPGs? I think it’s high time we took a look at both of them in the ring. Minecraft obviously has the weight of innovation, designers who are still alive, technology, and a huge user base behind it. RPGs have 40+ years of establishment, more versatility, the ability to roll d20s, and a somewhat larger number of monsters you can include. In any debate of one totally unrelated medium against another, it’s always best not to just outright say, “x is better”. Instead, it makes much more sense to go to elaborate lengths to compare totally unrelated elements of the games against each other in a point-for-point style which will result in a bare win—often because of a single irrelevant category. So, here goes.
Players: Which has more players? Can there be a better indication of which game is better? It’s pretty clear Minecraft has a lot of players considering it was #1 on the Google Play store. Not that anyone cares about Google Play considering Apple is King right now. RPGs probably have a lot of players too, but most of them are busy working and having families. The players of Minecraft, on the other hand, tend to be little kids so they’re probably only worth 1/10th point each. Comparatively, the little kids tend to game a heck of a lot more than the older players putting in record 15 hr. per day track records while their older counterparts are lucky to say, “I played an adventure for 15 minutes this month.” Money is another consideration, Minecraft costs a lot of money and probably generates a large income. However, Dungeons and Dragons sold everyone the same books about 3 times for even more outrageous prices so they actually might be winning on that count. Win goes to Minecraft, because I said so.
DMs: Only RPGs have DMs so they obviously win the DM’s vs. battle. It could be said that Minecraft has server moderators or creators of ‘worlds’ who might loosely be called DMs, but there probably aren’t that many of them and most other Minecraft players don’t pay a lot of attention to them. They’ve also been known to ignore their ‘players’ while they build stuff which is a classic GM mistake akin to looking up notes. The RPG DMs probably win on this count. DMs also tend to have to do a lot more creative legwork so they get brownie points for that too.
Creativity: This is probably the big one. While one game could have more players than another, that’s not generally a great indicator of how good the game is. While soccer might be the most popular game in the world, it can probably be safely assumed that 99% of the world’s population would agree that RPGs and hockey are much better provided you have a billion dollars to spend on books and live somewhere with ice rinks. From an old school stand point, RPGs easily win the creativity battle against Minecraft. This is because computers are automatically assumed to be uncreative and bad for the health while writing things down on paper is automatically assumed to show genius even though it’ll probably take you ten times longer and has no auto-correct function. This, however, could just be a symptom of two different generations’ perception. On the other hand, there are several medical studies which clearly show computers will give you brain cancer, arthritis, carpal tunnel, and basically kill you dead if you so much as glance at them. No medical studies have been done on the malign effects of paper, but it’s generally assumed that reading all day is un-manly and paper cuts really hurt if you put lemon in them.
In any discussion of creativity, the actual works must be considered. There are many quite famous adventures written, and there are a number of interesting Minecraft contraptions which look somewhat interesting for about 5 seconds as you gaze at the snapshot. On a more local scale, nearly everyone in Minecraft has created some sort of tunnel underground or a ‘house’ while most RPG players fail at the house part until they become around 9th level. While the RPG players don’t tend to build as many ‘tunnels’ they do tend to detail their character to far greater lengths than most Minecrafters would ever consider. On a related point, some Minecraft creations last longer than 5 seconds, but they usually fall into either the category: ‘elaborate way to kill monsters with no risk’ or ‘waterslide’.
Potential must also be reckoned with. In Minecraft you could potentially make just about anything. In RPGs, you aren’t even restricted by using blocks. You can make absolutely anything you can imagine. Unless, of course, you’re not the GM in which case you’re stuck with your character’s personality and that’s about it.
A third point to consider is the people involved. Regardless of game system or medium, the creativity of the individuals in question cannot be questioned. Obviously, everyone is highly creative or else they wouldn’t be playing Minecraft or RPGs instead opting for something more normal like Pac Man or Trivial Pursuit. The verdict on this question cannot be meant as an insult to any player’s creativity, but merely as an insult to the game system. Out of pure prejudice, I choose RPGs here.
Profit Margin: While RPGs have had many fine people in charge over the years, the company policies leave something to be desired. While in Minecraft you pay once for your license to use the game which you then give to all your friends and their sister, in most RPGs you have to own a new book or edition of the game every 2 weeks or so, making it a logistical nightmare. Where Mojang simply updates the game to make it more awesome for all (free of charge) RPGs instead create new books to make the game too complicated and to take more of your money. This is an easy win for Minecraft.
Combat: Yes, creativity is all fun. Yes, yes. Now how many bad guys can we fight and do they have cool stuff to loot? While Minecraft offers several bad guys to force to jump off cliffs so you can loot them with no personal risk, RPGs tend to have hundreds of monsters and a like number of sweet magical treasures to pick up. In fact, I actually like Minecraft for the de-emphasis on battling. In the end, RPGs just have more bad guys to fight. Victory goes to RPG here.
Ability to tick off Others: Loudly yelling battle cries and chucking odd dice can create quite the disturbance. However, nothing quite disrupts the universe like bringing a computerized device to the table so you can mine a few extra rocks during supper. Minecraft clearly has the ability to out annoy RPGs in the modern era. RPGs still tick off people, mind you, but they’re more considered odd and possibly literary (because of the paper) whereas Minecraft is considered a complete waste of time and a downright nuisance because it has cellphones and computers involved.
Practical Benefits: Here, work experience at a high paying job site purely takes the cup. When comparing the educational benefits of RPGs to Minecraft, one can only be left in the frame of mind of someone comparing the health benefits of hitting oneself in the head with a baseball bat or shooting oneself in the foot with a bb gun. Minecraft could be said to encourage building, spatial thinking, hard work (?), and ability to stare at computer screens for long periods of time which is becoming increasingly a very necessary job skill. It also trains you how to operate your touchscreen more effectively. RPGs on the other hand have long held the ‘math’ shtick because there are numbers on the dice and obviously you’ll have to add, subtract, multiply, or divide those numbers at some point. Some players like to just make up a result on the basis that high numbers are good, which calls into question the validity of this theory. RPGs also have paper in them which is very literary indeed and is currently associated with the highest learning abilities. RPGs also have the social advantage in that you actually need at least one other person to interact with to play them officially. Unless you have a preference to computers or sheets of paper, I think I’ll call this a draw on grounds of being irrelevant.
Who can argue the Loudest: Oftentimes it doesn’t matter which game is better. It’s more about which side can argue the loudest. This is how you can have one million people in favor of one thing, but 10 really loud and obnoxious people in favor of another and end up with the secondary outcome. Vocal chords play a large role in perception of awesomeness. For sheer ability to use social media and scream their lungs out, I think the Minecraft players have the potential to win this confrontation. Besides, all the RPG players are busy with work and have no time to spend 15 hours of every day shouting at each other on internet forums, unless, of course, a new edition of their favorite game is coming out. In this case, they’ll argue it should completely duplicate their favorite edition at the risk of everything else being complete baloney. In fact, if it’s not a duplicate of my favorite edition, by Jove, I probably won’t even buy the books, except of course that I always buy the books if only to ridicule how bad they are compared to my old favorites. I’m going to go with Minecraft here, unless Mojang comes out with 6th edition Dungeons and Dragons in which case the RPG players will most definitely win as anyone who’s ever played the game in the last 35 years will show up just to say, “If it ain’t like when I played it, it’s gonna be crap.”
Cheating: In Minecraft, you can simply go onto creative mode and do whatever you like. Without a GM to tick off by doing this, it’s almost completely useless and will quickly grow boring. In an effort to show off to your friends, you can also probably hack a survival game to give yourself infinite ores or just create/use a mod which gives you everything.
RPGs, on the other hand, allow a multitude of variances on the cheating model from fudging dice rolls, to writing gibberish on your character sheet, to strong-arming the GM into giving you whatever you want. Because the GM is human and fallible, cheating becomes a much more viable option. You can’t cry at your computer and get it to give you magic items (usually). RPGs win this one. No reason why, really. Mainly all those 18s the players kept telling me they rolled.
Perception: Most people think Minecraft is Legos. Most people also think RPGs are rocket propelled grenades. I’d say Minecraft wins this one.
Topic of Conversation: Generally, old RPG stories are pretty awesome compared to Minecraft stories which usually revolve around a creeper blowing up your favorite chest which was really bothersome.
So who won? I lost count, but I think it was 5 all.
Luckily, it doesn’t really matter which one ‘wins’ because they’re both games for the player’s enjoyment. Whether you like one and hate the other, hate both, like both, or couldn’t care less; it’s all good. The main thing we want to do here is argue about which game we like the best and compare the virtues of various games we enjoy.
Players: Which has more players? Can there be a better indication of which game is better? It’s pretty clear Minecraft has a lot of players considering it was #1 on the Google Play store. Not that anyone cares about Google Play considering Apple is King right now. RPGs probably have a lot of players too, but most of them are busy working and having families. The players of Minecraft, on the other hand, tend to be little kids so they’re probably only worth 1/10th point each. Comparatively, the little kids tend to game a heck of a lot more than the older players putting in record 15 hr. per day track records while their older counterparts are lucky to say, “I played an adventure for 15 minutes this month.” Money is another consideration, Minecraft costs a lot of money and probably generates a large income. However, Dungeons and Dragons sold everyone the same books about 3 times for even more outrageous prices so they actually might be winning on that count. Win goes to Minecraft, because I said so.
DMs: Only RPGs have DMs so they obviously win the DM’s vs. battle. It could be said that Minecraft has server moderators or creators of ‘worlds’ who might loosely be called DMs, but there probably aren’t that many of them and most other Minecraft players don’t pay a lot of attention to them. They’ve also been known to ignore their ‘players’ while they build stuff which is a classic GM mistake akin to looking up notes. The RPG DMs probably win on this count. DMs also tend to have to do a lot more creative legwork so they get brownie points for that too.
Creativity: This is probably the big one. While one game could have more players than another, that’s not generally a great indicator of how good the game is. While soccer might be the most popular game in the world, it can probably be safely assumed that 99% of the world’s population would agree that RPGs and hockey are much better provided you have a billion dollars to spend on books and live somewhere with ice rinks. From an old school stand point, RPGs easily win the creativity battle against Minecraft. This is because computers are automatically assumed to be uncreative and bad for the health while writing things down on paper is automatically assumed to show genius even though it’ll probably take you ten times longer and has no auto-correct function. This, however, could just be a symptom of two different generations’ perception. On the other hand, there are several medical studies which clearly show computers will give you brain cancer, arthritis, carpal tunnel, and basically kill you dead if you so much as glance at them. No medical studies have been done on the malign effects of paper, but it’s generally assumed that reading all day is un-manly and paper cuts really hurt if you put lemon in them.
In any discussion of creativity, the actual works must be considered. There are many quite famous adventures written, and there are a number of interesting Minecraft contraptions which look somewhat interesting for about 5 seconds as you gaze at the snapshot. On a more local scale, nearly everyone in Minecraft has created some sort of tunnel underground or a ‘house’ while most RPG players fail at the house part until they become around 9th level. While the RPG players don’t tend to build as many ‘tunnels’ they do tend to detail their character to far greater lengths than most Minecrafters would ever consider. On a related point, some Minecraft creations last longer than 5 seconds, but they usually fall into either the category: ‘elaborate way to kill monsters with no risk’ or ‘waterslide’.
Potential must also be reckoned with. In Minecraft you could potentially make just about anything. In RPGs, you aren’t even restricted by using blocks. You can make absolutely anything you can imagine. Unless, of course, you’re not the GM in which case you’re stuck with your character’s personality and that’s about it.
A third point to consider is the people involved. Regardless of game system or medium, the creativity of the individuals in question cannot be questioned. Obviously, everyone is highly creative or else they wouldn’t be playing Minecraft or RPGs instead opting for something more normal like Pac Man or Trivial Pursuit. The verdict on this question cannot be meant as an insult to any player’s creativity, but merely as an insult to the game system. Out of pure prejudice, I choose RPGs here.
Profit Margin: While RPGs have had many fine people in charge over the years, the company policies leave something to be desired. While in Minecraft you pay once for your license to use the game which you then give to all your friends and their sister, in most RPGs you have to own a new book or edition of the game every 2 weeks or so, making it a logistical nightmare. Where Mojang simply updates the game to make it more awesome for all (free of charge) RPGs instead create new books to make the game too complicated and to take more of your money. This is an easy win for Minecraft.
Combat: Yes, creativity is all fun. Yes, yes. Now how many bad guys can we fight and do they have cool stuff to loot? While Minecraft offers several bad guys to force to jump off cliffs so you can loot them with no personal risk, RPGs tend to have hundreds of monsters and a like number of sweet magical treasures to pick up. In fact, I actually like Minecraft for the de-emphasis on battling. In the end, RPGs just have more bad guys to fight. Victory goes to RPG here.
Ability to tick off Others: Loudly yelling battle cries and chucking odd dice can create quite the disturbance. However, nothing quite disrupts the universe like bringing a computerized device to the table so you can mine a few extra rocks during supper. Minecraft clearly has the ability to out annoy RPGs in the modern era. RPGs still tick off people, mind you, but they’re more considered odd and possibly literary (because of the paper) whereas Minecraft is considered a complete waste of time and a downright nuisance because it has cellphones and computers involved.
Practical Benefits: Here, work experience at a high paying job site purely takes the cup. When comparing the educational benefits of RPGs to Minecraft, one can only be left in the frame of mind of someone comparing the health benefits of hitting oneself in the head with a baseball bat or shooting oneself in the foot with a bb gun. Minecraft could be said to encourage building, spatial thinking, hard work (?), and ability to stare at computer screens for long periods of time which is becoming increasingly a very necessary job skill. It also trains you how to operate your touchscreen more effectively. RPGs on the other hand have long held the ‘math’ shtick because there are numbers on the dice and obviously you’ll have to add, subtract, multiply, or divide those numbers at some point. Some players like to just make up a result on the basis that high numbers are good, which calls into question the validity of this theory. RPGs also have paper in them which is very literary indeed and is currently associated with the highest learning abilities. RPGs also have the social advantage in that you actually need at least one other person to interact with to play them officially. Unless you have a preference to computers or sheets of paper, I think I’ll call this a draw on grounds of being irrelevant.
Who can argue the Loudest: Oftentimes it doesn’t matter which game is better. It’s more about which side can argue the loudest. This is how you can have one million people in favor of one thing, but 10 really loud and obnoxious people in favor of another and end up with the secondary outcome. Vocal chords play a large role in perception of awesomeness. For sheer ability to use social media and scream their lungs out, I think the Minecraft players have the potential to win this confrontation. Besides, all the RPG players are busy with work and have no time to spend 15 hours of every day shouting at each other on internet forums, unless, of course, a new edition of their favorite game is coming out. In this case, they’ll argue it should completely duplicate their favorite edition at the risk of everything else being complete baloney. In fact, if it’s not a duplicate of my favorite edition, by Jove, I probably won’t even buy the books, except of course that I always buy the books if only to ridicule how bad they are compared to my old favorites. I’m going to go with Minecraft here, unless Mojang comes out with 6th edition Dungeons and Dragons in which case the RPG players will most definitely win as anyone who’s ever played the game in the last 35 years will show up just to say, “If it ain’t like when I played it, it’s gonna be crap.”
Cheating: In Minecraft, you can simply go onto creative mode and do whatever you like. Without a GM to tick off by doing this, it’s almost completely useless and will quickly grow boring. In an effort to show off to your friends, you can also probably hack a survival game to give yourself infinite ores or just create/use a mod which gives you everything.
RPGs, on the other hand, allow a multitude of variances on the cheating model from fudging dice rolls, to writing gibberish on your character sheet, to strong-arming the GM into giving you whatever you want. Because the GM is human and fallible, cheating becomes a much more viable option. You can’t cry at your computer and get it to give you magic items (usually). RPGs win this one. No reason why, really. Mainly all those 18s the players kept telling me they rolled.
Perception: Most people think Minecraft is Legos. Most people also think RPGs are rocket propelled grenades. I’d say Minecraft wins this one.
Topic of Conversation: Generally, old RPG stories are pretty awesome compared to Minecraft stories which usually revolve around a creeper blowing up your favorite chest which was really bothersome.
So who won? I lost count, but I think it was 5 all.
Luckily, it doesn’t really matter which one ‘wins’ because they’re both games for the player’s enjoyment. Whether you like one and hate the other, hate both, like both, or couldn’t care less; it’s all good. The main thing we want to do here is argue about which game we like the best and compare the virtues of various games we enjoy.
