ca-book Chapter 353 Minecraft
Chapter 353 Minecraft
Lu Ran closed the page of "Wilderness Era", leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes to think for a while.
EA has made a really good game; the map is large, the graphics are great, and it offers a high degree of freedom.
But Lu Ran wasn't thinking about how to compete with EA; he was thinking about something else entirely.
He opened his eyes and accessed an encrypted folder on his computer.
If outsiders were to see what's in this folder, it would probably cause an earthquake throughout the entire gaming industry.
It was all game proposals, one after another, densely packed, from core gameplay to business model, from user profiles to operational strategies, all written clearly.
He flipped to one of the documents and double-clicked to open it.
The title has only four words: My World.
He had been working on this document for a long time, but he didn't finish it all at once.
Sometimes when I can't sleep at night, I get up and jot down whatever comes to mind.
Sometimes when I get distracted during meetings, I sketch a few diagrams in my notebook and then organize them into my notebook later.
It's been going on intermittently, but the framework has already been built.
He looked at it again and felt it was about time to get started.
Instead of having the technical department start development now, we should first export the complete solution from the system.
Lu Ran closed his eyes, his consciousness sinking into the light screen deep in his mind that only he could see.
The screen was densely packed with various options: games, music, scripts, business models, each category neatly organized.
He typed four words into the search bar: Minecraft.
The screen switched, and a complete project package appeared in front of him.
The game itself, source code, art assets, sound files, operation plan, marketing strategy, user growth model—everything is there, neatly packaged, saving even the need for compression.
He clicked the download button, and the progress bar started moving forward.
10%, 30%, 60%, 90%, 100%.
Download complete.
Lu Ran opened his eyes and saw a new folder on his computer desktop named "Minecraft_Complete".
He opened the folder, and the contents were even more detailed than what he had seen in the system.
The game itself is an installation package, less than one gigabyte, ridiculously small.
Compared to the "blockbuster" games on the market today that are often tens of gigabytes in size, this size is like a product from the last century.
But Lu Ran knew that this little thing had far more power than those so-called masterpieces that were tens of gigabytes in size.
He opened the game and entered a completely new world.
A landscape made up of blocks appeared on the screen, each block being an independent unit.
Grass blocks are green, dirt blocks are brown, stone blocks are gray, the sky is blue, clouds are white, everything is a block, square and angular.
The image looks like something from the 1990s, so crude it's appalling.
But as Lu Ran looked at this blocky world, the corners of his mouth slowly turned up.
Because he knew that this seemingly rudimentary world concealed a terrifying power—freedom.
Absolute, unrestricted, and complete freedom.
In Wilderness Era, players can build houses, but only those allowed by the system.
The walls have a fixed height, the roof has a fixed angle, and the doors and windows have fixed positions.
You can make choices within the framework the system provides, but you can't break out of that framework.
It's different in Minecraft.
You can build whatever kind of house you want.
You can build a house that looks like a matchbox, or a palace, or a hole in the ground, or even live in a tree or in the sky.
There are no restrictions, no rules, and no system telling you "this can't be put here" or "that can't be put there".
You place a block, and it stays there.
You dig out a block, and it disappears. It's that simple.
But simple things can often be combined to create endless possibilities.
Lu Ran controlled his character to walk in front of a tree, pressed the left mouse button, and the character's hand began to wave on the tree trunk, causing cracks to appear on the surface of the block.
A few seconds later, the tree trunk block shattered into a small block and bounced to the ground.
He picked it up, chopped a few more pieces of wood, then combined the wood into planks at the workbench, combined the planks into sticks, and combined the planks and sticks into a hand axe.
With a hand axe, the speed of chopping down trees was much faster.
He chopped down some wood, made a workbench, used the workbench to make a wooden pickaxe, dug up some stones, used the stones to make a stone pickaxe, used the stone pickaxe to mine iron ore, smelted the iron ore into iron ingots, and used the iron ingots to make an iron pickaxe.
Then he started digging for diamonds.
This is the logic of Minecraft—no goals, no quests, no system telling you "what to do".
Do whatever you want, play however you want.
Lu Ran dug in the mine for a while, then emerged from underground and found that he had run far away and couldn't find his way home.
He didn't panic. He opened the map and glanced at it, only to find a single marker on the map, which was the location where he was born.
There was nothing else.
This is the map of Minecraft.
It's not like EA's meticulously hand-drawn maps; it's a procedurally generated, boundless world.
The location of each tree, the shape of each mountain, and the course of each river are not arranged manually by the designer, but calculated by a program.
When you open up a new world, it's a completely new, unique world that has never been explored before.
And the area of this world—Lu Ran remembered reading in his previous life's records—is roughly eight times the size of the Earth's surface.
If you put the map from EA's Wildlands in there, it wouldn't even be a fraction of the total map size.
Lu Ran turned off the game and wrote a few lines in his notebook.
The first keyword: infinity.
The map is infinite, and its possibilities are endless; the player's creativity is limitless. Block by block, you can build a castle, a city, a computer, or an entire working game. This isn't an exaggeration; someone actually built a playable version of Minecraft within the game itself. That's the power of blocks—simplicity to the extreme, freedom to the extreme.
The second keyword: survival.
During the day you chop down trees, mine, and build houses; at night monsters emerge—zombies, skeletons, spiders, creepers—each capable of killing you. You need to eat, sleep, craft weapons for self-defense, and find a safe place to hide before nightfall. This cycle of building during the day and defending at night keeps players hooked.
The third keyword: creation.
If you're tired of Survival mode, try Creative mode. Unlimited materials, flight, and invincibility. Build whatever you want, without worrying about resources or monsters. Some players have spent thousands of hours in Creative mode, just to build their perfect city.
The fourth keyword: Redstone.
This is the deepest aspect of Minecraft. Redstone is a special block that can transmit signals, similar to electrical wires in the real world. By combining redstone with other blocks, you can create all sorts of mechanical devices—automatic farms, hidden doors, calculators, clocks, and even computers. Someone even built a computer in Minecraft that can play Snake using redstone. This level of depth is something EA's Wildlands wouldn't even dare to dream of.
After Lu Ran finished writing this, he leaned back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and laughed for a long time.
In a past life, someone asked the creators of Minecraft, "What exactly do you want to make this game?"
The producer said something that Lu Ran still remembers: "Our game has no end. Players have played for a thousand hours, and we've only just begun."
This is the source of Minecraft's confidence.
It doesn't rely on graphics, plot, or missions; it relies on the players' creativity.
The longer players invest in a game, the more they create, and the more reluctant they are to leave.
Because they built those structures themselves; they placed every brick and every tile on them.
Asking them to give up these things is like asking them to tear down their own house.
EA can't create this kind of emotional connection.
Because what they create is content, and that content will eventually be exhausted.
Minecraft, on the other hand, is about tools, and you can never run out of tools.
Lu Ran picked up his phone and sent a message to Zhou Mingzhe: "Brother Zhou, I've come up with a proposal for a new game. Take a look at it tomorrow."
Zhou Mingzhe replied instantly: "What game?"
"The kind with a hundred times more freedom than EA."
Zhou Mingzhe typed an ellipsis and then said, "You're bragging again."
"Read it first, then we'll talk."
"Okay. I'll check it when I get to the office tomorrow morning."
Lu Ran put down his phone and opened the Minecraft folder, looking through the files one by one.
Source code, art resources, sound effects files, operation plans, marketing strategies, user growth models, commercialization design, event planning, community building—everything is included, everything is complete, and everything is ready to use.
He doesn't need to develop the game from scratch because it's already a finished product in his mind.
All he needs to do is hand the plan over to the technical department, tell them "do it this way," and then wait for the acceptance.
The problem remains the same old problem—not enough manpower.
League of Legends is still running, Three Kingdoms Kill is about to launch its open beta, TUTU needs maintenance, and now there's the Chengdu branch to deal with too.
The people in the technical department have been working non-stop for months. If we add another big project to them, some of them will probably be exhausted.
Lu Ran sighed and closed the folder.
Not urgent.
Let EA run it for a while, let Wildlands give Chinese players a pre-game education on open-world games.
Once players have a basic understanding and interest in this type of game, and once Rabbit Technology has enough manpower, then we'll release Minecraft.
By then, EA will realize that their much-vaunted "high degree of freedom" is nothing compared to Minecraft.
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