I’m no stranger to The Hunger Games, let alone Hungercraft. I’ve been playing it on and off since I first started playing Minecraft last semester. It’s one of the things that interested me about Minecraft even before I started playing the game myself; I’m not sure if it’s my obsession with the Hunger Games or my not-so-secret desire to be a real life Katniss Everdeen, but I’m fascinated with it.

I’m a regular Katniss. I even have an enchanted bow!

One of the main things I’ve noticed in my time playing on different Hungercraft servers is the sheer lack of teamwork. To me, this is surprising; for a game as collaborative as Minecraft, teamwork just seems to come naturally. Other servers based off of popular franchises have more of a team aspect to them; players tend to band with/help other players often on both Maze Runner and Harry Potter servers. The reason for this not happening in the survival game genre is not necessarily Hunger Games related, either. In both the books and the movies, Katniss forges alliances with several characters during the games to help her have a shot at winning. Katniss knows that she’s not the best or the strongest, but with the help of others, she has a better chance of winning.

This doesn’t seem to be the same in Hungercraft. On certain servers, players do attempt to ask others to join forces with them, at least for a short time at the beginning. Usually these requests just go ignored. Lately, I see less and less players even asking to team up, and those that do are likely newer players.

It’s lonely out here in Hungercraft.

Some of this is probably because players don’t know anyone on the server, and are playing by themselves. To be fair, I’ve never gone and sought out alliances either – I’m a bit of a lone wolf when it comes to Hunger Games – but this is mostly because I don’t trust the other players further than I can throw them. It’s possible that this is the same for other players. Another factor in why there’s a lack of teamwork on these servers is likely due to the chat system. It’s hard to be strategic and know what someone else is doing if there’s no communication. When joining up with a random other player on the server, your only real option is to use the chat system, which is cumbersome and essentially forces you to be AFK for a bit, leaving you defenseless if another player happens to be nearby with a weapon. The only time I did play in an alliance was with a friend of mine (my partner-in-crime, so we worked well together) who happened to be sitting next to me as we played. Communication was great, I enjoyed myself more than I usually do in Hungercraft, and we both made it very far into the games before being killed.

Obviously we can’t force players to cooperate with each other, especially with limitations in place like the chat system. That being said, I wonder if there’s some way to encourage teamwork in the Hunger Games we’ll be building. It would add another variable to play, and due to the unpredictable nature of people, would make our build even more of a mind game.

Truthfully, with many of these servers having such limited resources/weapons/food, banding together actually seems kind of smart. Yes, eventually the alliance will have to be dissolved in favour of a player actually winning the game, but there’s something to be said about cooperation. Over the next week, I’m going to try and play Hungercraft a bit differently, and see how working in a team changes the game.