For our first design, Saeed and I choose to create an elevated cornucopia with twelve towers. Participants would “spawn” in one of the twelve towers and would have the option of jumping onto the lower cornucopia platform, with chests and the possibility of death, or run down the spiraling staircase and into the ocean. From there, they can swim towards land surrounding the cornucopia.

windows that allow the player to see the large chest therein when they descent using the spiral staircases

The top of the cornucopia

The basics of the idea are as follows:

The cornucopia and spawn points are located in the middle of the map and each corner of the map would feature a different zone such as a volcano zone and a forest zone.  The cornucopia sits on top of a chamber whose door is hidden by a downfall of lava. The player needs to secure a bucket and water (found in a chest on the cornucopia platform), throw it onto the lava, make their way down to ground level and then will be able to enter the chamber and take possession of the prestigious prize. We don’t expect players to understand this puzzle right away and have thus added windows that allow the player to see the large chest therein when they descent using the spiral staircases. We understand that once the puzzle is understood, the game might become dull if played repeatedly, but at the same time, Hunger Game maps in the novels are only used once; the tributes do not know what is going to happen, or what surprises they may find. Hence, we may want to introduce a system that would not allow a player to enter a match again after 2 or 3 deaths.

View of the cornucopia and one of the spiraling staircases

Saeed’s bouncy slime monster spawner. Unfortunately, the design might give it away…

The player map area is completely surrounded by glass (this will be called level 1). The player can only play within the confines of level 1 terrain. The game makers, i.e. us, have access to levers and events on the top of this terrain, henceforth named level two.  Players do not have access to the second level.  This allows us to view and control events going down on the map.  We can spawn monsters from above and into the play area to motivate activity like in the films and books. We found that creatures could survive elevated drops except for spiders that died on impact. We tried spawning them on top of water, but the spiders still died. Finally Saeed created a slime trampoline that allowed us to spawn spiders without them dying on impact. 

We can also set forests on fire to force players closer together through slots on the second level. We practiced with lava and trees grown in close proximity and found that we could control forest fires. Unfortunately, lava falls very slowly. We would need to figure out a way to set the forest on fire more quickly. Additionally, we found that we built out platforms too high, making the spiraling staircases overly long. We would need to build our platforms less high.  We also found that creating an ocean in Minecraft is much harder than it looks. At the moment, our ocean looks like a right mess – we would need to spend more time studying how oceans are generated in the game.

The group meeting allowed us to view our peer’s map proposals. We found that our map may be to limiting for players in terms of re-playability. However, we do not necessarily see this as something wrong, as, like I previously stated, this would work hand and hand with the “real” Hunger Game mechanics: learn quickly, stay sharp, and don’t die, or you cannot come back.  We still have a long way to go in terms of map creation and in terms of what aspects of Hunger Games we want to explore. Do we want to explore player-map interactions? Do we want to simulate a more accurate depiction of Hunger Game? How do we want to differentiate ourselves from other PVP #hungergames servers? In what ways will our maps create a relationship or dialogue with the novel’s narratives (if at all)? In the weeks to come I hope we are able to sit down together and discuss the future of our project in relation to these questions.

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This week I plan to share my ideas for how to create a more authentic portrayal of the novel “Hunger Games” in Minecraft.

What seems to be the crucial element in the realization of a “Hunger Games” server is the player-versus-player arena. Why do I say this is crucial? Every #Hungergames servers we have tried has revolved around players fighting other players in order to survive and “win”. However, that appears to be the only thing that is like “Hunger Games”. I believe this is boring and is just an excuse to call everything #Hungergames when in fact, it is only PVP. So what could WE do differently?

For starters, we could have our own “Head Gamemaker”. What, or who is this person? In the book it is Seneca Crane, and then Plutarch Heavensbee. As “Head Gamemaker”  they create the arena where the participants from the different districts will compete. Once the games begin, they control the environment with their team of controllers that can cause forests to combust instantaneously, creatures to magically appear or any other such activity.  By doing these things, the Gamemaker insures that the different “tributes” will end up close to each other and thus fight – creating a “glorious show” for the residences of the Capital (or a depressing and distressing one for the districts watching their children die).

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“Hunger Games” film: image from the console where they control the events live

So what could we do? We are all technically “Gamemakers” in that we will be creating the arena. My suggestion is that we have live events. Of course, we could not always hold live events as we do have lives other scholarly things to do–but the idea remains that we could host events.  First, we would need to make sure that all “gamemakers” are in some sort of “creative mode” and perhaps invisible to players in “survival” mode. Second, we would create a sort of ceiling around our map — this ceiling would be made out of glass. We could see everything happening on the field from our high vantage point. Third, we would have levers or other devices we could switch on and off to: pour lava from the sky and burn the forest, release mobs, et etc. This would allow us to create a more realistic Hunger Game competition like in the “Hunger Game” novel. Additionally, each event a different member could rule as “Head Gamemaker” and make the crucial decisions.

But why should we only focus on this one aspect of the novel?

While speaking with Nic on this subject, I told him about one another though I had come up with and that we then expanded together.

The bigger Minecraft servers usually have multiple “lobbies” to hold many players: players might be in these lobbies to mingle, to choose a game, or are waiting for a game to end so that they may start. Why not have our lobbies named after the 12 districts?

When a player would log into our server they would be assigned to a district. From there they wait for their turn to be selected by the computer. When it is their turn, the chat would post a message, example:

Marie has been selected to represent district ____

At this point, another player could then respond with something like:

//I volunteer as tribute!  OR //VAT

of course, then Marie would have the choice to begin her game or to allow the other player to volunteer.

Alright, so players can play around in different lobbies while they wait for the game to start, big whoop, what else?

Well, some players could also be placed within The Capital and be given thousands of diamonds. These players could then play as invisible players within the actual arena and dispense presents to their favorite tributes–like in the novel.  The “tributes” would be teleported to a room where they could talk with the players in the Capital lobby and barter for help.

We could also give players access to different things depending on their lobby; swords, bows, fire, wood, etc.

Perhaps we could have a point system and once a player has won enough credits they can “pay” to be moved to the capital.

Another idea was that any player who actually died in the arena would die in the game: they would no longer be able to fight in the arena — perhaps they could be “reborn” as members of the capital? Able to visualize the events and help players out or spring traps, but essentially invisible within the arena. Or perhaps we could give each player 5 lives to play within the arena and then they are “dead” ?

These ideas had us asking new questions: would these new rules really create a true depiction of Hunger Games? would players actually feel the class distinction and the terror at losing?  Would a war break out between the districts like in the film? Would the capital want to quealm it? What would we have to give players in The Capital to have them maintain other players and keep ruling? How many players would jump the boundaries or play and begin acting as security? What kind of game would this become? Would we moderate it or just allow player to rule it as they wished? Would we even have enough players for this to happen?

I am unsure. While this might create a more realistic portrayal of the books, it seems like a lot of time and energy. Perhaps all players want is to kill other players without consequences. To know that if they die they can play the game again. Perhaps they don’t care that the game is not really Hunger Games but just a small aspect of the book, or even just a ploy to entice more players into PVP servers. This idea would require a lot of cooperation to build, and then a lot of players to fill.  We might want to look at servers such as Potterworld (http://www.potterworldmc.com/), a “Harry Potter” Minecraft server that has a staff of over 100 unpaid players that take on the roles of prefects, professors, scripters etc. As well as the hundreds of players that play as muggles and students. This server is interesting in that players are essentially playing at being students at Hogwarts: they must attend classes, do homework and pass exams in order to pass each grade and then graduate. Once they graduate, they can apply to become professors, aurores, deatheaters, or any other Harry Potter role. The fans maintain and keep this server alive — it is their investment and interest in the franchise that allows this server to function as it was intended. Without the fans, the server would slowly disappear.

If we were to create a “real” Hunger Games map, including the different districts, the class inequality, et ect, could we achieve what Potterworld achieved? Or would chaos reign right away as players decided to attack the Capital right away? Would we even obtain enough players to make this work ?

Perhaps for now, it is but a dream. However, I do believe that we should start by creating a way to control events in the arena, become Gamemasters and thus create “live events”.  What think you?

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Hunger.

Games.

A game about survival for food. A game of high consequences. In 2008, Suzanne Collins released a book titled “Hunger Games” that followed a young adult female protagonist who volunteers to take her sister’s place in a mandatory death match enforced by “the capital”, the Elite society that controls the fictional world of Panem.

So what does it mean to transpose this narrative into a sandbox game such as Minecraft? Can it even be called “Hunger Games”?

The questions we must ask before we begin our construction of a quote-on-quote “Hunger Games” arena are as follows:

What is Hunger Games?  What makes Hunger Games, Hunger Games? Is it the narrative, the characters, the atmosphere, the environments? Can we simply reduce it to a Player-versus-player all out death match? How can we recreate the true essence of “Hunger Games” within Minecraft—is it even possible?

I found that often the hashtag “Hunger Games” is included in conjunction with multiple others. This use of Tags lures Hunger Games fan into joining a server that promises them the “Hunger Games” experience.  The use of “Hunger Games” encourages fans to flock to the server. Could these servers only be “survival” games which have existed for a long time but are now under the guise of “Hunger games” as a means to encourage more players to join?

Commenting on my ideas on “Hunger Games” as a hashtag, Nic Watson says;

“Interesting how some of the graphic banners on that list show a subset of tags that doesn’t include ‘Hunger Games’, but ‘Hunger Games’ is in the text tags. Like they want to make it show up in HG searches but not actually promise HG. Maybe we should look at what tags are collocated with HG tags. Perhaps that could go under ‘variants’”

The “Hunger Games” games are usually included with various other mini games on one server including various PVP arenas, and Sky Block.

These are example of PVP/Hunger Game-like servers found under the tag “hunger games”:

* Play.mc-lengends.com

* Mcsimplegaming.com

* Mc.hypixel.net

* http://www.ubermc.net/minecraft-the-walls/

However, this last server is a little different from the other PVP servers above and specifies team work in order to win:

“Minecraft The Walls is a very unique server type. 4 teams divided by a walls that keep peace for the first 15 minutes of the game. During this first 15 minutes all the players on each team are given a specific class that allows them to help their team in different ways. For instance the alchemist can create potions for their team for when the walls drop. or the blacksmith that can forge weapons and armor using their anvil. Below each team spawn there are mines to be explored and resources to be exploited. Team work is crucial to winning this game as each player has a unique role. The last team to survive after the walls drop, wins the game” (The Walls).

Names and titles take on a life of their own online, both explaining the context and enticing players. But what can we say about these games that may not really be “Hunger Games” portrayals, but just PVP games using the hashtag Hungergames?

These servers are mainly focusing on the battle arena, the all-out district war (The annual Hunger Game) while overlooking everything else about the novel. In this way, what makes them any different from PVP?

In my graduate class we read sections from Michel Foucault. “What is an Author?” brings up a valid argument and question about the way players are using the key words Hungergames.

Consider this: are we, and everyone else who tags their Minecraft server, using the “author function” as a way to gain credibility and legitimization? What are we promising when we assign the hashtag #Hungergames to our game servers?

Foucault explains that “such a name [the author’s name] permits one to group together a certain number of texts, define them, differentiate them from and contrast them to others […] establish a relationship among the texts” (227).

When talking about transmedia narratives, Game scholar Henry Jenkins explains that “Audience familiarity with this basic plot structure [read: knowledge of the narrative] allows script writers to skip over transitional or expository sequences, throwing us directly into the heart of the action” (Jenkins 120).  While franchises create Transmedia narratives, Minecraft can work as a form of fan generated transmedia narrative that allows players to interact with aspects of the media they normally would not have access to. However, most of these #Hungergames servers reduce the narrative to a single moment: the arena battles—we are literally thrown into the “heart of the action”, however, are we trivializing the rest of the novel that looks into inequality, poverty, capitalism, et ect? Without a deeper understanding of the consequences (are there any consequences in an online game?) of the “Hunger Games” as portrayed in Collin’s book, can we actually be anything more than a PVP using a hashtag as a function to obtain and entice players?

What are we doing to Suzanne Collin’s “Hunger Games” novel by thus tagging these PVP servers?  What can we do to create a more authentic server? Is it even possible to create a server worthy of the term “Hunger Games”?

In my next post I will look at a few ways we could construct our server with these questions in mind.

Work cited

Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author”.

Jenkins, Henry. “Convergence Culture : Where Old and New Media Collide”. New York: New York University Press, 2006.

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This week, I tried playing on a different server from my usual – you know, keeping things fresh, and all. My normal server plays like a pretty typical Hunger Games server; there’s a cornucopia, limited items, and implied instructions that you’re just supposed to kill everyone else who’s there.

This new server had all of the above, with a few added features. First, there’s a longer period of invincibility. Most Hunger Games servers give you a bit of this; it gives players a chance to go to the cornucopia and grab as much stuff as they can without being immediately killed. Yes, this is unlike the books or the movies, where the cornucopia is just a bloodbath from the start. On my usual server, however, the invincibility does not last for an incredibly long time. If you stop and camp near the middle of the playing field, other players will come, find you, and engage you in combat almost immediately.

On this new server, on the other hand, there was more time given – over 100 seconds. This doesn’t seem like long, but in Hunger Games time, this is an eternity. I wasn’t too sure why, at first – I grabbed what stuff I could from the chests in the middle, and started walking away, a bit more leisurely than usual. Nobody even tried engaging other people – it was just a mad dash for stuff before running away in different directions. I had so much time to get away and find a hiding spot, so it wasn’t a big deal if I wasn’t super prepared. Honestly, I was carrying almost nothing:

Pictured here: me carrying… not a whole lot of anything. Really, I’m not very prepared.

And then it started to get dark. Really dark.

Looking at the cornucopia as the sun sets

This is where this server differs from other servers I’ve played on: almost as soon as the game starts, it gets dark. Dark, in the Minecraft world, means that monsters will appear. And while this is okay for a bit, due to the extended invincibility of this game, it very quickly turns into not okay. Monsters were everywhere, and with such limited supplies, I found it very difficult to survive. I really felt as if the arena was out to get me almost as soon as the game had started. There were a few chests around, but they were few and far between, and none contained anything I could really use to protect myself. So I ran.

This is different than most of the other servers I’ve played on, and it ties in with some of the ideas that we were throwing around at our last meeting. What would happen if the arena was more hostile towards the player? Would players react differently towards both the environment and to the other players? Certainly, it made it more difficult, and seemed to be a bit more true to the books in the sense that the game (pretend it’s the gamemaker from the book series) throws unexpected elements at you that ultimately steers you towards other players (and your death).

Sticking with my theme from last week, though, I noticed an emergent behaviour in many of the players: teamwork. Players were banding together to fight off the monsters, even though they didn’t establish teams/alliances at the beginning of the game like many try to do. It seemed like something that happened more out of necessity. Truthfully, it’s a lot more satisfying to win by killing your opponents rather than just have them all die off because they can’t defend themselves against the elements. Perhaps that’s what players were doing.

Two players fight off hordes of zombies near the cornucopia

I didn’t make it to morning, so I don’t know from my own experience. Would players have helped me fight off zombies, or just let them kill me? Would they kill me themselves and then run away from the horde? I’ll play around on this server more and see if this is a common occurrence!

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Going into this new project, I’m excited about a number of things: having a chance to flex my creative and critical thinking skills, to dip my feet into the familiar worlds of ideological frameworks and implicit rules of play, and to undoubtedly have my mind blown by the most rudimentary of Minecraft mechanics that no one will find quite as amazing because they actually know what they’re doing because they’ve long since lost the child-like wonder with which I view the world.

For example: learning that people used Minecraft to stage simulated Hunger Games in a literally limitless variety of maps both astounded me and made perfect sense. It was a new way of playing Minecraft that did away with the overwhelming freedom and daunting openness with which I had so strongly come to associate the game, replaced instead with short bursts of play that rarely lasted beyond twenty minutes, clear objectives, and an understandably addictive premise: outlive everyone, through any means necessary.

Well, not any means – let’s talk about that.

Brent mentioned at our last meeting that in a server he played on, his choice to hide underwater until he was the last player alive got him expelled from the game. I’m assuming this was not an explicitly given rule, and in fact, one can assume that in an actual Hunger Game it’d be an entirely legitimate tactic (barring our species’ unfortunate tendency to, well, drown). This speaks to the gradual metamorphosis of the term ‘Hunger Games’ as it is used within the Minecraft community, an idea discussed between Marie-Christine and Nic, as mentioned in his weeknote, a metamorphosis that sees the term being used to describe any kind of PVP/Battle Royale/Arena match being held between players, with a sprinkling of Hunger Games iconography.

To break things down into some rudimentary literary elements (can you guess what my Major is yet?) the narrative structure of a Hunger Game is heavily reliant on the conflicts of ‘man vs. man’, and ‘man vs. nature’ (which also bleeds back into ‘man vs. man’, if only because nature, in the case of the arenas, is often manipulated and controlled by the overseers of the games – but even so). The narrative structure of a Hungercraft match largely does away with ‘man vs. nature’, or at least employs it in a different manner: the landscape may serve as a general obstacle between you and whatever implement you’re about to use to kill some guy, but killing some guy is still your number one priority. The arena is no longer one you have to survive, and I think it’s apparent that our team wants to bring that back into focus.

I don’t know why he’s not wearing a shirt either, but I think it’s completely fair to guess that it serves as a stylistic choice made to further illustrate my point: who needs clothing to survive the elements when you have a sword with which to stab them? I think I’m on to something.

Which then begs the question: why was man’s tireless conflict with nature phased out of the Hungercraft phenomenon? Was it too troublesome to implement? (My aforementioned child-like worldview insists that, no, anything and everything is possible in Minecraft because it was created to sate our innermost cravings for godhood). Did it lead to an inevitable stalemate, in which everyone took to the seas, buckets in hand, to live there for eternity? Was it simply deemed uninteresting to watch, as an e-sports-like viewing culture became a thriving part of Hungercraft? If the answers to any or all of these questions is ‘yes’, what can we do for them to change?

We have some ideas cooking.

Some stray thoughts, to possibly grow up into full-fledged weeknotes of their own some day:

• I don’t need to convince anyone of Minecraft’s flexibility, but the phenomenon of creating games within games – of creating play within play – has always interested me. I can think of a handful of instances of this – even something as simple as playing hide & seek with friends in an MMO.
• To tie this project into our last, I wonder here how the presence of a BFC location might affect a Hungercraft match. It would only truly be useful if starvation was a real threat, in which case placing it an open or dangerous location could lead to interesting results. How would it fit into the ideology of The Hunger Games’ narrative?
• Also relevant to the BFC project: I’m curious to see how construction will go once we start building our own arena. Will the concept of carpentry still apply as we build in creative mode?
• At what point in a piece of pop culture’s dissemination does it become so ubiquitous that its name alone evokes a ritualized series of events that can be re-enacted by those who never engaged with the original literature itself?
• On that note, what can be said about the ritualistic nature of Hunger Games/Hungercraft matches? What of the themes of human sacrifice so overtly at play?

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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.

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