Minecraft, creativity, capitalism & perfectionism

Back in the "golden era" of Minecraft, between the days of alpha and pre adventure update, the experience of playing Minecraft was much more barebones. We had very few blocks, very few color palettes to work with, and we certainly didnt have villagers, villages, the end or enchantments to worry about. Instead of having that specific block to ornate your building with, you had to get creative with other blocks to create details and interest in your builds. The content of Minecraft back then was much more approachable, it didn't feel like an ocean of stuff to use and catch up with. It also felt like your world was your untouched canvas with no shrines or prebuilt structures touching it: your world was your story to create.

It was also an era- for a lot of us, where we were much younger. We had few responsibilities and working to worry about. For many of us, it was an escape from school, a liberation from boredom or a distraction from social drama. An era where gaming was still fun, where the very notion of friction, effort or work wasnt yet tainted by the outside world, where we could apply all 3 of those to finding new ways to play, create and relax in our virtual worlds.

But as time went on, the growth of social media proliferated, and with it the "instagrammable" builds and worlds of the very best builders. Minecraft expands to grow alongside this, introducing ever more complicated and ornate mechanics and intricate blocks for detail. Alongside that, we were growing older, with more and more responsibilities, studies and jobs. We were consuming content of our favourite creators, who play for a living, and sure: we get inspiration from their incredible builds (that probably took teams of highly skilled people). You want your world to look like that! What's the point if my world just looks ugly?

Suddenly, comparison becomes the thief of joy: we start comparing ourselves to the content and "inspiration" we consume, all the while feeling building pressure of meeting those standards. Perform, improve, excel! In the process? The old care free magic of just playing around with that golden era blank canvas, untainted by expectations or standards... Slowly slipping away. All of a sudden? That day to day grind of going to work, performing, improving and excelling for the capitalist machine, leaving you an empty husk, starts seeping into your gameplay. That pressure to generate something "valuable", something "presentable" like the capitalist machine has taught you. It ruined the notion of surrendering yourself to the creative process, without fear of poor results. That care free magic playing Minecraft of your adolescence.

What if it looks ugly? I'll never build to those standards! Whats even the point if I cant make a beautiful world to post a tour of on YouTube? All self negating talk of capitalist empire. All ideas beaten into us to conform, to worship the alter of capitalism and stay in our place. Dont you dare create, creativity is only worth something if its beautiful, presentable, marketable. All these questions are driven by the fear of expectation, designed to keep us from creating, designed to have us shrink. Self expression without fear of expectations is liberation. Ironically, fearless self expression is also what allows us to build our skills and the distinct creative style that we so desperately crave for.

This is so difficult to do in the backdrop of our lives today: the ever growing expectations and labour of work: the exhaustion of working all day every day, only to get 2 days off and with barely any money to boot. And then? You have to go through the friction and effort of having to figure out how to build or design a new style or experiment? By the time we've come back from the hard graft of labour, we're too tired to foster our creativity. Its all we can do to grab a bite to eat.

But what if we scaled back these expectations? What if we just let ourselves go with the flow a bit more? Maybe not following guides or tutorials on building something aesthetic quite so closely, to just... Go where our creativity takes us? For our takes on what our visions of building should look like. To foster that inner child that just wants to have fun and throw shit at a wall and see what sticks. Just letting go, and allowing yourself to just build things for the sake of it, it doesnt have to have a purpose. Have fun instead! Is building something aesthetic satisfying at the end? Yes. But: it sets a high level of expectation that keeps you away from having fun and engaging with building in the first place. If the level of expectation is open ended, free, and liberated from the seductive pull of the algorithm, we can start to create freely without the weight of expectation, effort and friction pulling us down.

Suddenly, you're able to engage with the game for fun again, youre able to switch off and just experiment with different materials, or hell... Maybe even keep it basic! If we're not so focused on aesthetics anymore, maybe we just focus on a smaller set of more basic materials, just like the golden age of Minecraft. Maybe thats less overwhelming and more fun, making space for a place where we can breathe free from the suffocation of the need to generate content.

Deconstructing that perfectionism is difficult. But its a prison that kills creativity. If we aim for perfection from the start, then how can we ever hope to achieve perfection in the first place? How can we ever hope to create if we're always jumping to the final, polished and finished product? Escaping perfectionism allows us to learn that new instrument, to pick up that pencil and sketch, to start that new forever world and actually start things. To not get overwhelmed by the journey ahead, but to get excited about it. To look ahead and relish in the tapestry of possibilities ahead of you. Being able to make something "flawed" (whatever that means), and be proud of it, to look back on previous work and see how far you've come, where your style and creative identity is headed.

Now more than ever, people crave raw and authentic work. People are fatiguing of algorithmically curated perfection. In the age of machine learning generated slop, where the mathematical average of human creativity is output in the most bland and hyperpalatable way possible- to pollute our internet and colonise our attention... We long for YOUR vision, your unapologetic whacky ideas and designs. Have the audacity to create, craft a million disasters and stumble upon a masterpiece free from the expectations and constraints of the algorithm. Share it with the world, work that is proudly YOURS. Generated by YOUR effort and no one else's, not generated by the 0s and 1s using up our waters and boiling our planet.