7 Things Minecraft Taught Me About Internet Marketing

Minecraft is the phenomenal indie Java game that's swept the Internet, and, given the sea of copycats springing up out there, might yet prove to revolutionize the game industry. Here, I'm going to use seven game lessons as metaphors for Internet Marketing:

1. Build you first night's shelter *fast*!

In Minecraft, you start with the environment around you and two empty hands. In about ten minutes, "nighttime" in the game will fall and monsters come out to kill you. You have to be fast to succeed the first night. Similarly, in web businesses you want to be self-sustaining as soon as possible. The longer your web business isn't paying for itself, the more it's going to feel like you're taking a beating instead of getting ahead.

2. Be willing to explore.

You're unlikely to have everything you need right in front of you. Maybe you spawned near trees and some sand and dirt; but you're still going to have to find lava, clay, animals, and resources if you want the full game experience. In Internet Marketing, no matter how much you know, there's more you don't know. There's web business models out there waiting to be discovered. Just when you think you've seen everything, along comes some wise guy who has a new way of doing business you never thought of before.

3. The competition isn't tough, just numerous.

In Minecraft, you have enemies which include spiders, zombies, skeletons, and "creepers" which you'll discover are the most bothersome. There's a lot of them and you always have to keep an eye out for them, but the good news is that none of them have very sophisticated AI. They see you, they charge, you kill them, they die. Likewise in web marketing, it may seem like everybody else has a secret formula for getting in the first page of search results or converting more customers. In fact, everybody's using the same tools you are - it's just tough to make it because there's a lot of hands competing for each dollar.

4. Dig deep!

In Minecraft, diamonds, gold, coal, lapus lazuli, and iron are all waiting for you to dig them up and convert them into handy resources and tools. and so with Internet Marketing, there's a lot of money out there that's spread very thin. Take a miner's view of it. Grind for 100 yards and make ten dollars in ad impressions. Well, keep grinding!

5. Impress yourself first.

If you play Minecraft in single-player, at times it feels like a lonely game while you build your castles and railroads. But it is still fun, as long as you're building something beautiful and impressive. If all you end up with is an ugly mud hut, then it feels twice as lonely. In the web business game, your product and your site should wow you, first. Your own criticism comes free, after all, so if you feel like you believe in your own business, your customers will too.

6. Tinker and invent.

Minecraft rewards the tinkerer. Go on YouTube and there's thousands of crafters showing off their work. Using the "redstone" element which acts like electrical wiring, together with other mechanical devices in the game, they've built working calculators, roller coasters, water slides, player pianos, harvesting systems, and even a full-scale model of the Starship Enterprise! Likewise, in Internet Marketing, there's tons of geeky toys to play with and connect together into profitable systems in new ways. What gadget written in PHP, Javascript, or Flash could you have on your site right now to draw visitors? Could the pieces to put together the next Twitter be right in front of you?

7. Gain fame by showing off your work.

Of course, those YouTube videos I mentioned, in themselves, are sometimes clever Internet Marketing. As with the Second Life game, businesses are starting to use Minecraft to market themselves. Even without the Minecraft metaphor, you don't need us to tell you that advertising your work to the world is the way to get people to appreciate it.

"Penguin" Pete Trbovich maintains the website http://penguinpetes.com/, which includes a blog, wallpaper gallery, webcomic, and resources revolving around Free and Open Source Software and the wonders thereof. He is also available for freelance work in writing, graphics art, and some light web design including small Flash games. You may also view his portfolio at http://penguinpetes.com/pages/portfolio/index.php.

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Minecraft Creatures - A Thinker's Challenge

If you are a newbie or experienced player you should be aware at this point the problems that creatures can cause you. Poor planning or execution will leave you frustrated, angry, and ruin your chances of advancement. Your success or failure is largely dependent on your ability to adapt quickly. Understanding creatures should be a part of any player's successful strategy and a good starting point for this article.

What are Minecraft creatures?

Minecraft creatures are the adversary or "bad guy" in this instance. They haunt the game and increase in rigor to defeat with the passing of each and every level. They come in various forms and are in the minds of some the most compelling aspect of the game.

As stated, with advancement so does the challenge of defeating Minecraft creatures. They generally have more power and a greater prepotency to demolish resources architected by players. For this reason, one of the primary duties of players is to protect and ensure the well-being of resources from pessimist creatures.

The latest version of the game offers a combination of 17 different creatures from cows to pigman. All of which possess different powers and weapons and have different temperaments. They are all different in terms of their ability to be controlled and demolished.

Because of this, it is important to strategically tackle creatures. Especially the biggest threats and most aggressive Minecraft creatures such as the creeper, slime, spider jockey, and several others. They take no prisoners and won't hesitate to attack at any given time destroying everything that you've built and even damaging you.

As you've read there are a number of challenges to overcome when dealing with Mincraft creatures. As one of the most interesting yet frustrating aspects if the game, creatures can leave you angry and frustrated if not handled properly. By incorporating the information from this article you should now be more informed and able to begin to devise a successful strategy for taking you game play to the next level.

Shaun Caldwell is an experienced Minecraft player who is knowledgeable about practically every aspect of the game including how to make it past the first night and acquire, craft, and use every detail in them game. He encourages you to share your game playing experience and strategies for success with others on his Minecraft forum.

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Minecraft Is Ruining My Life

Plenty of things can change someone's life; divorce, sickness, or even death. However, my life has been changing due to something a little differently lately-Minecraft. This game is addictive. If you haven't played it before, you don't even know. Don't try it out. In fact, don't even think about it. Run man, RUN!

Anyway, the Classic version of the game is pretty entertaining on its own. It's basically just a huge sandbox game where you build with different blocks. There isn't much to it, but I found myself playing it for hours on end. It even started interfering with other parts of my life, because I couldn't get it out of my head. It was like a bad nicotine addiction, but turned all the way up to 11. It only got worse when I started playing the Alpha.

Unlike Classic, you have to actually do something to get your building materials. When I first started, I'm pretty sure some sort of divine entity tried to show me some mercy; I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out how to break blocks. I kept clicking on them, but they weren't breaking like they did in Classic. "This is dumb," I thought and abandoned the game. I should have stayed away.

One of my friends told me how to mine blocks. It was the beginning of the end, I guess. Soon, I had stone tools, stacks of wood, and a pretty glass window. I was king of my world, and my shelter was totally safe from monsters.

Oh god, the monsters.

There are quite a few monsters, or "mobs" as they're officially called, in the game. Some of them are classics, such as the zombies and skeletons that creep around everywhere. Speaking of creeping, there are more dangerous mobs like creepers. Unfortunately, creepers aren't just scary old men that follow children; in Minecraft, they're big, walking green things that explode in your face when you get near them.

These things are scary. You learn to fear them when you're in caves or whenever you get trapped outside in the dark. You start to be incredibly alert when going anywhere, even in the day, and the sounds start to get to you. You hear sounds everywhere-moans, groans, twangs, slurps, all that fun stuff. It's just terrifying.

I was recently mining in a cave I'd recently lit up. Despite being mostly lit with torches, I was still really scared that there were monsters lurking somewhere. I knew they were there. I could feel them. It'd been a long day of collecting iron and coal from this particular shaft, so I went back up to the entrance to my cave. To my horror, it was night outside. Fearful for my life, I quickly erected a small dirt hut to protect me. It was ridiculous and extreme, but it made me feel secure and safe. I couldn't see those hungry, lusty eyes in the darkness anymore, and that was cool with me.

I spend hours a day playing Minecraft. Sometimes I'm adding to my shelter, other times I'm gathering resources. The world I'm in right now is almost completely self-sustaining, so I have to occupy my time there doing other time consuming things. One of my first big projects was hollowing out 1492 blocks to make a huge underwater room to grow trees in. It took a ton of time, and I'm not even sure why I bothered doing it. Despite that, it's still my crowning achievement. I've since added on to it, creating sub-farms for other crops like wheat and cacti. I probably have a good three hours into that room alone.

All of that is pretty sane so far. It's only a game, right?

It's been two or three months since I started playing Minecraft, and lately I've started seeing and hearing things. Horrible things. At night, I hear moaning; perhaps other Minecrafters in similar positions calling for help? I see skeletons bouncing around outside my window, and around every corner I glimpse the green, pixelated skin of a creeper. I expect to hear the Minecraftian door sound whenever I push on a door, and I sometimes forget that there are shapes other than blocks.

My mind is slowly being eaten away by this treacherously addictive game, and I can't do a thing about it. Maybe I'm an addict. Dictionary.com defines an addiction as "the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma."

I think Minecraft pretty much fits the bill here. It's super habit-forming, and it's probably causing severe trauma to my mind. I can see this wonderful, horrible game being as hotly debated as marijuana is right now. It's just that good/bad.

http://binarysquared.co.cc/

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Playing on Minecraft Servers Fixes Dull Game

Minecraft has been known to be addicting. Minecraft rewards block dexterity in the best ways. When playing Minecraft you have a feeling of living through an inhospitable land. You wind up not just surviving, but doing well and casting works of art. Minecraft possesses an uncommon type of built-in level progression that makes you feel accomplished. The more you mine the more resources you own and the better looking your creations.

The game's in beta and still is not flawless yet. As of right now, there's really no which can really kill the fun. And because there aren't Non-Player Characters it can get very lame and make it clear how barren the Minecraft land is. Your sense of epicness in this grand and never-ending land dies when all the landscape starts to look repetitive.

Gaming within Minecraft servers do, however, cure most of these ailments. Goals are created by other Minecraft online players. Online gamers are a great source of endless content. You'll now have people to show off your sculptures to, and the surrounding territory would be much more diverse because it's 100% player created. You can come across unique towns, sculptures, and mazes in your expeditions.

But there are enormous setbacks with locating an online server that's good for you. You maybe want PVP enabled, you maybe want a more creative world to game in. You maybe need a RP server, you maybe want to live in an anarchy with no laws or you might want civilization. If the rules aren't tough enough you can wind up with unneeded griefers, murderers, and thieves. If the laws are too tough you might feel a loss of control, the inability to craft where you want, and it's only fun for those with power.

There are many server websites online however the majority are not good enough, and don't meet my needs. There's a lot of voter based spamming, which turns the entire site into a popularity contest with no indication of if a server's a good fit for YOU. I was looking in a server site recently which used the exact same description for each of their listings so they can reach #1 on search engines quickly by having many low content posts. A lot more of these directories are also biased, giving praise to only those websites who are willing and able to pay and no recognition to all else.

Pick your server with care, make sure it meets all of your wants, or else you'll be forever doomed to server-hop, over time getting frustrated and forgetting about the awesome opportunities that multiplayer can bring you.

If you want to use a good, honest Minecraft servers database and review site, try out http://www.MinecraftServersInfo.com We're small but we're growing rapidly and adding new content every day.

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