My Commander and original Monkeylord were still alive in the ruins of Tom's, but as I checked up on them, more enemy experimentals emerged from the fog of war. Oh hell. Five Monkeylords. Six dinosaurs. A Kriptor. Two Megaliths. A hundred tanks. I had my commander top off the Monkeylord's health, then spent some research points to jumpjet him the hell out of there and back to the relative safety of my base. Trying to get a better handle on how screwed we were, Rich built an Illuminator: a new structure that can momentarily reveal almost the entire map.
It's an eye-opening overview of the battle as it stands. And when he finally charged and activated it, it revealed a sea of horrors. This vast empty desert was now teeming with robotic death. Uncountable Monkeylords. Hundreds of Kriptors. Fleets of flying fortresses. Dozens of Soul Rippers. It was pointless to try and fight it all. Our only hope was a single joint strike on one of the AI's now heavily shielded bases.
I unlocked air transports, picked up my Monkeylords and flew them over to Rich's base. He set his teleporter destination as far as it would go towards the green base, and marched his 14 Colossi into it single file.
In about eight minutes — it's a big map — we were in position. Even with our ridiculous combined force, wading into that base was an explosive slog. I had to back us up with Bomb Bouncers to defend against artillery, and Soul Rippers to deal with the enemy's endless flying fortresses.
But of all the monsters that crept up in Minecraft, the creeper is the most distinct. It's a tall green quadruped with a permanent frown. Creepers hop around the landscape in small groups, and when they see you, they start to hiss and hop after you. When they get close enough, they puff up, flash white, and explode — destroying a huge chunk of terrain.
They're quite scary, but also a little bit cute. Only a few of us knew about the game at first, but as Minecraft's grip tightened on the office, we began to evangelise. It starts to make you go all funny. My first castle was a 5x5x10 keep with barely a window in it, but every time you decide to fortify something, you'll make it bigger and grander than the last time.
When you flatten a mountain and build a wall around it, then build a keep inside that, then build another wall all around that, then a palisade surrounded by a trench and then a fence, and hundreds of peasant houses and farms for miles around, you realise you're playing the game of the year.
It revolves around the same irresistible creative urge that made Lego king of the bricks-for-children industry, but it stays fresh because Markus Persson never stops making Minecraft. Survival mode already had crafting, so he kept adding recipes.
This one time, he added boats. He added snowy maps, and you could throw snowballs at the monsters. He added mine carts that you can ride around in. He added secret underground dungeons, with loot and monsters.
He added an ore that can be made into wires and combined with other elements to make logic gates. He added doors and fences. He added a dangerous fiery dimension that you can use to quickly travel around your main world via evil, purple, fiery gates. But the Minecraft community has a list of achievements and bizarre creations just as long.
Whether you're importing the schematics of the USS Enterprise into a Minecraft map, using some sort of fan-made editing utility to build a working Arithmetic Logic Unit out of the game's conductive Redstone wires, or just spending most of your adult life building an evil death castle where two treacherous mountains form a narrow pass, Minecraft will turn you into an obsessive architect. The dream was always Survival multiplayer, though.
Which is how I ended up sitting at home waiting for that little icon to turn grey. The match had been going on for five weeks by this point, and had been marked by broken alliances, early morning logins and late night attacks.
My opponent and I were now the last races standing. We'd betrayed each other once apiece already, but had grown weary and decided instead to create a lasting peace.
One I'd just thrown away in pursuit of victory. It was a few hours later and the space squid's icon turned blue again. When he saw what I'd done, he simply sighed and started trading me his planets for nothing. His message was clear: 'If you want to win that badly, then fine, just take them.
I did the only thing I could: I traded the planets back as fast as I received them, with the extra he needed to win. All hail the space squid! Space slug feels bad about himself. See comments. Sean's life has been intrinsically tied to competitive gaming, and he's got plans. I see e-sports having a position between sports as seen on television and chess. Ten years ago, when e-sports first rose to public consciousness, virtually all the content that was produced had an executive producer at the head, hired to just bark orders at people.
But executive producers don't get gaming. Gaming is not an activity, it's a lifestyle. What do I do on a Friday night? If I'm a party hound, I'm going to get trashed.
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