{"id":36,"date":"2014-04-03T14:31:59","date_gmt":"2014-04-03T18:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/?p=36"},"modified":"2015-04-23T10:43:16","modified_gmt":"2015-04-23T14:43:16","slug":"monster-prevention-and-control-in-minecraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/?p=36","title":{"rendered":"Monster Prevention and Control in Minecraft"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MmB9b5njVbA?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>To those who are familiar with it, the independently-developed video game <a href=\"https:\/\/minecraft.net\/\">Minecraft<\/a> is often touted as either one of the greatest things to come out of the gaming industry in decades or a shallow game in which a simple, blocky protagonist aimlessly wanders around in a simple, blocky world populated by simple, blocky animals.<\/p>\n<p>We think it&#8217;s neither.\u00a0 Under its surface, the game is full of learning opportunities.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>First, what is Minecraft?\u00a0 It&#8217;s a video game, developed in Java for Mac, PC , mobile and the Xbox by a company called Mojang.\u00a0 The player takes the role of an unnamed <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/ProtagonistWithoutAPast\">protagonist<\/a> who <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/Robinsonade\">finds themselves alone<\/a> in a massive, wild, <a href=\"http:\/\/minecraft.gamepedia.com\/The_Overworld\">undeveloped world<\/a> and has to find, farm, mine &amp; build food, tools, shelter, lighting and clothing in order to survive.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it, really.\u00a0 There are no levels to complete, no missions to accomplish, no real point to the game, actually, other than survival.\u00a0 It&#8217;s all up to the player &#8211; much like life, Minecraft is what you make it &#8211; and people have made a large number of <a href=\"http:\/\/minecraftmuseum.net\/gallery.php\">rather<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/102056244862854446060\/posts\">nice<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.technobuffalo.com\/2011\/09\/12\/20-awesome-minecraft-build-pictures\/\">things <\/a>using this game as a medium.\u00a0 The most fascinating thing to come from this game is that despite this openness &amp; this lack of constraints the player community has independently developed very similar methods of solving problems.<\/p>\n<p>As time passes in the world of Minecraft, the <a href=\"http:\/\/minecraft.gamepedia.com\/Sun\">square sun<\/a> arcs across the sky much as our familiar round one does.\u00a0 When it moves below the horizon, darkness sets in and monsters (who hate the light!) start to appear.\u00a0 This <a href=\"http:\/\/minecraft.gamepedia.com\/Day-night_cycle\">day-night cycle<\/a> &#8211; peace during the day, frenzied fear at night &#8211; drives more diverse and interesting gameplay than most quests, missions or storyline campaigns than developers ever could have included.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pIP7W-wmI2c?rel=0\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Confronted by the threat of nocturnal monsters, players often prefer not to spend their nights cowering in a cave.\u00a0 So what do they do?\u00a0 It&#8217;s simple &#8211; modify the environment to suit the needs of the player character (letting you accomplish stuff in a well-lit area while waiting for night to pass) while making it hard for the monsters to get at you (and your hard-earned stuff, because monsters hate the light, remember?).<\/p>\n<p>Here are <a href=\"http:\/\/minecraft.gamepedia.com\/Tutorials\/Safe_home\">but a handful<\/a>.\u00a0 These public safety tips have been collected by players, and the best ones have become mantra: &#8220;Don&#8217;t dig straight up!&#8221; &#8220;Be careful around lava!&#8221; &#8220;Don&#8217;t taunt the Creepers!&#8221;\u00a0 With a well thought-out, well-lit shelter area built along these &#8220;best practices&#8221;, monsters aren&#8217;t getting in unless you accidentally let them in.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s amazing how these just came about &#8211; players who had their fun ruined by being pushed into a lava lake by a zombie getting the word out so their buddies won&#8217;t go through the same thing &#8211; it&#8217;s shockingly similar to the field of infection prevention and control.\u00a0 The act of securing your shelter is even eerily close to declaring an area under isolation &#8211; setting up barriers so organisms can&#8217;t get in and lights so they can&#8217;t multiply (ultraviolet lamps are used for disinfecting).\u00a0 We could call it &#8220;Monster Prevention and Control&#8221;, if we wanted to.<\/p>\n<p>In the real world, monsters don&#8217;t come out at night, but they do come when we least expect it, and we certainly can&#8217;t see them.\u00a0 Rather than Creepers and skeletons we have bacteria like Clostridium difficile and MRSA, but what they both have in common is that they come from out in the community, and are most prone to coming in only through players (people) as vectors who let them in.<\/p>\n<p>Community-acquired infections have their own best practices that have been collected, researched and shared by people.\u00a0 &#8220;Practice the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.who.int\/gpsc\/tools\/Five_moments\/en\/\">Five Moments of Hand Hygiene!<\/a>&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;Healthy visitors only!&#8221;\u00a0 &#8220;Wear <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/products\/sign\/53\/detail\">a mask<\/a> if you have flu symptoms!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The game lets you place signage &#8211; even if you&#8217;re not playing with other players, reminding yourself of dangers (&#8220;Don&#8217;t dig! Lava!&#8221;) can mean the difference between staying safe and losing hours of playtime through equipment lost in the molten rock.\u00a0 In real life, signage <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patientguard.net\/system\">warning before you enter<\/a> an area that could contain dangerous bacteria should be even more crucial, after all you&#8217;re looking to lose more than just a few hours of playtime.\u00a0 You can also use signage (or gigantic landmarks!) to clearly label caches of supplies and weapons to fight monsters so you&#8217;re ready in an emergency &#8211; just as you should mark\u00a0 alcohol-based handrub in a hospital setting so people can use it to fight infection.\u00a0 (Or you can just use <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/products\/floor\/show\">a giant landmark<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>Lastly we learn that without help we&#8217;re stuck figuring out these best practices on our own.\u00a0 Thankfully, Minecraft players have a wiki to go to for help, there are plenty of resources regarding infection control, and both are being constantly added to as new techniques are learned.<\/p>\n<p>Who said video games never taught us anything?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To those who are familiar with it, the independently-developed video game Minecraft is often touted as either one of the greatest things to come out of the gaming industry in decades or a shallow game in which a simple, blocky<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/?p=36\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":171,"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taggcleanhands.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}