Spzi

One is multiple parallel goals. Makes it hard to stop playing, since there’s always something you just want to finish or do “quickly”.

Say you want to build a house. Chop some trees, make some walls. Oh, need glass for windows. Shovel some sand, make more furnaces, dig a room to put them in - oh, there’s a cave with shiny stuff! Quickly explore a bit. Misstep, fall, zombies, dead. You had not placed a bed yet, so gotta run. Night falls. Dodge spiders and skeletons. Trouble finding new house. There it is! Venture into the cave again to recover your lost equipment. As you come up, a creeper awaitsssss you …

Another mechanism is luck. The world is procedurally generated, and you can craft and create almost anything anywhere. Except for a few things, like spawners. I once was lucky to have two skeleton spawners right next to each other, not far from the surface. In total, I probably spent hours in later worlds to find a similar thing.

The social aspect can also support that you play the game longer or more than you actually would like. Do I lose my “friends” when I stop playing their game?

I don’t think Minecraft does these things in any way maliciously, it’s just a great game. But nevertheless, it has a couple of mechanics which can make it addictive and problematic.

If it has the information, why not?

Naive altruistic reply: To prevent harm.

Cynic reply: To prevent liabilities.

If the restaurant refuses to put your fries into your coffee, because that’s not on the menu, then that’s their call. Can be for many reasons, but it’s literally their business, not yours.

If we replace fries with fuse, and coffee with gun powder, I hope there are more regulations in place. What they sell and to whom and in which form affects more people than just buyer and seller.

Although I find it pretty surprising corporations self-regulate faster than lawmakers can say ‘AI’ in this case. That’s odd.

Vegans have more to do with morals than vegetarians. Vegans may refrain from using animal based products like leather, which can be completely unrelated to health. A vegetarian diet is just that, a diet without meat. Can be for health or moral reasons, unspecified.

Many things are tasty, many of which don’t have the detrimental implications of animal products, especially meat.

Which might be seen as a positive by some people (not me).

It encourages social interaction. Every answered question becomes a valid option to ask again just a short time later. And to answer again.

It also takes the burden to search from those who have questions. Just keep the chat flowing.

Maybe it’s a bit like asking people on the street for directions, instead of using your phone. Less efficient and accurate, but you might get a smile in the process.