There are PvE elements early in some Minecraft game types, but once they’re overcome, or if you pick a game type that disables them, the major challenge becomes building things that are impressive to you or to other players. If I had to classify that as anything in this typology it’d be PvP, but I actually think it’s reflecting something orthogonal to it, more along the lines of the game vs. toy distinction. (Game: Doom. Toy: SimCity.)
One thing Minecraft does do to stretch its PvE content is procedural generation, elsewhere associated with the Roguelike genre and its relatives (Diablo, Torchlight, etc.)
Yes, the toy vs. game distinction is a highly useful one, though I read the OP as talking more about entertainment software rather than about games (not toys).
Procedural generation helps, but at the moment it’s still limited. A different pattern of corridors with random mobs from a predefined set doesn’t generate that much novelty. Diablo is widely acknowledged as a loot collection game, not a world exploration game. However there is a lot of room to grow so in the future I expect procedural generation to create much more interesting worlds.
There are PvE elements early in some Minecraft game types, but once they’re overcome, or if you pick a game type that disables them, the major challenge becomes building things that are impressive to you or to other players. If I had to classify that as anything in this typology it’d be PvP, but I actually think it’s reflecting something orthogonal to it, more along the lines of the game vs. toy distinction. (Game: Doom. Toy: SimCity.)
One thing Minecraft does do to stretch its PvE content is procedural generation, elsewhere associated with the Roguelike genre and its relatives (Diablo, Torchlight, etc.)
Yes, the toy vs. game distinction is a highly useful one, though I read the OP as talking more about entertainment software rather than about games (not toys).
Procedural generation helps, but at the moment it’s still limited. A different pattern of corridors with random mobs from a predefined set doesn’t generate that much novelty. Diablo is widely acknowledged as a loot collection game, not a world exploration game. However there is a lot of room to grow so in the future I expect procedural generation to create much more interesting worlds.