Going on hunting trips is probably the hobby of many Minecraft players. For one, you get to train yourself in combat and also flex your limbs a bit after spending days stuck in that cramped mine-shaft, but, before mercilessly slaying helpless cows and pigs for experience, have you ever hesitated to ponder about whether animals in MC are conscious beings like yourself?



Whoa, you’re going a bit overboard with your theories here, mate, you might say. After all, it’s not like they’re REAL animals, are they? Well, answering your question, even though they’re simply artificial stimulations of their real life counterparts, it isn’t exactly moral for one to massacre them for fun. Plus, Notch didn’t actually intend for the player to go slay hapless animals for fun, and here’s the proof – whenever one slays a creature of some sort in the game, one might notice that, apart from simply dropping items, you’ll also witness a puff of white smoke emerge from the spot of the creature’s demise. Now, what exactly IS the smoke supposed to be? The most reasonable answer – considering that Markus Persson himself is also religious - is probably that the smoke is actually supposed to resemble to creature’s soul, slowly dispersing while floating upwards. However, you might tend to notice that, when undead monsters such as zombies and skeletons are slain, they also seem to have a “soul”. A simple explanation to this phenomenon is that the souls of the undead are confined within their corpses upon their transformation and resurrection, unable to begin their journey to paradise. Upon the destruction of their mortal prison, their spirits are released from their captivation.



With this little feature from Mojang in mind, the next time you go pig-hunting for fun, ponder on whether this moral violation is worth the fun you get from listening to those pigs squeal.

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