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The most lingering question I wonder from time immemorial is: why do players want to build in survival mode?

Reading and listening these players playing for this arduous-looking task which is collecting resources themselves to death, I can only express my surprise they do not change the game mode to creative to facilitate the building.
To make it clear: by “creative mode”, I mean the couple of the creative mode and the cheat codes. Furthermore, I speak here about building. I perfectly know that is not the whole survival mode.

I already know what answers I will get. Players are satisfied by the fact of “doing yourself”. I also read that some players considerate too easy having any blocks in the quantity you want. Some others will say it is not legit to play in creative mode, and then, think you will systematically have satisfaction in struggling in the depths of this cubic world. Because it is THE way to do it (to mine & to craft, remember?). And I do not mention the poor devils playing in peaceful difficulty, who would better directly playing in creative mode if they do not want to play without hostile mobs, according to them.

I think these reasoning are wrong.

First of all because I have a hard time imaging you can truly execute such tasks as recurring and without big interest as mine to craft, then re-mine and re-craft to achieve a goal.
Let’s talk about this goal. Generally, thinking about the time you need to get all your resources, the players building in survival mode build things smaller, less decorated, lesser shape-original. And it is perfectly understandable! One of the biggest advantages of the creative mode in relation to survival mode is to possibility to fly. It allows you to stand back from your current work in a very easy way. It can begin very tedious in survival mode. Other things: the damages. In creative mode, you do not have to worry about falling damages, neither about mobs damages, or hanger damages. In survival, you do have. Each of these constraints almost force you de facto to scale down your ambitions, compared to a work done in creative mode. Moreover, you do not have access in every blocs in survival mode, whereas they all are available in creative mode.
So, maybe it should not be in the building itself than in the way you choose to build it the interest is. But I think we can reconsider the fulfilment get in ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, playing in galleries where you alternate long sessions staying on your left-click and the come back to needed resources such as armors, weapons and food.

Next comes the argument of the ease. Some players consider that is too easy to build in creative mode.
I must write I totally disagree with that point. The creative mode is the mode allows you to avoid the most of the constraints between your ideas and the application of these ideas. In creative mode, if you do not have ideas, you jeopardise the continuity of your work. In survival mode, if you do not have ideas… Well, you still can farm skeletons in a machine you made after 4ours playing in a new game. So, in creative mode, you constantly must have ideas and know how to put these ideas in the game, which can be more grueling than searching for diamonds to make a block to put it on the top of the roof of a 90 blocks length castle.
And you can add to these argument that the collecting resources is, in fact, not so effort enquirer than it can looks like. You just have to learn some tricky skills to get your resources faster. That being wrote, I must precise that argument of knowing some tricky things to avoid you efforts can be used in the same way for the creative mode : the best players are the ones with a proper method and which respect it because it provides them a shorter moment between their ideas and the application of their ideas. However, according to me, the big difference reside in the fact that, when you build – no matter the mode you use –, you must create. Not when you get resources. In some ways, and because your builds in survival mode is generally lesser ambitious than the ones in creative, and because the biggest part of the creative mode can be resumed in creating acts whereas the biggest part of the survival mode consists in surviving and trying hard to reach your goal, we can say that the creative mode players make more efforts than the survival mode players.

Finally, some players find the creative mode non-“legit”. For them, the only truly way to play is the first we all know. This argument is easily refutable.
It is funny to realize that argument is hiding a nature call. As the nature of Minecraft was to mine and to craft, imperatively in a difficulty mode including hostile mobs. If only it was true, it would be by the developer’s will. Because there are the developers who define the setting and the limits of the game (and the sky is still too low). In this case, it was Notch who decided, in the first versions of the Beta, to orientate the game to the Mine & Craft. The RP part of the game must be rejected in this logic, because it is not about mining and crafting. But stopping to that point is foolish. And this is paradoxical because Notch said in the early days that Minecraft will have a RP part, but also it adds another dimension to the survival mode and, maybe, some new goals to reach other than the resource collecting…
And the creative mode had been added by the developers. So, if you estimate you have to respect the “essence” of the game, you have to respect what the developers offer in the game. The creative is an integral part of the game, you have no reason to complain about it. And maybe, if your purpose is to build, and because of the reason of the distance between an idea and its application in the game, you probably have better to thank Mojang to add this mode! A solution for these players consists in getting back in an (very) old version (for example, pre Beta 1.8) which does not contain this adds. I will not talk about the fact of playing in an (very) old version of the game here.
So the creative players are legitimate, so are the survival-peaceful players. What are they doing by changing the difficulty to peaceful? They delete of the constraints of the survival mode: the one of the hostile mobs. Compared to the survival mode, the creative mode delete every one of them. Perhaps these players consider, just like the players criticism them, that you must build by get your own resource by yourself, which they do. I now must write an aside about that.

One thing these players do not seem to like is the killing by a mob. Maybe, it would be interesting to think about the link between the players (not only the Minecraft players, every player!) and the difficulty of a game. What are they looking for? Not to be annoyed by the video game and make every level with a lot of aptitudes giving you a huge advantage against the AI? Here, you can objectively say that the players playing in high level of difficulty have a biggest propensity to making efforts. There is surely a lot of reasons, I prefer not talking about that here. The question is the same about the players alternating between creative and survival mode (not peaceful difficulty). The collecting of resource is, compared to an act of creation, much easier, the relevance of efforts has to be questioned…
The truth is, the limits of the constraints you set to your game are extremely relative to you and should not be an accepted norm. Do you want to get the hostile mob constraint off your game but keep the one of the resource collecting? Do it. There is no “legit” choice. But there is maybe some smarter choice than others. Like avoid the most of the constraints you can by choosing the creative mode if you want to build, because it is the mode which saves you the most efforts. And it is not a shame.
With that wrote, it is interesting to notice that the architecture produced by the both players have significant differences. The survival players have a larger more pragmatic view of the builds than the creative players. And, typically, the creative players will not build the inside of their buildings, the survival players do because they use it.

In conclusion, I would write that the choices of everyone will be influenced by the vision of every player. Having to continuously creating is not an easy task, and you have to remember that a lot of players play Minecraft like playing any other games: to have fun. But there are players who can do that and do see Minecraft as an artistic creation tool. The relevance of the efforts off everyone influence your choice too.
According to me, the biggest advantage of Minecraft is keeping interest by making all these visions possible in one game. A lot of players can make of Minecraft whatever they want.


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