Love them or, more likely, hate them, Minecraft Creepers are now an iconic part of Mojang’s beloved sandbox game. But the explosive creatures probably wouldn’t be included today, the creator said, if he had to design them from scratch now.
I’m talking in novel developer video Discussing the game’s balance and fairness, artistic director Jens Bergensten said that Mojang now follows a mighty policy of adding a novel item, biome or enemy to Minecraft that can make players depressed. In low, if anything causes player suffering, it should be because the players brought it on themselves.
This means that enemies need to feel fair, so players can choose to fight them if they want to, or have a decent chance of mitigating the danger if they don’t. Situations that negatively impact the player should also never feel too random.
Bergensten listed various examples of things that were added in the past that didn’t feel as fair as intended – like Iron Golems protecting villages by attacking Creepers (and causing them to blow up), or Endermen randomly stealing blocks that could be crucial (like carefully constructed Redstone circuits).
That’s not to say that Mojang won’t add more hard challenges, although the developer has stated that it’s now trying to make hard content feel like something that players choose to pursue – such as when they actively decide to enter The End and face the climactic Ender’s Dragon.
But what about Creeper? He can be encountered from the very beginning of the game, can quickly kill players and destroy builds, and sometimes appears to appear randomly. So why does it still exist the way it does?
“Even to this day, it’s one of the monsters in gaming that I’m a little afraid of,” Bergensten admitted. “If you followed the rules we have today, we probably wouldn’t have added the Creeper because it would actually be so controversial if the monster just showed up and destroyed what you built.”
Yet?
“Yet Creeper is very iconic,” Bergensten concluded, “and that’s true.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s news editor. You can contact Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
