Core Game Mechanics and Minecraft/Sandbox games

This post is a result of the in-class discussion regarding core game mechanics, I will be focusing on Minecraft, but what I will be discussing is not limited to that.

As we discussed in class, there are a variety of core game mechanics, the problem however is that in today's world there are many games that "lack" a single core mechanic, at least according to the traditional definition.

So the question I am posing is: "How do we define what a games core game mechanic is and is it time to change?"

As I mentioned many modern games "lack" a core mechanic in the traditional sense. Games like Minecraft are sandbox games, and while I heard a solid argument that Minecraft at its core is a collection game, thanks Peter. I am not  convinced that a game such as Minecraft is a collection game at its core.

Lets look into this a little deeper, yes Minecraft has a collection aspect, but it has a building, exploring and destruction aspect built in as well. Part of the argument today was that these three additional mechanics derived from the collection aspect of the game. This is where the argument loses me because it doesn't take long to find people who play Minecraft that just want to build or explore or destroy things without collecting items first. One just needs to take a look at the  Minecraft subreddit or YouTube to see plenty of videos that are either builds, exploring or my personal favorite blowing stuff up with TNT. This is because Minecraft is a sandbox game at its core, it is what you want to make of it. It is because of this that I pose this question. Minecraft cannot have a single core mechanic as we discussed in class, it certainly has aspects of many core mechanics but no single mechanic that everything else is built on.

This leads me to one or two possible conclusions. The first being that is the absence of a single core mechanic the core mechanic; the other being do we need to define another class of core mechanic that is a hybrid or a sandbox core mechanic.

I am going to switch topics here a bit and move to something else that was discussed in class. Which is that you do not really take anything away from an open ended sandbox style game compared to one that has a single core mechanic. An example was brought forward that after quitting World of Warcraft there was nothing that was taken away from that because there was no end goal. This may be partial true, but most people who have played an MMO will know that they have certainly reached one or more milestone goals.
Whether it was reaching the max level, completing all the Raids and Dungeons or being a very strong PvP player. In addition, when you look at many other game, computer or otherwise there are a plethora of examples where you do not take anything away.

Now lets tied this in with the top section. These games I have discussed draw tens of millions of players combined yet they have no single core mechanic but rather they have many. So what does this mean, well the  straight forward choice is that a game does not require a single core mechanic but what does this really mean? Well in my opinion it means as I stated before we either need to define a class of core mechanic that is the absence of a core mechanic or widen the definition of what a core mechanic is with concepts like sandbox games.

That wraps up my thoughts core mechanics as it related to today's discussion.