Principles
Vegancraft is a passion project born out of the need and desire of anti-speciesist and non-violent representation in videogames, specially in sandbox and children-friendly games such as Minecraft.
Minecraft, like many games, often falls guilty of unvoluntarily mirroring real-life societal injustices, perpetuating them in the process. The case of Minecraft is specially interesting since the own developers of the game often make an effort to speak against these injustices and actively try to avoid them in the game. In the case of animals, this is seen on their concern with the representation of real-life animals in the game (like no real-life animal being hostile to the player, or the avoidance of letting certain animals eat certain foods, such as the parrots and the infamous fireflies). In addition, Minecraft takes pride in having a “peaceful” gamemode, for players that just want to enjoy the game without any violence.
These things, however, are in direct conflict with the in-game representation of livestock animals or, better said, animals that are used by humans in western culture. How can the creators honestly say that they are against animal cruelty when the game encourages you to kill cows in order to craft something as simple as a book? The survival gamemode is filled with mechanics that are locked or soft-locked behind being violent towards certain animals. I do not believe that videogames cause violence or that they should refrain from representing violence. I do think, however, that videogames that aim to provide peaceful gameplay should include peaceful alternatives to that violence, even more so when those alternatives are already present in real life.
Apart from that, regarding the bit I said about western culture: the game is also filled with disparity between how certain species of animals are treated. You can kill cows, sheep, chicken, etc. for meat and leather, but you cannot get meat and leather from polar bears, dogs, etc., despite those animals also being historically and/or currently used for those reasons. In addition, the developers take extra care when designing the newer mobs for the game, such as camels, sniffers, or allays, providing them with unique mechanics and personality, while the western livestock animals are reduced to being sacks of meat with no personality and no other purpose in the game.
As I said, these issues are just a mirror of how humanity sees animals in real life. I, like most vegans, aspire to change that, and making these issues more visible through proper representation is a step towards that goal. If you are not vegan and are reading through this, I encourage you to rethink your relationship with animals and how it affects them in real life. And if all of that fails, I at least expect to provide some vegans like me with a better playing experience in this great game.
- Daenvil
Resources:
- You will never look at your life in the same way again - Youtube video by Earthling Ed
- Why go vegan? - The Vegan Society
- Watch Dominion
Design choices
In general, the features introduced by Vegancraft aim to be as close as possible to vanilla Minecraft, in a way that players can play with this datapack without feeling like they are playing a different game. These features also aim to be balanced with the vanilla mechanics they are an alternative to. These means that they shouldn’t be overpowered, but they also shouldn’t be underpowered. Each individual datapack has some reasonings for their design on their own page. Here are just some general thoughts:
- Plant-based Foods adds alternatives for Minecraft’s animal food products, which tend to be the best foods in the game, and also adds an alternative to cow milk, which for some reason is the only vanilla way of getting rid of certain effects, perpetuating the real-life myth that cow milk is some sort of essential food in our diet.
- Omnivorous Pets adds a way to make pets with any food items, instead of just bones and fish. I do not consider this a vegan datapack (that’s why its logo has a red frame instead of a green one), but I thought it would be a coherent way of implementing this feature for vegan players. An ideal solution, but not possible to my knowledge, would be being able to make friends out of any passive animals, instead of just dogs and cats.
- Acacia Gum adds an alternative for slime, which is only obtainable through killing mobs.
- Ethical Textiles solves the problem of leather, string, and wool being locked behind killing and/or using mobs, implementing alternatives that are realistic and giving more use to plants in the process. An additional solution that I wish the game implemented (I may do it in the future) is to add a new plant to the game that produces some textile material, such as cotton or linen, which then could be converted into (or could be used the same as) string/wool.
- Plant Wax offers an alternative for honeycomb by obtaining wax from certain plants, like in real life. This case is specially weird since the game already refers to “waxed” copper, but only offers honeycomb instead of waxes that are more commonly used in real life.
- Copper Horns (to be released) will offer an alternative for goat horns, allowing to craft music horns with metal, as in real life.
- Other future features –not yet designed– will provide alternatives to the rest of game mechanics, such as certain building/decoration blocks and items being only obtainable from mobs, or the whole story progression of the game and its rewards being locked behind killing mobs (wither skeletons -> wither -> beacon, endermen -> end mobs -> elytra).