ABSTRACT
In Minecraft, the game state contains the status of every block in that instance/seed of the world, everything the players have collected and built and all the tunnels they’ve created in the process. Separately, the game state also includes the players and their individual inventory, although players are free to drop out of the game without affecting the world’s game state. The possibility space of Minecraft is every game world that could ever be created. Mathematically speaking, symmetric games are by definition perfectly balanced: if all players have the same initial state and play by the same rules toward the same goals, obviously none can start with an unfair advantage. Symmetry allows players to make obvious comparisons and allows them to feel that the playing field is quite literally balanced. By contrast, asymmetric games, particularly those on the far end of the symmetric–asymmetric spectrum, can overwhelm the player with too many difficult decisions.
