Unarmed, they are capable of walking, running, jumping, crawling, punching, and crafting small items (on a two-by-two grid). Most of Steve and Alex's abilities come from tools. Within the limited lore of the game, Steve and Alex are indicated to simply be vessels of the actual player's manifestation in the Minecraft world, having no other discernable personality or role. In Java Edition, it is possible to customize the avatar's appearance with a template (allowing for entirely player-made appearances), while other versions of the game offer skin packs and mash-up packs (mostly based on public domain characters, other gaming properties such as Fallout, Banjo-Kazooie, and Mario, and non-gaming media such as The Simpsons, Adventure Time, and Stranger Things). During Minecraft Live 2022, seven more default characters were added to the game alongside Steve and Alex (namely Zuri, Sunny, Noor, Makena, Kai, Efe, and Ari), granting a total of nine default skins to choose from. The changes include folded sleeves for both characters, smoother skin, hair, and clothes textures, and the return of Steve's unused beard from its long-outdated texture in 2009.
In August 2022, Steve and Alex received an update on their model, now fitting with Jasper Boerstra's modern design of Minecraft. Despite this, as Steve has a traditionally "masculine" appearance and name, a feminine alternative named Alex was introduced in 2014 choosing Alex adjusts the model's arm proportions to be thinner, which is officially referred to as a "slim" model. The character of Steve, along with the rest of the Minecraft world, is intended to be gender-neutral so as to avoid forcing the player to make decisions about gender. Minecraft" was used for a guest role in Super Meat Boy. The name Steve was invented by developer Markus "Notch" Persson as a joke and was often formatted as "Steve?" prior to being formally adopted as the default name of the avatar. Steve is the default skin of the Player in Minecraft.