"I had no idea. You won't either."
November 22, 2014 5:36 PM   Subscribe

Hey, Parents. What Minecraft Is Doing to Your Kids Is Kind of Surprising. - A comprehensive look at how Minecraft is enabling kids (and adults) to be more creative, collaborative, and aware of some harsh life-lessons.

Include is a TED talk by video game developer Jane McGonigal, who shares a very personal story, and provides context in the form of 'dying last words' as to why video games are not the waste of time some see them to be.

Also, A clever presentation of the history in The Evolution of Minecraft
posted by quin (42 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
 
Of course, critics repeat the age-old line about video games: Minecraft is a big waste of time.

Have video games been around long enough for there to be age-old? That means I'm age old, and I kind of hope I'm not.

But advocates see it as a clever way to teach teamwork and creativity.

So does observing the obvious make you an "advocate," now?

The mystery of Minecraft’s near-hypnotic effect boils down its flexibility, engagement and community.

I love it when outsiders try to figure Minecraft out.
posted by JHarris at 6:00 PM on November 22, 2014 [4 favorites]


That’s a large army of children mining resources

I've been told I look young, but child is stretching it a bit.
posted by eyeballkid at 6:05 PM on November 22, 2014 [2 favorites]




Hey, Journalists. What Clickbait headlines are doing to your credibility is kind of disappointing.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:39 PM on November 22, 2014 [14 favorites]


My son made a really cool lightning tower earlier this evening. I have no idea how he pulled it off. I don't think it's useful to frame it as what Minecraft is doing to my son. Because I pay attention, I know that he can do pretty interesting things with the software.
posted by One Hand Slowclapping at 6:45 PM on November 22, 2014 [6 favorites]


I don't think it's useful to frame it as what Minecraft is doing to my son.

But don't you know, your kid is merely an object to be acted upon by outside influences. He has no inner life, no ability to observe and reason, he's just a black box that exchanges inputs for outputs.
posted by JHarris at 7:36 PM on November 22, 2014 [8 favorites]


Every time I see a "Hey X" headline, I hear it in Ryan Gosling's voice.
posted by No-sword at 7:52 PM on November 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Minecraft teaches lots of important lessons, like avoid Creepers.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 7:57 PM on November 22, 2014 [29 favorites]


Sadly they don't explode IRL.
posted by Artw at 8:02 PM on November 22, 2014 [9 favorites]


This is what Minecraft did to the child in my life.

I sat down with my 6 yr old niece and watched her play Minecraft on my phone. I showed her how to spawn cows in creative mode, and she flooded the valley with cows. And then she said, "There are too many cows." She figured out on her own how to equip the bow and she shot cow after cow.

Then she spawned wolves and put torches everywhere so they wouldn't be scared of the dark.
posted by honestcoyote at 8:21 PM on November 22, 2014 [18 favorites]


I've been a remodeler for about ten years in three different segments. I wonder how much housing could have been built with the time and effort expended in minecraft.
posted by vapidave at 8:24 PM on November 22, 2014


If you mean how much treehousing that could have been built, yeah, opportunity cost sucks sometimes.
posted by notyou at 9:01 PM on November 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


I set up a creative server for my 2nd and 3rd grade class, and the girls have built a bunch of shops and hotels, and they rent rooms and sell stuff to each other. We also started to build the school, but they lost interest and I felt like they should do what they want.

Also, my second graders study rocks and minerals and Minecraft has definitely helped with that... If nothing else they're more interested in learning it.
posted by Huck500 at 9:56 PM on November 22, 2014 [1 favorite]


Please. In my era, gaming taught us important lessons, like never to go anywhere dark without a brass lantern.
posted by roger ackroyd at 10:09 PM on November 22, 2014 [22 favorites]


The literature review here does a terrible disservice to the vast scholarship on games.
posted by k8t at 10:14 PM on November 22, 2014 [4 favorites]


I've not played so much Minecraft, but having watched my boy sink days into it, one thing that used to be great with it was when it was under alpha release and mods were still quite awkward and a bit broken and would have all sorts of incompatibilities. He'd really need to muck around with it and all sorts of Java decompilers and experiment to get them to work. It reminded me of my own experiences with early Linux where you'd have to recompile the kernel 3 times to get the sound card to work. I learnt a lot when it was still tricky to get a Linux kernel working well.

Now mods are largely fixed for Minecraft, the interest seems to be more in the ComputerCraft where you can program it in Lua and ScriptCraft which gives an API ... it's fun to see the code bugs expressed as insane messes of blocks across the Minecraft world. I guess its not for all kids, but I'm sure many have got into coding because of Minecraft.

It's funny that the author of the above seems surprised there could be positive things coming out of playing games, but Minecraft is quite different from a lot of other games in the way it encourages kids to make and learn at a lot of different levels.
posted by drnick at 10:45 PM on November 22, 2014 [4 favorites]


Two things I've seen my son do lately in Minecraft that impressed me (he's six)... First, he managed to build a piston-based contraption powered by redstone. I think he saw the basic idea in the book, but he was able to execute it without help from me. The second thing is when he plays in creative mode, he'll start planning out worlds inspired by map creators like Vechs and the worlds Stampylonghead plays. He might just be play-acting what he's seen in some of the creator videos, but he discusses ideas that are important to game design. For example, he'll say something like "We need to have some swords and food here so the player can make it through trap x."
posted by drezdn at 11:36 PM on November 22, 2014 [2 favorites]


Did you know that when you do a thing you don't do another thing that is sad
posted by jscott at 11:47 PM on November 22, 2014 [12 favorites]


Minecraft is keeping my 15yo locked in his room and that's just fine. either minecraft or porn maybe I should check
posted by mattoxic at 11:48 PM on November 22, 2014 [6 favorites]


In my era, gaming taught us important lessons, like never to go anywhere dark without a brass lantern.

Whereas in my era we learned to buy lots of bullets instead of food, don't ford rivers, and no one wants to be a carpenter.
posted by Jacqueline at 12:21 AM on November 23, 2014 [14 favorites]


The fewer enemies you have, the faster they will be.

Sometimes, you have to shoot through your own shields.
posted by kyrademon at 1:43 AM on November 23, 2014 [6 favorites]


Minecraft is like old school Lego.

Do you remember? When you could build more than one specific thing with each kit.
posted by fairmettle at 4:09 AM on November 23, 2014 [6 favorites]


Wow, TFA really, really sucks.
posted by signal at 5:00 AM on November 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't think Minecraft is as "good for kids" as Lego or whatever, but it's a lot cheaper.
posted by michaelh at 5:24 AM on November 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


Minecraft is not really a game. At least, not in the same sense that most games are. Even in survival mode, without mods to specifically make it difficult (which generally just means "tedious," sadly), you quickly achieve a level of power that makes the night unthreatening. In vanilla (with no mods), the general path is to find trees, then start mining, then, once you have gotten some iron, to make a bucket and some pistons and create an automatic wheat farm. At this point, you are invincible, barring mishap (falling or mining into lava) or actively seeking out danger (the wither, the ender dragon).

In light of that, I think that Minecraft is best understood as Lego, except unfettered by the limits of the imagination of a toy designer, and available to poor kids as well as rich, and far more flexible. Sure, okay, there's Mindstorms. I loved Lego, and I loved programming, and I had zero Mindstorms. Because I was poor. However, with Minecraft, redstone is there for everybody... and interesting mods that make programming possible (if not easy) are available for free.

Minecraft is incredibly awesome.
posted by sonic meat machine at 5:54 AM on November 23, 2014 [4 favorites]


either minecraft or porn maybe I should check

WhyNotBothGirl.jpg
posted by radwolf76 at 5:58 AM on November 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Wow, TFA really, really sucks.

I was waiting for some punchlines based on scientific study, but they never came. What I got was, "Minecraft gives kids something creative to do while making them aware that their stuff can be stolen." Nice sentiment but it doesn't help me with my son's irritability of having to deal with the "real world".
posted by pashdown at 6:13 AM on November 23, 2014


My son has done the following:

-Made a replica of himself (his Minecraft avatar self) as a giant Ozymandias-like building
-Spent lots of time making Ender dragons and various other things and killing them
-Made a subway for witches

That's what I know about...he's made lots more machines lately that play music and do various other things. He also spends a lot of time watching the Diamond Minecart guy, whose cheery Australian accent and mod demonstrations have turned into our house background music.

I still don't know whether to be alarmed about Kids Today.
posted by emjaybee at 6:28 AM on November 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm not sure I love Minecraft as much as my kids do, but I've had a heck of a lot of fun playing in creative mode on my iPad. It's kind of like the world building that can go on in model railroading without the need for the space and money that I don't have. And I love that there even IS a creative mode where you can just make cool stuff without the need to fight or grind through resource shortages. I also really appreciate the way the "game" appeals to pretty all of my sons' friends, boys and girls alike.
posted by wintermind at 7:15 AM on November 23, 2014


So yeah the article sucks, but then again I haven't read much good press on Minecraft. It's this weird slightly sub-journalist phenomenon. Every American kid between 4 and 15 I know of has played it, and many of them have played it 100+ hours. And it's a phenomenally creative game. But mainstream news about video games has barely discussed it. My guess is it's because the press is lazy and Mojang did not have any sort of traditional PR outreach.

When I try to explain Minecraft to folks who haven't seen it I just say "it's like legos". That's a correct analogy in that it's the same open ended creative building thing. But it totally overlooks the magic that these legos are part of a living breathing software world. It's the promise of computing made into a creative game, and I think something this great only comes along once every twenty years.
posted by Nelson at 7:25 AM on November 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


Daughter, 8, spends lots of time creating remarkably intricate worlds. The latest feature is a huge collection of statues of some of her favorite movie and book characters. Figuring out how to represent those characters accurately from a series of blocks is a great puzzle at her age.

Son, 5, made a simple beachside dairy and enjoys tending his cows and living a simple life.

Daughter, 3, found flint and created a massive forest fire that is gradually devouring her world while she spawns animals and laughs and laughs.

It seems like they are learning, respectively: (1) graphic arts, (2) the joys of beauty and simplicity, and (3) how to creatively manage burgeoning psychopathy.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 7:54 AM on November 23, 2014 [35 favorites]


It seems like they are learning, respectively: (1) graphic arts, (2) the joys of beauty and simplicity, and (3) how to creatively manage burgeoning psychopathy.

This made me laugh out loud, because it pretty much describes my household.
posted by jferg at 8:12 AM on November 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


My experience from studying Minecraft online gameplay is that, for many players, its appeal is more as a platform than as a game itself. You can play all sorts of games with the basic blocks of Minecraft (through modding or otherwise), but Minecraft gives you a sort of meta-verse where that is possible.

I think that the reason Minecraft has specifically taken off where virtual worlds like Second Life remain niche is that Minecraft is, first, a simple game before it's the virtual world, so you get the initial draw of its basic gameplay. Next, Minecraft is a social phenomenon, which means that players tend to learn about it from their friends, there's a huge network of social media that supports the game, and it's easy to play with both strangers and friends online. Finally, Minecraft gives players multiple meaningful levels of modifying the game to fit their needs, from no modification beyond player established rules (like roleplay servers) to full modifications that turn it into an FPS (like Hunger Games mode).

The real interesting question isn't so much what Minecraft is "doing to your children", but rather what Minecraft is doing to future expectations of games and online interactions. Virtual worlds have been fringe markets for a long time, but I think that having a generation of children raised on Minecraft is going to change that.
posted by codacorolla at 8:13 AM on November 23, 2014 [3 favorites]


Minecraft is like old school Lego.

Do you remember? When you could build more than one specific thing with each kit.


SIGH. Have you actually built any of the themed LEGO sets of the past decade or so? They come with all kinds of fantastic, interchangeable pieces and are so much better than the boring four-color blocks I used to mostly have as a kid. Not only can one easily build way more than one specific thing with each kit, having a few kits opens up even more possibilities than the old block sets, because there are so many more kinds of pieces.

/LEGOrant

posted by LooseFilter at 8:18 AM on November 23, 2014 [5 favorites]


, its appeal is more as a platform than as a game itself. You can play all sorts of games with the basic blocks of Minecraft

Minecraft is the as400 of games. Not great graphically but man can it be customized.
posted by M Edward at 8:30 AM on November 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


People go on about how minecraft doesn't have good graphics, but one thing that always astonishes me about it is how goddamn beautiful it is.
posted by signal at 9:29 AM on November 23, 2014 [9 favorites]


he'll start planning out worlds inspired by map creators like Vechs and the worlds Stampylonghead plays.

Ooh yes, my 8yo no longer watches any TV, he watches Stampylonghead, then plays Minecraft to recreate / use what Stampy's taught him. Which is more than I've managed to teach him, and I've been playing Minecraft since Alpha. Although it has led my son to start asking for an XBox, because Stampy plays on an XBox...

You can play all sorts of games with the basic blocks of Minecraft (through modding or otherwise), but Minecraft gives you a sort of meta-verse where that is possible.

With Mojang falling apart, and Minecraft on an unknown trajectory, I'm really hoping Microsoft knows what they're doing, and have recognized that this is the ultimate value of the game. My dream is for them to, sort out a proper modding/plugin API once and for all and make mods available in some kind of trusted in-game "app-store" of sorts, so using them is as simple as selecting an available mod from a list and clicking install. My son (again as a product of watching Youtube videos) has actually gotten us into modding lately - something I had avoided - and I have to say there is some amazing stuff out there. My son's been building rockets and exploring the solar system in the Galacticraft mod most recently. Internal development by Mojang really appears to have peaked, and I get the impression they don't really have much planned for the game at all apart from squashing bugs, so the future of the game really seems to be letting the modding community cut loose.

Of course, this would all be a very, very un-Microsoft thing to do. But hey, Microsoft seem to be doing some surprising stuff lately. I can live in hope.
posted by Jimbob at 2:17 PM on November 23, 2014


Also, I had no idea that scripting mods were available for Mincraft, although it seems obvious, of course. In an alternative universe, Notch would have integrated his 8-bit 0x10c computer thingy into Minecraft.
posted by Jimbob at 2:21 PM on November 23, 2014 [1 favorite]


Like others, I'm really impressed how much my 10 year old has learned about computers while Minecrafting. He's figured out how download (while for the most part avoiding malware traps), edit text files and images, and seek out help on the internet. He's also dipping his toes into engaging with the larger community. I sorta feel like Minecraft is somehow preparatory for the future.
posted by mollweide at 2:53 PM on November 23, 2014


I've definitely had fun with ComputerCraft, which lets you write little Minecraft robots in Lua. It's just a little too awkward to be a great teaching tool, and definitely too overpowered to be a balanced addition to the game. But it's a lot of fun writing programs to strip mine, or build castles, or tend a farm.
posted by Nelson at 3:32 PM on November 23, 2014


My younger two sons, 16 and 12, are autistic and have never been very successful at making IRL friends. They play Minecraft together with other kids around the world, always wearing headsets, talking to and laughing with all of these friends on Skype. The 16 year old figured out how to get a Minecraft server running on his computer and (more impressively to me) how to hack our router to circumvent my password. Then he set up port forwarding so that his friends could use his server. I checked his work and left his settings the way he set them. My younger son is teaching himself to program in Lua. He also made a scale model of Big Ben that he showed in a school presentation. And a subway. They have both learned a lot about cleaning viruses off of their computers and avoiding them in the future. (Not everyone who writes a mod is a nice person.) They both make youtube videos of their adventures.

Minecraft didn't "do" any of this to them. It just gave them a sandbox and a motivation to learn and do some pretty cool stuff.
posted by double block and bleed at 4:37 PM on November 23, 2014 [8 favorites]


double block and bleed, my son is on the spectrum, too. Minecraft seems like one of the things that helps all kids get over their problems of interacting with others. For that, I'm quite thankful.
posted by mollweide at 5:57 PM on November 23, 2014 [2 favorites]


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