> the game that allows children to build worlds made out of blocks
It's so weird to me that Minecraft has become a "children's game". Nobody thought of it that way in the beginning, when the alpha started getting really popular on Reddit and elsewhere. That perception must've started some time after the 1.0 release, in 2012.
Nothing about the game changed to make it more kid-friendly. That's just the culture that developed around it.
Call me crazy, but a game where kids build stuff, communally or individually, is about a bazillion times cooler than games where kids just zap each other with twitch reflexes.
I have noticed that kids playing Minecraft tend to fall into two groups:
1) Those building railways, roads, cities, redstone circuits, efficient automatic farms.
2) Those playing on "PvP" servers all day, attacking each other, fighting in arenas, clan wars, etc. (If you hear a constant "click click click" noise, that's probably them)
The ratio of type 2 to type 1 players is probably something like 7:3.
Type 2 relies on servers, while type 1 can be is usually done alone (on a server it typically ends in drama).
I'm late 30s and will still load up MC before resorting to TV or other entertainment. Have played consistently since the alpha. I have a Realm going with a fair few adult friends where we just play around in a long-term survival game together.
None of us can commit the time we used to commit to games (a few of us have kids), but I reckon we each probably put in half hour to an hour every day or 2, and the occasional 2-3 hour session per week while doing work on another screen or on hold on the phone.
I wish I hadn't gotten over it. It was a lot of fun for a few years there. I get nothing out of single player though and finding a good server is such a pain in the ass. Or at least it's a fruitless chasing of the experiences I had on my first big multiplayer server, which I'll obviously never be able to re-capture. This is also why I can't get hooked on WoW again.
(Not trying to change your mind) Why doesn't single player do anything? Did you try different play styles (eg, flatcore?) or was it just the lack of other people to build with?
It's a shame that Minecraft on a server has ridiculous requirements, because there is a need for better servers.
I agree, Minecraft worlds unlike some other sandbox games are backwards compatible mostly. You can create a world with the custom presets that is wild, all hills, all diamonds, massive floating islands in the sky, you name it then go back and play them whenever or as often as you like. Single Player still rocks!
The style of MC that I love is the whole Towny/loose RPing thing that you see a lot of in multiplayer. We'd build towns, form nations, have little battles, etc. There was local government and little goofy things that weren't taken very seriously, but still a lot of fun. The server had a lot of issues though. Such as the owner being the final word on everything, but not playing the game at all other than to check in occasionally. I set out to create my own server with a similar premise, but sans the issues...but man that is a lot of work to do alone!
In retrospect though, I think it's more surprising that it wasn't thought of as a children's game to begin with, and I say that as someone who played it off and on in alpha.
It's not hard to draw the analogy that Minecraft is essentially "advanced Legos", and the prevailing view certainly is that Legos are primarily for children.
Why that's the case is a separate question, but I don't think it's contentious to say that most people assume Legos primary audience is children.
I first discovered Minecraft through a YouTube video. I started playing it a few months after it was first released and it was essential to watch videos and hit the wiki to figure out how to even play it. I stopped playing regularly when they "broke" cart boosters but occasionally watch videos to "keep up" on the game.
Amongst the people I know who watch a lot of Minecraft videos, there seem to be a few key elements: staying "seeped" in an environment they love, picking up new approaches and ideas for their own play, and also getting a vicarious gameplay experience they can't get in real life (because they don't have enough MC playing friends or they're not "into" the game enough).
My little boy loves Stampy Longhead videos, detailing his adventures with Minecraft. What I love is that Stampy has recently started a series called Wonder Quest, which is an educational series, that my boy watches with equal passion. It's lovely to hear him come put to me and talk about Galileo and telescopes all learned from Wonder Quest.
The article is a bit of beat up and seems to omit a lot of features or aspects of the game and it's community that make it so rich.
>"The underlying creativity is baked into the program - the combinations, tools and materials - so the players have only one task to complete: design ever more complex structures. Though this seems like the pinnacle of an imaginative play experience, the kids we studied said they felt edgy and irritable after Minecraft sessions."
>The game, said the researchers, becomes "less about open-ended play and more about working to complete the never-ending stacks of buildings."
A bit surprised they seem to have ignored red stone, command blocks and modding. These seemingly complex concepts are not out of the reach of children. I don't have direct sources on hand but I've read many a programmer and parent (even on here) use it as a gateway to introducing computer science topics at a young age.
>but spending hours mindlessly watching others playing it represents a whole new level of obsession.
There are a lot of quality content creators with long running series' that have a narrative focus to some degree. I would rather my kids watch the likes of Etho, BdoubleO and Zisteau for instance over Yu-Gi-Oh, or some Transformers clone. Mostly so I can watch too.
> It bears out earlier research from YouTube video research firms Newzoo and Octoloy, which found that Minecraft material notched up more than 3.9 billion views on YouTube in March 2015 alone.
I used to watch the ones by Keralis a lot on youtube. I think it had more to do with his energy and personality than Minecraft itself, but I watched tons of them.
> The game, said the researchers, becomes "less about open-ended play and more about working to complete the never-ending stacks of buildings."
Spoken like someone who hasn't spent much time with kids playing Minecraft. I've run a MC server for my niece since January of 2014. There are around 15 of her friends who play regularly on the server. "Never-ending stacks of buildings," would bore them to tears.
In addition to stacking blocks, Minecraft has:
Redstone: A set of blocks and items that can be used to create (electrical-like) circuits.
Server Commands: A complex set of commands that can be used to manipulate the environment, spawn creatures, and move the player around.
Command Blocks: Special blocks that can have commands stored in them, and are triggered by Redstone.
The Minecraft server I run also supports something called mods, which extend the standard functionality of the game, and in the case of my server, allow the kids to create multiple worlds within which they can transport themselves and create different types of play environments.
There are two world types that go far beyond stacks of blocks. The simpler of the two are arenas. They've built an arena with a community-established set of gameplay rules. You can compete alone or as a team. The arena master controls the spawning of enemies and the difficulty of the game. It is fascinating to watch a new arena master learn how to balance difficulty. Make the arena too hard and no one wants you to be arena master (a job that is appointed in impromptu elections). Make it too easy, and everyone gets bored and moves on to other areas of the game. There are complex social dynamics at play. As the sole adult on the server, I've spent plenty of time counseling 7 to 12 year olds on the subtleties of not abusing your friends when the opportunity presents itself. They learn quickly.
The most advanced world type, and the one that really blows my mind, are the "adventure" worlds. They combine structures they build with command blocks to create interactive adventures. You press a button and you're transported to the inside of a cottage. From there, a stream of messages orient you, and you're tasked with some objective: solve a puzzle to escape the house, locate an item hidden near by, find tools to fight off an incoming wave of zombies, survive long enough to reach a far away destination. The possibilities are endless, and the kids exhaust them all.
Minecraft is so open-ended that the types of play are no more bounded by the game than outdoors play is bounded by the laws of physics.
Minecraft looks like a very engaging game. However, I've never sat down and tried playing it, and I'm having a difficult time understanding why people would routinely rather watch videos of it than play it themselves (which the article suggests happens). Is this really true for a subset of players? Can someone help me understand, maybe with an analogy? I certainly can't imagine wanting to watch professionals build legos to the near exclusion of playing with them myself, or to watch people perform Halo jump tricks and not play Halo myself.
There's an element that many people who are frequent gamers don't usually see and it's that watching a video of a game being played covers the gist of the game in a less involved manner. Basically, you aren't setting yourself up to be enthralled by the game and dedicated to it for hours, but instead appreciate what the game covers, it's visual aesthetic, it's gameplay, all without devoting a large chunk portion of time to it. There's also the benefit of skipping around a video during boring/slow (and setup) parts of a game that you simply can't do when you're playing it.
24 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 47.4 ms ] threadIt makes sense for the third-highest selling game of all time where Tetris is #1 and Wii Sports is #2. Those were both bundle with hardware.
It's so weird to me that Minecraft has become a "children's game". Nobody thought of it that way in the beginning, when the alpha started getting really popular on Reddit and elsewhere. That perception must've started some time after the 1.0 release, in 2012.
Nothing about the game changed to make it more kid-friendly. That's just the culture that developed around it.
1) Those building railways, roads, cities, redstone circuits, efficient automatic farms.
2) Those playing on "PvP" servers all day, attacking each other, fighting in arenas, clan wars, etc. (If you hear a constant "click click click" noise, that's probably them)
The ratio of type 2 to type 1 players is probably something like 7:3.
Type 2 relies on servers, while type 1 can be is usually done alone (on a server it typically ends in drama).
None of us can commit the time we used to commit to games (a few of us have kids), but I reckon we each probably put in half hour to an hour every day or 2, and the occasional 2-3 hour session per week while doing work on another screen or on hold on the phone.
It's a shame that Minecraft on a server has ridiculous requirements, because there is a need for better servers.
Guess I'll have to shut down my servers now…
It's not hard to draw the analogy that Minecraft is essentially "advanced Legos", and the prevailing view certainly is that Legos are primarily for children.
Why that's the case is a separate question, but I don't think it's contentious to say that most people assume Legos primary audience is children.
That must be tough.
Amongst the people I know who watch a lot of Minecraft videos, there seem to be a few key elements: staying "seeped" in an environment they love, picking up new approaches and ideas for their own play, and also getting a vicarious gameplay experience they can't get in real life (because they don't have enough MC playing friends or they're not "into" the game enough).
http://youtu.be/UC1Uupn45p8
>"The underlying creativity is baked into the program - the combinations, tools and materials - so the players have only one task to complete: design ever more complex structures. Though this seems like the pinnacle of an imaginative play experience, the kids we studied said they felt edgy and irritable after Minecraft sessions."
>The game, said the researchers, becomes "less about open-ended play and more about working to complete the never-ending stacks of buildings."
A bit surprised they seem to have ignored red stone, command blocks and modding. These seemingly complex concepts are not out of the reach of children. I don't have direct sources on hand but I've read many a programmer and parent (even on here) use it as a gateway to introducing computer science topics at a young age.
>but spending hours mindlessly watching others playing it represents a whole new level of obsession.
There are a lot of quality content creators with long running series' that have a narrative focus to some degree. I would rather my kids watch the likes of Etho, BdoubleO and Zisteau for instance over Yu-Gi-Oh, or some Transformers clone. Mostly so I can watch too.
Notched!
Spoken like someone who hasn't spent much time with kids playing Minecraft. I've run a MC server for my niece since January of 2014. There are around 15 of her friends who play regularly on the server. "Never-ending stacks of buildings," would bore them to tears.
In addition to stacking blocks, Minecraft has:
Redstone: A set of blocks and items that can be used to create (electrical-like) circuits.
Server Commands: A complex set of commands that can be used to manipulate the environment, spawn creatures, and move the player around.
Command Blocks: Special blocks that can have commands stored in them, and are triggered by Redstone.
The Minecraft server I run also supports something called mods, which extend the standard functionality of the game, and in the case of my server, allow the kids to create multiple worlds within which they can transport themselves and create different types of play environments.
There are two world types that go far beyond stacks of blocks. The simpler of the two are arenas. They've built an arena with a community-established set of gameplay rules. You can compete alone or as a team. The arena master controls the spawning of enemies and the difficulty of the game. It is fascinating to watch a new arena master learn how to balance difficulty. Make the arena too hard and no one wants you to be arena master (a job that is appointed in impromptu elections). Make it too easy, and everyone gets bored and moves on to other areas of the game. There are complex social dynamics at play. As the sole adult on the server, I've spent plenty of time counseling 7 to 12 year olds on the subtleties of not abusing your friends when the opportunity presents itself. They learn quickly.
The most advanced world type, and the one that really blows my mind, are the "adventure" worlds. They combine structures they build with command blocks to create interactive adventures. You press a button and you're transported to the inside of a cottage. From there, a stream of messages orient you, and you're tasked with some objective: solve a puzzle to escape the house, locate an item hidden near by, find tools to fight off an incoming wave of zombies, survive long enough to reach a far away destination. The possibilities are endless, and the kids exhaust them all.
Minecraft is so open-ended that the types of play are no more bounded by the game than outdoors play is bounded by the laws of physics.