Slashdot Mirror
The Minecraft Parent
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Agger has an interesting article in the New Yorker about parenting in the internet era and why Minecraft is the one game parents want their kids to play. He says, "Screens are no longer simply bicycles for the mind; they are bicycles that children can ride anywhere, into the virtual schoolyard where they might encounter disturbing news photos, bullies, creeps, and worse. Setting a child free on the Internet is a failure to cordon off the world and its dangers. It's nuts. ... The comfort of games is that they are partially walled off from the larger Internet, with their own communities and leaderboards. But what unsettles parents about Internet gaming, despite fond memories of after-school Nintendo afternoons, is its interconnectivity. Minecraft is played by both boys and girls, unusually. ... At its best, the game is not unlike being in the woods with your best friends. Parents also join in."
According to Agger, the significance of Minecraft is how the game shows us that lively, pleasant virtual worlds can exist alongside our own, and that they are places where we want to spend time, where we learn and socialize. "To me what Minecraft represents is more than a hit game franchise," says new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "It's this open-world platform. If you think about it, it's the one game parents want their kids to play." We need to meet our kids halfway in these worlds, and try to guide them like we do in the real world, concludes Agger. "Who knows how Minecraft will change under Microsoft's ownership, but it's a historic game that has shown many of us a middle way to navigate the eternal screens debate."
According to Agger, the significance of Minecraft is how the game shows us that lively, pleasant virtual worlds can exist alongside our own, and that they are places where we want to spend time, where we learn and socialize. "To me what Minecraft represents is more than a hit game franchise," says new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "It's this open-world platform. If you think about it, it's the one game parents want their kids to play." We need to meet our kids halfway in these worlds, and try to guide them like we do in the real world, concludes Agger. "Who knows how Minecraft will change under Microsoft's ownership, but it's a historic game that has shown many of us a middle way to navigate the eternal screens debate."
You haven't played it, have you?
It's like a box of legos. I've played with my daughter and my friend's kids, and in our little server, we've build castles, towers, giant highways in the sky, a glass dome, funny little traps for each other, underwater houses, a giant rocketship, houses, and many other things I can't recall at the moment. You can literally build your own little world in that game.
I was watching two of my friend's sons build their own little arena for each other so they could spawn zombies and spiders and ender dragons to challenge each other to see who could do better.
As the article says, it totally gives you the creative, imaginative experience of "exploring the woods" without having to have the woods to explore (handy if you live in the city!)
The creativity involved from my limited exposure seems close to nonexistant.
I don't really see any benefit from it, compared to any other game. Are parents just deluding themselves? Or is there some substantial creative benefit that I'm not seeing?
It's not the game itself that is terribly creative, the creativity comes from those playing it. As others have said, the game doesn't have much going on it unless you make something happen, and that's definitely something you want to encourage in children.
Anything you let your children do should involve a little bit of effort on the parents part ro make sure its really safe...
Not old, not entitled, not egotistical, loves minecraft.
Please re-examine your warped sense of reality and generalizations based on someone's UID number!