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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."
No, you just fell for the shill...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's nothing but creativity. If you don't create things, there's next to nothing to do there. I've played it extensively with my now 16 year old son, and it's been a great way for me to keep open a key line of communication with a teenager. Now we've moved on to 7 Days to Die, but that's another story. :)
Creativity is one important skill children need to develop. I think this kind of effusive praise willfully ignores that sometimes these activities can and do take the place of other important childhood activities in some cases.
And that brings me to how I kind of lament the lack of textual information in modern games. I learned a rather large amount of reading(and vocabulary) skills by trying to understand what games were saying as a child.
The universality of voice acting harms how much children can develop by reading.
It's not whether there's a substantial benefit towards building a certain mindset. It's that the game itself is inherently non-linear, allowing people to explore their own minds when playing.
For us adults who are set in our ways, minecraft might not be as fun as a sandbox as it might be as a player in an environment someone else built, but for a kid who really gives no shits about anything other than fucking around and doing what the mind and heart desire, minecraft is a pretty good playpit.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
A few weeks ago, at my kid's school, their info tech teacher mentioned that kids are much better at things like Google Sketch-up, and a lightweight CAD product they spend some time on, than they were a few years ago. She credited Minecraft as teaching them to visualize things in 3D. If that's truly the case, Satya might be on to something. That said, after about 15 minutes of hearing the music in the game I get the urge to climb a bell tower.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
As a parent, I don't see Minecraft through the rose-colored glasses, as it seems to be commonly described. While a game was supposed to be nonviolent, plenty of Minecraft servers seem to have added functionality that allows direct fighting and ability to kill other players. Chat capabilities go unmonitored and "adult language" is widespread.
Due to Minecrafts de-centralized nature there are no effective technological age or content controls, leaving children (mine anyway) exposed to kinds of things that I would prefer them to consume in limited amounts or not at all.
The only realistic technical measure of control is to prohibit playing Minecraft at all, or at least prohibit network play. Unfortunately, given Minecraft popularity this is not feasible. My parenting approach does not include use of force or abuse of my authority, (where safety or law is not directly concerned), so I can't in good consciousness prohibit it outright.
On a personal level, it annoys me that a game world with a level of 3d graphics and physics sophistication that was state of the art 20 years ago is extremely popular today, but I can see the draw of "retro" look and feel.
there COULD be. my son and daughter work together to build the worlds they create in the game; they've gone to great lengths to reconstruct their own school, and dug deep to learn how to accomplish things with just the goofy 8-bit tools provided. It's a large interactive puzzle, it seems, and they get to decide what the picture is.
Granted, it's no Galaga or Vanguard, LOL
Uh, yes, it's totally creative. It doesn't actively encourage creativity, but it still lets you make things, and you absolutely see children making "roller coasters" or interesting architecture, or sometimes even some light pixel art.
It's like calling legos "not creative" because you can use your imagination with action figures too. It's not radically creative, but it's a little more creative than most games.
"Who knows how Minecraft will change under Microsoft's ownership,"
Within 18 months:
Java codebase abandoned in favor of either from-scratch VB.net (or some other proprietary nonsense) rewrite, or a porting of the xbone codebase back to windows.
Support quietly dropped (if not dropped, no new updates published) for non-microsoft branded platforms.
Some new architecture to monetize DLC and/or server mods.
"premium" version with a subscription based revenue model.
Two or three smaller-scale spinoff games based around the minecraft IP published for xbone
Remember companies doing "recruitment" in 2nd life? Almost same shit, different name.
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!)
That's right, some psycho kids once tried to kill another kid in the woods. So DON'T EVER THINK OF LETTING ANY KIDS GO INTO THE WOODS EVER!
Keep them inside, where nothing bad ever happens to kids. No kid ever suffered harm while locked in the basement. Right?
My son is still too young, only 1.5 years old.. but when he's around 3 I plan to let him start fiddling around on the computer, specifically with Minecraft.
It takes coordination, cooperation, critical thinking, and creativity to create in this game and I'm looking forward to having this be one of the activities we do together as he gets older. Of course I also cannot wait until he's old enough for legos.. I only wish I did not sell all of mine 20 years ago in a garage sale..
I watch some streamers on twitch, for the "pros" everything is automated for them as they have done it all so many times. I'm still a noob at the game since I don't have much free time to play but look forward to exploring the game more with my son.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
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.
This is 2014, and we're in the decade of reboots. This is the reboot of "sit your kids in front of the TV to watch the Children's Channel" thinking. The glowing, phosphorus parent of the 80s, now back with less Big Bird.
Put your kids outside. Don't put them on the bicycle of the Internet; put them on a *real* bicycle. I walked the 1/3 mile to school when I was 6; I could bicycle 1.2 miles in that time, a good 10 minutes walking by myself, well out of sight of my parents. When I was 8, I had a bicycle with a coaster brake, and would disappear outside for hours at a time--by myself, since I had no friends. Sometimes I came back home after the older 5th graders beat the shit out of me for some Freudian satisfaction related to their small penises (too impatient for puberty I guess), I'm sure; but, for all the baseball bats and tennis shoes they applied, they never managed to put a bruise on me, so I made out alright.
This is all a bunch of wanting your kids locked in a room doing a single thing, in a place you know, with the ability to look in and verify they're still doing that one thing and nothing else, so that you don't have to show any concern. My massive internal simulator predicts, via armchair child psychology, that this will not provide a robust set of varied experiences for the child, and so will slow their mental growth and reduce their ability to thrive. History will prove me correct--has proven me correct--but I'm sure nobody will listen and, when it's all well proven that this actually happened, will instead find the next substitute single activity and claim it's different, somehow, and fail to predict the same result.
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.... it was never much of a videogame, more a modelling editor who's basic building block is cubes.
All the corporate PR speak in the world can't change the fact that the game isn't really a game, just software in which to tool around in with some minor if trivial game elements.
That is what all parents think. Good luck.
It helps if you don't live in some sprawled out suburban hellscape devoid of both nature and culture, like the kinds of places people who think minecraft is good for kids think is good for raising kids.
A friend of mine's kid plays incessantly. Not even in kindergarten, but can build gigantic, amazing structures. And then he blows it all up. :)
Major plus sides:
Ability to express creativity with no real cost but time
Ability to socialize with others without having to worry about getting beat up
Ability to exercise lots of things, like planning. I mean, when we were kids, we built forts in trees to throw pinecones at each other, snow forts from which to throw snowballs at each other, and cardboard forts at which to shoot each other with bb guns. Now kids can kinda do the same in a video game. Plan out the fort, build the fort, then tear it all down and do it again, even better this time.
I'm pretty impressed with the game, but haven't actually played it myself. Shame. I wish I had more time for play these days.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
You create your own homes and monuments. It's almost literally digital Lego. Most kids seem to disable or ignore most of the "gameplay" stuff like the monsters and fighting and just build stuff. A lot of the blocks have interesting interactive elements as well, with buttons, triggers, and the functional equivalent of conditional statements. You can literally build a digital computer (but it will be quite large).
The best description of Micecraft I've heard is Digital Lego.
In creative you can build anything.. My son and I built the Great Pyramid of Geza to scale on the Reddit creative server.
Play with redstone.. lean the basic electronic circuits with switches and logic gates.
Then switch to survival, join a community.. work with others as a team.. So many things you can do in one little game..
Well not to call it little.. the map can have more land than 9 million earths.
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
You're a fool if you think that. Minecraft doesn't have its success for being a lego-like building game, it's way more than that. People build games within it for example. Think of it as a friendly version of Unity or UE. You have adventure games, survival, exploration, competitive, all online or LAN on all platforms. You can explore real world maps with it using the survey data from various countries' official map data. I've seen GoT cities built in it too. And that's before the mods.
I was a plank and thought block building, how crap, but then saw what is really going on via youtube channels my kids were watching.
Spend a few minutes and look at what people do, you'll be surprised. There's never been anything like it.
There's a niche to be filled with parent-friendly games and Microsoft has bought a great game franchise to fill it with. Well played.
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?
Speaking of delusions, I'm struggling to find the "benefit" you're looking for from the worlds most popular kill-em-all games...
Minecraft, Lego, Mechano...all branches on the same tree. I don't have children, but if I did I would rather they play Minecraft than CoD Whatever: The Sequelling.
Best of luck to Notch. Hopefully MS are good stewards of the property.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
On the one hand, playing minecraft can be like playing with legos. I've seen my kids create amazing things in minecraft.
With some mods, it can also teach basic programming skills and simple electric circuits.
OTOH
It can be modded into a pvp shooter. Not the worst thing in the world, but it sort of kills the educational value of it. It is not a safe, walled environment because, you know, other players are coming to kill you. Moreover, even in other forms of minecraft other players can come and destroy your stuff. They can also yell at you and call you names and otherwise annoy you via the chat window.
Not old, not entitled, not egotistical, loves minecraft.
Please re-examine your warped sense of reality and generalizations based on someone's UID number!
I watch my son play minecraft and I like what I see... creativity, use of a commandline, interaction with his friends (he's usually on the phone to a friend who moved away across the country, so it's a good way for them to stay in touch). It's fine for half an hour a day or so. On the other hand, when I see my nephew play minecraft I'm appalled. The chat messages are full of nasty, hateful language. It seems to me that the user experience varies greatly from one server to another.
Nullius in verba
We have 3 kids, two of whom are BIG into Minecraft. (The 3rd. one, our 11 year old daughter, just kind of played along since the other two were so into it -- but it's not really her thing.)
IMO, any of these computer games that encourage kids to actually create and think are a good thing. The "Little Big Planet" series of games on the PS3 work a similar way (but have much better graphics, as they're not trying to do the retro, early 80's block graphic look).
The original article's author seems to be implying that they're also a "win" for parents in the sense it gives kids a place to play and explore on the net that's still relatively safe. Unfortunately, I think that's less true than some people might think.
Our youngest girl (a first-grader, who was able to chat/type far above her grade level) ran across a fellow Minecraft "player" who turned out to be some kind of perv -- getting kicks out of sending her links to hard-core porn photos and videos, etc. She was still too young to really get what was going on with all of that. But we had to have a talk with her and make sure she knows never to give out ANY personal information in the game -- and have to review what she's doing in the game more closely now.
As much as there is to dislike about Sony and its money-grabbing, proprietary ways? I will say they seem to have a lot more invested in locking down the play environment - so I feel this sort of thing is less likely an issue in a game like LBP.
How about trying *actually" being in the woods with your friends?
Right. My kids visited with some family friends, and their kids play Minecraft 3-4 hours a day.
I guess it's entertaining, and they do neat stuff _in_ Minecraft, but it'll all illusory.
When they came home they asked me if we could get Minecraft. I told them, "of course not - go outside and build a treehouse. Get some sunshine while you're at it".
Minecraft is conditioning the factory workers of tomorrow. If we're to build a digidystopia, at least my kids can be running the thing. :/
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
But... But...... Then children might learn that they can make their own entertainment without needing to pay Hollywood to imagine it for them! You monsters! What are you doing to our children???!!!!
=)
Of all the things my 14 year old could have gotten hooked on, Minecraft doesn’t even register in the “lesser of evils” category. A little moderation is a good thing, but compared to having his brain rot in front of the TV, I’ll take Minecraft any day. He’s imagining & implementing the things he imagines, and he’s communicating and cooperating with his peers. Most of them are even in our geographical area and/or in his school which puts his online social interactions a good bit better than my own at his age where my closet emotional connections were to people I’ve never seen who lived on the other side of the country.
And as far as TFS’ assertion that, “Setting a child free on the Internet is a failure to cordon off the world and its dangers,” may I just say, “Fuck you!” I’ve never once felt the need to shield my son from reality. We’ve talked to him throughout his life about the fact that there are bad people and that there are things you should never do online because they could put you at risk in the real world (sharing personal information, arranging to meet people, etc.). I think my son is a much better adjusted young human being for the trust and faith that we’ve shown that we have in him. Teaching, guidance, and trust are much better tools than surveillance and censorship. It’s the same approach that my parents took with me (admittedly more out of ignorance of what the Internet was at the time on their part). It worked out alright for me, and my son has never done anything to make me regret taking the same approach with him.
One other thing I liked about Minecraft for my kids was that it's not as polished and easy to use as most modern games (and console games especially). The players actually have to struggle and figure it out and tune their settings and figure out how it works behind the scenes a bit. This is so much better and they learn so much more than just sticking in a disc and having the game run!
I don't mean to advertise here, but if language, "adult content" and so on is as big a problem as it's being made out to be on Minecraft servers, you might want to try an alternative game instead.
Those of us who run Minetest (the open source game/engine) usually very careful about policing the users on our servers, to the point at least that adult discussions are usually not tolerated at all, and coarse language/cursing is usually equally shunned. Sometimes, depending on the server, it's okay to "blur" your curses if they're not directed at someone in an insulting manner.
Some servers have PvP enabled, but I guess most server owners have that turned off.
We're small, and we're not Minecraft, but I think we do okay, and besides - its fun.
Freenode channel #minetest or http://minetest.net/ if you want to take a look. And no, it's not supposed to be a Minecraft clone and it does not use any code or assets from that game. It's just supposed to be similar enough to appeal to same "sandbox" audience.
Full disclosure: I am a modder and texture pack author for this project and have contributed a couple of small things to the engine.
"Setting a child free on the Internet is a failure to cordon off the world and its dangers."
Well, yes. At a certain point when they lack the ability to comprehend danger, that might be true. However, you can only go for so long before enforced ignorance will backfire. You think your kid's friends have the same definition of limits as you? Or the public library? Or commercials on tv for sexed up teen drama, or sexed up medical drama, or murder-sex-up-cop drama? Or the line of magazines at the grocery store proclaiming "10 ways to have SEX that will give you a SUPER-ORGASM"? Or pop music about sex, drugs, and how great it is to combine the two?
At some point, you have to start coaching the child on the actual dangers of the world, including the internet. Especially the internet. It's ubiquitous, and once they're old enough to be a target, they're old enough to have circumvented any access restrictions you might use.
When they're old enough to start using Minecraft, they're probably old enough to get one in a series of many talks about the world. Stranger Danger applies to emails and creepy guys on websites too, you know.
Minecraft is not any sort of solution to this issue. It's just entertainment, and has nothing to do with it.
I kind of wish there had been something like Minecraft around when I was a kid, too. I think it's a great way of encouraging some creative exploration and problem-solving and expressing oneself, and I certainly would've needed some of that. I never learned to truly use my creativity and I feel I'm quite stunted in that regards. There are plenty of great games these days that explore various kinds of settings and things and could be of great influence in kids, I just wish more parents were willing to explore and think about what could be useful for their kids. Also, one thing that comes to mind is how my ex has trouble learning stuff, especially foreign languages, so soaking her in an English-speaking environment in the form of a game she enjoyed really boosted her skills; I see no valid reason for why similar approach couldn't be used for children with trouble learning this or that.
And as far as TFS’ assertion that, “Setting a child free on the Internet is a failure to cordon off the world and its dangers,” may I just say, “Fuck you!” I’ve never once felt the need to shield my son from reality. We’ve talked to him throughout his life about the fact that there are bad people and that there are things you should never do online because they could put you at risk in the real world (sharing personal information, arranging to meet people, etc.). I think my son is a much better adjusted young human being for the trust and faith that we’ve shown that we have in him. Teaching, guidance, and trust are much better tools than surveillance and censorship. It’s the same approach that my parents took with me (admittedly more out of ignorance of what the Internet was at the time on their part). It worked out alright for me, and my son has never done anything to make me regret taking the same approach with him.
I agree with you there. Shielding the child from all the bad things seems like a way of causing more permanent harm to the child than letting the kid know about all the bad things and then discussing them. Of course one should pay a little bit attention, but going overboard with protection is just wrong, kids *will* sooner or later find out about all the stuff anyways. You sound like a reasonably good parent, I give you props for that, and hopefully your kids will do that too when they grow older :)
Put the kids on single player in a creative map and just let them create. When they get older, introduce survival mode.
Not quite sure how they got there, but I believe it went something like this:
1) Kids watch daddy play Minecraft and watch Paulsoaresjr's videos along with daddy. (Paul is very family friendly in his videos) They scream when surprising things happen.
2) Kids start playing around with Daddy's copy of Minecraft PE on iPad and eventually take it over.
3) Kids get plush Creeper stuffed animal with explosion noises from Santa and use it sneak-up and scare Daddy. Kids: (whisper) "Lets creep Daddy!" Creeper: "ssssSSSSBOOM!" Daddy: "Ahhh!" Kids: *Giggles*
4) Kids beg Daddy to let them play Minecraft on PC and eventually Daddy sets up a single-player creative world for them. Kids show-off their creations to Parents.
It's not all the time and as with any toy it goes in and out of their attention, but they are having a good time and I feel that it is beneficial.
Do not poke the elder gods.
I think not...(*poof*)
It's not illusory, not at all. Is reading a book illusory? Is going to a museum illusory? Is painting a painting illusory? Playing a videogame is NOT illusory. Building things out of your mind into a videogame is NOT illusory.
The world your kids are growing up is not the world you grew up, the world your kids will have to live and work is not the world you're living and working right now. Why would you want to make your kids grow up like you did? In the future, there will probably be few to none factory workers. Get this into your head: the world is constantly changing and nobody knows how it will be, preparing your kids for the world of yesterday is useless at best. Now, creativity... that's always useful.
Nobody ever called your parents realists.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Our whole family loves playing Minecraft, although so far we've kept network play to our own server. For parents with young kids playing on the net, any recommendations for kid friendly servers? Ours are currently 5 and 7, so may be too young to consider letting them venture out on their own, but will be looking pretty soon probably.
My neighbor's kid refused to learn to read ... so I started playing Fluxx with him. (specifically, Zombie Fluxx).
As he had to read the cards to be able to play (or reveal his hand to someone else at the table), it finally pushed him over the edge to read. Once he got to the point where I was fairly certain that he had memorized the cards, we switched to Pirate Fluxx.
These days, he uses his reading skills for reading books on Minecraft -- I saw him at the library last week checking one out.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
i have a low UID and run 3 minecraft servers
i can say with much authority that anonymous troll is an idiot.
US$0.02++
My three year old nephew was building red stone traps I didn't even dream up.
No surprise... you don't even know that its redstone (without the space...) so I doubt you know how to use it...
[The Universe] has gone offline.
You're just jealous that no one invites you to the circlejerk.
Oh, wow, dude... Calm down. Have some water.
I gotta say, "goosestepping neckbeard" is the best thing I've been called in weeks. And no, a low UID only means I showed up. Just like you did.
I could type something nice about Minecraft, but I already did in another thread today: stuff about minecraft being an excellent UI for 3D printer data.
And try not to lunge so hard at obvious trollage. :)
I think not...(*poof*)
Like you said, it's 20 fucking 14. Why do you want your kids to play like it's 1814? You condemn a reboot and then suggest one. Good job!
Pardon my bluntness but; Go outside, and show your children the wonders of the natural world not a &**% screen! Nuff said.
When they came home they asked me if we could get Minecraft. I told them, "of course not - go outside and build a treehouse. Get some sunshine while you're at it".
Because, of course, there's no possibility of kids both playing Minecraft sometimes, and playing in the woods at other times. It has to be one or the other, for ever.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
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