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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."
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. :)
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
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.
Wow, where to start?
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.
So do not let your child play, unsupervised, on these public servers. You cannot get to a server without specifically adding the server address (which you typically get by searching on the internet).
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.
So graphics trumps gameplay for you? I still play my favorite NES/SNES games on an emulator because of how much fun they are, not what they look like.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
It takes a little effort on the parents part. You don't have to micromanage just do your due diligence to make sure your kids are safe. You can make a list of "whitelisted" servers your kids can go on or create your own either by buying a realm or setting one up yourself. Then heres the magic part, you fucking pay attention to what your kids are doing, check logs occasionally or monitor the servers themselves a little. You don't just give them a toy or cell phone or laptop and say now go away (at least I hope you don't). Its not a baby sitter its entertainment and you as a parent still have to do your job. A little supervision and some research makes it a completely safe place. I have 3 kids 16, 14, 10 and they all have been playing minecraft safely for a few years now.
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!
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.