Thoughts on "Minecraft" for kids?

The cover of the most recent New Yorker looks just like our kids at home (playing Minecraft):

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/cover-story-playdate

Does anyone have more knowledge of this game and thoughts on its suitability for kids in terms of educational value, etc.? We are pretty in the dark at present

- rj

Well the first thing you should know is it's called "Minecraft"

Big thumbs up from me. We have a 7-year-old. It's like a virtual Lego, only more involved. It's a world-building game.

Yes - just caught the title mistake but couldn't figure out how to change it )…Sounds like it would have made sense for it to be called "Mindcraft" also …The article mentions that it can be played with friends - is there any concern about strangers being able to interact with our kids?

- rj

Its good in moderation. When my kids have someone over, they can play Minecraft for a while, but must also do some other activities.

It is not a bad game, and kids can actually be fairly creative. Like anything, though, it has to be limited and you have to keep an eye on things. At first, we wouldn't let our son play online at all, and now we only let him play with known friends online. I can't tell you how it all works. Our son has a friend with younger parents who knew how to set up a server. You don't have to do that, though.

I forgot to add: in moderation.

FilmCarp said:
It is not a bad game, and kids can actually be fairly creative. Like anything, though, it has to be limited and you have to keep an eye on things. At first, we wouldn't let our son play online at all, and now we only let him play with known friends online. I can't tell you how it all works. Our son has a friend with younger parents who knew how to set up a server. You don't have to do that, though.

That's been our experience. Our son played it along with a bunch of other kids in the neighborhood when they were between about 8 or 9 and up until they hit teenage years. It was also nice that my nephews play it, so they had something to bond with at the intermittent family gatherings. I view it as electronic legos with some elements of old role-play board games thrown in.

Just make sure it doesn't become all-consuming. Luckily, our son loves outside and sports, so it was never a big issue.

It is available on various platforms, with different levels of outside access. You can set it up as a solo sandbox on a computer, or log in to servers of various sorts and add modifications of various sorts (the most complex and richest version).

Alternatively, for a younger kid, you can get a tablet version for $7, which is less sophisticated but has less focus on outside servers. Also, the Xbox version is nice because it allows multiple kids to play together on a split screen, and makes it easy for an adult to see what is going on.

So it all depends on the age of your child, and what you want.

It can be played in "creative" building mode, or in more survival oriented modes. In creative mode my eldest actually did a couple of school assignments on it, building virtual models (e.g. of a Roman building) rather than physical models for middle school projects.

At its core it is an amazingly creative game. A digital Lego where astounding things can be created.

But it also can be a place of violence and destruction. And is played interactively carriers all the risk of social media and multi player games where it is hard to know who your child is interacting with.

According to my 14 yo son, who I've watched build and play in this game (and who became rather disgusted with my lack of ability to catch on, and do much of anything in any tolerable time-frame), when I asked him the OP's original question, he said, "It's awesome."

He says that kids as young as 8 years old "should" be allowed to play. You also don't have to play online. He says it's "not really" a violent game. "You have a sword and you kill things, but it's not like there's blood."

His young cousins play it and love it. One cousin is not allowed to play any other video games at all.

Your kids will likely spend much time building things and then destroying them in lava flows and other crises, as well as rushing to build shelters before night falls and the nasties attack. Mine also built amazing rollercoasters across the landscape (with minecarts), and complex buildings, but have yet to get involved in "redstone" circuit design, although it is possible

For younger kids, I recommend playing offline initially, and learning their way around. The tablet interface was a nice one for starting out. Ideally, when they want to play on a server, you can help them find a "whitelist" server that only allows on people who have been invited, and perhaps has some moderation to keep people polite. My daughter was lucky enough to start out on one that I found out about through a university alumni parenting group.

The fully public servers can have some of the nastiness of any other online forum full of strangers, so require a bit more sophistication...on my daughter's first try on one of them (under my supervision, at age 11 or so?) she was tricked into going the wrong place and framed for theft from another player, and finally left in tears when no one believed her.

But then she learned the ropes, and Minecraft servers were as good a place as any to learn how to deal with the many personalities in online forums and games, with me nearby to help with the problems.

My 8 year olds play on tablet and X-box from time to time, but only online on the very rare occasion that they can convince big sister to turn on her online server to let them play. My ideal is that she create an online game for them to play with out of town cousins, but it hasn't really come together.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts! My son keeps wanting to presumably "graduate" to playing the version available for computers (he's currently limited to the iPad version), but I was concerned about not being able to control with whom he would be interacting…I'm curious if there's a way to fully monitor this, should we eventually "upgrade"?

My teen doesn't know of any parental controls functions in Minecraft. She says you can do things like turn off chat (to remove any comments), but you would need to be on the trust/supervise system with it.

In our case, we helped her find/choose servers to play on, reiterated the importance of not sharing personal information and of knowing when it was time to leave if a server was too full of "griefers" or other things that she didn't like. We had some teaching moments, but it may be a better place to have them than on Facebook. Initially it was something she played when we were in the same room, so that I could keep an eye on things.

If you move to server based play, you will also find a broader range of types of play. I cringed when my kid went through the "hunger games" server phase, but she always tended to be eliminated quickly, so moved on to other things (and eventually to games other than Minecraft).

robjohn99 said:
Yes - just caught the title mistake but couldn't figure out how to change it )…

Jamie just today announced that you can now edit thread titles. You need to go to the discussion list (not My Discussions) and you will see an "edit" option under each thread. It isn't by editing the first post as on the old board.

Now in 3D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yg6ljnASxw

Just don't let them find out about the "Stampy" videos.

When our kids were in grammar school, "SimCity" was big. Is Minecraft a similar, "build it and see what happens" type of experience? I understand there is an online component, so obviously that's a difference from our "primitive" computer game from long ago.

By the way, imo there are things far more inappropriate for kids in the on line The Sims (the current updated take on Sim City) than there are in Minecraft.

Steve said:
Just don't let them find out about the "Stampy" videos.

Talk about a Youtube sensation. My daughter spends more time watching the videos than playing the game. Though she is banned on pain of losing her computer from posting a comment to try to get in his "Love Garden"

ramzzoinksus said:
By the way, imo there are things far more inappropriate for kids in the on line The Sims (the current updated take on Sim City) than there are in Minecraft.

Just to be clear, I was writing about SimCity, not "The Sims", which is from the same people but NOT the same thing.

"The Sims" is not "SimCity" in the slightest. The former has characters, and apparently one can have them do "adult" things. The latter is building a city, figuring out the infrastructure, figuring out how to pay for it, finding out if you (as "Mayor") are doing a good job or if the whole thing is going to collapse financially.

It's like "Atlas Shrugged", but with a better plot.

ramzzoinksus said:

Steve said:
Just don't let them find out about the "Stampy" videos.

Talk about a Youtube sensation. My daughter spends more time watching the videos than playing the game. Though she is banned on pain of losing her computer from posting a comment to try to get in his "Love Garden"

My kids, particularly my son, watch these at almost any opportunity. And these guys are pulling down seven figures annually doing them. Unbelievable.

And then there are the Minecraft songs using pop hits with Minecraft themed lyrics. Like "Don't Mine at Night" to the tune of "Last Friday Night"

I thought the stampycat video tutorials were cute until I heard old Stampy dropping the F-bomb, and that was the end of that! The game is fun, though difficult for me. I have played with my 7-year-old son on Minecraft for PS3.

I thought that the Stampy videos were pretty "family friendly." I haven't heard any "F-bombs" when they've been played in my presence. Just did a little "research" and found that that language was only in the first 18 videos that he did. The rest are clean.

Those damn songs are contagious.....

My 8yr old does watch more of the videos than playing at this point. Always have time limits...always.

ramzzoinksus said:
At its core it is an amazingly creative game. A digital Lego where astounding things can be created.
But it also can be a place of violence and destruction. And is played interactively carriers all the risk of social media and multi player games where it is hard to know who your child is interacting with.

It's actually better than lego in that you don't run into the danger of stepping on a piece barefoot while walking to the bathroom at 3am.

My five year old loves it. He doesn't play on a server with other kids so we don't have to worry about bullying or who he is chatting with. And of course as mentioned above, moderation is key.