I’ve been playing Minecraft for almost three years now, and it’s been absolutely incredible watching this small indie world-builder take the real world by storm. The PC version alone has amassed over 100 million users, and the recently-released console versions are only making that number grow. Oh, and there is a possible motion picture in the works.. Needless to say, I absolutely love Minecraft, and do you know who else does? My eight-year-old little sister. To me, that’s an excellent thing.
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Working in video-game retail, I understand where popularity sits in terms of gamer culture. Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, FIFA, Madden (the list goes on): these are the majority of what is placed on the counter to purchase, and sometimes it gets taxing. It’s especially awkward, at least for me personally, to see a 10-year-old boy holding a copy of Grand Theft Auto 5 in his hands. His parents are none the wiser:
“It’s just a game I know his friends play. Is it really that bad?” I do my civic duty when they come up and teach them about the ESRB ratings on the front & back cover, and of course, their tone changes. The typical response revolves around: “I didn’t know this game had so much violence! All of his friends play this! Do you have anything more suitable for someone his age?” My first choice is always Minecraft.
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When I was ten, I loved LEGO. More often than not, I never followed the instructions, and instead made my own creations based on whatever popped into my head at the time. That child-like wonder, that sense that I have the tools to mold and create whatever I wished is what I feel when I play. This game has no rules, no checkpoints, no designated objective, and absolutely no hand-holding. In a world where primary education takes its dear sweet time holding students’ hands, its no wonder that so many children are legitimately uninterested. They crave knowledge, but within their own terms: they love things like blank pages and a fistful of crayons, a sandbox with a couple of tools, and big playgrounds to experiment with different activities. Children inherently not only love to learn, but love to create.
The parents mentioned before, when they come back to buy something else, they love to talk about what they saw their kids build in Minecraft. More often than not, they even have pictures, and I am completely blown away. I’ve seen towering cobblestone castles encompassed in lava moats. I’ve seen lush, intricate gardens with wheat fields and melon patches. I’ve been shown statues built on top of mountains, clever redstone wiring, posh mansions, nether fortresses, and the list goes on and on. This kind of creative stimuli, that open experimentation, the openness, and unique level of incredible immersion is what makes this title so special, and so important to share with your children.
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Minecraft’s console version allows the player to sit down with three others to locally connect to a single server and play the game together. This allows your kids and their friends to not only share an awesome game together, but to grasp the concepts of teamwork, task-managing, and even concepts of rationing. Whenever I hop into a server with my friends, we create a list of things we want to get done, assign jobs, help each other here and there, and what did we create? We created a walled-off city complete with a bakery, farm, and slaughterhouse. Inadvertently, your child is taught to promote synergy.
Minecraft is a liberating, creative toolkit for all ages. It’s celebrated all around the world, and its imagination, sense of freedom, as well as its versatility deserves to reach today’s youth every way that it can. Heck, maybe you should even try it out yourself! See what you can build together.