Minecrafting

My son loves Minecraft

During this pandemic, we had extended periods of time when it was not possible to leave the house nor do any activities outside, so I went to videogames, because I like them and they work great to pass the time at home.

The idea was good, and I managed to spend most of April doing an indoors activity that me and my son enjoyed without getting too nervous about meeting friends and going out. For sure it's not good to do this all the time, but during this period it was nice to do so.

With my son I've played together some games. When he was little he was obsessed with helicopters, so I played Just Cause 2 without being violent, just grabbing vehicles, and he liked that. This moved later to Sonic 4, which was probably the first one where he actually played, with the 2 players mode in part 2. This made him interested in other Sonics and other platformers like Cuphead, and well, we just kept trying different ones and different options.

In this way he has learned how to use the basic controllers, plus it has always been a nice bonding activity. I love video games and it's fun to introduce some of them to him and to try new ones together, when they're age-appropriate. For example, I think Nintendo is over-hyped because they tend to repeat themselves way too much and this pathological need to fit their same famous characters with same plot (rescue the princess) everywhere is detrimental, but it's true that their games are rather good for children. Getting the switch has allowed us to play great games, like Luigi's Mansion (that's a good example of detrimental, the game is great but King Boo as the ultimate bad guy really kills the scary but child-appropriate tones because Boos are too cartoonish), Towerfall or Untitled Goose Game.

However, for a while now he has asked to play Minecraft after trying it  a few times as a demo I had on the Xbox. And since I was curious as well, it was cheap, and we were confined, I ended up buying it.

And minecraft is great.

First, while there is combat, this is optional: You can pass the time in creative mode where you cannot die or be attacked, and in this way you have a relaxed atmosphere that allowed him to understand the usual control setting of camera/movement using both joysticks. In other games there was too much action or they required too much fine control right away of this mechanic for him to learn without getting frustrated, but in Minecraft you're allowed time.

Then, the game itself is incredibly detailed. The graphics are what they are, but this allows for a game engine that focus on functionalities rather than in showing off. And by doing that, the game offers a lot of items and different uses you can make of them. It's impressive how can you make castles, rollercoasters, traps, automatic processes and more complex stuff, like basically functional siege cannons,  RAM memories or even basic computers.

The game itself has no point whatsoever, but letting you create and move around freely gives you the tools to let your imagination create your own objectives: Building a house. Then building a tower. Then building something more complex, and so on, and so on, and in this way it stimulates a lot of creativity.

Basically, Minecraft is a computerized Lego with infinite pieces, so of course it stimulates creativity and it's quite addictive. And this made me also try, on my own, the survival mode. This is a bit too hard for him still, he prefers to be able to create things at will even if sometimes activates survival on creative worlds, but it's still interesting.

Survival mode is not that hard, but it forces you to create a home and slowly build things up from there. Very early on you realize you will need a lot of iron, so you start mining, and then you want to improve things, make a better home and a better mine, create new equipment, personalize things, and so on. It's also quite addictive and fun, even if there's no purpose either and you're just passing the time and trying to go a bit deeper and achieving an easily sustainable situation. 

The way he plays sometimes can be quite, just repeating actions or spawning lots of mobs, but he also creates more complex things like houses connected to rollercoasters, fish tanks, tunnels, structures, traps, etc., and it's quite cool to see what he thinks and makes, some of them are quite complex and cool. 

 

If the original game is not enough, they sell extra worlds that offer retexturing, new fucnionalities, new models, etc. You have to pay for most of them, but some of them are quite original and give new opportunities to create new things or play with a new concept. 

Overall it has been a great finding and it's really cool to have an infinte lego-like world to explore our creativity.