And as I watched my sons play yet another Lego Star Wars shoot ’em up game on. This video is just such.Just like explaining to your kids why they have to. Why Minecraft Is More Than Just Another Video. Terraria 'People need to understand that Minecraft isn't a game anymore,' claimed. More From the New Yorker. Why Minecraft is more than just another video game. Minecraft's creators revealed this week that the blocky freeform building game has 3. It can easily become an obsession. I was pretty sure I hadn't but I know a couple of people, my two boys, who might have done it for me. That message clued me in to the depth of their obsession with Minecraft. The game is set in a virtual world made of cubes of different materials - dirt, rock, sand, lava, obsidian and many more. Almost all of these can be used as building blocks and a few can be refined into usable raw materials (wood, iron, diamond etc). Playing the game involves surviving by using blocks to build a shelter (which can be as crude or elaborate as you like) and turning raw materials and combinations of them into items (swords, armour, bows) to help kill the game's many monsters (creepers, skeletons, zombie pigmen etc). From such an uncomplicated setting has grown a gaming phenomenon. The community of people involved with the game numbers in the tens of millions. Many of those fans are children, mainly boys, aged between nine and 1. My two nine- year- olds - Toby and Callum - are devoted members of that congregation. They spend a lot of time playing Minecraft, talking about playing Minecraft and, as I found out from my ISP, watching You. Tube videos of other people playing Minecraft. For Liz Cruddas, whose two boys Oliver (1. Will (9), are equally firm fans, the time spent glued to You. Tube is baffling. He sees what the best can do and gives him ideas about what to try in the game. That's all very well but I, like many other parents with Minecraft- obsessed kids, wonder if they are wasting their time. Surely the whole experience can be made educational? Perhaps it could be the route they use to get to grips with that most coveted of skills - computer programming. Playing Minecraft has also led his younger son to getting to grips with some basic computer concepts. They can find multiplayer servers, use email to set up sessions with friends and use Skype so they can shout at each other in games rather than just type comments. They might also be recording, editing and uploading their own You. Tube videos of what they get up to. I rented a server for them and it has become a hangout for them and some of their friends. It's a useful place, given that they tend not to just go out and play with their friends like their parents used to when they were young. Teacher Joel Levin has seen the positive effect Minecraft can have on relationships among schoolchildren - especially on those who would otherwise be dismissed for being too geeky. Image caption. Mark Ward's sons enjoy Minecraft (in Minecraft- themed hats). Mr Levin is the co- ordinator of Minecraftedu which was set up to show how the game can be used in classrooms. About 1. 50. 0 schools are now using it as a teaching aid and not just in computer science lessons. He also hopes Minecraft can teach parents a thing or two rather than them wanting the game to teach their kids. And that's perhaps the best thing about the game - the shared times and stories we've had playing it together. Like that time we got ambushed by a creeper, which blew up and dropped us into a cavern, and we only had one torch and had to find our way back. Or the first time we killed the Ender Dragon or the time they showed me around the giant elaborate treehouse they had built and the.. You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook. FREQUENTLY ASKED MINECRAFT QUESTIONS - PARENT EDITION . World files are usually less than 1. MB each. Why does Minecraft make me seasick? A lot of people get motion sickness when playing 3. D games like Minecraft, and vertigo and headaches can also cause problems. Playing in third person and turning off the head bobbing can sometimes help. Some other things that might work are changing eye focus away from the screen regularly, not playing in fullscreen, increasing the frame- rate, taking regular breaks, turning down the display brightness and playing in a well- lit room. What is a seed? A seed is a unique identifier for a particular world, which is automatically assigned when the world is created. You can manually enter a code when you start a new world to generate that specific world. In this way, players can each generate the same world on different computers or create the same new world over and over again. Can you play without other people? Yep! Minecraft is a game that you can play by yourself (single player) or with others (multiplayer). Lots of people use and enjoy single player mode. My kids complain that the game lags. What does that mean? The game has to do a lot of work behind the scenes to display the action onscreen, and if it gets overloaded the processing slows down for a moment. This causes the display to react slower than the player input, which is called lagging. The action on the screen will look choppy and there might be a delay between the player clicking and the game responding, which can be really frustrating. It usually happens on multiplayer games and servers, especially when a lot of players are online at the same time. It can also happen on single player games too, so try reducing the frame rate and render distance to help speed things up. I hate the music, how do I make it stop? Some parents find the music to be irritating, so if you really can’t stand to listen to it you can turn off the music in the game settings. Does everyone on a server need to have the same mods? It depends on what the mod does and whether it’s installed just for the player (called the client) or the server as a whole. If the mod just changes the appearance or number of things then everyone can play regardless of whether they have the mod. For server- side mods, if they change the way the game works (add new blocks or change the way things are crafted) then everyone needs to have the mod installed to join the game. If you have client- side mods like this you might run into problems on a LAN game or multiplayer server where others don’t have that mod installed. If my kids accidentally destroy something, can they get it back? In Creative mode the inventory is infinite, meaning that more blocks and items are always available. In Survival mode, blocks and items can only be replenished if the player has more of them in their inventory. Alternatively you can temporarily switch back to Creative mode and grab some more. However there is no undo button in Minecraft, so constructions that are destroyed can only be replaced by rebuilding them. Is there a way to stop my kids losing all their stuff when they die? Yes. Each time you start a game or open a world in the computer version, open the command line (by typing T) and type this: /gamerule keep. Inventory true. What is a griefer? There are people who get enjoyment out of destroying or stealing the things that other plays build and collect. This is called griefing, and it can be a big issue on multiplayer servers. It’s not a problem that’s unique to Minecraft, but it’s easier to do than in other games. Check out the tips to help kids cope with griefers. My kids keep asking for mods, what are they? Mods are unofficial changes to the way the game looks or acts. They're made by other players and downloaded from public websites like forums, so they can be a lot of fun but also come with risks. You can learn more about mods on the Mods Help page. What is a resource pack? Like mods, resource packs are files which modify the game except in this case they just replace images and sound files so they're a lot less risky. What is an adventure map? A map is a world that players create in Minecraft. Players often spend a lot of time creating interesting, fun or spectacular worlds which they give away to other players. Adventure maps are a particular type of world where players follow a story and solve puzzles to reach specific goals. There's more about maps in this article. Do you need to start a new world when there’s an update? No. Updates are downloaded and applied to existing worlds automatically when you launch the game, so any new items or mobs will be available in those worlds the next time they’re opened. Does Minecraft work when you’re offline? Yes, you can play in single player mode when you’re not online. Can I turn off the bad guys? Yes, the bad guys are called . You can also stop them from spawning in Survival mode by typing the command /gamerule do. Mob. Spawning false, although this will also turn off non- hostile mobs like sheep and cows. Are there any traps in an abandoned mineshaft in Creative? No, there are no naturally occurring Cave Spiders or hostile mob spawners in the mineshafts in Creative mode. There are mob spawners in Peaceful level, but any creatures that spawn instantly despawn. Why can’t I dig up the redstone ore? Some ores can only be mined with a pickaxe made of a specific material. Coal and nether quartz can be collected with any pickaxe. Iron and lapis lazuli requires a stone pickaxe or better. Gold, diamond, redstone and emerald require an iron pickaxe or better, and you can only mine obsidian with a pickaxe made of diamond. Do you have to kill the animals? Nope, it’s possible to play the game without harming any animals but there are some items that can only be crafted from animal sources. There are non- animal sources of food and dye, but the feathers needed to make arrows can only be collected by killing chickens. The leather used to make books and item frames can only be gathered from killing horses or cows, and black dye can only come from killing a squid. None of these items are essential to playing the game (and of course in Creative mode all items are readily available without needing to harm anything). Where can we get cheat codes? Cheat codes in Minecraft are called commands, and there’s a good list of them in the wiki. What is a butter block? That’s a slang term for gold. Do you have to feed the people? You don’t have to feed villagers, but if you’re playing in Survival mode on any difficulty level other than Peaceful then your player will need to eat to replenish the hunger bar before all of the turkey leg icons disappear. How do you know when you’ve completed the game? To get to the end of the game, you need to kill an Ender Dragon. If you’re successful and jump through the portal which appears, you see a screen of scrolling text with a story on it before being sent back to your spawn point. How long is a Minecraft day in real time? Minecraft time is 2. Day lasts for 1. 0 minutes, sunrise and sunset are 1. What is Realms? Realms is an official Mojang server subscription site, where you can easily set up multiplayer games for a monthly fee (currently $1. At the moment it's only available for vanilla Minecraft (the original, unmodded version). What is Pv. P? Player vs Player is a style of play where players fight with each other using weapons, often in purpose- built arenas. What is a skin and how do you make one? A skin is the image file that gives each player their unique look. Everyone starts with the same default one (known as Steve), but this can be easily customized. Skins can also refer to the textures of other things in the game too, like blocks or animals. You can find a ton of readymade ones online (like Minecraftskins. Skindex or Nova. Skin).
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