4 ms·

Whats wrong with Minecraft, that seems like an odd inclusion in the list?

by acedTrex 11mo ago

Spivak 11mo ago
There is Minecraft the standalone game that you play either by yourself or on a private server with friends you know IRL. That's totally fine. Then there is the wider Minecraft community based on a constellation of public and semi-public servers. This is a lot more like Roblox.
- hedora 11mo ago
  Microsoft forces login these days for single player play, and jams ads, social networking crap. As a parent, I don’t have time for this bullshit, and assume they have malicious intentions. Also, at least once, there was some warning about a profanity filter that my kid dismissed without reading. It’s tied to my MS account, and only a matter of time before that is tied to github and linkedin. So the kid says “doodie head” one too many times, and what, I lose my windows login / bitlocker key, gh repos and professional network? Screw it.
  - autoexec 11mo ago
    Exactly, everything wrong with Minecraft started with Microsoft. They took a fun, harmless, and free game so that they could profit from it and they've been working at making it increasingly harmful ever since.
  - dwattttt 11mo ago
    Have you considered not tying your encryption keys to your child's online activities? I can understand the thrill of danger, but I'm not that much of a gambler myself.
- LeifCarrotson 11mo ago
  The Minecraft you know and love is a fantastic game, especially for kids. Top 10 all time, IMO, in terms of creativity and education and development. And you can easily set up a personal friends and family server/realm, and there are tons of free mods and maps. The problem is that malicious actors can build Roblox in anything. It's not hard to get kids hooked and begging their parents for lucrative in-game gambling currency.
  - oezi 11mo ago
    I am probably not the right generation but all attempts to engage with Minecraft with my children have always ended badly. It seems very tedious and clunky. The learning curve seems steeper than playing factorio casually.
    - A_D_E_P_T 11mo ago
      Yeah, I tried playing it with my son, but I've never quite understood what you're supposed to do. I grew up on RPGs and adventure games where you usually had an objective out there in the world. In comparison, Minecraft is extremely solipsistic; there are no structures in the world to meaningfully interact with, and it seems one is supposed to simply treat the world as a sort of Lego set.
      - cess11 11mo ago
        You're supposed to build a place to live and sleep, and then you find some magma and water and create a portal to a less friendly place. Eventually you find the bad dragon and murder it.
        immibis 11mo ago
        That was added to the game after its creator got cynical about it. He said it needed an ending to justify being 1.0, then he sold it to Microsoft because he hated being popular and wanted the game destroyed, as well as money. The actual goal of Minecraft should be whatever it was in Alpha 1.1.2_01.
    - mghackerlady 11mo ago
      It's a cultural thing. The learning curve has always been bad but it was bypassed by the initial cultural penetration of people playing it on youtube and now the learning curve is a thing learnt through prior knowledge instead of trial and error
    - black_knight 11mo ago
      There are several ways of enjoying Minecraft. I play it a lot with my kids (5 and 10) at the moment. They love creative mode, spawning mobs and just building strange houses. When I played with my friends, sibling snd parents, it was all about survival mode everyone would create their own huge buildings and connect up via railway, visit each other and make fun stuff. Then there was the whole red stone rabbit hole…
mock-possum 11mo ago
just another surface for predators to access underage targets. I guess one thing with Minecraft specifically is there’s a veneer of positive / educational content to smuggle that access beneath - schools have lessons that include Minecraft play, you don’t get that with Fortnite or Roblox, so it seems more ‘innocent.’ Fortnite is about killing eachother, Roblox is about literally anything, Minecraft is about… well, mining and crafting, mostly. But really, with mods, it can be just as ‘anything’ as Roblox, only with possibly less scrutiny. Idk. I love Minecraft, for the record. It’s just the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the popular online game that provides access to kids gets the creeps.
- bstsb 11mo ago
  where would creeps even contact kids on Minecraft? the only officially sanctioned servers are on Bedrock and tightly moderated, everything else is plastered with Microsoft-sanctioned warnings about unmoderated play
  - sergent_moon 11mo ago
    And the one things kids avoid, without prejudice, is unmoderated play.
- ls612 11mo ago
  Most people on this website can run a Minecraft server themselves for their kids and their kids' friends. That seems to be the way to go tbh.
ACCount37 11mo ago
Minecraft by itself is benign, but online servers? Oh boy. Full tilt P2W servers, ran by low key cybercriminals, with I Can't Believe It's Not Gambling mechanics targeting children. And Mojang itself is adding fuel to the fire by selling paid mods - for Bedrock only, which is the version most children play. Then there's the usual boon of online gaming - getting to interact with the shadiest characters you've ever met online.
- recursive 11mo ago
  What's wrong with paid mods?
  - prophesi 11mo ago
    Not OP, but for me I'm wary whenever I see in-game currency (Minecoins). Thankfully there are no gambling mechanics tied in to Minecoins directly, but the server ecosystem is still rampant with gambling just the same[0]. [0] https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/360043131652--Servers-Ban-Casinos-From-Bedrock https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600...
    - recursive 11mo ago
      I agree regarding in-game currency. I find it distasteful. But in my mind, paid mods are a different thing that can exist independently. I don't find those distasteful. I find their existence slightly positive.
      - kulahan 11mo ago
        If it's made by randoms, then Microsoft is barely better than a rent-seeking middleman. If it's made by Microsoft, they should just put it in the f-ing game or move on to making something new to get more money.
        recursive 11mo ago
jay_kyburz 11mo ago
I was fine with Minecraft until the kids started wanting to install all kinds of mods, which as far as I know are random executables you download from shady websites.
- ApolloFortyNine 11mo ago
  As someone who grew up on Industrial Craft 2, you can really miss out on a lot of incredible, free, content if you write off minecraft mods entirely. And many of those mods at worse might have a donation link if any kind of monetary discussion at all.
- acedTrex 11mo ago
  Mods are the lifeblood of Minecraft though, they are incredible.

Whats wrong with Minecraft, that seems like an odd inclusion in the list?

Spivak 11mo ago

There is Minecraft the standalone game that you play either by yourself or on a private server with friends you know IRL. That's totally fine. Then there is the wider Minecraft community based on a constellation of public and semi-public servers. This is a lot more like Roblox.

hedora 11mo ago
Microsoft forces login these days for single player play, and jams ads, social networking crap. As a parent, I don’t have time for this bullshit, and assume they have malicious intentions. Also, at least once, there was some warning about a profanity filter that my kid dismissed without reading. It’s tied to my MS account, and only a matter of time before that is tied to github and linkedin. So the kid says “doodie head” one too many times, and what, I lose my windows login / bitlocker key, gh repos and professional network? Screw it.
- autoexec 11mo ago
  Exactly, everything wrong with Minecraft started with Microsoft. They took a fun, harmless, and free game so that they could profit from it and they've been working at making it increasingly harmful ever since.
- dwattttt 11mo ago
  Have you considered not tying your encryption keys to your child's online activities? I can understand the thrill of danger, but I'm not that much of a gambler myself.
LeifCarrotson 11mo ago
The Minecraft you know and love is a fantastic game, especially for kids. Top 10 all time, IMO, in terms of creativity and education and development. And you can easily set up a personal friends and family server/realm, and there are tons of free mods and maps. The problem is that malicious actors can build Roblox in anything. It's not hard to get kids hooked and begging their parents for lucrative in-game gambling currency.
- oezi 11mo ago
  I am probably not the right generation but all attempts to engage with Minecraft with my children have always ended badly. It seems very tedious and clunky. The learning curve seems steeper than playing factorio casually.
  - A_D_E_P_T 11mo ago
    Yeah, I tried playing it with my son, but I've never quite understood what you're supposed to do. I grew up on RPGs and adventure games where you usually had an objective out there in the world. In comparison, Minecraft is extremely solipsistic; there are no structures in the world to meaningfully interact with, and it seems one is supposed to simply treat the world as a sort of Lego set.
    - cess11 11mo ago
      You're supposed to build a place to live and sleep, and then you find some magma and water and create a portal to a less friendly place. Eventually you find the bad dragon and murder it.
      - immibis 11mo ago
        That was added to the game after its creator got cynical about it. He said it needed an ending to justify being 1.0, then he sold it to Microsoft because he hated being popular and wanted the game destroyed, as well as money. The actual goal of Minecraft should be whatever it was in Alpha 1.1.2_01.
  - mghackerlady 11mo ago
    It's a cultural thing. The learning curve has always been bad but it was bypassed by the initial cultural penetration of people playing it on youtube and now the learning curve is a thing learnt through prior knowledge instead of trial and error
  - black_knight 11mo ago
    There are several ways of enjoying Minecraft. I play it a lot with my kids (5 and 10) at the moment. They love creative mode, spawning mobs and just building strange houses. When I played with my friends, sibling snd parents, it was all about survival mode everyone would create their own huge buildings and connect up via railway, visit each other and make fun stuff. Then there was the whole red stone rabbit hole…

mock-possum 11mo ago

just another surface for predators to access underage targets. I guess one thing with Minecraft specifically is there’s a veneer of positive / educational content to smuggle that access beneath - schools have lessons that include Minecraft play, you don’t get that with Fortnite or Roblox, so it seems more ‘innocent.’ Fortnite is about killing eachother, Roblox is about literally anything, Minecraft is about… well, mining and crafting, mostly. But really, with mods, it can be just as ‘anything’ as Roblox, only with possibly less scrutiny. Idk. I love Minecraft, for the record. It’s just the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and the popular online game that provides access to kids gets the creeps.

bstsb 11mo ago
where would creeps even contact kids on Minecraft? the only officially sanctioned servers are on Bedrock and tightly moderated, everything else is plastered with Microsoft-sanctioned warnings about unmoderated play
- sergent_moon 11mo ago
  And the one things kids avoid, without prejudice, is unmoderated play.
ls612 11mo ago
Most people on this website can run a Minecraft server themselves for their kids and their kids' friends. That seems to be the way to go tbh.

ACCount37 11mo ago

Minecraft by itself is benign, but online servers? Oh boy. Full tilt P2W servers, ran by low key cybercriminals, with I Can't Believe It's Not Gambling mechanics targeting children. And Mojang itself is adding fuel to the fire by selling paid mods - for Bedrock only, which is the version most children play. Then there's the usual boon of online gaming - getting to interact with the shadiest characters you've ever met online.

recursive 11mo ago
What's wrong with paid mods?
- prophesi 11mo ago
  Not OP, but for me I'm wary whenever I see in-game currency (Minecoins). Thankfully there are no gambling mechanics tied in to Minecoins directly, but the server ecosystem is still rampant with gambling just the same[0]. [0] https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/360043131652--Servers-Ban-Casinos-From-Bedrock https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/3600...
  - recursive 11mo ago
    I agree regarding in-game currency. I find it distasteful. But in my mind, paid mods are a different thing that can exist independently. I don't find those distasteful. I find their existence slightly positive.
    - kulahan 11mo ago
      If it's made by randoms, then Microsoft is barely better than a rent-seeking middleman. If it's made by Microsoft, they should just put it in the f-ing game or move on to making something new to get more money.
      - recursive 11mo ago

jay_kyburz 11mo ago

I was fine with Minecraft until the kids started wanting to install all kinds of mods, which as far as I know are random executables you download from shady websites.

ApolloFortyNine 11mo ago
As someone who grew up on Industrial Craft 2, you can really miss out on a lot of incredible, free, content if you write off minecraft mods entirely. And many of those mods at worse might have a donation link if any kind of monetary discussion at all.
acedTrex 11mo ago
Mods are the lifeblood of Minecraft though, they are incredible.