16 ms·

For people without children, here are some quick notes on the situation in kiddieland: - My son is 7. We bought iPad edition first, shelled some more for PC ed

by gokhan 12y ago

For people without children, here are some quick notes on the situation in kiddieland: - My son is 7. We bought iPad edition first, shelled some more for PC edition last month, and I'm sure I'll be forced to buy more in the future if MS puts a price tag on it. - I spend a fair amount of time during weekends for deciphering the modding world, trying to find something called CraftBukkit, learning to mod, finding launchers, finding maps shown on some Youtube video etc. because the son is mad about it. BUT, he's spending hours trying to learn JS (ScriptCraft on Bukkit) just to make an exploding arrow. I truly believe this is analogous to C64 days back then. - School started today, he's moved to another school this year. The first thing he asked to his news friends was about Minecraft. Then he advertised how PC version is superior to the one on iPad. - My 2 yo daughter knows what Minecraft is, tells she'll play Minecraft when she grows up. - While we were shopping for school supplies last week, saw two people asking for Minecraft licensed school bags for their kids. - We live in Turkey.

sireat 12y ago
What is interesting is how Minecraft has been pretty much the only game that people actually pay cash for in the Eastern Europe. This is pretty amazing since most games and software are pirated. Of course, people can and do pirate it, but it has a fantastic sell-through that no other game has achieved outside first world. The popularity among 5-15 year olds is very high.
- thesz 12y ago
  If Russia counts for Eastern Europe, then the whole Steam catalog is pretty much the only games that are paid for here. http://www.steamfirst.com/worldwide-steam-sales-by-region-some-impressive-stats/ http://www.steamfirst.com/worldwide-steam-sales-by-region-so... Keep in mind that Russians has much lower income than Western Europeans.
  - zyx321 12y ago
    But aren't prices in Russia less than half of those in EU/US? I remember that region locking controversy a few years back, where people bought the cheap eastern European boxed copies over the Internet and found that they wouldn't be able to redeem them from a US IP.
    - thesz 12y ago
      I see you and I answer you much less Internet coverage for Russia and less mature credit card support.
- jack9 12y ago
  > What is interesting is how Minecraft has been pretty much the only game that people actually pay cash for in the Eastern Europe. Mobile game stats show a very different picture.
- davidgerard 12y ago
  How do you pirate it? The "demo" .jar is the same as the "paid for" .jar - what you're actually purchasing is authentication against Mojang's servers.
  - ben0x539 12y ago
    You set up a server for yourself and your friends that doesn't phone home to Mojang to verify logins.
sdegutis 12y ago
My children (ages 6 through 10) had a similar experience to what you described in your comment. It pretty much sums up why we've banned Minecraft from our house. EDIT, To clarify: I fully encourage them to learn to code. We let them use Scratch and write love2d games. I've banned it from our house because we want them to build real things that they can actually use. We want them to learn how to build furniture and tree houses and real circuits. I banned it because we want them to live in the real world. EDIT 2: Don't be shy, downvote me if you disagree. It helps me to know just how far off my perspective on life is from that of the average HN visitor. Which in turns helps me to know whether I should just reading/writing comments.
- Angostura 12y ago
  Sorry, could you explain why? Because it soaks up parental time?
  - VLM 12y ago
    With laser like precision WRT exactly one topic my wife yells at my son when he plays minecraft youtube videos containing non-mom-approved language or highly questionable behavior. Its important to note the vast majority of lets play type videos are mom approved. Almost all of them. But once in awhile one comes up in rotation that's PG-13 or worse rating wrt language or behavior (serial killing in game pigs while making cop killer jokes and then uploading it anyway, wtf is wrong with you, boy?) (and edited to emphasize, the "big name" video guys are virtually all "mom-approved" the worst behavior and language is usually some goofball one off not a semi-pro show host wanna be) Unless kids have dramatically changed in the last decade or two I know he's heard worse on the playground, its not the end of the world. Its better than watching TV, for example.
  - sdegutis 12y ago
    No, because it has become an obsession. It's all the ever talked about, all day, non stop, for months. To this day they still play Minecraft imaginations games with each other. I would rather they learn how to build actual things that they can use. I'd love for them to learn how to build a real circuit or a real tree house, whatever. I would rather them live in the real world.
jballanc 12y ago
> - We live in Turkey. Merhaba Bodrum'dan! I'm reminded of a refrain that seems to be going around recently: the computer revolution is just getting started. When people today talk of how computers can empower change, often they're thinking about getting better taxi service. In reality, there are entire cultures that have yet to fully engage in the revolution. With Turkey in particular, I am so excited by the possibilities. Turks have such a natural hacker-mindset, it's just that thus far it's been mostly limited to "real-world" hacking. Imagine what can happen when a population that is naturally curious and creative is given tools to effect great change. At the same time, for this reason I'm wary of Microsoft as the buyer. In many parts of the world, Microsoft successfully monopolized business and personal computing, but even at their highest height they never fully monopolized developer mindshare. Contrastingly, Turkey's developer community was effectively "colonized" by Microsoft such that, if you were a programmer in Turkey it was just assumed that you worked with Microsoft technologies. That is starting to change...and I wonder if that doesn't cause Microsoft some small amount of concern. I think it's not an exaggeration to say that how Microsoft serves as steward of the Minecraft community will be telling as to whether they've changed their ways, and are willing to be participants in a larger community, or whether they remain the Microsoft of old.
- eru 12y ago
  Microsoft is doing alright by the Haskell community. So not all hope is lost for the Minecrafters.
neves 12y ago
The most impressive thing for me: I was at the playground with my 2 sons and we started to role play pretending we were superheroes. I said something like: "I'm Hulk", and my seven years old son: "I'm Venon Extreme". Venon Extreme is a guy who has a Minecraft channel in You Tube that has millions of views. This is really impressive. Ah, we live in Brazil.
aresant 12y ago
"Minecraft is digital Lego . . . We only wish we had invented it." - Lego's marketing director. (1) I think that's an interesting quote to understand both the generational appeal of Minecraft and why the deal makes sense. Continuing the lego comparison, Lego was recently valued at ~$15b (2) and I think that also demonstrates the potential here. Lego mastered the IP licensing biz (lego star wars, batman), merchandising (theme parks, etc), distribution (market specific sets etc). I'm almost surprised that Disney wasn't the acquirer but I imagine that with a corporate profiteer behind Mojang we'll see significant expansion of the brand. (1) http://www.atbmedia.com/lego-we-wish-wed-invented-minecraft/ http://www.atbmedia.com/lego-we-wish-wed-invented-minecraft/ (2) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/lego-builds-new-billionaires-as-toymaker-topples-mattel.html?cmpid=yhoo http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/lego-builds-new-bil...
- Laremere 12y ago
  Lego had the opportunity to buy digital lego ( http://blockland.us/ http://blockland.us/ ) Blockland's creator went to Lego to see if they were interested in his game while he was working on the retail version, but for whatever reason no deal was made and Blockland was released without external branding. This all happened much earlier than Minecraft: Blockland was featured on the Screen Savers in 2005, and had a retail release in 2007, two years before Minecraft development started. I think Minecraft goes beyond digital lego though. There are many little pieces of minecraft's design which came together to make a game better than one would expect. I honestly wonder how many of those choices were intentionally done by Notch, and how many were arbitrary choices which happened to be right.
  - sitkack 12y ago
    Minecraft was at the right place at the right time, it had already occurred in nearly identical forms earlier yet failed to "pop". http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer
    - cookiecaper 12y ago
      I think there's a tendency in people to assume that massively successful properties like Minecraft become massively successful because they're special or innovative. While this may play a role, it is rarely the only important factor, and sometimes is not a relevant factor at all. The reality is that Minecraft's explosive popularity is the result of a perfect storm of all kinds of fickle conditions. It doesn't mean that Notch made the "right" arbitrary choices, as some posters in this thread have intimated; it just means that the choices he made didn't preclude the other externalities from converging. I think the two biggest factors in Minecraft's success were a) notch's responsiveness and availability to the community on reddit and twitter and b) Mojang's decision to have the game ported to Xbox. Neither of these have much to do with the specific design decisions in Minecraft itself (many of which were frankly terrible and are still only gradually being reversed).
apetrovic 12y ago
I have two girls, 5 and 8 years old. Minecraft craze started a year ago. Just like you, I bought iPad edition first, and after that I paid for two licenses, so my daughters can play hide and seek inside Minecraft. I was amazed seeing my younger daughter, 4 years old at the time, moving flawlessly in 3D world, hiding from her sister, or building structures. And just like you, I spent enormous amount of time learning about Minecraft mods. BTW, I live in Serbia.
holri 12y ago
I installed my nephew http://minetest.net http://minetest.net because this is free software and therefore better suited for learning to hack. With this deal it is even better suited.
bhc3 12y ago
Another parent here. This summer, we took the kids to Paris. 10 y.o. son is wearing a Minecraft t-shirt on the street. A group of Chinese kids in a tourist group walked by. They saw his shirt, and I understood one word they said: "Minecraft".
mvp 12y ago
Yep. My Son's done that for me. I haven't played games for more than a decade. So I never introduced him to any game. He learned about it all by himself around the age of 7 I think, and then started pestering me to buy. I acquiesced. First on iPad, then Mac, and then the XBox. This game changed my view about games. I don't worry that he is wasting time on it. He seems to learn a lot constantly by playing this game. Everything else he has learned about computers & internet is through Minecraft. He even got me to build a server so we both could play on a private server. I've played once and then stopped. He watches videos on YouTube and learns a lot. Now at 9, he wants to build a YouTube channel that has millions of subscribers. When I told him I have 4 subscribers on my YouTube channel, you gave me a pathetic look :)..
davidgerard 12y ago
My 7yo watches all the YouTube Minecraft stars (particularly StampyLongnose and DanTDM). She wants to try a new mod every day or two, often one requiring a particularly old or new version of Minecraft. I need to teach her how to shuffle mods around herself so I don't have to. This is on Ubuntu. (Oh, and she has a cuddly creeper that goes "ssssss-BANG!" when you squeeze it.)

by gokhan 12y ago

sireat 12y ago

What is interesting is how Minecraft has been pretty much the only game that people actually pay cash for in the Eastern Europe. This is pretty amazing since most games and software are pirated. Of course, people can and do pirate it, but it has a fantastic sell-through that no other game has achieved outside first world. The popularity among 5-15 year olds is very high.

thesz 12y ago
If Russia counts for Eastern Europe, then the whole Steam catalog is pretty much the only games that are paid for here. http://www.steamfirst.com/worldwide-steam-sales-by-region-some-impressive-stats/ http://www.steamfirst.com/worldwide-steam-sales-by-region-so... Keep in mind that Russians has much lower income than Western Europeans.
- zyx321 12y ago
  But aren't prices in Russia less than half of those in EU/US? I remember that region locking controversy a few years back, where people bought the cheap eastern European boxed copies over the Internet and found that they wouldn't be able to redeem them from a US IP.
  - thesz 12y ago
    I see you and I answer you much less Internet coverage for Russia and less mature credit card support.
jack9 12y ago
> What is interesting is how Minecraft has been pretty much the only game that people actually pay cash for in the Eastern Europe. Mobile game stats show a very different picture.
davidgerard 12y ago
How do you pirate it? The "demo" .jar is the same as the "paid for" .jar - what you're actually purchasing is authentication against Mojang's servers.
- ben0x539 12y ago
  You set up a server for yourself and your friends that doesn't phone home to Mojang to verify logins.

sdegutis 12y ago

My children (ages 6 through 10) had a similar experience to what you described in your comment. It pretty much sums up why we've banned Minecraft from our house. EDIT, To clarify: I fully encourage them to learn to code. We let them use Scratch and write love2d games. I've banned it from our house because we want them to build real things that they can actually use. We want them to learn how to build furniture and tree houses and real circuits. I banned it because we want them to live in the real world. EDIT 2: Don't be shy, downvote me if you disagree. It helps me to know just how far off my perspective on life is from that of the average HN visitor. Which in turns helps me to know whether I should just reading/writing comments.

Angostura 12y ago
Sorry, could you explain why? Because it soaks up parental time?
- VLM 12y ago
  With laser like precision WRT exactly one topic my wife yells at my son when he plays minecraft youtube videos containing non-mom-approved language or highly questionable behavior. Its important to note the vast majority of lets play type videos are mom approved. Almost all of them. But once in awhile one comes up in rotation that's PG-13 or worse rating wrt language or behavior (serial killing in game pigs while making cop killer jokes and then uploading it anyway, wtf is wrong with you, boy?) (and edited to emphasize, the "big name" video guys are virtually all "mom-approved" the worst behavior and language is usually some goofball one off not a semi-pro show host wanna be) Unless kids have dramatically changed in the last decade or two I know he's heard worse on the playground, its not the end of the world. Its better than watching TV, for example.
- sdegutis 12y ago
  No, because it has become an obsession. It's all the ever talked about, all day, non stop, for months. To this day they still play Minecraft imaginations games with each other. I would rather they learn how to build actual things that they can use. I'd love for them to learn how to build a real circuit or a real tree house, whatever. I would rather them live in the real world.

jballanc 12y ago

> - We live in Turkey. Merhaba Bodrum'dan! I'm reminded of a refrain that seems to be going around recently: the computer revolution is just getting started. When people today talk of how computers can empower change, often they're thinking about getting better taxi service. In reality, there are entire cultures that have yet to fully engage in the revolution. With Turkey in particular, I am so excited by the possibilities. Turks have such a natural hacker-mindset, it's just that thus far it's been mostly limited to "real-world" hacking. Imagine what can happen when a population that is naturally curious and creative is given tools to effect great change. At the same time, for this reason I'm wary of Microsoft as the buyer. In many parts of the world, Microsoft successfully monopolized business and personal computing, but even at their highest height they never fully monopolized developer mindshare. Contrastingly, Turkey's developer community was effectively "colonized" by Microsoft such that, if you were a programmer in Turkey it was just assumed that you worked with Microsoft technologies. That is starting to change...and I wonder if that doesn't cause Microsoft some small amount of concern. I think it's not an exaggeration to say that how Microsoft serves as steward of the Minecraft community will be telling as to whether they've changed their ways, and are willing to be participants in a larger community, or whether they remain the Microsoft of old.

eru 12y ago
Microsoft is doing alright by the Haskell community. So not all hope is lost for the Minecrafters.

neves 12y ago

The most impressive thing for me: I was at the playground with my 2 sons and we started to role play pretending we were superheroes. I said something like: "I'm Hulk", and my seven years old son: "I'm Venon Extreme". Venon Extreme is a guy who has a Minecraft channel in You Tube that has millions of views. This is really impressive. Ah, we live in Brazil.

aresant 12y ago

"Minecraft is digital Lego . . . We only wish we had invented it." - Lego's marketing director. (1) I think that's an interesting quote to understand both the generational appeal of Minecraft and why the deal makes sense. Continuing the lego comparison, Lego was recently valued at ~$15b (2) and I think that also demonstrates the potential here. Lego mastered the IP licensing biz (lego star wars, batman), merchandising (theme parks, etc), distribution (market specific sets etc). I'm almost surprised that Disney wasn't the acquirer but I imagine that with a corporate profiteer behind Mojang we'll see significant expansion of the brand. (1) http://www.atbmedia.com/lego-we-wish-wed-invented-minecraft/ http://www.atbmedia.com/lego-we-wish-wed-invented-minecraft/ (2) http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/lego-builds-new-billionaires-as-toymaker-topples-mattel.html?cmpid=yhoo http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/lego-builds-new-bil...

Laremere 12y ago
Lego had the opportunity to buy digital lego ( http://blockland.us/ http://blockland.us/ ) Blockland's creator went to Lego to see if they were interested in his game while he was working on the retail version, but for whatever reason no deal was made and Blockland was released without external branding. This all happened much earlier than Minecraft: Blockland was featured on the Screen Savers in 2005, and had a retail release in 2007, two years before Minecraft development started. I think Minecraft goes beyond digital lego though. There are many little pieces of minecraft's design which came together to make a game better than one would expect. I honestly wonder how many of those choices were intentionally done by Notch, and how many were arbitrary choices which happened to be right.
- sitkack 12y ago
  Minecraft was at the right place at the right time, it had already occurred in nearly identical forms earlier yet failed to "pop". http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer
  - cookiecaper 12y ago
    I think there's a tendency in people to assume that massively successful properties like Minecraft become massively successful because they're special or innovative. While this may play a role, it is rarely the only important factor, and sometimes is not a relevant factor at all. The reality is that Minecraft's explosive popularity is the result of a perfect storm of all kinds of fickle conditions. It doesn't mean that Notch made the "right" arbitrary choices, as some posters in this thread have intimated; it just means that the choices he made didn't preclude the other externalities from converging. I think the two biggest factors in Minecraft's success were a) notch's responsiveness and availability to the community on reddit and twitter and b) Mojang's decision to have the game ported to Xbox. Neither of these have much to do with the specific design decisions in Minecraft itself (many of which were frankly terrible and are still only gradually being reversed).

apetrovic 12y ago

I have two girls, 5 and 8 years old. Minecraft craze started a year ago. Just like you, I bought iPad edition first, and after that I paid for two licenses, so my daughters can play hide and seek inside Minecraft. I was amazed seeing my younger daughter, 4 years old at the time, moving flawlessly in 3D world, hiding from her sister, or building structures. And just like you, I spent enormous amount of time learning about Minecraft mods. BTW, I live in Serbia.

holri 12y ago

I installed my nephew http://minetest.net http://minetest.net because this is free software and therefore better suited for learning to hack. With this deal it is even better suited.

bhc3 12y ago

Another parent here. This summer, we took the kids to Paris. 10 y.o. son is wearing a Minecraft t-shirt on the street. A group of Chinese kids in a tourist group walked by. They saw his shirt, and I understood one word they said: "Minecraft".

mvp 12y ago

Yep. My Son's done that for me. I haven't played games for more than a decade. So I never introduced him to any game. He learned about it all by himself around the age of 7 I think, and then started pestering me to buy. I acquiesced. First on iPad, then Mac, and then the XBox. This game changed my view about games. I don't worry that he is wasting time on it. He seems to learn a lot constantly by playing this game. Everything else he has learned about computers & internet is through Minecraft. He even got me to build a server so we both could play on a private server. I've played once and then stopped. He watches videos on YouTube and learns a lot. Now at 9, he wants to build a YouTube channel that has millions of subscribers. When I told him I have 4 subscribers on my YouTube channel, you gave me a pathetic look :)..

davidgerard 12y ago

My 7yo watches all the YouTube Minecraft stars (particularly StampyLongnose and DanTDM). She wants to try a new mod every day or two, often one requiring a particularly old or new version of Minecraft. I need to teach her how to shuffle mods around herself so I don't have to. This is on Ubuntu. (Oh, and she has a cuddly creeper that goes "ssssss-BANG!" when you squeeze it.)