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My son is 6 and many of the kids he interacts with at school and daycare play Minecraft. So just the last week or so, we picked up Minecraft for the iPad and f

My son is 6 and many of the kids he interacts with at school and daycare play Minecraft. So just the last week or so, we picked up Minecraft for the iPad and for the PC. I had always been vaguely interested in playing it but never actually pulled the trigger. So my impression after a week is that it is weirdly fun and addictive. I've now put more hours into Minecraft than anyone else in the house. I got my wife playing it and she's still experimenting around. My son likes to play creative and just kind of fool around. I think he's a bit too young yet to really get into it. But he does love watching me play and we discuss everything together. It's probably the most engaged he's been with me on the computer. But I have stayed up way too late playing it...

MichaelGG 11y ago
I played it on PC years back (and when I thought the game making $30M was an insane amount of success). But shitty graphics support prevented me from running it on my laptops and I gave up. Yet I can still remember the large things I built, the houses and bridges and staying up all night. Now my girls are 7 & 8, and for the last year they've been building these huge things in creative. They're in love with Stampy (on YouTube... Annoying voice but he shows some neat tricks). This week they took vacations, and I agreed to play survival with them. (I must admit, it does scare me just a bit; the rush to setup before nightfall and the sound that something is nearby.) Well... Every night we've stayed up until 1am or so (kids are lightweights) playing Minecraft. Coordinating expeditions, streamlining resource usage, building sky palaces. It's a blast and my one daughter told my wife how much she enjoyed it and was so happy I did this. Now it's probably because I'm a terrible father and don't spend enough time with them, but they really enjoy this time. And they tell stories, laughing, about how the time a creeper blew me up, or when they accidentally attacked something or whatever. It's some serious "together" time. (And I can't imagine am easier way of being a decent parent.) I'm gonna install it on their laptops (I was lazy and used 360) and I'm hoping there's servers aimed for littler kids. Just because teenage boys seem to be real dicks online. (It's not language, we swear a fair amount while playing, I'd just like to increase the chance of them making real friends vs endless griefers.) There's gotta be other parents like me that'd be willing to run a private, verified identity, server, eh?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > There's gotta be other parents like me that'd be willing to run a private, verified identity, server, eh? I'm sure there are. By the way, isn't this basically how football clubs, etc. get formed? :).
- GotenXiao 11y ago
  Mojang actually have a service that provides an invite-only hosted server called Minecraft Realms[1] - it's subscription-based, currently priced (according to their website) at £8/mo. And, quoting: "Only the host of a Realms server needs to pay a subscription fee." [1] https://minecraft.net/realms https://minecraft.net/realms

MichaelGG 11y ago

I played it on PC years back (and when I thought the game making $30M was an insane amount of success). But shitty graphics support prevented me from running it on my laptops and I gave up. Yet I can still remember the large things I built, the houses and bridges and staying up all night. Now my girls are 7 & 8, and for the last year they've been building these huge things in creative. They're in love with Stampy (on YouTube... Annoying voice but he shows some neat tricks). This week they took vacations, and I agreed to play survival with them. (I must admit, it does scare me just a bit; the rush to setup before nightfall and the sound that something is nearby.) Well... Every night we've stayed up until 1am or so (kids are lightweights) playing Minecraft. Coordinating expeditions, streamlining resource usage, building sky palaces. It's a blast and my one daughter told my wife how much she enjoyed it and was so happy I did this. Now it's probably because I'm a terrible father and don't spend enough time with them, but they really enjoy this time. And they tell stories, laughing, about how the time a creeper blew me up, or when they accidentally attacked something or whatever. It's some serious "together" time. (And I can't imagine am easier way of being a decent parent.) I'm gonna install it on their laptops (I was lazy and used 360) and I'm hoping there's servers aimed for littler kids. Just because teenage boys seem to be real dicks online. (It's not language, we swear a fair amount while playing, I'd just like to increase the chance of them making real friends vs endless griefers.) There's gotta be other parents like me that'd be willing to run a private, verified identity, server, eh?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> There's gotta be other parents like me that'd be willing to run a private, verified identity, server, eh? I'm sure there are. By the way, isn't this basically how football clubs, etc. get formed? :).
GotenXiao 11y ago
Mojang actually have a service that provides an invite-only hosted server called Minecraft Realms[1] - it's subscription-based, currently priced (according to their website) at £8/mo. And, quoting: "Only the host of a Realms server needs to pay a subscription fee." [1] https://minecraft.net/realms https://minecraft.net/realms