Week of Minecraft: My Son’s Bottomless Toy Box

While the guys here dove headfirst into Minecraft this week, my nine-year-old contracted the crafting fever a few months back and I thought I’d share a few of the side effects I have noticed around the house.

After a long day of refining his reading, writing and arithmetic skills my son’s favorite form of relaxation is digging though mounds of dirt and rock avoiding exploding creepers, bow-wielding skeletons and brain-hungry zombies. While this in itself isn’t so different from what thousands of others around the world are doing; what I found interesting when I looked at his creation was that he didn’t have one world that he painstakingly tended to, he had dozens of worlds.

He plays with Minecraft the same way kids play with Legos. He plays in the worlds for a few hours or days and then moves on to a new undiscovered land and build a new castle, cave or tree house.

Watching him play in his world reminded me what truly makes Minecraft amazing. While many of today’s games attempt to give players handcrafted, cinematic experiences with Hollywood voice actors, motion capture suits and budgets that rival motion picture blockbusters, the team at Mojang have provided players with a place to mold their canvases into anything they can imagine.

 

My son has even started bringing my six-year-old daughter into the mix as well. She sits by his side and plays the role of site foreman and helps him come up with design ideas and keeps him focused on the task at hand. In doing so she prevents him from exploring every random cave he passes.

 

While video walkthroughs of my son’s creations will probably never go viral like a full scale recreation of the Starship Enterprise, each one of his worlds has a special meaning to him.
His love for the game has had an impact on his life outside of playing the game as well, his new screen name, Crafty Digger, on Xbox was inspired by the game. His favorite TV series is X’s Adventures in Minecraft; incidentally, it is also a great place to learn some of the games basics before you start playing.

His new fondness of blocky worlds has also caused him to dust of his box of Legos and play with them instead of his Xbox when the family computer is in use. Over the past few months I’ve been inundated with ever evolving space station and fighter jet designs.

While he’ll probably be at a disadvantage in the coming years when he starts playing first person shooters with his friends who are already honing their leet skills; maybe the spark started by Minecraft will lead him create amazing structures in the real world. Also, I’ve yet to step barefooted on a single Minecraft block left laying around the house.