While parents - my sister included - might worry that all these pixels and the occasional zombie might be bad for children, a lot of experts say they shouldn’t fret.Įarlier this year, for example, a school in Stockholm made Minecraft compulsory for 13-year-old students. (Eiffel Tower included) or an ancient Mayan civilization. There are thousands of mods, or modifications, for the game, that allow people to play in prebuilt worlds, like a replica of Paris
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Today, the game runs on various devices, includingĭesktop computers, Google Android smartphones, Apple iOS and the Microsoft Xbox. The game was first demonstrated by Markus Persson, a Swedish video game programmer and designer known as Notch, in 2009 and released to the public in November 2011. Minecraft is about building, exploration, creativity and even collaboration.
Sure, you can kill a few zombies while playing in the game’s “survival mode.” But in its “creative mode,” Instead, like the name suggests, the goal of the game is to craft, or build, structures in these 16-bit worlds, and figuring things out on your
Unlike other video games, there are few if any instructions in Minecraft. The graphics look blocky, like giant, digital Lego pieces. Instead, it’s built in 16-bit, a computer term that means The game looks a bit crude because it doesn’t have realistic graphics.
And my sister, whom you’ve probably guessed is the person doing all that yelling, is a typical parent of a typical Minecraft-playing child: she’s worried it might be rotting his brain.įor those who have never played Minecraft, it’s relatively simple. Actually, obsessed might be an understated way to explain a child’s idée fixe with the Like millions of other children his age, Luca is obsessed with the video game Minecraft. “Luca! Get off Minecraft! Luca, are you on Minecraft again? Luca! Enough with the Minecraft!” If you were to walk into my sister’s house in Los Angeles, you’d hear a bit of yelling from time to time.