parent of child on minecrack.:(

CrazyRabbit

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I can't get into the game myself, but my son loves it.
It was all he could talk about for the last year or two.
That said, he has kinda moved on to Terraria and is showing an interest in playing Skyrim, the latter being a proper game with a seriously involving campaign.
He's only 10 but has been playing games since he was 3, my bad
He finished a fair few too, with the likes of the Skylanders games just lasting hours, enjoyed DQIX though.

Ssshh...don't mention Terraria or even Starbound. The OP will never leave the computer and will die from starvation/thirst.

Grimebox

horace456 wrote: »

well i dunno about mine craft yet but i know social media like fb has been a blessing and a curse, certainly cheaper than a therapist. the idea that mine craft is educational is true. my kids seem to know all about it in so little time. and its obviously a great vehicle for information in a format they take in.... i admit it annoys me that they couldn't use the laws of physics of this universe but then it would probably be as tedious as real life if they had. and it seems theres a good bit of overlap. so lava turns into obsidian when it cools quickly which is true!! i never knew that! and the amount they relate to the real world is great.... "thats just like a crafting table" they said when they saw cement turning to stone! I'm really liking it more and more.

If you could somehow get them interested in Kerbal Space Program...

Temptamperu

Im introducing my 5 year old nephew to it at the moment... he is ruining my world but enjoying the crap out of it.

Kirby

horace456 wrote: »

My friend advised me try minecraft as a deterrent for free to play games like galaxy life. Now i'll admit minecraft is awesome. But my six and eight year old are now being assimilated into some ghastly hive mind. They speak of nothing but minecraft they wake up they go to sleep they dream mineccraft. And I like a fool have an xbox lined up for Xmas. And I'm just thinking will I ever see my children again? Has anyone ever come back or is this a serious thing? Should I limit the amount of minecraft to a small time frame or just once a week as a treat? i also think my son who watches "snuffy long nose" videos about playing minecraft is emotionally attached to this man. Any advice appreciated.

If he likes Minecraft, I say let him play it. Play it with him, get involved in it so it's an activity you share instead of an activity you feel you have to police. Just don't allow him to obsess over it and spend every waking hour playing it.

Playing football or reading a book isn't inherently better or worse than playing a computer game......it's just different. It requires different skills, and uses different parts of your body and brain.

The "Games are bad, get him playing sports" advice being thrown around in here is old fashioned and incorrect in my eyes. It's no healthier to have him play football for 12 hours a day, every day than to have him play a game for 12 hours.....and I say that as a football fan and somebody who coaches kids football. I find it puzzling that the practice of kicking your kids out of the house at 10 am and not seeing them again until it gets dark is thought of as good parenting.....and people even hark back to how that was better. Obsessive behaviour is obsessive behaviour even if its a positive activity...not to mention the fact that these parents had no idea what their kids got up to and the idea that they are "outside" makes that okay is ludicrous.

In my opinion if a kid shows an interest in something you should encourage it and allow them to express themselves no matter what the interest is. But you have to remind them that they can't spend all their time doing it. Moderation is the key here, no matter what the past time. Reading is hugely beneficial to a child but it's not going to help them socially if they spend all day doing it.

Eoin247

I love video-games , more than most people even, but these kind of things annoy me. As a young kid a couple of hours a day is more than enough (that includes time obsessing about it while not playing).

1 - People saying ''Minecraft is educational''. Documentaries are educational. Building square houses out of blocks is about as educational as drawing a picture of a square house. People say minecraft is educational without even knowing why.

2 - This has been said by a few people but i'll quote the last person to have said it. ''Playing football or reading a book isn't inherently better or worse than playing a computer game''. Football gives you exercise which by the looks of all these fat kiddies today is exactly what they need. I'm 19, when i was in secondary school there were a surprising number of people who couldn't read effectively. Their spelling was atrocious and they took far longer than other students to do homework or study. Only the hardest workers out of them got decent exam results. The common denominator? They never read books and magazines when they were young. They were brought up in a house where it was okay to watch as much TV and play as much PlayStation as they wanted.


3 - ''Playing with others on minecraft so its sociable''. Not a bad thing, but certainly not a replacement for real social interaction. I wouldn't think that any reasonable person on here would actually suggest that people act the same online as they do in real person interactions.

I'll leave it there to stop my post getting too long. However in conclusion i ask parents out there to use a their common sense and keep in mind that the benefit of minecraft is fun and only fun. There's nothing wrong with playing it a bit, but trying to justify addictions to it by saying it has other benefits is simply fooling yourself and harming your kids.

CiDeRmAn

Whoa there.
Minecraft is "educational" in the same way that Lego is.
It's essentially a creative sandbox that allows the user to both play a game and engage the noggin to build creations that can withstand the travails the game throws at them and also demonstrating a token economy, exchange system, where the player engages in resource management.
It encourages exploration, co-operation and, on another level, acts as a gateway to both landscaping on a grand scale, and the sharing of your work with others as well as a gateway to mod creation, where whole new rulesets and ingame artifacts can be crafted before being published.
So, yes it's educational.

Of course, you're right to say, Everything in moderation, including Minecraft, it hoes without saying really.

Tbh, even without those features it'd still be educational, given it's a form of play which is, in essence, an educational process.

nc19

BloodBath wrote: »

You can build far more advanced things than basic houses in minecraft.

You can build fully functional 8 bit and 16 bit computers inside minecraft that can do basic calculations. You have kids designing their own basic processors inside the game. That's fairly advanced but it shows minecraft is more than just a lego type kids game.

You can learn to do some pretty incredible things with the game tools.

The thought of all that hurts my head.....ill stick to GTA thanks

Ponster

Eoin247 wrote: »

I love video-games.

That reads like "I'm not a racist but..."

There's nothing wrong with playing it a bit, but trying to justify addictions to it by saying it has other benefits is simply fooling yourself and harming your kids.

Who in this thread has been justifying addictions? Minecraft as Ciderman says is much more akin to lego rather than a traditional video game and playing Minecraft online is just like playing lego with friends. I don't know of any other game which has penetrated the classroom to the extent that it has and have had firsthand experience in the USA seeing how the game can bring together troubled/disadvantaged kids.

Jane McGonigal has a great talk on how video games are more than just fun that's well worth watching.


Of course it can never replace real-life social interactions but for some young kids they don't have any social interactions and are unable to form such relationships. Minecraft is a wonderful way for young children to build confidence in the online world which we hope builds their confidence in the real world.

CiDeRmAn

Viewed as an aid to socialisation it is an excellent tool for support teachers to introduce the social rules to people on the autistic spectrum, it contains both a simple, consistent ruleset that provides grounding and security while it challenges as the gamespace is shared with others, necessitating cooperation, I speak as someone who has worked in the field for over 23 years.

Mickeroo

Eoin247 wrote: »

I love video-games , more than most people even, but these kind of things annoy me. As a young kid a couple of hours a day is more than enough (that includes time obsessing about it while not playing).

1 - People saying ''Minecraft is educational''. Documentaries are educational. Building square houses out of blocks is about as educational as drawing a picture of a square house. People say minecraft is educational without even knowing why.

2 - This has been said by a few people but i'll quote the last person to have said it. ''Playing football or reading a book isn't inherently better or worse than playing a computer game''. Football gives you exercise which by the looks of all these fat kiddies today is exactly what they need. I'm 19, when i was in secondary school there were a surprising number of people who couldn't read effectively. Their spelling was atrocious and they took far longer than other students to do homework or study. Only the hardest workers out of them got decent exam results. The common denominator? They never read books and magazines when they were young. They were brought up in a house where it was okay to watch as much TV and play as much PlayStation as they wanted.


3 - ''Playing with others on minecraft so its sociable''. Not a bad thing, but certainly not a replacement for real social interaction. I wouldn't think that any reasonable person on here would actually suggest that people act the same online as they do in real person interactions.

I'll leave it there to stop my post getting too long. However in conclusion i ask parents out there to use a their common sense and keep in mind that the benefit of minecraft is fun and only fun. There's nothing wrong with playing it a bit, but trying to justify addictions to it by saying it has other benefits is simply fooling yourself and harming your kids.

More kids read today than ever before to be fair thanks to smart phones, internet etc....also drawing a square house on a piece of paper is educational. Education does not rely solely on absorbing facts and figures nor does it take place exclusively in schools.

I agree with you about exercise of course but in the right circumstances there's no reason why a child can't be healthy and play lots of minecraft. Like a lot of things in life its all about balance and downplaying the actual benefits of something like minecraft doesn't do anyone any favours imo.

CiDeRmAn

There's certainly a vast amount of "facts" in Eoin247's post.
No stats to back them up and certainly no one in the gaming fora I frequent would suggest that gaming is good for you in anything other than moderation.
It all smacks a bit of typical conservative over-reaction to a new feature of the current day, although as a gamer I'm sure he can appreciate an alternate point of view.
The word "addiction" is quite over-used, but to the Eoins credit he is right, a parent who allows their child play nothing but videogames all the times is being neglectful, but no more so than the parent of yesteryear who allowed the TV to be the house nanny, "Cathode Ray Nipple" as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy once said.
A sentiment that can be transferred to videogames just as easily as to any other pursuit that is obsessed over to the exclusion of all else, including sports.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgOWTM5R2DA

Grimebox

In fairness, the opinion on this forum was always going to be incredibly one sided.

Turtwig

Grimebox wrote: »

If you could somehow get them interested in Kerbal Space Program...

This times 1000!

You'd probably need to play with them the first few sorry several times but once they grasp the "concept" of the game they'll be building projects to mars before you know it.

Corkfeen

Jernal wrote: »

This times 1000!

You'd probably need to play with them the first few sorry several times but once they grasp the "concept" of the game they'll be building projects to mars before you know it.

I'm still struggling with it.

CiDeRmAn

Grimebox wrote: »

In fairness, the opinion on this forum was always going to be incredibly one sided.

No, I think people endevour to be objective and acknowledge their own personal bias and take it out of the process.
Just because it's a gaming forum doesn't make the contributers irresponsible parents.

gctest50

http://fold.it/portal/

http://fold.it/portal/info/about#whygame

Eoin247

There were a lot of replies to my post, so i'm going to just reply to the last two and hopefully reply to the previous ones in the process

Mickeroo wrote: »

More kids read today than ever before to be fair thanks to smart phones, internet etc....also drawing a square house on a piece of paper is educational. Education does not rely solely on absorbing facts and figures nor does it take place exclusively in schools.

I agree with you about exercise of course but in the right circumstances there's no reason why a child can't be healthy and play lots of minecraft. Like a lot of things in life its all about balance and downplaying the actual benefits of something like minecraft doesn't do anyone any favours imo.

I agree that there are benefits in everything one does. You can technically say it's educational in the sense that all experiences are educational. However when people say things like ''minecraft is educatonal'' it gives the impression that it's far more beneficial than it actualy is.

With regards to kids reading more online. Let's be honest here, is the English used on Facebook and in Minecraft in any way proper English? I was playing minecraft on a pvp server on Saturday. If I spoke to real people like people typed on that server, I would become known as the mentally challenged lad who has a tendency to curse every second sentance

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

There's certainly a vast amount of "facts" in Eoin247's post.
No stats to back them up and certainly no one in the gaming fora I frequent would suggest that gaming is good for you in anything other than moderation.
It all smacks a bit of typical conservative over-reaction to a new feature of the current day, although as a gamer I'm sure he can appreciate an alternate point of view.
The word "addiction" is quite over-used, but to the Eoins credit he is right, a parent who allows their child play nothing but videogames all the times is being neglectful, but no more so than the parent of yesteryear who allowed the TV to be the house nanny, "Cathode Ray Nipple" as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy once said.
A sentiment that can be transferred to videogames just as easily as to any other pursuit that is obsessed over to the exclusion of all else, including sports.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgOWTM5R2DA

I was talking about personal experience. Until somebody writes my biography, i'm afraid i can't link facts for that . I'll try not to get too off topic here, but you know as well as i do that on the internet there exists ''facts'' and sources for any argument. There are respected doctors that have written loads both for and against the topic of ''are videogames good for kids?''. With the internet, your own personal experience is the only thing that you can trust.

However it seems that we agree that moderation is the key, so we shouldn't be disagreeing on what i wrote. I suppose it's just what we each define moderation as. What would you consider to be a moderate amount of time daily for a schoolchild?

I said in my original post that a couple of hourse is more than enough. In other words 2 hours a day to the occasional 3 hours. Obviously this could be increase a bit in the summer months and when the kid becomes a teen.

TV is just as potentially bad and i did mention that in my original post. As long as sport/exercise, real life socialising, alternate actvities (like reading), school and schoolwork are given proper time each week, then of course minecraft is being played in moderation.