
Playing Video Games with My Son Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be - ingve
https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/playing-minecraft-with-my-son.html
======
hluska
This article reminds me of playing Minecraft with my stepdaughter. When we got
her a PS4, I have to admit that I had a bit of a fuddy duddy moment. Games
weren't like they were when I was young, blah blah blah, NES, blah blah blah,
the damned princess is in a different castle. And, when I firstlooked at
Minecraft, I couldn't for the life of me, figure out what I was supposed to
do.

Then, my stepdaughter took over and taught me the game. I was amazed by what
an incredible teacher she was! And, I was more amazed by how much I learned
about her playing Minecraft with her. That's still one of my peak experiences
in step-parenting and I hope that's a memory that I will hold onto until the
end of my days.

One particular moment still makes me laugh. As I mentioned, she was an
incredible teacher with an ability to teach through stories and an incredible
amount of patience with me. So, I said, "You know, you should become a
teacher." She gave me a look that can best (and only) be described as her
stinkeye and said, "I don't want to be a teacher. I want to be normal."

~~~
watwut
Nobody knows minecraft intuitively. There are many children's games that you
can figure out easily, but minecraft requires "a lot" lonely experimentation
or reading or someone shows it to you.

~~~
bitexploder
That is at least part of the fun. I bought it when it (Minecraft) when it
first came out. It was FPS Lego as far as I was concerned. At the time, and
still, more or less, it was a game with none of the Psy Ops modern game makers
employ to get people hooked. It was just intrinsically rewarding to make
stuff. My son learned to use a mouse on Minecraft (he is 11 now). Now my kids
and I have a long running world where we have been working on th same castle
and world for years. It is cool seeing kids grow up with this game. Watching
their building skills and ideas grow with thier minds is pretty cool.

So, it isn't intuitive, but my 6 year old can do pretty much everything in the
game now. Mostly her older brother showed her. So, I dunno, maybe it is
lonely, but in the same way building Lego is lonely.

~~~
watwut
I did not mean "lonely" as negative. But people sometimes go "oh I dont get it
instantly I must be too old for it, cant do it and kids get it naturally". And
that is not the case, kids are figuring it out slowly and their play is more
incapable then they think at first. However, they "feel" like they know what
they are doing whole time, so learning is pleasant.

But also, I dont really think Minecraft is like lego. You can play it like
lego, but you dont have to.

~~~
bitexploder
True. Original Minecraft had no story or game. The game was survive. You could
"win" within 30 minutes of your first time learning things. The plot and end
dragon and all were added a lot later.

My kids have never finished the game and pretty much only play creative mode.

I didn't think you meant it negatively. Just an interesting way to describe
it.

~~~
watwut
The beauty of Minecraft is that you do your thing and gameplay emerges - it
does not pushes you in any direction. And you can switch game playing style
whenever you want however you want. You can be explorer, you can learn, you
can build, you can roleplay, you can care about aesthetics or not, you can
care about ecology or not, you can go to caves and catch monsters. Most
importantly, you can mix approaches. And when you get bored by it, you change
gameplay style and game dont care, there is no penalty.

All that while whole game is remarkably low stress and zen-like. In survival,
you will dig for hours for material. And you can also get stress if you want
to and you can put yourself in danger if you want to.

------
bwang29
I definitely feel games like Sims and Simcity changed my perception of
resource safety as a child. I played Sims/Simcity2000~3000/Civs for hundreds
of hours as a kid, and I loved the "realistic" feels and setups of these
games. When I started to play I always had later stage trouble when I'm
overspending on building fancy roads and bridges in SimCity or buying
expensive items up front. I slowly learned the way of setting up a less
impressive base first, and swapping out parts and do re-designs and expansions
as more resources became available.

I later found out all games have a specific pattern you follow to win, many of
these patterns are available in online communities/guides/cheat sections where
I'd spend tons of time to read, try and experiment. Those were probably the
peak happiness and best time I've enjoyed as a little nerdy kid. I never
thought too much a big deal of these experiences but nonetheless I believe
definitely contributed to a base reality of how resource management work, and
how I manage my personal projects, finance, and career choices as I grew up.

I'd be super curious to see research / longitudinal study coming up from the
past 2-3 decades of gaming on kids, and see if conservative gaming styles
leads to conservative financial decisions etc etc.

I'm not a father yet but I thought it would be a really cool idea to
understand my kid through game play like this, but I also don't want the kids
to be limited by my personal value though these interactions - sort of like
the "observer and supporter" role the author played.

Sidenote: I'm still playing the latest Civ6 and still enjoy a lot from the
dynamics in the economy managements with A.I..

~~~
sdfin
Resource management in video games is a skill that I'm sure transfers to real
world resource management. Apart from the simulators you mention strategy
games like age of empires and red alert also teach about it.

Some weeks ago a co-worker told me something similar to what you share, how he
learned about resources while playing SimCity. He also said his younger sister
asked him "If people doesn't have money, why doesn't the government print
money and gives it to people?". He said that playing SimCity would have
prevented his sister from asking such a naive question.

I also would love so see the results of research about these games on kids.
Maybe someday kids will play Sim City and AoE at elementary school or similar
games designed for schools.

~~~
gowld
It's not a naive question. She was on the verge of re-inventing Keynesian
Economics, which ended the Great Depression.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/keynesianeconomics.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/k/keynesianeconomics.asp)

~~~
icelancer
>> Keynesian Economics, which ended the Great Depression

This is a pretty bold claim and not one that should be stated as fact.

~~~
gowld
What are the competing theories? The most common one is "WWII", which is
another way of saying "Keynesian Economics"

~~~
UncleEntity
There's a ton of competing theories that like to point out that previous
depressions lasted a year or two while the Great Depression went on and on
_because_ of all the government interventions that prevented the economy from
being able to recover.

------
proaralyst
This points out a possibility I never thought of: archiving your children's
play! I suppose we already keep art that our children produce but something so
complexly imagined & constructed over hours was previously fairly ephemeral.

I recently had the pleasure of reviving a game world my brother & I had built
three years ago. Wandering around that was a nice trip through nostalgia.
These kids will be able to do that for their ten year old selves, all the way
up.

~~~
diamondo25
I also have visited old minecraft worlds i made with my friends, but I must
say that bitrot is a serious issue. Once the world is corrupt or lost, you
cannot look back at it like you did. This save and restore is what I have
grown up with. I remember the day my Pokemon Silver savegame got erased, due
to a depleting battery, for example.

People should not forget to take pictures and movies and make them physical,
instead of dumping it on the internet. Having a small amount of pictures is
more than enough, that make those events even more special.

I had a lot of gaming memories saved on Xfire. They stopped their service a
couple years ago and all the contents and thus the strong link to memories are
gone. Just like people you have had contact with online, eventually you'll
loose contact and then these pictures can help you not forgetting that time...

Maybe we are making and processing so many events, that we'll get issues
remembering stuff in a couple years?

~~~
bringtheaction
My Pokémon games still hold their saves, about 20 years after I got them. I
turned on my GBC and checked a few months ago and the saves were amazingly
still there then.

I want to dump the save files but I haven’t quite found the right equipment at
the right price. Does anyone know of some electronics that are not too
expensive and that can be used to dump the save games onto a Linux computer?

------
RomanPushkin
I tried to play with my 4 y.o. son to NES classic games. He loved Donkey Kong
County, and some other arcades, but I found games affects his behavior in a
bad way. He was always asking to play more, refusing to go and play outside,
working at home with books, paper, and color pens and water paints. So we're
not playing for 6 months or more. He loved plasticine, and makes some really
fancy and realistic animals. He likes water painting on the paper, and likes
when we read him books. We believe video games is not something we should hook
up our kids for. Avoiding games, and limiting the amount of youtube videos to
30-60 mins helped a lot.

~~~
otabdeveloper2
Video games are a vice, not a hobby.

Giving your child video games is like giving him beer. (I learned this from
bitter experience.)

~~~
wilsonnb
Like most things, video games are a hobby for some and a vice for others. It
has more to do with the person than the activity.

Also, a four year old is probably too young to be drinking beer but I don't
think beer with a low ABV (0.5-2.5%) is particularly bad for older children as
long as they don't drink enough to get drunk. I could be wrong about that
though.

------
cptskippy
My kids and I use to play Terraria together. I would always challenge them by
building things like a castle on the edge of space or a mine car track that
ran the length of the map but hidden either in clouds or deep under ground.

I would leave them rare materials or dyes in chests and see what they would
come up with.

The fun part was that we didn't have to play at the same time, every now and
then I would log in and they'd have left something in my house to let me know
they found my hide out.

We eventually invited some of their friends and a co-worker's kid who was
getting griefed in public servers.

Every so often we'll spend an evening on the couch playing some co-op or
competitive game but we don't spend much time in our Terraria world anymore.

I should check it out and see what's become of it.

~~~
sundvor
Terraria is brilliant. My 7 year old son and I have just discovered it; I must
say after spending quite a lot of time in Minecraft it's a fresh breath of
air.

~~~
skybrian
Why is it better?

~~~
sundvor
I didn't say better, but they are different. It might end up as better though!

I'm loving the 2D aspect which makes it easier to find stuff, and that
pickaxes don't wear out - that sort of thing. Also the number of things to
discover is greater. As an adult, combat mechanics are more interesting.

You get to keep your character between games, so those rare items you find -
you get to keep them.

Additionally, it's super easy to connect to a friend via Steam. On the LAN it
just works every time, no need to manually enter IP address and remember the
port; also I hated having to pay a monthly fee for Realms just to let my son
play with his geographically distant cousin.

Son is 7 and loves a bit of action; probably wouldn't want anyone too much
younger, Minecraft in creative mode is far more suitable for younger kids.

~~~
wccrawford
[https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/a+breath+of+fresh+air](https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/a+breath+of+fresh+air)

That phrase is usually used on something that's positive, after something
that's negative. Notice that most of the examples use the word "boring" for
the former thing they're talking about.

The person that replied to you probably just assumed you were using it the
same way. I don't think I've ever seen anyone use it on 2 things they liked
before.

~~~
sundvor
Fair enough. We've played Minecraft for a long time, so it has indeed become
somewhat boring - familiarity breeds contempt, that sort of thing.

However just because Terraria feels _fresh_ having just discovered it, I'm not
going to say it's automatically better. Only long term play would decide that.
They're quite different games although they share certain elements.

~~~
cptskippy
One of the nice things about newer worlds created with Terraria is the event
system. There are cyclical events around phases of the moon and holidays. And
there are world changing events like defeating Skeletron that unlock harder
modes and access to new materials and crafting abilities.

The full game isn't available all the time and has to be discovered tonit
gives you something to work towards.

------
jsemrau
There should be more collaborative games rather than competitive games. One of
my fondest memories is playing Quake 2 in COOP mode at a LAN Party back in the
90s getting stuck in a mineshaft with the group way past midnight. Extremely
immersive and bonding experience. We still talk about this moment years later.

~~~
FPGAhacker
I definitely wish there were more collaborative games. I like to game with my
wife, and we don’t prefer games where the objective is defeating each other.

Minecraft far and away is the game we play together most of the time. Alas it
has finally gotten old to us.

One Christmas we played eve online. That was a great bit of fun. Bit of a time
sink though.

I wish The Long Dark had coop.

~~~
animal531
Stardew Valley once its multiplayer launches. Magicka for weirdness.

Warhammer Vermintide 2, Left For Dead 1/2 or Borderlands 2 for FPS coop. Dead
Space 3 if you don't mind a few scares. Ark is decent for PvE coop.

Portal 2 for puzzles. Rocket League for sporty action (albeit coop vs other
people). Throw in Factorio for building.

Path of Exile/Diablo 3/Torchlight 2 for ARPG. StarCraft 2 for RTS.

But overall I'm with you, I feel all games can be enhanced with coop.

------
SimonSword91
> In Minecraft, the imaginary worlds my son dreams up are expressed and
> realized in a virtual environment multiple people can occupy and affect
> together. When he tells me the floor is lava, I look down and notice that
> the floor is indeed made of burning lava, fatal on contact. In response, I
> construct a bridge.

I always wondered about my nephews fascination for minecraft. This is probably
one of the main reasons.

------
ggm
A friend makes elaborate Minecraft worlds with his five yo daughter and it
echoes what is here.

But there is another darker Minecraft world he operates with entire subspecies
of Minecraft being chained helplessly in dark towers making lava derived net
worth in a very Faustian "it's just a machine" life. Even their bodies when
done with plummet into trains, to be taken for subsequent processing. We do
talk about this. Will he introduce his daughter to mechanized entity-farming?
How will he vocalise the stages? "This is where the bodies are taken to be
turned into chicken food for the egg factory..."

------
roel_v
What age is ok to start Minecraft with? Can you do couch coop with it? I have
a steam link and some couch coop games but it doesn't work very well for my 5
and 7 year olds. (Steam link and steam conrollers are really finicky to set
up, too). Should I just get a ps4 or xbox?

And how does minecraft compare to Lego Worlds? I've played Terraria in the
past, but that seems too hard for that age - at least for kids who aren't
really intrinsically interested in video games like mine. Maybe one day...

(Could probably google this, but I imagine there must be ppl here who have
actual experience)

~~~
scott_karana
You can disable monsters altogether, if that's the concern. :)

------
PeterStuer
I remember my kids playing Minecraft at 6, the exploring and the building like
the article describes. But by 8 they had discovered the 'other side' of
Minecraft, the servers that turn the world into a low-res version of a PvP
game, and most of the 'building' went out the window. My greatest times
playing together with my young sons was had not in Minecraft, but in Age of
Empires II (vastly preferred by all over I or III). Usually we'd play us
against the AI, and they got pretty good at it so we'd sometimes play against
each other as well. I think the RTS genre holds more potential for a common
ground between parents and kids than either the 'virtual lego' or the FPS
categories.

------
IIAOPSW
>He loves extreme symmetry, varying bands of bright colors, and elaborate
lighting comprised of dozens of fixtures.

Um I'm pretty sure if you don't go overboard on the lighting monsters spawn.
This is more of an in-game thing than a preference thing.

~~~
reificator
That's my biggest problem with Minecraft as a game, I think there are a lot
more options to handle this that don't force aesthetic choices on the player.

~~~
Filligree
Stick a Magnum Torch somewhere, or just turn off monsters entirely.

~~~
reificator
1\. Console sales outnumber PC sales, or at least they did a few years ago.
Meaning no mods for most players.

2\. I didn't specify because the discussion was on the number of torches
placed, but the problem is not just the visual piece. It's the requirement
that the player understand an invisible mechanic. Magnum torches don't fix the
underlying issue.

3\. Turning off mobs is not a reasonable solution.

I'm not talking about using the current system to prevent spawning, I'm
talking about making a better spawning system. There are a ton of ways the
game could handle spawning rules and making an area safe:

* Could track what blocks were naturally generated vs. placed by hand, and spawn enemies away from player made structures.

* Could refuse to spawn mobs around any blocks that don't spawn naturally.

* Could track visited areas in a separate file per chunk, creating a sort of lightmap for what the player can see, and only spawn enemies in unvisited areas.

* Could create more detailed rules about where mobs spawn, such as having zombies rise out of the dirt or endermen falling from the sky.

* Could decouple the lighting system from the radius-based safety. For example: enchanted items that work sort of like a magnum torch. Or (a closed loop of) crafted fences/walls could prevent spawning. (3D presents issues of course)

* Could use a game-of-life style system to track migrations/populations of friendly and hostile mobs on a per-chunk basis.

* Could mix and match from the above.

And that's just from less than five minutes of brainstorming.

------
soyiuz
I grew up playing computer games with my father. He was terrible at the actual
button pressing so I would drive and he would be responsible for the logistics
(and often for removing the copyright cruft, as these games were pirated in
USSR). It was kind of like buddy programming. I don't think we would bond as
much if we played on separate computers.

------
skrebbel
I tried Minecraft for the first time in my life a few weeks ago. Together with
my 5 year old son. He loved it, and I liked it too, but we really didn't get
very far - the moment night fell, we got brutally slaughtered by zombies or
whatever. Respawning only made things worse, because later nights seemed to
bring stronger attackers.

I played some Quake back in the day, it's not like 3d games are totally new to
me. Still, I felt completely incompetent. Does anyone know what someone should
do to get past these first few days? I keep reading articles like these on the
internet about how kids build fantastic structures, but how do you do that if
half the game is basically about being hunted down by mindless killers?

I feel like there's some key aspect I don't understand. Any tips?

~~~
modeless
Spend night underground, mining. There won't be any enemies as long as you put
up enough torches and don't explore natural caves.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Hmm, that's not true. Torches stop mobs from spawning right there, they don't
stop them approaching. Also mining enough wood and coal to make lots of
torches isn't that simple when you've not played before.

Usually it's easier to mine a couple of blocks of wood, kill 3 same-coloured
sheep, make a bed. Then just build a prison of earth around you, including a
roof, to stop mobs (ie monsters) getting in. If you can't make the bed, just
entomb yourself and wait for morning!

------
nemothekid
> _Once, a friend yelled at me for having breathed too audibly while he played
> a hard level of Batman. Since it was his Nintendo, he decided I would from
> then on hold my breath during his turns, lest I corrupt his delicate focus._

This is so incredibly nostalgic.

------
tgb
Oddly, my favorite memories of playing games with my parents were of the Myst
series. We huddled around our computer, took turns "driving" and taking notes
and managing the CD changes (in Riven at least) and just generating ideas to
try. It was exhilarating and great bonding time. Like exploring a new world
together and piecing together mysteries.

~~~
Grangar
Yes! Helping my dad with point and click games is a very fond memory of mine.
Especially Rama (game based on the books by Arthur C. Clarke)

I should try getting it to run again sometime.

------
joering2
Anyone here spent their childhood playing Transport Tycoon 2 ?? I would soent
ages reinwenting and redesigning my whole network as better engines become
available, until I had MagLev networks running everwhere in loops (one way so
that multiple tracks where one after another). Golden times never to come back
again ;(

~~~
oneweekwonder
Did a ctrl+f to find someone who mention ttd.

Transport Tycoon Deluxe, was the first game I did a all-nighter at 11 years
old; parents was not happy!

But it was the first game the whole family played; and my dad liked it because
he believed it thought us how to interact with windows ui's... little did he
know later in live I will fall in-love with tmux(screen alternative) and groom
a unix beard.

For anyone interested, there a open source version[0], true to the original.

[0]: [https://www.openttd.org/en/](https://www.openttd.org/en/)

------
ctoestreich
On the Switch playing Mario Kart 8 with a 5 and 3 year old is everything I
wanted. It can both be cooperative and competitive. We have also ventured coop
through Mario Odyssey. I think Minecraft is fun, but you definitely have whole
bunch of games you should explore with the kids.

~~~
tootie
Mario Kart is now banned in my house. My youngest never wins and he never
takes it well. Mario Odyssey is everyone's jam. They kinda like Minecraft on
and off.

~~~
itronitron
on the wall in our living room, about 2 feet up from the floor an indentation
was made by a Mario Kart steering wheel that was hurled across the room with
great passion

------
senectus1
I found playing Minecraft with my 9yr old son a painful experience.. all he
wants to do is get into creating mode and make stuff then grief it. All I
wanted to do was explore and battle against the odds with what I could make of
it.

It was/is a disappointing experience.

~~~
bjornlouser
I have experienced this with my kid of similar age. I think the survival mode
is a bit scary even if they won't admit it.

------
m3kw9
I’ve play so many games and had every system that came out up to ps3, Xbox 360
from NES. I still don’t know how to properly play Minecraft. Is one of those
game I feel sorry for myself for still now knowing how to play lol!

~~~
m3kw9
Every time I start a new Minecraft game, I would start throwing random bricks
and beating up chcickens and saying to myself, that’s it?

~~~
kuzimoto
I think the open-endedness of Minecraft isn't for everyone. When I started I
just enjoyed exploring and trying to make fun little houses/buildings/etc.
Every world gave way to a new landscapes and designs. The cave systems in
particular were a lot of fun.

Then when redstone came out you had the ability to create some seriously cool
contraptions (though I was never particularly good at that).

Playing with friends is much more fun, and there are a lot of cool adventure
maps around if you're into those.

I guess playing on PC has a lot more perks when it comes to custom worlds and
mods. Certain Modpacks introduced oil, gass, and engines and all kind of cool
stuff.

------
blueprint
His daughter will probably end up wanting to play Mortal Kombat and Overwatch.

------
SubiculumCode
Playing with my son has gone from me beating him and feeling bad, to him
beating me and feeling bad. Damn those teenage reflexes.

~~~
reificator
That only happened because you were willing to beat him instead of going easy.
You did good.

------
sillysaurus3
_Touring the worlds that my son has settled over the last couple of years, I
find a lot of the imagery one might expect from a kid his age. Throughout are
standard fantasies like living in a treehouse or on a boat. The dominant
themes vary as I pass through time: trains in his earliest worlds, then
robots, a long streak of pyramids. Pirate ships, particularly half-sunken ones
with treasure chests, remain a constant._

If only all kids were so innocent. Maybe he's just young. It'd be mildly
amusing to read this from the perspective of a parent horrified that their son
developed into one of those raging lunatics that occasionally haunt Dota 2.

When I was about 14 or so, I used to play this oldschool game called
Underlight. It was a roleplaying game unlike any other, before or since:
You're _forced_ to play a character. You're not allowed to talk about real
life or even admit that real life exists at all.

It was so cool, mostly because this was the world of adults. This was also
before the era of voice chat, so they had no clue I was 14.

It was also around that time that I was discovering myself, and it usually
took the form of various relationships with various women. These relationships
could feel quite real, though it was solely a text-based medium. And "sex" was
obviously involved, or as close to it as you can get. (On the forums it was
called "Quality Roleplaying," or QRP, hah.)

That was a very small component of the game, but it was there. The point was
that it emulated real life in a few ways. There were politics. There were 8
"houses" (basically clans), with various leaders. I even participated in a
murder once, an extremely rare event in any game. It was true murder, in a
sense, because you're not allowed to log in to your character after that, and
only a select few people ever had the ability. It cost 10 points of health
permanently. It was basically the world of Harry Potter, and I was in
Slytherin. So we had certain abilities that no one knew existed, one of which
was the ability to end other characters. As far as I know, this ability was
used only three times in the history of the game, so it was quite lucky to see
it firsthand.

My dad once came down and sat behind me, perhaps out of curiosity.
Unfortunately this was _right in the middle_ of one of the QRP sessions. I
spent about 20 minutes doing nothing but staring at the screen and frantically
clearing the text whenever she said anything. He never understood what was
going on. Eventually he got bored and left, and I was able to pick up right
where we left off. Quite hilarious in retrospect. He never bothered to try to
understand what I spent so much time doing, and I certainly never offered any
info.

Video games are an increasingly important component of childrens' habits, and
we shouldn't be quick to dismiss or trivialize their positive effects. I
wasn't so good at writing until a few years of being forced to be.

~~~
gqg
Are you aware of any currently active multiplayer games which require that
level of commitment to character?

~~~
DiThi
A long time ago I played [http://www.sindome.org](http://www.sindome.org) but
my English was not very good back then. Out of character talking was allowed
but with a particular marking (I think it was double parentheses). I guess you
can filter OOC talk.

~~~
hluska
Wow, that's a blast from the past. Seriously, thanks so much for posting that
link - I've been dying to get into some hardcore roleplaying and it's nice to
know that Sindome is alive and well.

------
ekianjo
> But those games are about stretching and challenging him to fit the mold of
> the game’s demands. When we play Minecraft together, the direction of his
> development, and thus our relationship, is reversed: He converts the world
> into expressions of his own fantasies and dreams. And by letting me enter
> and explore those dream worlds with him, I come to understand him in a way
> that the games from my childhood do not.

Is this a Minecraft PR Piece? Because the games of my childhood were not just
action games of the NES. Adventures games made you think and be creative (even
more so the text games!) - RTS made you build bases from scratch and react to
impending waves of enemies until you finally could crush them. Flight
simulators were all about "open world" since you could have missions and the
like but let's face it, it was more fun to just fly around and test your plane
where you went. Games like 4D driving were also Minecrafty-like since you were
encouraged to build your tracks from scratch.

No, really, I don't feel like I missed anything in my childhood by not having
Minecraft. If anything, it's sad that Minecraft is so popular that it eclipses
everything else for most kids.

~~~
pasabagi
I played a lot of red alert as a kid, and flight simulators, but honestly,
calling the first 'creative', and the second 'open world' is ridiculous. They
were nice games - but if you play them today, you'll see how far games have
come.

You can literally build a computer in Minecraft. I don't like the game, don't
like that the developer ripped off the idea, and find the art obnoxious - but
you have to admit, it's basically dwarf fortress for kids. That's an order of
magnitude more creative than anything we had twenty years ago.

~~~
reificator
> _don 't like that the developer ripped off the idea_

Minecraft and Infiniminer are two very different games, similar in superficial
visuals and technological implementation but completely different in terms of
gameplay.

Besides, if you enjoy a game and then development of that game stops, what's
wrong with making your own?

~~~
pasabagi
I guess I think it's a bit of a tragedy that the most successful game since
Doom was a copycat.

It's also a shame that really creative game-makers, like ToadyOne or Zach,
tend to not do that well - while Notch, who basically copied an entire game,
presumably having even read the source code, is now made out of money.

I've no idea about the exact mechanics of the copying - whether he just copied
the idea, or copied the implementation from the source, or indeed used parts
of the source in his game - but I think these are largely small differences.
The real problem I have is it seems like this is basically how our society
works - somebody thinks of something cool, then somebody else gets rich /
famous / tenure off it, while the person who did most of the work is lucky to
get a footnote.

~~~
gowld
Isn't infiniminer just a computerized copy of Lego.

As the old saying goes, "If you could have invented Facebook, you would have
invented Facebook". Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything.

~~~
pasabagi
I generally agree. To be honest, I wasn't so much making a general moral
judgement about copying. Hamlet was a copy. Bach was a music kleptomaniac.
Execution is way more important. I just find minecraft a particularly
uncreative copy, and personally like zachatronics - so I 'don't like that he
ripped it off'. Which he did. I don't think this dislike could or should
extend to other copied pieces of work, games or otherwise.

~~~
reificator
I like Zachtronics, but I really, really don't get how you view Minecraft as a
ripoff of Infiniminer.

Infiniminer is a competitive class-based game in a constrained arena. The goal
is to get a higher score than your opponents.

Minecraft is a survival game in an infinite world. The goal is to build a base
and progress through a tech tree, or to build things for fun.

Ace of Spades is closer to being a ripoff of Infiniminer, though with more of
a focus on combat. Minecraft is a game that has a similar (but more polished)
aesthetic but with completely different rules.

Star Wars is not a ripoff of Star Trek just because they're both set in space.
They're fundamentally different at every level.

~~~
pasabagi
Well, the explanation is probably that I've been taken in by a meme. I should
have added a disclaimer that I've not actually played infiniminer a good deal
earlier in the thread, and my feeling that Minecraft was derivative was almost
entirely based on its timing, visual similarity, and my understanding that the
basic mechanic (digging through voxel based terrain) was the same.

An additional factor that made me extra-specially susceptible to this meme is
that when I played minecraft, I immediately thought it was essentially a
dumbed-down version of dwarf fortress with better graphics. What I saw at the
time as the basic innovation - which I think is still what makes dwarf
fortress exceptional, is a game that uses a tiling or cubic grid to allow for
real creative play, with an attendant focus on mining, survival, and craft.

I don't think Star Wars is a rip-off of star trek, but it absolutely is and
was always intended as a derivative work. All the ideas and content was
developed in earlier sci-fi. Star Wars was an interesting contribution in
terms of execution - and that's exactly why I like it. It had genuinely new
ideas about set design and special effects. Minecraft, on the other hand, has
no new ideas I can think of.

I still think it's a good game - and I'm very happy that when my kid hits the
age where they wanna play games, I can point them to Minecraft and be pretty
certain they're not going to be loading naked kidnapped people into a sausage
factory (I played GTA2 when I was a kid), or squashing people with tanks, or
irradiating them until they turn into mush. I mean, I guess they'll do those
things at some point to, but it's nice that there's an actual honest-to-
goodness kids game out there that doesn't suck.

