
The Minecraft Generation - tysone
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-minecraft-generation.html
======
joezydeco
These days I'm a bit more intrigued by Roblox. My 11 year-old son and his
friends have completely abandoned Minecraft for it.

Roblox is designed for MMO play from the start, but worlds (or whatever
they're called) are completely open to modification with their free editor.
Then you can script things in Lua. Lua!

The other night my son was antsy at the dinner table. So I asked him why the
rush. He said he "had a flight to catch". Turns out he's joined a group that
operates an "airplane" that has scheduled flights in and out of an airport
that someone has created. He _interviewed_ to become the first officer on the
flight.

It's messier than Minecraft, but the players seem to understand the potential.
They're hiring, actually. (no I don't work for them). The stats on this page
are interesting too:

[http://corp.roblox.com/careers](http://corp.roblox.com/careers)

~~~
zanny
The idea of a corporate for-profit proprietary video game being the
centerpiece of a generation's learning is horrifying and dystopian to me.

It is the same problem the last generation had, in large part, with the public
schooling Microsoft monoculture. Kids grew up on Windows 95 and Office and are
now indoctrinated into Microsoft tooling, probably for life, as loyal
customers. A very valuable investment on Microsoft's part to capture the
computer knowledge of a large portion of a generation.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "It is the same problem the last generation had, in large part, with the
public schooling Microsoft monoculture. Kids grew up on Windows 95 and Office
and are now indoctrinated into Microsoft tooling, probably for life, as loyal
customers. A very valuable investment on Microsoft's part to capture the
computer knowledge of a large portion of a generation."

I don't think this is as big of an issue as you think. I would be part of that
generation. Almost everyone I know (and I mean regular people, I don't have
many tech nerd friends) has switched to OS X in work and personal life. A few
are on Chromebooks too. Most use a mixture of MS Office (when required for
work/college) and Google Docs. So although I agree that there was an MS
monoculture when growing up through the 90's/00's I disagree that has led to
lifelong loyal custom.

~~~
sjm-lbm
As an alternative point of view, I've always heard that HP calculators were
killed by TI giving free calculators to schools - which lead to an entire
generation that had no desire to learn RPN, even if it has some serious
advantages in a lot of areas.

The counterexamples you provide (OSX and Chromebooks) follow basically the
same UI paradigms as the Windows machines they replaced (even if some of those
might have been copied from earlier Macs). There still may be less overall
diversity in the computers we use, even if there are now a number if different
logos on the box.

~~~
jcrawfordor
I don't think HP's RPN calculators were ever in competition with TI. The RPN
calculators like the 12C are marketed to finance professionals, and TI has
nothing like them. The HP graphing calculators like the 50g are infix
(although there is a pretty good RPN app available).

Edit: I do see that HP made graphing calculators with native RPN in the late
'80s, so perhaps they were pushing these for academic markets, although today
they seem to be the provence of surveyors.

Random aside: I first learned RPN from my father, a budget analyst, and have
used it ever since. RealCalc is an Android calculator app with an excellent
RPN mode, if you're curious.

~~~
DigitalJack
The 50g is infix? When did HP switch away from RPN? Oh, it's just an option
now. I've had my 48g since college in the late 90s, and now use a 48g emulator
on my phone.

~~~
apricot
HP hasn't been making calculators for years. They buy calculators from some
Taiwanese maker and put their logo on them.

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markbnj
Great article, and I loved the mooshroom in a pen with pressure plates hack.
That is indeed very creative thinking. But this ...

>> “My art teacher always says, ‘No games are creative, except for the people
who create them.’ But she said, ‘The only exception that I have for that is
Minecraft.’ ”

I guess his art teacher didn't play many computer games. If she was familiar
only with board and party games then perhaps this comment would make sense,
but "builders" have been a part of computer gaming for a long time, as any
obsessed fan of Railroad Tycoon or Civilization can attest to. In Fallout 4, a
relatively new title, you can build entire towns.

~~~
joemi
To be fair, that's quoting an 11 year old quoting his art teacher.

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david927
Last year my daughter, then nine, discovered Minecraft and fell in love with
it. The wonderful and surprising result was that it seemed to make her fall in
love with problem-solving and architecture in general. Suddenly programming
wasn't boring, it was empowering.

I was skeptical at first; now we have it on every device in our house and we
have a family server that we share with my sister and dad.

~~~
markdown
My 10 year old spends _all_ of his free time on the cubeville server. It's
incredible the things they've built there:
[http://www.cubeville.org/map/](http://www.cubeville.org/map/)

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danielvf
This is a good article.

I couldn't help but laugh though: "telnet, a command-­line tool often used by
professionals to manage servers."

~~~
CaptSpify
Sadly telnet is still in use in some places. As of ~4 years ago, I was using
it on medical devices!

~~~
nfd
That's horrifying.

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vvanders
It really does feel like Minecraft is the Doom/Quake/Half-Life of this
generation.

I'd almost thought that modding had disappeared due to the complexity involved
in AAA games but nice to see it alive and well in Minecraft.

~~~
noobie
The Minecraft modding scene is amazing! The Japanese have been doing wonders.
You'd be amazed not only by the content but also by the visual effects of some
of the mods.

Some examples (Not Japanese):

ComputerCraft: adds programmable computers in Lua. With in game applications;
programmable robots called turtles.

Botania and Thaumcraft are two magical mods with stunning visuals.

Buildcraft and AE2 are logistics-oriented mods.

All in all, vanilla Minecraft is definitely unplayable once you try it with
mods.

Edit: Probably worth mentioning that Mojang hired the guy who created the
modding API. (See SquareWheel's comment below for correction/details)

Edit: Just finished reading the article (I check the comments first). They
mentioned the Redstone logic. Probably worth mentioning as well that a
16-year-old built a scientific calculator using Redstone.
[https://youtu.be/wgJfVRhotlQ](https://youtu.be/wgJfVRhotlQ)

~~~
SquareWheel
Just a quick correction. Mojang hasn't hired the guy that created Forge. They
hired Dinnerbone and grum, two guys from Bukkit (a server plugin API). They
also hired developers from MCP (Searge and Professor Mobius), which enables
Forge to do what it does.

Forge's early contributors have mostly moved on from the modding scene, but
the current maintainers are cpw and LexManos. They've worked with Mojang on a
few issues, such as the block model format, but haven't been hired by them.

Additionally, I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but the mods you
mentioned aren't by Japanese developers. There is a significant modding scene
in Japan, but there's little overlap with the more common mods such as you
listed above. Some notable mods from that community are StarMiner[1],
RealTrainMod[2], and Helicopter Mod[3].

[1]
[http://forum.minecraftuser.jp/viewtopic.php?t=17975](http://forum.minecraftuser.jp/viewtopic.php?t=17975)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0yAsWJZxkLFrogH1Rfa8EA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0yAsWJZxkLFrogH1Rfa8EA/videos)

[3]
[http://forum.minecraftuser.jp/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14837](http://forum.minecraftuser.jp/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14837)

~~~
noobie
By "modding API" in my first edit I was actually referring to MCP. I couldn't
think of a better description.

The mods I mentioned aren't indeed by Japanese developers but I can now see
how my wording is wrong. I meant to say that the Japanese modding community is
also active and doing wonders. Thank you.

------
chezhead
I'm a bit younger than many of you (talking about your grandchildren and sons
playing this game!). I'm 20, and played a lot of Roblox and then Minecraft
before they were this popular. I even interviewed Notch on a cute little
podcast called "MineCast" I made back then.

Administrating a medieval-themed role-playing server back then taught me a lot
about server administration and general diplomacy (handling bans and choosing
admins), chatting on the MinecraftForums and its IRC showed me how to function
well in online communities, and now children are experiencing this all over
again.

I'm a lot older than the majority of fans, but it's a great touching stone
when chatting with younger cousins. My haircutter's son was playing Roblox on
a computer a few feet away from me last time I got my hair cut there, and she
went on and on about how much time he spent on that game. It really brought me
back to those days.

It's going to be fun watching these little nerdlings growing up with such a
great toy. Minecraft's popularity goes to show that we don't need to worry
about a lack of modding-friendly games (Doom/Quake/Garry's Mod), the kids will
find them :)

~~~
Joof
I'm 25 and love minecraft. Knew notch from IRC before he got famous which was
a pretty weird 'this random guy I met is rich and famous now'.

I was a big dwarf fortress fan before minecraft came out. That's probably
where my obsessions really are :p.

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wielebny
If you'll boy or girl is interested in Minecraft, and you want to teach them
programming, then I strongly suggest ScriptCraft - a Minecraft server mod that
allows scripting in JavaScript.

[https://github.com/walterhiggins/ScriptCraft/blob/master/doc...](https://github.com/walterhiggins/ScriptCraft/blob/master/docs/YoungPersonsGuideToProgrammingMinecraft.md)

~~~
voltagex_
Interesting. Any idea how the interop works? I couldn't see a Javascript
engine in there (Rhino?). I wrote some integration based on web services for
Forge but I've never been able to muster the motivation to finish it.

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Aelinsaar
I like the expectation Minecraft sets up in players, that the world is going
to respond to them in some kind of meaningful way. I hope that expectation
drives broader development over time.

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e0m
It's amazing what you can do with redstone these days. YouTube effectively
turned into the GitHub of redstone. I can't imagine how much more powerful
this could be if you could "fork", "clone", and "pull request" red stone
designs and compose them as easily. Most people rebuild each and every single
bit from scratch.

~~~
kraftman
Can they not just import the schematics with WorldEdit?

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Kenji
I love minecraft. It is actually through redstone circuitry in minecraft that
I understood many things of digital design, for example I discovered the
contamination and propagation delay all by myself while playing. When the
professor taught us those things, I instantly understood he meant this. I had
trouble with my redstone circuits when I built a combination lock because,
while the circuit was settling to a stable state, the door would open and
close erratically. I then had to build something like a timer that isolated
the door from the circuit until it settled to a stable state.

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bsharitt
I have two kids, a son 5 and a daughter 8 who spend a lot lot of their free
time on Minecraft(pocket edition on Kindle Fires). I'm kind of amazed at the
kind of stuff they come up with. My daughter mostly uses for "artwork"
building sculptures and statues and things like that, basically an extension
of the drawing she does when she's not on her Kindle. That was basically my
expectation when I got Minecraft for them as I was familiar with the "virtual
lego" aspect of it, but my son has really surprised me. He uses pressure
plates, switches, dynamite, red stone, etc to build all these little
machines(my daughter does too, but not to the same extent). Looking closely at
what he builds I didn't expect my 5 year old to have the kind of grasp on
programming-like logic.

I had originally set up a Raspberry Pi to hopefully teach him some beginning
programming(my daughter has a Chromebook with regular Linux installed, and
I've taught her some Python and HTML) with Scratch, but he had not interest in
it at all, but he did find Minecraft on the Pi and for the first few days both
kids where gathered around it until I put in on their Kindles to give them a
newer version and one where they can play together.

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purplelobster
>> “An adult mentor opens up these new worlds that wouldn’t be open to them,”
she adds. Of course, critics might worry about kids interacting with adults
online in this way, but as Ito notes, when there’s a productive task at hand,
it’s similar to how guilds have passed on knowledge for ages: knowledgeable
adults mentoring young people.

Kids can't interact with adults online? What has this world come to?

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mrmb
> To play, you’ll need a computer with Minecraft and a child who’s familiar
> with the game.

Hilarious, and true. Oh, I hope someday to be asked how one plays Minecraft...

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ap22213
The article describes it as 'clunky'. But, I think much of its popularity is
due to its accessibility. It's a very intuitive system, and even my 1 year old
gets it. She messes around with it on the tablet and enjoys moving and looking
around and watching the cows and chickens.

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megamark16
My kids love Minecraft, but more recently they have been playing an open
source, highly extensible, and much faster game called Minetest. The mods are
all written in Lua, and it runs so much faster on the older hardware I make my
kids use, it even runs well on Raspberry Pis.

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wintersFright
is it just me or does this article smell like advertorial?

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phaed
Well written article. Dude fucks.

