Minecraft is the universe that captured our children. Minecraft homework: what students will learn with their favorite computer game

At what age can you play Minecraft? - this question arises from parents who decide whether to allow their children to play Minecraft.

To answer this question, you can, for starters, turn to the official ratings of the game. The European Video Game Rating System has designated the game as suitable for children ages 7 and up.

The age limit is justified: “Unrealistic cruelty towards fictional characters. An image or sound that may frighten children. Unrealistic looking cruelty towards characters that are human-like (but not detailed)."

Translating to understandable, this means that the game is generally harmless, but there are weapons (swords and bows) in it, and "monsters" attack the player - spiders, zombies, skeletons, etc. Considering the very style of the game, all these creatures look like a heap of rectangles with a stretched texture, and naturally there is no detail here - blood, etc. They killed the pig - it fell, and then disappeared, dissolving in a cloud of smoke. At the same time, there are unexpected elements in the game and the unexpected appearance of a spider (or some other creature), accompanied by the corresponding sound, can scare the child. Like any unexpected event.

At the same time, we must not forget that, like most modern games, this game has the ability to play over the network. And in this case, there are additional risks associated with communicating with other people. A child can become a victim of cyber-bullying, face unscrupulous commerce on game servers, and generally learn a lot of new words (which have not yet been taught at school).

A good alternative to playing on servers can be the Realms service. It is good because it allows you to get at your disposal a game server without any special tricks, to which you can invite only those you want - relatives and friends, for example.

In general, there are no special reasons to restrict a child from playing Minecraft specifically. Moreover, unlike many other games, Minecraft can be an incentive to develop creativity:

• Building from blocks develops spatial thinking, and the buildings that some players get are real masterpieces of virtual architecture. Some players are fond of building certain things: models of ships, planes, trains…
• The game has a kind of prototype of electronics - redstone. Of course, you can’t get a diploma in circuit engineering, but then it will be easier to understand how certain electronic devices and electrical appliances work.
• Someone finds himself in programming: Java, php, C# - these are the programming languages ​​that a person who is seriously interested in Minecraft can learn.

Also, don't forget about the question. If the game is not purchased, but put on the shoulders of the child, then there is a high probability that he will either become a victim of scammers and simply lose money, or acquire a pirated version that will contain some kind of malicious code.

I don't know about everyone else, but when I was growing up (in the 80s) there were people who talked about video games loudly and often:

Video games are bad for you

Because of them your brains rot!

Kids today will never learn how to be normal (adults - ed.) if they sit in front of the monitor and play all day!

At the time, I thought it was just the ravings of a madman. It's just a game after all. As a child who grew up listening to these words, I changed my point of view. Not much and not for the worse.

Brains don't rot because of games!

The main argument in the statement " Games make your brain rot!" is that " when you play you don't do real things". This is a separate topic for discussion, but there are studies that prove that games not only do not rot the brain, but, on the contrary, make them work more actively. The same is true for adults. Since minecraft is a well-known game, I will use it as an example.

Almost everything you can do in Minecraft requires some ability. For example, when building even the most ordinary house, you use creative thinking. What if we build a big fortress on the mountain? Here you will be to plan construction from the very beginning, so as not to get into a mess. The player will have to research territory, in order to understand whether it will be possible to build a castle in the chosen place. Next you will need calculate how many resources will be required to build. If the player is going to build a fortress in survival mode, then he will have to think about safety, because at night it will be attacked by hostile mobs,

And after the construction of the castle, you will need to do design interior spaces and ennoblement territory.

Games don't make people anti-social!

The image of a lonely, closed-in, sitting in a dark room and never uttering a word gamer is very popular in the media. Anyone who has ever played Minecraft online knows that this is a complete lie. Here I can say for sure that the example may not only be Minecraft. Now the developers are trying to make the game as much as possible social. For example, in Counter Strike: Global Offensive it is not possible to play without voice communication at all. Ingress and Pokemon Go can only be played alone at the initial levels.

At its core, online play forces people to contact each other. Let's go back to the fortress example. Suppose we have already planned everything and now we must begin construction. We have a lot of work and we want to invite friends to help us. Now 2 points become apparent:

1. Communication in the game is vital;
2. Joint efforts rally people in a friendly team.

Now the team must decide who gathers resources, who designs the fortress (if the fortress was not fully thought out), and who builds it (and what parts of it), who will forage for food and who will defend the rest from hostile creatures. In addition to this, you need to distribute the players so that they work effectively. Trying to assemble such a team, the leader acquires invaluable experience in communication with people, which will be useful to him in the future.

Anti-social research has taken place over the years, and as a result, it was found that games with a multiplayer mode helped players overcome self-doubt and fear of other people. About 70% of users were happy to chat with other players. In Minecraft, gaming communities range from a few people playing together over a local network to entire servers with over a hundred people online at the same time. For example, on the site, the daily reach is over 5000 players.

Games are not bad!

I have been playing games for two decades. During this time, they have grown and developed and, it seems to me, games improve everyday life, rather than destroy it. Some people make a career out of gaming. We can see this by watching the channels of famous let's players on YouTube or Twitch. In addition, Minecraft is one of the top mmo-rpg games. (according to: http://vsemmorpg.ru/top-mmorpg)

People have always played games. Over time, their form has changed. It all started with pupae made of grass. and sticks sharpened with a sharp stone, and now our games have been transferred to computers and phones. Games have always been played for fun, but in addition to that, games teach us some things.

I don't know how video games are worse than the ones that came before them. And in some cases they are even better!

What do you think of video games? Are they harmful or beneficial?

Write your thoughts on this in the comments!

If the Minecraft hobby has passed you by, then we have made an adaptation of the large and thorough NY Times material about this game. Below you will find out why you need to drag these stupid dice at all, what is the point of the game, and why children playing Minecraft will grow up smarter than you and become great programmers.

Jordan wants to set up an inconspicuous trap.

The 11-year-old with black horn-rimmed glasses was inspired by the sci-fi thriller The Maze Runner and now wants to build the same maze for his Minecraft friends. Jordan has set up an obstacle course with a waterfall and shrinking walls in the style of Indiana Jones, but his goal is an unpredictable trap that will take his friends by surprise. Really, how do you do it? This problem haunts him.

And then a light bulb lights up in Jordan's head - animals! Minecraft has its own zoo of animals that the player is free to eat, tame or simply bypass. One of the animals is the mooshroom, a red and white cow-like creature that wanders aimlessly around the map. Jordan uses these erratic cow movements to hide a trap. He sets up pressure plates that activate the traps, and then brings in some cows that start circling the area and accidentally activate the traps. Jordan took advantage of the cow's strange behavior to create what is essentially a random number generator inside Minecraft. In the language of computer engineers, Jordan hacked the system, forcing it to do something new and tricky.

“It's like planet Earth, a whole world that you build yourself,” the guy explains, guiding us from the beginning of the maze to the exit. - My art teacher always said that games develop creative thinking only in the creators of these games. The only exception is Minecraft." Jordan leads us to the exit, with the slogan "The journey itself is more important than what awaits you at the end" imprinted above it.

Since its release 7 years ago, Minecraft has become a sensation, spawning a new generation of gamers. With 100 million registered players and being the third-best-selling game in history (after Tetris and Wii Sports), Microsoft shelled out a whopping $2.5 billion for Minecraft in 2014. There have been blockbuster games before, but as Jordan rightly points out, this is a different story. Mineraft is both a meeting place, a technical tool and a theater stage where kids build machines, design worlds and make YouTube videos. And it doesn't feel like a game in the usual sense - while Google, Apple and other giants are trying to simplify the interfaces of computers, Minecraft, on the contrary, encourages the player to explore the world, break it down and rebuild it. It makes you turn on your brains and work with your hands.

Minecraft takes us back to the 70s, to the era of early PCs like the Commodore 64 and kids learning to code in Basic to write software for themselves and their friends. And today, when the President of the United States encourages children to learn to code, Minecraft has become an opportunity for them to approach coding from the back door. Not because it is necessary, but because it is interesting. And if the children of the 70s were the ones who paint the canvas of the current digital world, then what will the children of the Minecraft generation bring to the world?

“Children,” writes social critic Walter Benjamin, “love to play where there is work that they understand. They are irresistibly attracted by the waste of construction, gardening, household, weaving and carpentry. According to Colin Fanning of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, European philosophers have long considered the block game, perfected by Friedrich Froebel (who is credited with the concept of kindergarten) about three hundred years ago, as a useful game. Starting to build from blocks, children learn to synthesize complex objects from simple parts, which later allowed them to better see patterns in the world around them.

Pedagogy pioneers like Maria Montessori used blocks of wood to teach mathematics to children. During the cataclysms of the last century, like World War II, some architects like Carl Theodor Sorensen proposed turning the ruins into playgrounds where children could play and build at the same time. And Swedish teachers, who were afraid that children would lose touch with the physical world, introduced sloyd (in the original: sloyd) at school - carpentry lessons that are still taught in Swedish schools.

In Minecraft, children start the game free to do anything: around a pristine environment on which the player is free to build whatever they want. And it all starts with wooden blocks, which the player makes from the trees that come to hand. In this respect, Minecraft is no longer like video games, but more like Lego bricks, which replaced traditional wooden construction sets in the post-war period. Although today Lego is more about brands than fantasy, store shelves are littered with themed sets like Hogwarts Castle from Harry Potter or the rebel base from Star Wars.

“You buy a kit, read the instructions, assemble the model, and put it on the shelf,” explains iconic game designer Peter Moline in the Minecraft movie. “Lego used to be a box of pieces that you took and scattered on the floor and made magic out of them. Now Minecraft does it."

As a Swede, Mojang founder and Minecraft creator Markus Persson took the Swedish layer into the digital realm. Persson, 36, was a kid of the computer age who learned to code on his father's Commodore 128 at the age of seven, and by the age of 20 was developing games and coding online photo vaults from his CD-decorated bedroom.

He released the first version of Minecraft in 2009. The game principle was as simple as the corner of a house - every time the player starts the game, it generates a new landscape for him with mountains, forests and lakes. Next, the player is free to dig the ground, mine stone ore or process wood to make the coveted block. From these blocks, he can erect buildings, or combine them to get a new item. Combine a couple of stone blocks with wood and get a pickaxe. With it, you will get to the bottom of gold, silver and diamonds (just don't dig too deep, to the earth's core). Or use it to kill that spider over there, and make a bowstring for a bow or crossbow from its web.

At first, the game was fun for overgrown nerds, but in 2011, all the children of the world got hooked on Minecraft, and sales skyrocketed. And even after 5 years at a price of $ 27 per copy, Minecraft remains one of the best-selling games - about 10 thousand copies are shipped from the shelves every day! According to official Microsoft statistics, the main age of Minecraft players today is 28 years old. 40% of them are women.

Over time, Persson improved the game. First came the survival mode, in which the player had to build defensive structures to fend off the regular attacks of monsters. Then the inhabitants of the Minecraft country got the opportunity to share their maps with friends. Following this, Persson opened the game code (the players began to make mods) and screwed the multiplayer. Today, for $5 a month, kids play in the same world with hundreds of thousands of other players, and the distinction between solo play and multiplayer has faded completely.

The game became a hit, but Persson felt like a squeezed lemon - both the popularity that fell on his head and the fans who constantly demanded to add / remove / change something, and then scolded the same changes, got it. In 2014, Marcus finally got sick of the game, and he handed Mojang into the hands of Microsoft for a modest reward of $2.5 billion. And as compensation, he bought himself a mansion for $ 70 million, in which he refuses to remember his brainchild.

Persson left, but the blocks remained. There was also complete freedom of action. Watching my kids play, I've seen replicas of the Taj Mahal, Star Trek's starship Enterprise, and Game of Thrones' iron throne castle built. But then it turned out that real freedom was hidden not in blocks, but in “redstone” - an element that is mined from red ore and is a game analogue of electrical wiring. My 8-year-old son Zev showed me the automatic doors he made with redstone, and 10-year-old Gabriel came up with a game within a game. He designed a giant catapult that, using redstones, threw anvils at other players, and they dodged projectiles flying at them, running merrily within the play area.

Persson designed "redstone" with an eye on conventional electronic circuits. By adding switches and switches to this block, you can make "logical gates," as computer designers call them. Place two switches next to each other, connect them with a "redstone" - and you already have an AND gate: if switch 1 and 2 are on, current will flow through the wire. It is also possible to build a logical element "OR", in which it is enough to use only one of the switches. If we look inside a conventional microchip, we see a similar architecture.

This winter I was visiting a 14-year-old guy named Sebastian. He showed off his machines to me, the largest of which was the marketplace, a giant wall where players could sell items by placing them in a special chute. This wall was full of AND gates, and it took Sebastian several days to design the wall and find a bunch of AND elements for it. “Move here,” Sebastian tells me as he dives down the shaft below the apparatus. Inside, like an architect at a construction site, he shows me the inside of his apparatus. “Levers are connected to these wires on opposite sides of the wall - one with this one, the other opposite. When both are turned on, they actuate a piston that attaches the redstone to this block at the top in the distribution tower.”

To work with the "red stone" you need logical thinking, perseverance and the ability to find holes in the system. For example, five-year-old Natalie installed an automatic door in her castle, but it did not open. Natalie frowned briefly, and then began to look for a bug in the system - it turned out that she had connected one of the red stones incorrectly, and it was sending current to the other side of the circuit.

This is what programmers call computational thinking. And this is one of the most important learning effects of Minecraft. Unbeknownst to themselves, children learn the daily struggle with bugs, familiar to every programmer. After all, it is not the gods who burn the pots, but the gods find and correct errors in the code. From this point of view, Minecraft is the ideal educational game for today's children - it touches on the elements of science, mathematics and engineering, but teaches this through play. Unlike the government's "teach kids to code" initiative, which the US government has spent millions of dollars on. The funny thing is that Persson himself and his followers never considered Minecraft as a pedagogical tool. “We were just making a game we wanted to play,” says current Mojang lead developer Jens Bergsten.

The next useful skill that Minecraft players acquire is the ability to work on the command line. In a world where lines of code have replaced glossy interfaces, the average person breaks a sweat at the sight of a dozen simple lines of code. But without learning how to work with the command line, you will never tame the computer. In Minecraft, kids learn this, again, not because it's necessary, but because it's fun. Call the command line "/", type in "time set 0" in it and you will see the sun's tail leaving the horizon. Learn the command chains and be able to conjure as well as Harry Potter.

The next hero of the article is seventh grader Gus from Brooklyn, whom we met this spring. As I watch Gus play with friends, I notice him typing "/give AdventureNerd bow 1 0 (Unbreakable:1,ench:[(id:51,lvl:1)],display:(Name:"Destiny") )". She gives his character an indestructible magic bow called Destiny. Gus's desktop is full of virtual stickers with the commands he uses most often. Several commands are combined into a block that leads to a chain of actions. Just like clicking on the icon of the desired program launches blocks of code in its bowels.

“Minecraft is one of those places where young people can connect with more experienced people much older than them,” says Mimi Ito, creator of the Connected Camps platform at the University of California, which studies the relationship between learning and computer games. “These connections become key: the guys get the opportunity to look at the professional side of things, and this is something that they won’t show at school.” And don't let the form of this interaction between unfamiliar adults and children scare you - according to Ito, when an interesting task is set for a group, age fades into the background.

Ito has found that Minecraft encourages children to develop other talents as well. For example, 15-year-old Eli just wanted to change some game textures, but eventually got to the point where he mastered Photoshop along with drawing and now uploads entire mods on the game forum, where both adults and children help him. “Criticism is always constructive there,” Eli says. “The gaming community is very helpful.”

You may laugh, but playing Minecraft also develops stress tolerance. Mojang tweaks the game on a weekly basis, and you may wake up one morning to find that your giant railroad is no longer running after a fresh update. Ito sees this as a valuable experience - in a practical and philosophical sense, children become stronger.

“Minecraft is creaking and you are trying to fix it,” she says. “It's a different kind of thinking. If the application does not work on your iPhone, then you just sigh. If something doesn't work in Minecraft, you sigh and then start fixing the problem. Not because you have to, but because you want to. It's similar to the aesthetic of homebrewing - you can buy a pint of lager in the store, but it's more interesting to brew it yourself." Given that Minecraft is now 7 years old, Ian Bogost of Georgia Tech is looking forward to the first students who have grown up with the game in their classrooms.

Ava, a fifth grader I met on Long Island, started playing Minecraft 2 years ago. She launched "survival mode", not really understanding what to do next. “I thought this skeleton was kind and asked him how he was doing,” Ava says. “Then I died.” The fact is that Minecraft is a complex and incomprehensible game. Unlike blockbuster games, there are no pop-ups and hints, no one leads you by the hand, showing you how to turn your head, run or crouch. Nothing is explained in Minecraft, not that skeletons can kill you, not that you can get to lava (which will also kill you) if you dig too deep, not even that you can make a pickaxe.

During the development of the game, Persson did not have the money to write instructions. He hardly guessed how brilliant the decision to abandon the tips turned out to be: today players on the forums hourly share the secrets and strategies of the game (about 5 thousand articles about Minecraft hang on Gamepedia), book publishers release entire volumes with the secrets of the game, and they sell well. For example, one of the books about the red stone overtook such literary hits as The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. In his review, writer and critic Robert Sloan calls Minecraft "a game about secret knowledge".

The most important helper in learning Minecraft is YouTube. Having found death at the hands of a skeleton, Ava went there to look for answers, because the easiest way to learn new things is by looking at how the master does it. YouTube has become a second home for Minecraft players, with let's play, how-to guides, tutorials, and just plain fun videos. Today, the word "Minecraft" is the second most searched term on YouTube (after "music"), and the total number of themed videos has exceeded 70 million. For young players, these videos have become an opportunity to abandon the TV diet in favor of what you personally like. “I don't understand this,” Ava's mother complains during my second visit to them. Why are you watching someone else play? Why don't you play by yourself?"

Ava recently launched a YouTube gaming channel with her friends. Her father bought her a microphone, and her sister painted a sign saying "Recording in progress" (on the other hand "Recording not working, but please be quiet"). While I'm sitting in her room, Ava calls her friend Patrick on Skype and they start recording. It's pure improvisation - they joke about how Ava drowns in lava traps, like real radio hosts or sportscasters. If something goes wrong, they start over. Seeing this first hand, I better understand the words of the head of the gaming division of YouTube Ryan Veit about the blurred boundaries between the player and the viewer.

Some Minecraft broadcasters have become really famous and make good money on it. These stars are mostly not children, but young people. For example, 25-year-old Stumpy Cat from Brighton has 7 million subscribers on the channel. His colleague Mumbo Jumbo from Brighton has only a million. But this million was gained very quickly when the guy uploaded a video with 20 homemade mechanisms for opening doors. “Of course, this is not a new Gangam Style, but it still turned out well,” says Mumbo Jumbo, whose real name is Oliver Brotherhood. Now Oliver spends 50 hours a week on the game itself and recording themed videos. This is actually work.

“I told my mom I was quitting my postal job,” Mumbo Jumbo recalls. - When asked why, I showed her my channel and my first 40 thousand subscribers. That's more than the traffic of the corporate newspaper she consults." Oliver will be studying programming in college next year. In his opinion, programming is very similar to Minecraft - you experiment, learn, make mistakes and ask for advice on the forum. By the way, the guy was accepted to college even before the results of the final exams - his YouTube channel became a pass ticket to the university.

Last year, 12-year-old London launched a separate server for his friends and acquaintances. A couple of days later, he saw that some merry fellow broke into their holiday and blew the hell out of all their buildings. Then London did a little magic with the settings and opened individual access to the server for friends. Now try to imagine this in some World of Warcraft, where server settings are controlled exclusively by developers. Microsoft allows you to play on a shared server, rent your own, or create an individual game and play over Wi-Fi with a friend. And here the most interesting begins - how will children use this freedom? Will their world be equal for both creators and destroyers? And what to do with rule breakers?

Sociologist Seth Frey of Darmouth College studied the behavior of hundreds of children on Minecraft servers for three years and concluded that the game improves their social intelligence. “The kids run around with their blocks and you think it's just a game,” explains Seth. “But in fact, they solve one of the most difficult questions in the history of mankind - how to establish interaction between different social groups so that everyone is comfortable.” In Seth's experiment, most of the participants were teenage boys with all their insecurities and puberty issues. “These are the worst people on Earth,” Seth says, either joking or serious. “And in my opinion, this socialization experiment should have failed. It's all the more amazing that it all worked out."

Three years ago, the municipal library in Darien, Connecticut, launched a public Minecraft server that only season ticket holders could play. According to John Blueberg, the library's director of development, they gained 900 new readers under the age of 20 in the first month. “And this is a real community,” says John. – As a rule, I get up to a dozen calls a day in the style of ‘Hello, this is Dasher 80, some horseradish blew up my house while I was not here, figure it out’ or ‘Hello, someone robbed me’. We used to deal with conflict resolution ourselves, but then we noticed that if the children were given a little freedom, then towards the end of the day, other messages appeared on your answering machine like ‘This is Dasher 80, we figured out the problem, ignore my previous message’.

Many parents and experts believe that Minecraft is an additional dimension, a digital sandbox in which children learn to socialize and respect other people's space (albeit virtual) without the supervision of elders. Previously, the role of this sandbox was played by the street, and in Minecraft, although children are at home, they communicate with friends using new technologies. In a sense, Minecraft is not so much a game as a social network.

Life on a Minecraft server constantly requires more complex technical skills from children. 11-year-old Leia was furious about griefers (as vandals are called in the game) and once asked the server administrators for moderation rights. For several months, Leia worked as a police officer. A program called "command spy" allowed her to watch the recordings of the players' actions: she moved all the villains to a virtual "time out" zone and soon she was promoted. “The implication is that I have to give punishments to anyone who breaks the rules,” she told me at the time. In fact, Leia performed the role of a system administrator on the server.

But not everyone is so easy to take root in the world of Minecraft. Timid 17-year-old Tori has been playing Minecraft for 2 years, but mostly in single player mode. When she decided to try to play online, other players, having learned that she was a girl, laid out “BITCH” blocks. Gamer friends comforted her and told her that this kind of thing happens everywhere. For example, a study of Halo players found that girls were bullied twice as often as boys. And from a regular survey where 874 people identified themselves as online gamers, 63% of girls said they had been bullied. Some parents get angry because of this and forbid their daughters to play online games, some daughters do not pay attention to this and simply hide the gender or put animals on their avatars. Like Leia.

How long will Minecraft's popularity last? It directly depends on management of Microsoft. The executive directors of the company have little control over the game. All major development issues are handled by Mojang in Sweden. They can improve the game, or they can, on the contrary, nullify all the magic by making a new interface or changing the combat system. Once Mojang tried to change the combat system, but this caused a storm of criticism - the children did not want their sandbox to be turned into an ordinary fight field.

But so far there is no reason to worry, and Minecraft goes to the masses. Teachers are starting to try to bring elements of Minecraft into the classroom, both math and history. Many libraries already install Minecraft on their computers. For example, the Bronx Library Center recently installed Minecraft servers. The local librarian gave the task to the kids who did not have their own PCs and who came to play in the library to build the Arc de Triomphe in Paris in 45 minutes. Three guys started working together, and the fourth, younger, developed his own design. The trio teased each other all the time, and after 45 minutes, when the arch was ready, they stuffed it with dynamite, admired the fireworks from the cubes and left to play another game.

In the corner, the fourth boy continued to work on his Arch. He told me that he often stays up late playing Minecraft with friends. They built the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center, and even a replica of the library we were in. He flicked the cursor over the blocks, composing an inverted staircase to mimic the curved vault of the Arch. He leaned back in his chair to enjoy the work he had done. “I didn’t blink for I don’t know how many minutes,” he said. The model was finished and looked quite realistic.

"I'm actually proud of it," he said with a smile.

It so happened that my attitude to raising children (and who else to educate, not adults) has always been based on humanism, bordering on connivance. Even in my youth, teaching English to teenagers in a private school and my peers in a medical college, I perceived each ward as a whole universe with its own unique laws, life circumstances, opportunities and talents. The students quickly got wind of this feature of the young teacher's worldview and, of course, sometimes shamelessly used it - telling amazing stories about unfinished homework and making me crawl under the teacher's table with laughter.

Of course, over time, my humanistic fever, not fully understood in my youth, faded a little - I began to understand that people, in addition to free will and choice, need rules, boundaries, rituals, stability and a foundation. Children - even more.

Nevertheless, I thought and to this day I consider myself not entitled to create greenhouse conditions around the child, trying not to adapt the lives of those close to me to the growing person, but to help the growing person to get used to the world around him. This is not a question of discipline and not an attempt to raise a child “comfortable” for society - quiet and always obedient (which, of course, is nothing wrong, but I only saw such children on Soviet postcards). Borders and rules are needed not so that the child is not noticeable, but to make it easier for him to get used to the world of people.

For example, the rule “listen to what they say to you, and then speak out yourself, it will be more convenient for everyone,” I consider it justified, and “I am an adult, I know better, and you are silent” - obscurantist. Boundaries should be drawn for the purpose of protection and prevention, and not for the purpose of prohibition.

Frame from the movie "Wall", 1982

The same rules have always applied to available information. The question "Where do babies come from?" - an honest answer in an accessible form, where, how and why. The question "Mom, will I die too?" - an honest affirmative answer and a conversation about the fact that the memory remains alive in our relatives, friends and descendants.

In general, my position in raising new people boiled down to two main factors: the desire to organically fit the child into the daily life of the family and the desire not to restrict his access to what does not pose a danger to his life and the comfort of others.

These two factors have influenced my attitude towards a growing person's access to digital entertainment. I, my family and my friends are modern people who have been actively using and interested in digital technologies, gadgets and the Internet since their youth. Soon the internet became my place of work; naturally, the son constantly saw his mother behind the screen of a laptop, smartphone and tablet; I'm used to the fact that I'm looking for answers to some of his questions in Google; to the fact that cartoons can be viewed on YouTube; to the fact that you can play Cut The Rope on your smartphone. I am pleased with how my son gradually immersed himself in the digital information environment and I am sure that he has developed an adequate idea of ​​the network for his age - as a place where knowledge is obtained, and where you can find everything that interests you if you wish.

Something went wrong

His son got his smartphone at the age of 5 - he got his father's old phone. He played on it all parts of Angry Birds (a great game for children who are not destined to walk with a slingshot in the yard) and Bad Piggies (a cool engineering puzzle - I couldn’t cope with the levels, but a five-year-old was easy). In the summer before entering school, he appeared in the arsenal of Minecraft Pocket Edition. I was even glad - how many times I wrote about this toy right here on Newtonew, and I was going to offer it to my son, but then somehow it just happened.

Minecraft is a game without exaggeration cool, almost immediately after the release, overgrown with a fan subculture. I am still not able to understand what is so attractive about it for children of senior kindergarten and primary school age. If adult players can be nostalgic for eight-bit graphics and enjoy the square Minecraft world, then such nostalgia is unknown to children. Nevertheless, elementary and middle school students are crazy about her - just look at how many let's plays are filmed and posted on YouTube by young unspoiled souls. I came to the conclusion that Minecraft combines everything that basically distinguishes computer games from all other types of entertainment:

• the ability to build your own world;
• a non-linear way of interacting with the game world (not like with a book);
• interactivity (not like when watching programs and movies);
• instant feedback;
• extensive opportunities for communication and self-expression (thanks to the gaming community).

These are excellent properties that develop systemic and strategic thinking, digital literacy, planning skills, and even communication skills. Under several conditions: you yourself know how it all works, you are ready to spend a lot of time learning about the game world together with your child, and… you don’t use the mobile version of the game.

It was Minecraft Pocket Edition, the official Minecraft mobile app, that led to disturbing results.

The Dark Side of Minecraft

We also had Minecraft installed on a free home laptop that did not really belong to anyone, and therefore passed into the possession of his son - on an old macbook (in this case, Mac OS is important). Anton launched his favorite toy, searched for tutorials himself, watched let's plays on YouTube. Everything he watched, I carefully controlled, because he surfed through my active Google account. The version of Minecraft that Anton played on a macbook, and the style of his game only aroused my approval - he learned simple commands in the terminal, found new blocks, learned how to handle them on his own, explored the possibilities of the world.

But the style of his game on a smartphone, I could not call constructive. One thing needs to be said here: there is a huge shady industry serving Minecraft - modifications, or simply "mods". A mod is a code file that changes the original content of the game. They can add new features, such as allowing their own music to play in the background, or adding electricity, elevators, or new dimensions to the game; can change the appearance, for example, change textures; and they can seriously affect the entire course of the game, giving a loophole for cheats - for example, giving an unlimited amount of resources. Mods are not officially supported by the manufacturer, but there are a huge number of launchers that allow you to install and run mods. This is very easy to do in Minecraft for Windows and in the mobile version of Minecraft.

The whole industry is built on these mods, millions of views.

Mods, with skillful handling, can greatly enrich the gaming experience, complicate and diversify the game; but, unfortunately, the possibility of easy money turns out to be much more attractive. How to install mods on Mac OS, Anton did not guess, but he also had a mobile version!

In general, all that Anton's game has turned into on a smartphone is the search, review and testing of dozens of different mods. It turned out to be forgotten the main goal of the game - the development of their own world. Fantasy, spatial thinking, patience needed to collect resources were left out of work.

All this has been replaced by a mindless race for new mods, their updates, short joy from visual goodies and a huge amount of resources, and quick disappointment from each acquisition - what you do not earn yourself will soon get bored.

And it will be difficult for an adult to stop himself if he finds himself in a giant hypermarket, where there is a lot of everything and everything is free - just reach out and take it. Candy? As much as you want. The most delicate pate? Yes, take it right from here. Lemonade? Croissants? Caesar salad? Imagine yourself in such a place. There is a great temptation to overeat, then suffer from indigestion, then reproach yourself for the weakness of the spirit and promise yourself that never again, but ... But here again the neon sign of this hypermarket, and again you cannot help it, and then again you are angry with yourself.

It is even more difficult for children to control their desires. And they also grow irritated by what they have received undeservedly, but they are not aware of the reason for their negative emotions.

After a couple of months of such a "game" in Minecraft, I got a capricious, apathetic, nervous child. A little more, and it would look like this canonical example:

I had to be drastic. During the winter holidays, after a week of skiing and reading books from his mother's childhood in his grandmother's house, Anton did not find his smartphone in his usual place.

Mom, where's the phone?
- He is temporarily not with us until you and I both understand what you are interested in, except for mods for Minecraft.

And you know what? This explanation, short and honest, was enough. Sometimes we check the official website together to see if there's an update for the game (not mods!). I did not restrict access to the laptop, in the desktop version of Minecraft, which I like, he plays on the weekends. Read the entire home library of children's books. Anton no longer depends on the charger, and the morning does not begin with the words “I will just install this mod and get dressed.”

And yet I do not lose my faith in video games and believe that they are the right place in school. After all, games at school are, by default, licensed versions without the simple possibility of bypassing and adult supervision. Moreover, there are successful examples and experiments - a Norwegian teacher, or even in Russian schools.

According to a study conducted by Octoloy and Newzoo, in the month of March alone, the above game has collected about 4 billion views.

This figure is unlikely to surprise many parents who are hopelessly trying to drag their children away from the screens. Neither football, nor a bicycle, nor a picnic in the forest can distract young gamers from watching videos where people build with small green bricks.

This passion is called by parents in different ways: some call it an obsession, others call it addiction. However, both of them are very concerned about it.

Opinions differ.

In numerous articles and posts online, parents complain that Minecraft has taken over the lives of their children, they neglect household chores and school assignments, and are annoyed when they are not allowed to play. As a result, many parents have to ban this game altogether or severely limit their time at the computer. One father explained his decision to limit time this way: “Minecraft, like other addictive games, is limitless, but children's childhood is not. I would like them to learn not the virtual, but the real world.”

Other parents do not see a big problem in this game. As the father of two boys notes, his children spend hours watching videos with different versions of Minecraft. “Currently, they watch YouTube a lot more than regular TV. Am I against it? Probably a little - yes, however, I am fully aware of the place in the lives of my children and their peers this game occupies. To ban it is to separate your children from their friends,” he says.

Interest in the game also has beneficial consequences, as the children have mastered the program well, learned how to create their own game modes, manage their own game server, create and edit videos and run their own YouTube channel.

Minecraft on YouTube is a vast ocean of content with almost 42 million videos. There are hundreds of channels dedicated to Minecraft, of which the most popular are SkyDoesMinecraft and Yogscast. Some Minecraft channels have become real sensations. YouTube channel Stampy with a moderator cat has 5.6 million subscribers and about 3.4 billion views. Last year, this channel was the fourth most popular on YouTube.

There are also channels for parents, such as MineMum, created by educator Beck Oakley, to help parents navigate the Minecraft minefield. “YouTube is the new generation of television. It allows children to learn and share knowledge. He entertains the kids. When they look at the game of others, they get a new experience of the game, and they can also share it with others,” she notes. - Unlimited content. It is extremely interesting, educational and useful.”

According to Oakley, this infatuation is not a serious problem. She stresses that attention should be drawn to the time spent by children playing, as well as the impact on their mood and health. “It is very important that parents teach their children to enjoy the game without compromising a healthy lifestyle. Parents need to teach their children "healthy" gaming, which involves, first of all, the ability to stop in time. Parents need to establish rules for harmless play, as well as rewards for following those rules,” she notes.

It is worth noting that Minecraft is the creation of the Swedish game designer and programmer Markus Persson, who is also known as Notch. Initially, the game was not designed for young players. Persson was inspired by games like Dwarf Fortress and Dungeon Keeper.

Some time later, the programmer founded Mojang, which released the game for some time, and last year it was sold to Microsoft.

How games affect the human brain.

There are many studies regarding the effect on the human brain. Some of them are quite contradictory. Researchers in China used fMRI to monitor the brains of eighteen college students who spent about ten hours online, mostly playing games like World of Warcraft. Compared to a control group of students who spent no more than two hours a day on a computer, gamers found less gray matter in their brains, which is responsible for the ability to reason.

In the early 1990s, scientists warned that given that only those parts of the human brain that are responsible for movement and vision are stimulated, other parts responsible for emotions, learning, and behavior may be underdeveloped.

In regards to Minecraft research, a Quartz article by Robert Peisonau and psychologist Yoon Lee notes that it doesn't seem to be as creative as some parents think. “In fact, the creativity of the game is inherent in the program itself - it is a huge number of combinations, materials and tools. And the only task left for the players is to create more complex structures. Despite the fact that at first glance the game seems to be creative, in reality it is quite a monotonous activity. Most of the children we studied experienced irritability after a long period of play."