Minecraft is a casual social game that seems to be used (in my experience) predominantly by middle schoolers and high schoolers. Both my 11 year old boy and 9 year old girl are obsessed with playing Minecraft. It’s an interesting idea for a game in that there really aren’t fixed objectives, but it’s a sandbox where players can build everything from a dirt house (if you’re a Noob) to an arithmetic logic unit, which is a building block for a CPU.
What makes it unique in my mind is that it’s
- Social – there are different servers and moderators can kick people off
- Creative – there are different types of material that can be combined and modified to produce new things, where things can be almost infinitely complex
Remember this is still a computer game . . . and all computer games are evil. Right? That’s what we parents have been conditioned to believe. This assumes that all computer games are created equal and that both Civilization V and Super Mario Brothers stimulate the brain in exactly the same way. I’m not saying this isn’t true, but what if it’s not? What if there could be redeeming qualities in video games if we were simply to open our minds and treat them with an intentional purpose that superscedes entertainment.
What’s odd is the intersection of Minecraft (and Farmville) is being both social and creative at the same time. Honestly, how much of what we do in a given day is both social and creative? Meeting friends at the bar: social, not always creative. Gardening: creative, but often not social. Watching TV: neither. Chatting with friends while codeveloping a really tall building in Mincraft: both.
At the World Dommination Summit 2012 Brene Brown noted that
“Unused creativity is not benign. It turns into grief, judgement and shame.”
If Brene is right in that unused creativity is a very bad thing, and I’m right in Minecraft being a creative pursuit, it follows that Minecraft could keep kids away from drugs, drinking, sex, and worst of all: hanging out with buffoons.
So the question is how can we harness the positive aspects of creative social gaming, and leave behind the negative aspects (like obesity, eye strain, and zombies). I would propose that we need a video game that is more engaging (like real time conversations in Call of Duty), more creative (like a hackathon in a coworking space), and more active (like CrossFit). I’m not sure how to get there, but I’m sure that somebody smart will figure it out and end up with an enormous volume of creative brilliance ready to change the world through gamification. If you have any comments on what a next step may look like I’d love to hear about it.
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