“Why are you crying? It’s only a video game.”

Okay, so this stems from a post one of my friends made on Facebook.

Now, first off, and this is hugely important, Hayley is an inspirational parent. She’s one of the best and her three amazing children are testament to that fact. The reason I felt compelled to reply was that, as I’m an obsessive gamer, I understand the importance of virtual stuff. I’ve piled up quite a lot of it and many of my friends have too. It’s easy to forget that my group of 30 (and 40) something gamer friends, who are also all parents, may not be the norm. Except with Flecher, he’s quite patently abnormal… and Gary, I mean, look at his head! Ugh… anyway, that doesn’t help make my point.

Your kids’ Minecraft items and creations DO exist. I can prove it. Your favourite song exists, right? Where is it now, exactly? It’s stored on physical media. It represents an artist’s creativity. The value of your CD collection would change dramatically if someone came along and blanked all the disks. But hey, what’s the problem? Your real-world stuff is still there. Stop your whining!

“I lost all my Paul McCartney but also some good music too”
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Thing is, the value of virtual belongings can actually be higher than real world things. Especially in the case of children, where real world toys are bought for them but in Minecraft, they have invested time, care and effort into obtaining their stash and even more time building their constructions. I believe Minecraft is the Lego of their generation. It’s like unlimited Lego. Connected to the whole world via the internet.

Any model made in Minecraft represents an investment of time. The bigger and more intricate, the more it is worth. It’s not easy, either. The limitations of resolution means that you either need an obscene amount of blocks or a very carefully thought out design in order to get it to look halfway decent.

Depending on how you play, those blocks themselves didn’t come for free either. Each block you place has to first be gathered. You start out with your bare hands. You literally have to punch a tree until it breaks and you can gather the wood.

From this wood, you can cobble together a makeshift wooden spade. You can then start to dig into the earth until you find some rock. It’s going to take a lot of twatting to break a rock with a wooden spade but what else are you going to do? Your flimsy wooden tool is going to break after a few hits. You can keep trying to mine solid rock with your hands but you’re probably best off climbing back out and getting all Van Damme on the trees again.

“Daddy needs a new shovel!”
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Eventually you’ll resurface with a handful of rock. You can use this to make a shonky stone pickaxe. Then you can start mining the rock for some ore. After a load of mining, building a furnace and smelting, you’ll have a chunk of iron. Now you can build a half decent pickaxe.

The Minecraft Wiki tells me that 0.09% of rock contains a bit of diamond. If you gather up enough diamonds, you can make tools from it. These tools last for ages! Although it’s taken hours and you had to punch trees with your bare hands, you now have your very own diamond pickaxe!

In a world where all sort of nasty things come out at night and it’s not safe to be out in the open, you now stand a fighting chance of building a decent shelter, surviving another day, gathering more supplies and securing continued prosperity. Maybe you’ll even….

NOOOOOO!!!!

Your brother comes along, stabs you with a wooden sword.

You watch helplessly as your prone body spews all your belongings onto the floor. Your assassin gleefully hoovers up the items you have worked so hard for.

Now, the challenge is explaining to your parents why you’re so upset.

“HE TOOK MY DIAMOND PICKAXE!!”

“Your what?”

“oh.”

This doesn’t even scratch the surface of Minecraft. There’s a huge amount of depth to it. Have a look at the Minecraft Wiki. It’s insane! Each creature drops a different material which is neccessary to craft new items. There are entire systems of circuitry, machinery, sounds, water, fire and many many more to master. Where the game appears simple, its blocky awkwardness actually makes constructing complicated machines a real challenge. Overcoming the limitations of the game is where the real appeal lies.

“Do or do not. There is no try.”
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I often thank Lego for teaching me a lot of useful things about working with limitations, improvisation and creative thinking. Minecraft is this and then some. It includes co-operation, trust, team work and respect.

Obviously, you’re going to want your kids to leave the house and work out what trees and stuff really look like. Doing anything too much is bad news and I don’t want my kids sat in front of the telly all day. All I’m saying is that we should respect their digital possessions and creations in the same way we would physical ones. The line between the two is becoming increasingly hard to distinguish.

Paul is a father of two, Seth (8) and Flynn (4), an avid gamer and the Creative Director of Mad Fellows games studio.