What is "mine craft"?

[XmisterIS]

I've looked it up on Wikipedia but I still don't really understand the point of it!

I'm asking because my niece and nephew have asked for mine craft farm, or something like that, for Christmas. I'm not sure what it is!

[Joe85]

Kids game, frequented by adults, where they build all sorts of crazy shit out of cubes of god knows what.

I once connected my son to an online game with 3 other kids. You should see the little buggers go. After 30 minutes they had a little city built.

[RantMachine]

Lets you build simple computers, too. Some people have done some utterly crazy stuff with it...

The extent of my personal experience is finding things that look like they took forever to build and wiring them with explosives and pressure sensors then leaving it running in the background and waiting for results

That said, it's been a three or four years since I gave it a look - I'd assumed it had died off by now! No idea what your niece and nephew are on about.

Glad I could be of help

[Gin]

It's a video game that has had a lot of toys released in it's name, so to start off, work out whether they want the lego style toys, or a copy of the video game.

If it's the video game, pick the console they most frequently use.. Personally Minecraft is best on PC rather than xbox etc just because that's what it was designed for and gets all the updates first..

In terms of Why Bother:

So my friends and I tend to start up a server between us at which point you all start with nothing.

It falls nicely into the "survival" genre of games that are getting really popular at the moment (Like being stranded on a dessert island and trying to live with resources you can find).

So you start with nothing and build cave-man simplistic tools to get better resources to build a safe home to get better stuff to get better tools to... You get the idea.

As Ollies said, when I was working on an electronics module in uni the simplistic electronics you can built with NOR, AND gates etc really helped get my head round the principles!

[XmisterIS]

I think if I was 9 (my niece's age), I would actually find that good fun! I think they want the lego set rather than the PC game. Thank you for bringing me up to speed; the last computer games I played seriously were things like Chuckie Egg in the early 1980s! If you've never seen Chuckie Egg, you haven't lived ... well, actually you have, it's pretty basic by modern standards. I had a ZX Spectrum, the games loaded from a cassette tape, they would take as long as 10 minutes to load, and sometimes you'd get right to almost the end of loading and a message would pop up saying "load error". That led to plenty of tears and snot bubbles!

[Gin]

Haha well I'm quite glad my generation refused to let go of video games, I'm 25 and still play with friends.. Including Minecraft! It's great fun and works well for learning to share resources, team building blah blah..!

[XmisterIS]

If you'd grown up with early 80's games, you would have let go of them long ago:

http://www.retrogamesnow.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Chuckie_Egg_Spectrum-e1351345634429.png

... I rest my case (That's a Chuckie Egg screenshot).

Edited November 29, 2016 by XmisterIS

[Gin]

Pretty colours!

This was the first game I owned:

http://lparchive.org/Pokemon-Blue/Update%2001/5-capture_02042010_121742.png

[Hoggs]

Ooh are we going off topic again? Awesome. This was the first game I owned

Also OI Hoggfather, remember this?

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/21stpinball/Screenshots/Pinball%20Dreams/Pinball%20Dreams%20-%20Comparison%20-%20Nightmare%20Amiga.png

[Skimblet]

If they haven't been already because maybe they live on the moon or something, introduce them to the joy that is Dan TDM or Stampy Cat on youtube, the parents will be forever indebted to you and will treat you like a god always.

You can also drop words like Roblox, PixelGun or FNAF (pronounced Fernaf, stands for five nights at freddies) into conversations with said kidlets and again you will be raised to god like status

[Westbeef]

The other guys have explained it pretty well, but I always say to those who have no idea what it is - it is the modern day lego . Except its probably more fun, less messy and can be educational (just make sure they dont think theyre gonna get bits of wood from punching trees ).

There are endless things you can do on the game, the 'lego' aspect is only really scratching the surface.

Also my first game here;

[Glorian]

Ooh are we going off topic again? Awesome. This was the first game I owned

Also OI Hoggfather, remember this?

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/21stpinball/Screenshots/Pinball%20Dreams/Pinball%20Dreams%20-%20Comparison%20-%20Nightmare%20Amiga.png

 

A rare picture of sam with her first game.

http://quatr.us/medieval/games/pictures/rollinghoop.jpg

[Glorian]

Also minecraft is basically like having lego. You can build what you like with blocks. Except you have to create the blocks. Jolly good fun I still play with friends. Nothing more fun than creating traps for them to kill themselves on.

[JRH]

Ooh are we going off topic again? Awesome. This was the first game I owned

Also OI Hoggfather, remember this?

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/21stpinball/Screenshots/Pinball%20Dreams/Pinball%20Dreams%20-%20Comparison%20-%20Nightmare%20Amiga.png

 

Ahh pinball

[Grumpy Old Git]

A great game which can get as complex as you want it to be!

I have been 'playing' in Survival Mode for many moths (on 'Hard' setting) and suffered my second 'death' last night - Killed by a Cave Spider as I was attempting to build a automated MOB (Spider) farm.

The 'redstone' circuits use fairly basic concepts (Comparator, Switch, Repeater (signal enhancer), etc. but in order to build ('Craft') such devices, you need to have visited (and survived) the 'Nether' in order to obtain the correct materials.

The 'playing area' is virtually infinite as the design 'builds' the landscape in 'chunks' as you near the edge of the area you are in.

Some aspects are a bit 'nonsensical' - Why would you wish to ride a pig off a cliff?

A very addictive and enjoyable (challenging) game.

[RantMachine]

It's great fun and works well for learning to share resources, team building blah blah..!

Clearly we play VERY differently...

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/minecraft/images/c/c7/Lavagrief.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140602040320

http://static.planetminecraft.com/files/resource_media/screenshot/1248/2010-12-31_225434_4299573_lrg.jpg

Unrelated topic:

Hey Al, which server are you on?

[Mawsley]

We got Pong on release. Best thing my Dad ever did.

[RantMachine]

These were my first ever video games:

Cairo Shootout

http://macgui.com/downloads/?mode=screenshot&get=549&key=867d

Daleks

http://nonanone.com/Daleks/img/scrn_OS85_2.png

Social Climber

http://home.planet.nl/~pulle071/firemac/shots/soccli.gif

Social Climber was SHIT. The other two were fun, especially Cairo Shootout.

[Lateralus]

Never played Minecraft, but returning to the tangent my first game was Lemmings!

http://toucharcade.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/lemmings-game.png

Played quite a lot of games until relatively recently, and imagine that when the next GTA and Elder Scrolls (single player) games come out, I'll get the relevant console to play those too! PC gaming is probably behind me now though.

[mattycoops43]

Adults game, frequented by kids, where they build all sorts of crazy shit out of cubes of god knows what.

I once connected my son to an online game with 3 other kids. You should see the little buggers go. After 30 minutes they had a little city built.

 

Corrected for you, don't worry about thanking me.

It's basically lego in a VR world if you think about it.

[Joeman]

Is the mobile version any good?

[Westbeef]

Is the mobile version any good?

 

I think on the surface it's mostly the same game with a few different features, I haven't played it too much but it seems more difficult to control than the console/pc version. It seems to be very popular, more so with the young 'uns.

[klingelton]

struggling to think what my first game was. Probably something on the C64. I remember playing dynamite dan, jet set willy, eldon and the like. first console i had was the NES. first games i had was super mario bros and duck hunt. followed up a couple of days later with a game called "section-z". I wanted mario 2, but my dad said i already had a platform game and wouldn't i prefer a side scroller (i.e. he prefers side scrollers!).

Always been a gamer, Always will be a gamer.

I've had a minecraft account since 2010 (was looking just last night) when the game was early beta. It's a sandbox survival sim. Basically it's lego. The PC version allows for mods to be build where elements of the core code are extended and overloaded by modified code allowing for some pretty special new items such as engines, trains, computers, mining "turtles" and mining machines (to name but a few.) My wife doesn't understand it at all. When i tell her it's a game with no real purpose, she doesn't get it. It's just fun to be creative.

[rob m]

My son loves it and builds some impressive structures on it. He directed me to this youtube video which blew me away:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afcudstM9zA&t

To be fair it took a team of people to do this but shows what can be done. Think I'll stick to GTA and Skyrim