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Comment by davidrudder | Hacker News Reader

It's more than that. I have an 8 year old and an 11 year old who are into minecraft. Minecraft is 100x better than other video games. My son is using redstone and logic gates to build things. My daughter designs these expansive cities with, yes, pools full of wool. It's better than shooting zombies with peas or wiping out the world with an engineered parasite.

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Agreed re: minecraft, which is fantastic, but Plants vs. Zombies is actually a really good game too. I like to think of the planting sunflowers mechanic as the kids' first introduction to compound interest.

If the kids are really excited about logic gates, hunt down "Rocky's Boots"[1] or one of its descendants.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockys_Boots

Link correction:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky%27s_Boots

Thanks! I just cut-and-pasted it, didn't think to check whether the quote had made it through unmolested.

I can't tell you how excited my 11 year old was this morning to show me his latest world right after he'd installed a new texture pack that worked with the old red-blue 3D glasses. I tried to explore around a really felt like an old geezer when I accidentally busted a hole in his wall when I was trying to climb a ladder. "I don't understand these new-fangled games."

You're right. I shouldn't have busted on plants vs zombies. My point was that Minecraft is a particularly good game.

That's good to read, Minecraft is good, but I'll admit I do not regret this time I had alone or with my friends in my bedroom playing Streets of Rage, Tekken, Gran Turismo, and other less intellectual games. I also spent time playing with music instruments, legos, wood, and electronics, but I consider other games to be part of the adventure too.

I totally get your point and I just want to add I'm glad my mother didn't want to push me away from junk and towards science and creativity, because that's where I was going anyways, but making the choice myself felt great. Playing zombie games did not make my math grades any lower than other kids (or so I think), what matters is balance I guess.

Personally, creating/building things always made me happier than anything else, so I had to do it more anyways.

Maybe I'll have another point of view when I have kids though!

This seems like as good a place as any to ask for some parenting advice - I've got a 5 year old. Everybody in his school has iPads. I've noticed a few kids have minecraft, but I've resisted installing it on his iPad because from the sounds of it, mincraft is a diabolically addictive game :-)

However the story and this thread is having me re-think my opinions.

So what age should I set him up with mincraft? Is it suitable for 5 year olds?

> ...mincraft is a diabolically addictive game

Yes, Minecraft is really addictive.

> So what age should I set him up with mincraft? Is it suitable for 5 year olds?

Content-wise, it's definitely suitable for a 5 year old, the addiction aspect is something you'll have to manage. It may be a good idea to start with the creative mode.

The survival mode contains no graphic violence and the enemies are zombies and skeletons that are already dead, although you might have to kill some cute animals to eat (you can play vegan if you like the challenge). There's no sex except animal reproduction, which is represented by tiny hearts and small animals appearing.

Yep, brilliant for 5 year olds and the "Pocket Edition" tablet interface is a lot easier for young kids to handle than the mouse-keyboard version on the PC. Plus the world is smaller, which makes it a lot harder to get hopelessly lost.

PS: People who live in brightly-coloured woolen houses shouldn't play with buckets of lava.

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