Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

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I think there's a tendency in people to assume that massively successful properties like Minecraft become massively successful because they're special or innovative. While this may play a role, it is rarely the only important factor, and sometimes is not a relevant factor at all.

The reality is that Minecraft's explosive popularity is the result of a perfect storm of all kinds of fickle conditions. It doesn't mean that Notch made the "right" arbitrary choices, as some posters in this thread have intimated; it just means that the choices he made didn't preclude the other externalities from converging.

I think the two biggest factors in Minecraft's success were a) notch's responsiveness and availability to the community on reddit and twitter and b) Mojang's decision to have the game ported to Xbox. Neither of these have much to do with the specific design decisions in Minecraft itself (many of which were frankly terrible and are still only gradually being reversed).

I doubt the importance of the xbox port. It was a poor port that couldn't be modded and only came around once the game was already a big internet fad.

My anecdote may not be representative, but in my experience, Minecraft was able to spread and become a massive fad among elementary school age kids because they could download it to their Xbox. All the kids I know who play Minecraft do it primarily on the Xbox until they get really into it, at which point they convince their parents to let them download it for the PC.

The xbox release definitely gave it the huge boost it needed.

My kid started playing Minecraft in the Xbox when he was 2. He couldn't even use the control right, his hands were too small for legos, but almost right for the controller. You wouldn't believe what a 2 year old mind can build.

The Xbox is now the Minecraft machine, it has no other uses.

What are some examples of poor design decisions that were made?

Modding is a very popular part of Minecraft.

TO mod Minecraft you have to:-

i) find the right mod - it has to be for the correct version of Minecraft

ii) Locate the Minecraft jar; expand it.

iii) Copy the mod into the correct folder

iv) Delete a file (if you haven't already)

v) recompress

vi) test

vii) do all this again for the next mod you want to apply

A better mod interface would be lovely.

Compare this to a game like KSP where modding is also very popular.

Installing a mod is generally: extract rar to game folder. Step two is play the game.

Modding hasn't been like that for over two years nowadays. These days it's:

1) Download the MinecraftForge Installer and run it.

2) Find the right mods you want.

3) Copy the mod into the correct folder.

4) Change configuration (if you want)

5) Test

Furthermore, you can use various launchers such as the Feed The Beast launcher where you download the launcher, run it, pick a pack that it'll download and then run with a very low chance (< 1%) of there being problems. Oh, and you can also join servers that are configured to that modpack too without doing anything.

You miss the bits where you pray the mod isn't carrying anything malicious and you hunt around for a version that is compatible with the engine version you are running.

That's a lot of copying. Sounds like minecraft could do with a proper package manager. Maybe Microsoft will give it nuget support(har har).

Sure, adding a mod is not trivial, but that's just a technical hurdle for an advanced feature. Nor is that process difficult for someone who can follow a list of instructions. Neither this nor your original comment actually address the core user-level design features. The point at which you feel whatever pain there is in trying to mod the game happens only after you enjoy the game and decide it's worthwhile to mode.

I teach kids to do cool stuff with computers.

I don't teach them Minecraft. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I should. But then, I really don't need to. The kids that want to, seem to have no problems at all figuring out the seven steps you just posted. They use a combination of youtube videos/tutorials, persistence, and if all else fails, reading the docs/wiki. What I help them with is basic computer literacy (I can read English faster, and know my way around the OS, file system, zip/jar files, etcetera, quicker). I'm just a catalyst in that sense. In fact I know very little about Minecraft at all (I think I know slightly more about modding the game than actually playing it).

The kids that have a drive to figure this out (and some are as young as 7 years old, incredible), also happen to be the same ones that will want to learn other types of programming such as shell scripting (or .bat/VBS programming, depending on the OS), relatively advanced Gamemaker stuff, things like that. They also like explaining these things to the other kids (which we try to encourage).

For that reason, and that reason alone[0], I do ban Minecraft in certain circumstances. I only allow it if they're actually modding stuff instead of just playing. They only get to play games the second half of the day (if they want), otherwise they have to do something more creative on the computers (or go play somewhere else). This limitation is because I've found, by experience and experiment--not just because I want to believe this is the case--that there are many kids who have talents to do truly amazing things on the computer at a young age, and that it really helps them if they're not surrounded by peers simply playing games on those same computers (peers that have other, non-computer-related talents, but just happen to like playing video games, become a distraction). Of course they have to test their mods in a real life network setting later on, which makes it even cooler :)

[0] okay, there is one other reason. you may be familiar with applications such as TeamSpeak or Ventrilo. Kids like to use a similar voice-based, wireless communication protocol known as "shouting across the room".

I have kids playing Minecraft too, how many minutes/hours of screen time do you allow per day?

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2014/06/30

Even I wasn't sure in the beginning with by Son. But I think we don't have to worry, they do get bored and then want other activities. So, don't have to police kids too much.

I don't help my Son much in getting mods and stuff. So, he does whatever he can. That puts some sort of a break.

The full day is open from 10-16h, they get to play games from 14h until closing time.

Some kids circumvent this by watching YouTube videos of games instead ... but usually not for too long, because they quickly realize there's so much other interesting stuff to do. I sometimes feel I should regulate this watching of videos too, but it never really got to a point where it was that bad. There's also a social aspect to it, when there's five kids watching a video of a cat doing something silly. Plus, observing what they like to watch helps me connect to their world a bit better. It also makes me understand the more inane and stupid parts of YouTube better. In particular those ultra-cheesy MineCraft music videos, with the over-autotuned voices, superhappy melodies about mining stuff and creepers. On the one hand it's a terrible musical equivalent of HFCS, on the other hand, the sheer exuberance and happiness that radiates from it makes me remember, I loved to listen to Happy Hardcore when I was young :) :)

I don't regulate their general "screen time" (how long they are at a computer), although a few of the parents do tell their kids they don't want them the entire day in the computer area. Surprisingly, those kids take care of that request fairly good by themselves, partially because there's more than enough other fun and interesting things to do, partially because there's something about how the place is run, giving the kids some responsibilities, positive attitudes, that just makes them really well-behaved.

> "...on the other hand, the sheer exuberance and happiness that radiates from it makes me remember, I loved to listen to Happy Hardcore when I was young"

Haha, this made me laugh. I think it's great that you have that perspective!

I recently learned that Steve Jobs didn't give iPads to his own kids and maintained an atmosphere to intellectually stimulating conversation with their kids, as it has been before tech. He gave them bookBooks instead (hilarious IKEA book book ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0).

Other tech CEOs limit at 30 minutes screen time per day for their kids.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-jackson/why-the-creato...

They're not raising their kids to sling code for a living.

CEO's also don't have to use iPad's and TV as cheap babysitters.

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