Last week the makers of Minecraft announced that the game had over 33m users. I am not a great fan of computer games – particularly the ‘shoot ‘em up’ variety. But Minecraft seems to be quite different.
I have several reasons to be interested in it;
- 1. My beloved 9 year old Grandson has been a fan for several years. He also happens to be autistic. As the Guardian article states, Minecraft is particularly appealing to autistic kids. This is the one area where my Grandson is not only as good, but a lot better, than his classmates. It has done wonders for his confidence. “There are now dedicated multiplayer servers where autistic children can meet up and play together”.
- As the excellent BBC article – Why Minecraft is more than just another video game– demonstrates, Minecraft is a ‘route to get to grips with that most coveted of skills – computer programming’. The way you build things in Minecraft is pretty similar to way you now assemble routines together to build an app. Indeed, Minecraft teaches the basics of Boolean logic - AND/OR/NOR etc.
- Minecraft is ‘widely used in education’ (according to the Guardian article). “Geography teachers get children to model real-life buildings or villages, physics teachers use it to teach simple fluid dynamics and mechanical properties’.
Within TechMarketView, several of our analysts have kids who are Minecraft addicts – just like my grandson. Rather than being afraid of it, maybe Minecraft really is a ‘force for good’.