Notes

If you haven't Heard of It

This post actually started out as a lengthy email sent to some researchers I work with that study user experience, especially with families (they're the folks that did the fun Nokia/Sesame Street-related things). I thought about the email today and realized there was no reason not to share it here as well as I find it truly fascinating.



My nine year old son Alex was playing with me recently at our house After a while, he wanted to show his friend Minecraft Pocket Edition, which I just got for our iPads (we both have one, the my best investment so far in his education). He and I spent a couple of hours creating virtual castles and underground hideouts together on a Saturday. It was a lot of fun.



If you haven't heard of it, Minecraft is an independently developed block-building-slash-survival game that hit it big over the last year, and they just came out with a tablet version a few weeks ago for both Android and iPad. The tablet version of Minecraft is a light version. There's no fighting, zombies, etc. The only thing it has is the ability to make things, similar to the PC version. At first I wasn't going to purchase the iOS version because it costs $7 on the iPad, but Google has been advertising games for Android, and Minecraft was on sale for 10 cents, so I bought it for my Motorola Xoom (which I use for testing). It was at this point that I realized how fun it was! I then purchased the iPad version, and Alex and I have enjoyed playing with it ever since.



Although I wasn't sure if Alex's friend would be interested, the event was an overwhelming success. Because the Android and iPad versions are compatible, we were able to jump into the same world together using all three tablets at the same time. We spent two hours sitting in the living room with our individual tablets, enthralled in creating cool things both individually and together and then exploring the virtual world to see what the other kids had built. There were no bad guys to blast there were no puzzles, and no challenges. It was pure virtual creation.



For me there are many aspects to this experience that I find very interesting.



- Minecraft PE isn't really a "game in the traditional sense. It's an sandbox. Minecraft PE is a sandbox, similar to Lego blocks, but more exciting because you actually create the world you're creating. The interface is simple, anyone can pick it up and have fun without previous experience - not normal for many video games or virtual worlds - It's incredible how quickly you go from building a little tunnel or shack, and then wanting to clear out 10 virtual acres of land to create the biggest castle ever. It was amazing to watch the boys leap ahead of themselves and then scale back, support each one another and more. The social aspect of sharing your creations is very compelling, even although I had to chide both kids at one point or another to check out what the other one had built, as they were so absorbed in what they were working on that they didn't want to stop. There were plenty of 'Oh! minecraft names Cool! I'm here to assist! Come see my work! This is the first time that some sort of lesson has come up while playing any type of game with co-op that I've seen. The ability to join the two boys and guide them in the event that they stopped was great (in terms of new ideas, or simply being lost - one kid tunneled into the virtual world and then could not figure out how to get back to the surface. :-) ) Cross-platform compatibility - this may seem obvious, but it really did enable all the above. The boys finally found the game Hide and Go Seek. This, when you consider that you could create your own tunnels that are endless, was quite entertaining.



It was amazing to see the boys jump into the game, come up with new ideas and have fun. Even though we all sat facing each other using our respective devices, the experience was still more intimate than a typical co-op game in which you communicate with grunts and elbows. Instead, we all sat comfortably in the living room and talked with one another. We also looked over to see what others were doing. It was all done in a more normal and social manner as opposed to, say the shared-screen experience.



Again, I'm amazed at how far tablet computers truly are: Touch can make UIs much more user-friendly and user-friendly and the tablet's shape is able to easily integrate into social settings without creating barriers like gaming consoles or laptops.



This is another illustration of the technological advancement that tablets are a part of. They aren't a third-party computing device that appears to be an odd fit compared to the mobile phone and the PC I'm convinced now that tablets will become the primary computing device of the coming age. They could be referred to as mobile OSes or computers with touchscreen interfaces but they are the form factor we have been waiting for for decades.


Website: https://minecraft-names.com/