Notes

It's an Excellent Idea, However, you May not have Heard of It.

This post started as an email to some researchers that I work with. They investigate user experience, specifically with families. (They're the ones who did the fun Nokia/Sesame Street-related stuff). Today I was thinking about the email and realized I was not able to post it on this blog without permission. I find it fascinating.



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



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 lighter version. There's no fighting, zombies and so on. The only thing it has is the ability to make things, similar to the PC version. At first , I was not going to purchase the iOS version because it costs $7 on the iPad however, Google has been promoting games for Android, and Minecraft was on sale for 10 cents, so I bought it for my Motorola Xoom (which I use mostly for testing). It was then that I discovered how much fun it was! I bought the iPad version and Alex and I have had fun playing it since then.



However, I was unsure if Alex's friend would be as interested as it's sort of geeky and an instant hit. Because the Android and iPad versions of the program are compatible, we could all be a part of the same world using all three tablets at once. We spent two hours sitting in the living space with our own tablets, creating cool things individually and together and then hopping around the virtual world to see what the others had created. There were no puzzles or challenges, no blasting bad guys and no challenges. It was pure virtual creation.



To me there's so many parts of this experience which I consider to be pretty unique:



- Minecraft PE isn't a game' in the traditional sense, but rather a Sandbox. Minecraft PE is a sandbox, similar to Lego blocks, but better because you actually create the world you're creating. - The interface is so easy that anyone can use it without prior knowledge. - It's amazing how fast you can go from building a small tunnel or shack to clearing out 10 acres of virtual land and creating the largest castle ever. It was amazing to see the boys advance ahead of themselves, then scale back, support each other and more. Sharing what you've built is a great social aspect. I had to remind the boys at times to check out the work of the other because they were so absorbed in their activities that they simply couldn't stop. Once they did, there were lots of "Oh! Cool! I'd like to assist! Visit my work! This is the first time I have ever witnessed this type of lesson while playing any kind of game. The ability to jump in with the boys and help them along was fantastic. This was in terms of introducing new ideas or getting lost. One boy walked all of the way to the virtual world's boundary and couldn't get back. It was a bit of a nightmare.) ) - Cross platform compatibility - this is almost obvious, but it did enable all the above. The boys finally found a game called Hide and Go Seek. This, when you consider that you could create your own endless tunnels, was quite fun.



It really was fascinating to watch the boys slam into the game together and start making new stuff and having fun without any hassle. Even though it appears that, with us all having our heads down on our personal device the experience will be less personal - it was actually far superior to playing a co-op video game in which everyone is seated in one direction and communicate with grunts and occasional elbows. teamextreme minecraft server Instead, we were all sitting in the living room, and we would glance up and chat with each other, lean over to see what the other was doing, etc. It was all done in a more normal and social manner as opposed to, say sharing a screen.



Once again, I'm truly amazed by how advanced tablet computers really are: Touch can make UIs easy to use and user-friendly and the tablet's shape can easily be integrated into social situations without imposing barriers like gaming consoles or laptops.



This is yet another example of the technological advancement that tablets represent. Rather than being a third type of computing system that seems an odd fit compared to the PC and mobile phone, it's obvious to me now that tablets will become the primary computing device of the next time. They may be classified as mobile OSes or PCs with touchscreens however, they're the type of device we've been waiting over the last several decades.


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