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 people who did the fun Nokia/Sesame Street stuff). Today I was thinking about the email and realized I was not able to publish it without permission. I find it fascinating.



My nine year old son Alex played with me recently over at our house - after a while, he wanted to show his friend Minecraft Pocket Edition, which I just got for our iPads (we each have one, best investment I've made so far in his education). He and I had spent a few hours making 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 simplified version. There's no zombies, fighting or zombies. It's just a way to create items, much like the PC version. At first I wasn't going to buy the iOS version as it cost $7 on the iPad however, Google has been promoting games for Android, and Minecraft was available for sale for 10 cents, which is why I purchased it for my Motorola Xoom (which I mostly use to test). This was when I realized how enjoyable the game was! I immediately bought the iPad version and Alex and I have enjoyed playing with it for years.



But I was unsure if Alex's friend would be as enthralled as it's sort of geeky and an enormous success. Because the Android and iPad versions of the program are compatible, we can all be a part of the same world on all three tablets at once. We spent two solid hours that afternoon sitting in the living room with our own tablets, excitedly building cool things both in tandem and independently and then hopping around the virtual world to see what other players had built. No blasting bad guys there were no puzzles, and no challenges. It was pure virtual creation.



For me, there are so many parts to this experience that I consider quite novel.



- Minecraft PE isn't a 'game in the traditional sense, but rather an sandbox. Minecraft PE is a sandbox similar to Lego blocks, but more exciting because you can actually build the world you're creating. The interface is so simple that anyone can play it with no prior experience. It's amazing how quickly you can start from building a small shack or tunnel to clearing 10 acres of virtual land and building the biggest castle ever. It was amazing to watch the boys ambitions get ahead of themselves, and then reduce their ambitions, support each one another, etc. The social aspect of sharing what you've built is very compelling, even however, I had to remind both of them at one point or another to check out what the other one had built, as they were so engaged in what they were working on that they were unable to stop. There were many "Oh! Cool! I'm here to assist! Then come see mine I'm here to help! This is the first time that I've ever witnessed this type of lesson while playing any type of co-op game. The ability to jump in with the two boys and guide them along in case they stalled was great (in terms of new ideas, or simply getting lost - one boy tunneled straight down to the border of the virtual world, but could not figure out how to return to the surface. Cross platform compatibility, although it may seem obvious, it was essential element to all of the above. The boys finally found a game called Hide and Go Seek. It was quite amusing particularly when you consider you could make your own endless tunnels.



It was really fascinating to watch the boys slam into the game with each other, start creating new stuff and having fun without effort. Even though we all sat next to each other, using our respective devices, the experience was much more intimate than a co-op game in which you all communicate with grunts and elbows. Instead, we were all sitting in the living room, and we would glance up and chat with each other, leaning over to see what the other was doing, etc. It was a much more normal social interaction than a shared screen one.



It's been a while since I'm amazed by how advanced tablet computers truly are: Touch can make UIs easy to use and user-friendly and the tablet's form factor can easily be integrated into social situations without imposing barriers like a laptop or game console.
MINECRAFT SERVER LIST


This is yet another example of the technological leap tablets are a part of. They aren't an additional type of computing device that is odd in comparison to the PC and mobile phone It's clear to me that tablets will be the principal computing device of the upcoming time. They could be referred to as mobile OSes or PCs that have touchscreen interfaces however, they're the form factor we have been waiting for for decades.


My Website: https://minecraft-server-list.co/