by Stone Marshall | Jul 14, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Last month I posted about the contents of the “beta” Mine Chest. If this is the first you’ve heard of it, the basic idea is the same as all those other swag box subscriptions. $29.99 a month gets you a shipment of Minecraft swag, about every 30 days, and it’s filled with some exclusive stuff you can only get via this service. This month was pretty similar to last month, in that there was a shirt, a sticker, a stamp, and other little trinkets.
The outside of the box itself looks the same, last month’s box looked like a wood block when you opened it up, and we’ve got a new material this time around, but the same basic load out of a t-shirt and a post card on top. This month’s post card has a neat 3D lenticular effect:
Here’s the back of the post card:
And the full shirt:
Getting deeper into the box yields this month’s stamp and ink pad:
The sticker (which got a little messed up in packaging):
A Hotwheels mine cart:
Two of these mystery figures:
Inside they come wrapped in a black bag so you can’t see what they are, here’s the two I got:
Last, but not least is the IRL crafting recipe:
Aaaaand here’s the instructions to make the Ghast Kite:
So, yeah, that’s this month’s Mine Chest. As an adult without kids, it’s real hard to gauge the value propositions of these boxes. Last month had a coffee cup which was pretty cool, but aside from maybe wearing the shirt, there’s nothing here for me. Maybe if I had kids they’d be super into these mini figures? Either way, if this stuff looks cool and you want a Mine Chest of your own you can sign up over on their site.
Here’s What’s in This Month’s Minecraft Mine Chest Loot.
by Stone Marshall | Jul 13, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Ask kids to explain what makes the video game “Minecraft” cool and fun, and you get answers all over the board.
Do you like wandering through a forest admiring the scenery? You can do that. Want to build a battleship? You can do that. Think taming and training dogs sounds fun? You can do that, too.
Watch out for suicidal green zombie monsters that try to blow themselves up on you. Go digging on a quest to find super-rare diamonds. Mind your step through that portal. Build a tower stretching hundreds of virtual feet into the sky or dig a hole miles deep. Fight your way to the big bad Ender Dragon, but only if you want to.
(Parents, don’t bother trying to adjust the TV or computer screen. Yes, the game graphics are super blocky and pixelated. They’re supposed to be like that. It’s throwback to old-school graphics for kids who are too young to have ever played throwback Nintendo.)
Blow up that building you don’t like. Chop wood, lay bricks, mine ore. Don your armor and grab your sword and watch out for spiders. Play with friends online. Play by yourself.
Minecraft is about building, fighting, mining, crafting, collecting, exploring, farming, animal raising, planning, designing, creating, collaborating … The question soon becomes, what can’t you do in Minecraft?
And there’s not really a story. And there aren’t any stated objectives. And there aren’t any guidelines about how to play.
The game is just the raw material. The players build it into whatever they want it to be.
“I honestly don’t think there is a point. It’s just a fun game,” Stephen Smith, 10, of Avilla, said matter-of-factly, the way only a kid can.
What Minecraft actually is is an open-world sandbox game, officially released in 2011 and now available on multiple devices including computers and laptops, video game consoles, tablets and even smartphones.
Open-world means just that, it’s a widespread landscape that is open to explore however you want. The term sandbox hearkens back to the physical wooden box filled with sand of days past, a place where kids could go to imagine, build, sculpt, destroy and restart over and over.
Minecraft is novel in the aspect that, unlike most video games, there isn’t a set of objectives to accomplish. Players set their own goals, whether that’s building a massive castle to live in, fending off monsters or running in one direction just to see where you’ll end up.
And it’s not just kids, either. Search YouTube or Google and you’ll find videos from adults, too, showing off incredibly massive and complex builds that take days to construct.
“I like how it is so open-world and you can do almost anything,” Smith said, although admits he has a terrible time trying to hunt for diamonds to make better weapons and armor … or craft a jukebox.
He tried out a tutorial one time. He mined some iron and some gold, killed some mobs (Translation: monsters) and died a few times. Immediately, he was “so into it.”
He’s built a battleship that shoots fire charges and arrows. He climbs on top of trees and builds houses on top of them. He once built an underground house and installed a portal in it, because every house needs a portal.
“I don’t know why most kids like it. But the reason I like it, I love to let my imagination loose,” 7-year-old Molly Reasner of Auburn said.
You can find her tending her “sheep god” or building houses, farms or wedding arches.
Wait, what’s a sheep god? Her dad, Adam Reasner, asked in the background of the phone interview. It’s the rarest type of sheep — duh. He admitted later that he doesn’t understand what his daughter sees in the game.
“Minecraft is cool to kids, because most of the time kids are so amazed because of everything you can do. They love it because it’s so much fun and they could do anything they can ever imagine. They can farm, they can explore, in some versions you can talk. So it’s really, really fun,” said 8-year-old Sylvia Easler, Reasner’s friend and neighbor who taught her how to play.
She built Rapunzel’s tower. It was really tall — not as tall as she wanted, though, she said. She didn’t like the finished build because it was kind of plain and her green vines turned brown and gross.
She’s battled the Ender Dragon once, with help from her brother because she’s said she’s no good at archery. He’s 10, and better than her at the game. She’s no “expert,” she claimed, although she plays just about every day.
Even though kids are plopping themselves down just about daily with Minecraft, often for hours, adults aren’t necessarily trying to shoo kids out of the game and into the real world. Kids don’t realize it, but they’re probably practicing important thinking skills while playing.
“It’s amazing to see the planning. They plan, ‘Let’s build this house. Let’s put this protection fence around this house.’ They’re working together, planning ahead on what needs to happen, sometimes there are monsters that attack them and they’re having to protect themselves,” Butler Public Library children’s librarian Teri McKown said.
During the monthly Saturday Minecraft Mania at the library, kids sit down in the same room, fire up the game and go at it, McKown said. In a few short moments, they’re discussing what they want to do, how they’ll go about it and cooperating to make it happen, she said. That’s a skill — collaboration — that schools are frequently utilizing technology to try to teach.
It’s not uncommon nowadays to find libraries hosting Minecraft gatherings. Kids are already playing it, so adults just help funnel them together where they can work together.
“With Minecraft, kind of the hope or the idea behind it is (encouraging) that creativity again,” Noble County Public Library children’s librarian Derrick Leatherman said. “Just kind of along the lines of everything else we’re doing, there are all kinds of things inside of Minecraft. There have been people who have built working computers inside the game.”
Smith’s mom, Avilla Elementary teacher Jo Smith, is looking into whether Minecraft is something that could work in the classroom. It’s not something ready to roll out, but she’s inspired by watching her son navigate and interact with the blocky world. Whether it’s the planning he does to design a building, or thinking about what resources he’ll need to craft a new pickaxe or how to face and overcome pixelated perils, he’s getting more than entertainment out of it, she said.
“I see the appeal. It’s interesting because it’s very simplistic,” Jo Smith said. “It’s different than other games that are on the market. You really can see a lot of creativity.”
Speak the language
Kids and slang go together like PB and J. If your kids sound like they’re speaking a different language when they’re playing Minecraft, it’s probably just some slang. Try to impress your youngsters by dropping some Minecraft lingo:
Build: A building project. “That build took me like infinity hours!”
Butter: Gold ingots. They’re yellow and rectangular, like the stuff you spread on bread.
Creeper: Green, zombie-like suicide bombers. They do a lot of damage when they self-destruct.
Griefer: Bad people who swoop in and destroy your build. Kind of like the wildlings from Game of Thrones.
Mob: Short for “mobile.” It’s a creature. Could be harmless, like a pig. Could be deadly, like a Creeper.
Mod: Short for “modification.” Downloadable files that alter some aspect of the gameplay.
Skin: A texture file that changes how something looks. Think of it like clothes for people, or paint jobs for cars.
Spleef: A competitive sport. Players gather on an elevated platform over a pit, then slowly destroy the floor, causing people to fall. Last one above wins. Thrill-seekers can play over lava.
Vanilla: A game without any mods. Pure. Plain. Untouched. No sprinkles needed.
Hostile mobs: Bad dudes. They will chase you and attack you.
Creeper:
Ghast:
Ender Dragon:
Deconstruction: What makes building game Minecraft so popular?
by Stone Marshall | Jul 12, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Comics often weave in other aspects of popular culture.
It helps make comic book universes more grounded in reality and gives readers something to relate to. Whether it’s taking selfies or talking memes, comics have always adapted with the times.
Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that Marvel’s superheroes might occasionally play video games when they aren’t too busy saving the world. Fighting supervillains is hard work, and playing games can be a great way to kick back and blow off some steam. That’s exactly the case with Bruce Banner in The Totally Awesome Hulk #8, on stands now. Bruce has seemingly been cured of the Hulk, and now, he finally has some time on his hands to kick back and relax. While fellow superheroes and friends like She-Hulk play cards, Bruce sits in bed and plays the wildly-popular block-based building game Minecraft.
Apparently, Bruce has been spending more than a little time with the Mojang-developed game, though he has yet to slay the Ender Dragon. Minecraft, at first, comes off as an odd video game of choice for the onetime Hulk to play. After all, the game is filled with spiders, exploding creepers and more that would seemingly send the scientist into one of his Hulk-induced rages, whether or not he thinks he’s been cured of the Hulk forever.
It’s then that Bruce reveals he likes to play the game on Peaceful difficulty. On Peaceful mode, no hostile enemies spawn. That means no scrambling to find shelter every night or screaming when a creeper blows up an entire day’s worth of hard work. It’s definitely a calmer and more relaxing experience, and that works perfectly with Bruce’s new Hulk-free persona. According to Bruce, he wants to tame an ocelot. Given his genius-level intellect, there’s no telling what kind of insane creations Bruce could build, given the time.
(Photo : Marvel Comics)
In the grand context of the comic, Bruce playing the game isn’t a major plot point or moment. However, writer Greg Pak manages to turn a fun Minecraft reference into a meaningful reflection on Bruce’s new life. He’s relaxed and stress-free, and playing Minecraft on Peaceful difficulty illustrates that in a way more than a few readers instantly understand.
For more pop culture reference in Marvel Comics, you can read how Spider-Man and Deadpool feel about superhero movies here.
Marvel’s Bruce Banner Is A ‘Minecraft’ Fan In ‘The Totally Awesome Hulk’ #8
by Stone Marshall | Jul 12, 2016 | Minecraft News |
Minecraft has recently released a new title update (TU) for Xbox 360 called Title Update 38. It has also rolled out a new content update (CU) for Xbox One called Content Update 26.
Although they have similar update numbers, they actually bring about the same changes for the Minecraft Battle Mode, which was released on June 21. The mini game proved to be instantly popular among many Minecraft fans, although it was plagued with glitches that thankfully didn’t destroy its gameplay.
TU 38 and CU 26 are designed to fix some these bugs and improve user experience for Minecrafters on Xbox 360 and Xbox One, respectively. Specifically, they fix several areas in the map where many players have found themselves to be stuck. However, most of the changes that the updates bring about are related to adding new weapons and making changes to the default settings.
For one thing, players will notice that the Wooden Shovel has been removed from the Center Chests. They’ll also find that they can no longer kick players during Public Battles, although they can still do this is the Lobby if they are the host.
Weapons have been given better performance. All sticks, for example, now have a Sharpness 1. The Wooden Pickaxe and the Wooden Shovel (both of which are in the Outer Chests) have been given an additional Sharpness 1 and Sharpness 2, respectively, while the Wooden Hoe with Fire Aspect 1 has been given an additional Sharpness 1. All Poison Potions, which were on Level 1 before, are now on Level 2.
Certain items have also been replaced. The Diamond Chest Plate, for instance, has been replaced with an Iron Chest Plate, while the Fire Charge item has been replaced with a Fire Resistance potion.
You can find the complete change log for the Title Update 38 here. Some have complained about the changes, particularly those who are used to using the Diamond Chest Plate and the Fire Charge item, but most players have welcomed the improvements. Have you noticed these changes in Minecraft Battle Mode? Do you think they improve the game as a whole? Tell us your thoughts by commenting below!
Minecraft Releases TU 38 for Xbox 360 and CU 26 for Xbox One
