Skyler Roberts is getting tired. For the past nine months, the 20-year-old has been on a solo journey across the United States. He has walked over 3,600 miles, and he’s still got a long way to go. Or as he puts it, “just 600 miles” to go. Just.
From his starting point near Ontario, Canada, Skyler has hiked through dozens of states, from New York to Texas to Washington. The finish line is San Francisco. On the way, he’s worn out seven pairs of shoes. He’s been stopped by police 20 times (without incident). He’s eaten countless packages of instant mashed potatoes and ramen noodles. He’s also found 16 spoons.
He did this to visit some online friends he met playing Minecraft.
Generating level, building terrain
It started as a joke. Skyler was in middle school when Minecraft entered public alpha, and he caught the bug almost immediately. He started playing just before the release of the Nether and has since logged thousands of hours across several servers, including his own ultra hardcore server (‘UHC’ is a survival death-game mode, and isn’t that fitting) and the Jsano fan server, an offshoot of the Mindcrack community.
One day, he told his far-off friends in server chat that he’d walk over sometime. He laughed it off at first, but somehow the idea stuck with him as he waded through high school. By his junior year, he was so busy with schoolwork and his part-time job that he didn’t have much time for Minecraft. He was feeling the pressure of graduation. What next? He wasn’t sure.
After graduating in June 2016, Skyler didn’t want to immediately commit to anything and risk exploding “like a bed in the nether,” he said on Reddit. He wanted to unwind. So he got a second job, worked 60-hour weeks, saved up around $5,000 Canadian and charted a gap year across America. You know, to cool off. He also wanted to sell his parents—his mother in Canada and his father in the U.S.—on the idea, which actually went pretty smoothly.
“From the get-go I was like ‘awesome!’” says Paul Roberts, Skyler’s father. “I raised him to be capable of these kinds of things. I trust him and believe in him and he thought about it … he thought about this for a while before he ever pitched the subject, and I could tell that, so I was like ‘yeah, you go!’”
In speaking with the Roberts, I get the sense that fear doesn’t run in the family. That being said, Skyler’s mother, Esther Roberts, was understandably concerned for his safety. She wanted to know where he would stay, how he’d get there and how he would fund his journey. Skyler started mulling over the same questions before he approached either of his parents, and because he had good answers, his mother had no qualms trusting him.
“You know, I have protected my kids to a certain extent,” she says. “And all of my family was shocked, you know, ‘how could you let him go?’ Well, how could I keep him back? You don’t really have a lot of control as a parent when they get older. If he was 16, I mean, absolutely not. I would be screaming bloody murder, absolutely you’re not going anywhere when you’re 16. But when you’re 20, that’s a whole different thing … he knew I would ask five million questions and he had the answers to all of my questions. He’d thought those through.”
With his proud parents behind him, Skyler started gearing up. He was an accomplished camper long before he punched a tree in Minecraft. Most of his 50 pounds of gear was leftover from previous, considerably shorter trips—among other things, a tent, a sleeping bag, a jetboil stove, a sturdy phone, a portable charger and a laptop that sadly can’t run Minecraft at a decent framerate.
Far lands or bust
It would be doable, but it wouldn’t be easy. Just getting acclimated to the walking regimen was tough enough. Skyler departed August 14, 2016, and by December his hip was killing him, so he exchanged his backpack for a jogging stroller. That eased the pain but also made passing through stretches like New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains even more of a slog. The day I spoke with him, his hip was hurting again, but Skyler is anything but discouraged.
“I’m really looking forward to this next month. A few months ago, I was more scared to do things,” he says. “A few months before that, I couldn’t even imagine being finished. Before that I was still getting my sea legs on. It’s interesting how it’s evolved. By this point I’m ready to be done. I’m excited for this last portion and I don’t want to rush it too much.”
Skyler was never in a hurry. His journey was always about meeting people and seeing new things. He had a rough route in mind when he set out, but his only goals were to “outrun winter” on his way south and visit as many Minecraft friends as possible. He originally wanted to meet seven, but he’s already up to nine. Skyler makes up the rest as he goes, all the while diligently chronicling his travels via his subreddit, YouTube and Instagram, always eager to share the day’s stories and scenery.
“I purposely didn’t read any books by people who have [travelled across the US]. I did my best to because I wanted this trip to be my own,” he says. “I just wanted to do it. I didn’t want any expectations going in. I just wanted to experience it for myself.”
And what an experience it’s been. Skyler can only spend a few days with each friend, so most of his weeks are raw travel. And though his route is malleable, he does have places to be, so he keeps to a schedule. Sunrise is his alarm clock and sunset his curfew, and there’s often little but walking in between. “Before, I was doing 10 to 15 miles a day,” he says. “Now I’m doing 20 to 25 … some days I’ll just never stop walking, just keep walking for seven or eight hours straight or even more. When it gets to an hour or two before sunset, I start looking for a place to camp.”
Skyler regularly rooms with local Couchsurfing hosts, and he’s spent plenty of time in churchyards and parks. Some nights saw less likely shelters, including the Kentucky Downs horse racing track.
“It was getting dark and there was no security around so I snuck in and camped right in the middle of the field,” says Skyler. “I got out before sunrise because it probably wouldn’t have been good if I was there too late on a weekday.”
He spends about half his nights indoors but he’s only paid for housing twice—once due to severe weather and again when his stroller broke. His GoFundMe campaign helped with that, not to mention all the shoes. I asked him what his most dangerous moment was and he told me about an eventful night near a small town in Idaho.
“I was about 10 miles outside of it and I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it there. The sun was starting to set, there was rain going on, so I was just going to find a place to camp. I started knocking on people’s doors—and this was really rural, so we’re talking houses a quarter-mile apart.
“Nobody answered until like the third or fourth house. The guy who answered, old guy, he didn’t feel comfortable with me camping in his yard, but he told me about a half-mile down the road there was a barn and I could stay in there for the night. So I left and I was going to head back to the road, and as I was going back this guy in a white pickup truck just comes barreling towards me. He stops right in front of me and his first words were ‘what the fuck do you think you’re doing knocking on people’s doors out here?’ And I was like ‘oh, shit.’”
After hearing Skyler’s story, the man stowed his rifle, which had been sitting in the front seat of his truck, and gave Skyler a ride to a nearby park. He bought him breakfast the following morning. It started with a threat, but ended with a meal. Skyler has mostly met friendly people during his journey and says he’s grown comfortable talking with strangers along the way, though he knows the dangers.
Before the trip, “tons of people” told Skyler he couldn’t do it. He’d be murdered or robbed, they said. He listened, but went for it anyway. “It’s good to keep what people say in mind,” says Skyler, “but not to let other people’s fears prevent you from living your own life, experiencing the world for yourself.”
“The people he comes across, a lot of them are fearful of the unknown,” says Paul Roberts. “There’s so much stuff out there in the news about bad things happening, so he looks like someone who isn’t from [parts of the country], and you kind of have to overcome that fear with folks. And he’s good at it. He’s really good at it.”
Friends list
I also spoke with Chris Kreidler, who Skyler visited a few weeks ago. Kreidler has known Skyler since 2013, but while they’ve cracked jokes online for years, he never expected to spend a weekend together. But when Skyler posted a Skype message asking if anyone was near his northwestern route, Kreidler reached out.
“He got here Friday evening. I drove about 20 miles to pick him up because he didn’t make it all the way to [my home in] Seattle,” Kreidler says. “Then he was here for Saturday and Sunday. We went out and did some stuff Saturday, then he spent a bit of Sunday just writing some blog posts and we did a couple things later, then he packed up Monday morning. So two full days.”
Kreidler has made many friends through Minecraft, and met many of them in person through events like Minecon, but Skyler’s visit was more personal. He thought things might be tense since they’d only ever interacted online, but it didn’t take long for old habits to kick in.
“The very first part when I met him was a little awkward because I don’t really know him that well, but after a few minutes it’s not much different from talking online,” Kreidler says. “It went better than I expected it to. I was worried beforehand that it’d be awkward the whole time and that we wouldn’t really have anything in common, but it’s not too hard to start talking to him. And he had a lot to talk about, obviously.”
It’s testament to how easy it is to bond over games, and how legitimate and valuable those friendships can be. “I think having online friends is great, and [that] the Internet is great for making friends,” Kreidler says. “Because if you meet online you automatically have something in common. He and I had Minecraft in common. That would make for a really great real-life friendship as well.”
Thousands of miles later, Skyler is every bit as supportive of making and visiting online friends. “I would say go for it, definitely do it. It’s worth the experience 99 times out of 100. I can’t even articulate it,” he says. “I totally support anybody doing this, or anyone taking any sort of trip to experience more of life than you normally would.
“Meeting people is fantastic. I think walking across a country to visit friends is maybe not for everybody—probably not for everybody. But I think driving down or flying down and meeting someone and having some fun for a weekend, that’s something a lot of people can do and a lot of people should do.”
Ah, the Sydney Opera House. The name implies it’s all about opera, but don’t be fooled: in 2011 I watched gameplay footage of Rage on a big cinema screen in there, with the crowd hooting and hollering with every brutal murder. No, the Sydney Opera House isn’t just a place for high-falutin ruling class flim flam. It’s also a place for video games.
And that will become amply obvious when Minecraft at the Sydney Opera House kicks off next month – a festival celebrating all things Steve. Dubbed a “true choose-your-own-adventure experience”, it definitely seems to be geared towards younger Minecraft fans, but “devotees of all ages” are invited to attend.
“The Opera House’s grand Concert Hall and Northern Foyers will be transformed into a Minecraft extravaganza spanning three sessions over two days. Attendees can come and go between the main competition on stage and the activities in the foyer,” reads the press release.
There will be a bunch of Minecraft-related competitions, as well as appearances by Minecraft lead creative designer Jens Bergensten and Mojang brand director Lydia Winters. Tickets go on sale Thursday June 8, but pre-sales are on now.
A couple of offers on console bundles have popped up recently on eBay. The first, from NewEgg’s portal, has the Xbox One S Minecraft bundle for the low price of $200.
The bundle includes a white, 500GB Xbox One S, and a copy of Minecraft. This is a pretty good price, even if you’re not interested in Minecraft. The deal is available for 29 days, or until supplies last.
Then we have the PlayStation 4 Uncharted 4 bundle from seller Antonline. Priced $210, this one comes with a PS4 Slim and a copy of the game. This is also the 500GB version, available until supplies last.
One thing to note with the PS4 bundle, though, is that you can only see the price at checkout.
Saturday AM writethru after Friday 3rd UPDATE: Paramount is seeing slightly better numbers on a film that opened this past Tuesday in previews and has been stuck in second gear. The latest pic in its franchise —Transformers: The Last Knight — is on track to take in about $40M+ for the three-day and is looking at a $63.9M five-day, which would be the lowest opening in the series of five films. The last time out, Transformers: Age of Extinction grabbed $100M in its opening weekend in 2014 also in June. It seems the studio and Hasbro has squeezed every drop out of this film franchise; audiences are clearly growing tired of it.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros./DC’s Wonder Womancleared the $300M mark yesterday with $7.3M and is expected to hit $319.4M by Sunday. Currently, the Patty Jenkins-directed movie is expected to pull in $26.17M for the weekend, which would inch out Dark Knight ($26.11M) to become the best fourth weekend for a Warner Bros. release ever at the domestic box office. Soon, Wonder Woman will overtake Suicide Squad ($325.1M) and Batman v. Superman ($330.3M) to become the third highest grossing DC title ever after TheDark Knight ($534.9M) and The Dark Knight Rises ($448.1M).
In its second weekend out, Cars 3 should drive past the $100M mark for Disney/Pixar, depending on how strong the family audience attendance is today and Sunday. That would mean a 52% drop for $25.6M. The picture that is just tanking in its second weekend is the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me, which kept its theaters but it sinking like a stone in its sophomore frame, down possibly 78% with $5.88M.
REX/Shutterstock
More interesting are the performances of films in the Specialty box office. The Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan comedy The Big Sick from Amazon and Lionsgate could pull off $80K per screen in its five theaters its first weekend out. To date in 2017, that’s the best opening theater average beating Beauty and the Beast‘s $42K. The husband/wife duo promoted this film at CinemaCon earlier this year and it was one of the highlights of the convention, primarily because Nanjiani had everyone in stitches. As reported exclusively by Deadline, Amazon scooped up The Big Sick at Sundance for $12M. Can they make their money back? Given the notable per theater here, an expansion is obviously in store. The movie is certified fresh by Rotten Tomatoes at 97% and that equals more foot traffic.
Focus Features
Sofia Coppola’s drama The Beguiled, which premiered this year at Cannes and stars Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst and Elle Fanning, is also in a handful of theaters and may pull in a per screen average of around $65,6K from its four theaters. The Beguiled is also in its first weekend. While Beguiled is 74% fresh, it has the distinction of having Cannes kudos best director for Coppola as well as Nicole Kidman’s special 70th anniversary prize.
Other indies, like the Mike White/Miguel Arteta satirical comedy Beatriz for Dinner expanded to 491 theaters after a great performance for distributor Roadside Attractions’ last weekend. The film, which has been getting critical kudos since it premiered at Sundance, stars Salma Hayek and Jonathan Lithgow. And you gotta give kudos to the marketing team on this one for the fun trailer and visuals.
Here’s the chart as of Saturday AM:
1). Transformers: The Last Knight (PAR), 4,069 theaters / $15.65M Wed. (includes Tuesday preview of $5.5M) / $8.1M Thurs. / $13.7M Fri. / 3-day cume: $40.1M / Total cume: $63.9M / Wk 1
Book of Henry (FOC), 646 theaters (+67) / $325K Fri. / 3-day cume: $1.1M (-21%) / Per screen: $1,741 / Total: $3.2M / Wk 2
The Big Sick (AMAZ/LGF), 5 theaters / $105K Fri. / 3-day cume: $322K to $400K / Per screen: $64Kto $80K / Wk 1
The Beguiled (FOC), 4 theaters / $68K Fri. / 3-day cume: $210K / Per screen: $52,190 / Wk 1
— Anita Busch reported Friday night numbers. Anthony D’Alessandro handled Saturday AM writethru
2nd UPDATE, Friday, 12:24 PM: Paramount’s Transformers: The Last Knightis looking at an estimated $12.5 million today based off of midday matinees, with a current outlook that’s just under $60M over five days. That number could fall if these estimates don’t maintain themselves into the night. Three-day already is estimated at $36.5M.
Again, this is a waning property stateside, which many in town believe Paramount strictly made for China, which is bound to clear a $100M opening per Deadline’s Nancy Tartaglione. That territory repped close to a third of Age Of Extinction‘s $1.1 billion take. And even though China for Last Knight is pacing ahead of Extinction by 69%, some analysts believe it may not even finish in the $300M-plus range when all is said and done.
After drawing a profit of $250M on the last movie (merchandise alone generated $30M), it only made sense financially for Paramount to make another Transformers film, and a prolific writers roundtable led by Akiva Goldsman cannot put these robots back together again when there’s the dominant, repetitive, hyper-CGI vision of director Michael Bay (who apparently says its his last Transformers). As we’ve pointed out, critics have zero patience for Last Knight and moviegoers’ interest is on the decline.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros/DC’sWonder Woman, which is clicking past Universal’s Mamma Mia! on a worldwide basis to become the highest-grossing live-action movie directed by a female with $610M, will stay planted in second place with an estimated $26M take (down a marvelous 37%). By Sunday, the Patty Jenkins-directed movie will hurl itself past $319.2M, just $5.8M shy of taking out Suicide Squad and another $11.1M before Wonder Woman shows Batman V. Superman ($330.3M) who exactly is the boss at the box office. Wonder Woman is looking at an estimated $7M today.
Disney/Pixar’s Cars 3 is also driving toward $7M today, but as of this minute is expected to come in under Wonder Woman in third with $23M, down 57% from last week, for a running 10-day take of $97.7M by Sunday.
Lionsgate’s Codeblack Entertainment’s All Eyez On Meis expected to gross $2.7M today for a second weekend of $8M, down 70%, for a 10-day total of $40.8M.
We’ll have more updates tonight.
PREVIOUS, Friday 7:32 AM: Thursday wasn’t expected to be high for Paramount’sTransformers: The Last Knight at the domestic box office,but the downer $8.1 million day, off 48% from its $15.65M opening, doesn’t help the Hasbro pic’s five-day opening.
Through two days, Last Knight counts an estimated $23.7M at 4,069 venues, and some analysts even think there’s a chance the Michael Bay title may even fall below $60M in its five-day opening. Last Knight cost a reported $217M before P&A and will rely on overseas ticket sales to get it to any profit point. The last movie, which grossed a then-domestic final low of $245.4M, minted $1.1 billion worldwide good for a $250M profit after all post-theatrical streams were counted. We’ll have a better idea by noon where domestic lies for Last Knight, and overseas results will be coming in soon. What’s interesting is that no other studio dared to counter-program Last Knight, which is funny because it’s not like the movie is vacuuming up the weekend’s business.
While the fifthquel declined to a B+ CinemaScore from the A- earned by its previous chapter Age Of Extinction, ComScore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak even shows a tiring among audiences between installments. Moviegoers gave Last Knight a mundane 75% positive score versus 84% on Age Of Extinction. Word of mouth has even declined from a 69% definite recommend on AOE to 55% on Last Knight. PostTrak shows mostly men occupying seats at Last Knight, at 61%. How that breaks down: men 25+ (33%), men under 25 (29%), women 25+ (23%), and women under 25 (16%). Most people are watching Last Knight in 3D at 53%. A bulk of Last Knight‘s sales are from walk-up business, with 80% purchasing tickets at the theater. Forty-four percent of moviegoers attended Last Knight because it’s part of a franchise they like, while 16% came for star Mark Wahlberg.
Disney/Pixar’s Cars 3 made $4.4M yesterday in second place, raising its week’s cume to $74.7M, off 10% from the first week of Cars which made $83.3M in seven days and ended its stateside run at $244M.
Entertainment Studios
Warner Bros/DC’s Wonder Woman grossed $4M in third at 4,018 for a running three week cume of $293.2M. Entertainment Studios’ 47 Meters Down rose up in the daily rankings to fourth with $1.2M at 2,270 and a week’s cume of $16.7M. Lionsgate’s Codeblack Entertainment’s All Eyez On Me made $1.09M at 2,471 and a week’s tally of $32.8M. Where’s Sony’s Rough Night? All the way down in eighth place with $878K and a seven-day take of $11.9M.
Meanwhile, hope resides for the Culver City studio with their romantic action title Baby Driver, opening Wednesday, and currently maintaining a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Coding curricula is sweeping into classrooms across the country, thanks to programs such as Code.org. According to the Education Commission of States, about 20 states now require that districts allow students to apply specified computer science courses toward completion of mathematics, science or, as a foreign language. But is coding preoccupying the hearts and minds of students after school hours? This is the question that researchers at the MIT Media Lab are asking.
It was there that one of the most popular learn-to-code tools, developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group, was born in 2007. And while it has inspired a flurry of copycat offerings from other developers, Scratch has retained a loyal following: Today the platform claims over 100 million users around the world.
So what keeps these users, er, scratching their itch to code?
Upon entering the offices of the Lifelong Kindergarten groups, one immediately notices images of the whimsical orange “Scratch cat” plastered all over the walls. It is clear that the project has become a source of pride and the center’s claim to fame. That’s where we met Natalie Rusk, one of Scratch’s creators, who is now researching how kids find and sustain the motivation to code.
Rusk with the Scratch cat
To conduct this research, she interviewed over a hundred Scratch users who are active on the platform not just during or after school, but even after a student has graduated and moved on to another school. The key, Rusk found, are what she calls “interest-based communities” that play a strong role in keeping students engaged and learning to code long after school is over.
Scratch was originally built as a program to introduce children to basic programming concepts. Yet the online communities that have sprung suggest the tool wields a much larger influence. “Too often people are positioning Scratch as a stepping stone to other things, whereas we see from our interviews that Scratchers keep going deeper and broader and contribute back either online or offline to other people,” says Rusk.
She describes the Scratch community as a youth development program where many users start, some leave, but others stay and become leaders on the platform. The community, similar to those on other platforms like Reddit, is difficult to quantify since it simply consists of active members who engage with each other to the point that they call one another “friends.” Users do find ways to act on those friendships, celebrating “Scratchaversarys” (similar to an online birthday), by offering coding projects and comments as gifts to one another. Reading through the comment streams on projects, one can easily get a sense of the communal atmosphere where users congratulate each other on getting featured, wish each other happy Scratchaversarys, make jokes with one another and even share personal details about their lives.
New coding cards MIT offers to teachers to build interest-based coding activities
“Initially I was the one who questioned the word ‘community.’ I mean, they were posting projects and writing comments. How is that community?” says Rusk. But when she interviewed many of the users to see why they stayed on the platform, she found that many of them referred to each other as “friends.”
“We interviewed one kid from England who said he wanted to give back on the site because he benefited so much,” explained Rusk, “But when we asked him if he also did that in school he said, no, because he moved around [to different schools] so much.” She says several students share a similar sentiment—especially those whose friends and sense of community come from the coding platform. It is those types of students who she sees as lifelong Scratchers, ready and excited to code for life.
Rusk hopes to cultivate these online communities by allowing them to explore programming projects specific to their hobbies in music, arts and games. It is their theory that by allowing students to engage in interest-based groups that they will become engrossed in the community and code beyond the classroom.
Perhaps the only online coding community that could compete with Scratch for kids’ attention is Minecraft, which aims to provide kids with a similar sense interest- and peer-based exploration. Recently its developers released a coding addition to the game that has sold over 121 million copies.
Its developers at Microsoft hope to cultivate a large, open community for teachers and students around coding. “Before we launched the Education edition [of Minecraft] we spent about a year out with the Minecraft community, listening and learning,” said Neal Manegold, a senior manager at Minecraft Education, in an interview with EdSurge.
Educators told Manegold that most of their students spend a lot of time on Minecraft projects outside of the classroom, but they don’t view the projects as educational in nature as many of them are simply playing the game.
There was already a strong community of Minecraft users, but to maximize learning on the platform, he had to build an active community of educators as well. To do this, the Minecraft team offered a mix of in-person training and online sessions, including forums, Twitter chats and live streamed workshops where educators can teach each other, something Manegold says is important to keep them engaged and creative.
Manegold says that teachers have already been using Minecraft to teach subjects such as History and Engineering by having students recreate three-dimensional replicas of ancient ruins, and he sees the addition of coding expanding the opportunities for educators to use the software for interdisciplinary learning.
“Adding coding to the platform has brought people who were coding-focused, but not necessarily Minecraft focused on to the platform,” says Manegold. “They bring a depth of expertise for people who are interested in Minecraft but don’t have expertise in Computer Science. It is exceedingly valuable to all involved.”
Following on from the recently announced “Better Together” update for Minecraft: Xbox One Edition at E3, Mojang have now revealed their next DLC in the form of a graphics pack, the “Super Duper Graphics Pack”. They do point out that this upgrade is optional, so if you like things the way they are, you don’t need to change it.
This Fall, along with a free update that will allow Minecraft to be played with 4k graphics, the “Super Duper Graphics Pack” will improve a whole bunch of aspects of your game. Some of these include – “features like dynamic shadows, lighting that streams through fog, movement in leaves and grass, new textures for mobs and villagers, directional lighting, edge highlighting and more”. It all sounds very impressive, and to show it off a little bit more, we’ve got a trailer to share with you too.
The “Super Duper Graphics Pack” will be arriving, along with the 4k update, this Fall. It will be available for Xbox One, Xbox One X and Windows 10, with Mojang pointing out that this pack will be “performing best on high-end PCs and the Xbox One X”.
