Sturgis woman publishes Minecraft adventure novel
Danica Davidson of Sturgis has published “Escape from the Overworld.” It’s a Minecraft adventure novel for ages 7-12.
- Michelle Patrick/JournalDanica Davidson of Sturgis recently published “Escape from the Overworld,” a Minecraft adventure novel for ages 7-12. A book signing is planned for 11 a.m.-noon March 28 at Lowry’s Books and More in downtown Sturgis
Danica Davidson of Sturgis has published “Escape from the Overworld.” It’s a Minecraft adventure novel for ages 7-12.
“It’s about an 11-year-old, Stevie, who lives in the Minecraft world,” she said about her novel. “He’s not good at fighting zombies. He doesn’t feel he belongs in that world.”
But there’s a solution, with a twist.
“He finds a portal into our world,” Davidson went on to say about the book. “He meets a bullied girl named Maison. The two become friends, but by opening the portal, he lets zombies into our world too.”
According to Davidson, the novel is a fantasy read with real world issues as well like bullies and kids going to a new school.
While “Escape from the Overworld” is her first published book, Davidson is no stranger to having her work published.
“I’ve been writing for years,” she said. “I started writing professionally in high school.”
Davidson currently writes for MTV News. She has also written for CNN, Los Angeles Times, The Onion, Publisher’s Weekly and more. Her next venture is to publish a book on how to draw Manga.
“Escape from the Overworld” has been selected to be part of an anti-bullying, girl empowerment initiative in Los Angeles and Atlanta where copies of her book will be given out, Davidson said.
A book signing is planned for 11 a.m.-noon March 28 at Lowry’s Books and More in downtown Sturgis.
Davidson is interested in visiting local classrooms and libraries. She may be contacted at danicadavidson.com.
“Escape from the Overworld” is published by Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., and is available at Lowry’s Books and More, Wal-mart, Barnes & Noble, Target and Amazon.com.
Mojang Responds To Possible Minecraft Ban in Turkey
“Minecraft is enjoyed by many players in a wide variety of ways.”
A spokesperson from Mojang responded to the possibility of Minecraft’s ban in Turkey over its alleged focus on “violence.”
Speaking to GamesBeat, the Mojang representative explained the many different approaches to Minecraft by its fans, and the ways the game world’s dangers can be avoided or turned off entirely:
“Minecraft is enjoyed by many players in a wide variety of ways. Many enjoy the creative freedom that’s presented by Minecraft and its tools, some are more interested by the opportunity to explore a landscape without boundaries and to go on exciting adventures with friends. We encourage players to cooperate in order to succeed, whether they’re building, exploring, or adventuring.
“The world of Minecraft can be a dangerous place: it’s inhabited by scary, genderless monsters that come out at night. It might be necessary to defend against them to survive. If people find this level of fantasy conflict upsetting, we would encourage them to play in Creative Mode, or to enable the Peaceful setting. Both of these options will prevent monsters from appearing in the world.”
Turkey’s Ministry of Family and Social Policies are working on possibly banning Minecraft after its Children Services General Directorate investigated and found that while “the game can be seen as encouraging creativity in children” via building and crafting, “mobs [hostile creatures] must be killed” in the process.
“In short, the game is based on violence,” concluded the organization.
We’ll keep you updated on the results of this investigation.
Meanwhile, Minecraft is doing well in Japan, selling over 500,000 units on the PlayStation family of consoles.
Microsoft Buys ‘Minecraft’ Maker for $2.5 Billion
It’s official: Microsoft said Monday morning that it’s buying Mojang, maker of the popular “Minecraft” video game, for $2.5 billion.
The Mojang team will join Microsoft Studios, maker of games such as the “Halo” and “Forza” franchises, according to a Microsoft news release.
“Microsoft’s investments in cloud and mobile technologies will enable ‘Minecraft’ players to benefit from richer and faster worlds, more powerful development tools, and more opportunities to connect across the ‘Minecraft’ community,” the company said in the news release.
Microsoft said it expects the acquisition, which is expected to close in 2014, to be break even in fiscal year 2015.
“Minecraft” has had more than 100 million downloads on PCs alone since its launch in 2009. It is the most popular online game on Xbox and the top paid app on the iOS and Android platforms in the U.S., Microsoft said.
“The ‘Minecraft’ community is among the most active and passionate in the industry, with more than 2 billion hours played on Xbox 360 alone in the past two years,” the company said in the news release. ” ‘Minecraft’ fans are loyal, with nearly 90 percent of paid customers on the PC having signed in within the past 12 months.”
Phil Spencer, head of Xbox and Microsoft Studios, said in a blog post Monday morning: “We respect the brand and independent spirit that has made ‘Minecraft’ great, and we’ll carry on the tradition of innovation to move the franchise forward. …
” ‘Minecraft’ adds diversity to our game portfolio and helps us reach new gamers across multiple platforms. Gaming is the top activity across devices and we see great potential to continue to grow the ‘Minecraft’ community and nurture the franchise. That is why we plan to continue to make ‘Minecraft’ available across platforms – including iOS, Android and PlayStation, in addition to Xbox and PC.”
Mojang is a small, independent game developer studio based in Stockholm, Sweden. Last year, the company made a profit of $128 million on $360 million in revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported last week that Microsoft was considering the purchase.
“Change is scary, and this is a big change for all of us,” the Mojang team wrote in a blog post Monday morning, seeking to reassure the community of “Minecraft” players. “It’s going to be good though. Everything is going to be OK.”
Mojang agreed to be acquired, the game studio said in the blog post, because “Minecraft has grown from a simple game to a project of monumental significance. Though we’re massively proud of what Minecraft has become, it was never Notch’s intention for it to get this big.”
Markus Persson, known by gamers as “Notch,” is the creator of “Minecraft” and Mojang’s majority shareholder. According to the Mojang blog post, Notch decided:
“He doesn’t want the responsibility of owning a company of such global significance. Over the past few years he’s made attempts to work on smaller projects, but the pressure of owning ‘Minecraft’ became too much for him to handle. The only option was to sell Mojang. …
“There are only a handful of potential buyers with the resources to grow ‘Minecraft’ on a scale that it deserves. We’ve worked closely with Microsoft since 2012, and have been impressed by their continued dedication to our game and its development. We’re confident that ‘Minecraft’ will continue to grow in an awesome way.”
The company said it expects most of Mojang’s employees to remain there for the time being, though Mojang’s three founders — including Persson — are leaving.
This is Satya Nadella’s first major acquisition since becoming Microsoft CEO in February.
In a July memo, in which Nadella outlined his vision for the company, he said the company would focus on “digital work and life experiences that are reinvented for the mobile-first and cloud-first world.”
“The single biggest digital life category, measured in both time and money spent, in a mobile-first world is gaming,” he said in the memo.
Given Nadella’s vision, the “Minecraft” acquisition is important to Microsoft’s mobile strategy, IDC analyst Al Hilwa said in an email Monday morning.
Hilwa continued:
“Microsoft is a mobile ecosystem owner and has no choice but to keep building it if it is to maintain its relevance in the long term. … ‘Minecraft’ strengthens Microsoft’s hand in the battle with Google, Apple and Amazon. … ‘Minecraft’ is a solid business with intense user loyalty. That it can be purchased with overseas cash is also a part of the attraction, but its strategic value is that it is another brick fortifying Microsoft’s consumer services, a key lever in its mobile relevance. Gamers on other platforms will demand ‘Minecraft’ for some time to come…
“Successful and sticky games like ‘Minecraft’ are powerful strategic consumer services for their owners. Microsoft is wise to build up its services assets to make its mobile platform more compelling.”
Minecraft in Schools: A Tool for Learning
When you hear the words “tears of joy” you may think of a wedding, graduation, or some other emotion-laden event, but probably not an elementary school classroom and definitely not in the context of a school assignment. That was recently the case however in Chris Hanna’s fourth grade class in Goleta, California, where a student was overcome with emotion at the opportunity to use Minecraft for a class assignment on making a model of a California mission. One Minecraft mission project created by a student a few years ago has had over 22,000 views on YouTube. The California mission project has stepped into the 21st century!
But how does Minecraft connect with learning goals? Is it just the latest gaming fad or does it have real benefits for teaching and learning? If it does have benefits how might teachers and teacher education programs learn how to leverage it in spite of not fully knowing how it all works?
Still from Minecraft-San Diego Mission Project by Peter de Tagyos
First, a little background. Minecraft is akin to a digital sandbox where players “mine” to find desired resources, and “craft” to create and modify desired builds in a block-based environment. As the official Minecraft trailer (with over 110 million hits on YouTube) states, “with no rules to follow, the adventure is up to you.” My 11 year-old son seconds this notion by saying that he likes Minecraft because, “It can be anything you want it to be. There is no guidebook.” My 8 year old enjoys it because you “can make different things that you cannot make in real life.” Beyond that, Minecraft tends to be one of the leading causes of collaboration among my three sons as they talk, laugh and work together on various builds and adventures.
At this point you may be thinking “that is great that your kids (and millions of others) like the game, but what exactly does Minecraft afford for formal learning opportunities in schools and how does it connect to learning outcomes?” Perhaps you are also considering your own experiences with games in school like the classic Oregon Trail (death by dysentery anyone?) or others like Lemonade Stand, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, Math Blaster, and the like that were supposed to transform teaching and learning, but have ended up like the floppy disk in the round file of digital history and wonder if Minecraft is just the latest “gaming fad” along those lines.
To explore these questions a bit more I reached out to three teachers with extensive experience using Minecraft in their schools. As a point of clarification, most schools are using MinecraftEdu which is an educational version of the enormously popular game.
Photo by Kevin Jarrett, Creative Commons License
James Pike, formerly a 3rd grade teacher at Ascension Catholic school in Los Angeles, used Minecraft with Math, Science, Computer Science, and English Language Arts. Students created models of cells starting with DNA, learned about area and perimeter and algebraic concepts and built “sets” related to the books and plays they are reading. Pike indicates that Minecraft changed the culture of his class. “Students were so engaged in learning, they would complain if they had to go to recess or DID NOT get homework. They were learning for their own reasons, not just to get a grade. When we took the final benchmark test of the year the class average was 84% in Math and 81% English Language Arts,” which was significantly greater than the school average.”
John Miller is a 7th grade History teacher at Chalone Peaks Middle School in King City, CA. He has spent extensive time with his students using Minecraft to support the development of literacy in his students, particularly English Language Learners, with learning experiences on Vikings, and the Tang Dynasty. Upcoming units will look at the Middle Ages, Crusade, and the Renaissance among other topics — all in a way that incorporates Minecraft and student developed creations. While they are “in Minecraft” students connect to other resources such as videos, websites, and documents that they interact with via reading and annotating. By the end of the year each of student “will have created a 40-50 page ‘historical novel.'”
As to the value of Minecraft, Miller sees it as “a 21st century version of experiential learning, or the learn by doing philosophy where students can experience a novel or develop and engineer an idea alone or collaboratively in an expansive virtual world with endless possibilities.” Because of these possibilities Miller has shifted his planning and pedagogy from being on the “front of the stage” to being a “designer behind the stage” working to “design lessons so that I get out of the way as quickly as possible” so that students can construct meaning through interactive approaches. That said his class use of Minecraft is not a free-for-all, but a highly structured and scaffolded exploration that has resulted in the most successful unit that he has taught in over twenty years of teaching.
Ancient Roman Bath House-Minecraft Tour, Moss Pike Harvard Westlake School
Moss Pike (no relation to Jim) had his Latin IA students at Harvard Westlake School in Los Angeles build their own versions of Roman structures with Minecraft. This was in order to understand how the Romans would have used them and to consider how public structures worked together. The project culminated in a digital tour of their structure shared on YouTube. Additional pictures and information are detailed on Pike’s blog. While some might wonder what does making a structure of a Roman bath have to do with learning a language like Latin, Pike argues that “project work and game-based opportunities of the sort provided by Minecraft are great ways for students to explore culture in active ways, especially if the projects have a social focus. By spending time on cultural fluency and people, we help our students to learn how to be more creative, collaborative, empathetic, etc., which in the long run is far more important than linguistic fluency on its own.” Based on the high levels of engagement and the quality of the work his students produced Pike believes it is just a matter of time for educators to “witness firsthand the power that game-based learning has within the classroom, I think we’ll see more experimentation with it. That’s not to say that everything will soon be game-based, but I think we’ll be able to find uses for it where we would have otherwise thought not possible or appropriate.”
Although these three teachers and others are highly favorable about Minecraft as a tool to engage students and give them opportunities to be collaborative and creative, there are others who think it is no more an educational fad and lacks alignment to standards. There are also concerns that Minecraft requires too much time for teachers to learn and takes too long to use in classroom settings. These concerns reflect many of the questions that K-12 education currently finds grappling with and exploring related to the role of teachers, the use of technology in teaching and learning, and issues of student engagement and achievement. These include questions like:
- Should teachers have a solid understanding of how to use educational technology tools or is it ok for students to know more than them, or for it to be a co-learning experience?
- To what extent should teachers work to connect to and leverage popular culture and tools that might be highly engaging to students as they plan lessons and learning experiences or should students conform to teachers notions of what is necessary?
- How might teachers make shifts in their identity from being content experts and disseminators of knowledge to becoming more of a designer, activator, and coach of learning?
- Should schools focus on achievement or work to find ways to get students excited about learning first with the hope that that will lead to academic growth?
- How do teachers curate the ever increasing plethora of technological tools and how might teacher education programs and school districts support that process?
In the end the debates about Minecraft reflect tensions over educational values. Different teachers value certain teaching and learning experiences, probably based on their educational and cultural backgrounds and personal abilities and proclivities. This in turn leads to the prioritizing of particular skills that they seek to develop in their students. Whatever the priorities may be, schools and teachers need to deeply reflect on the learning experiences they are providing for students in a world where content is no longer limited to what can be found within the walls of schools and where the risk of disengagement is increasingly a threat due to the competition from technological alternatives both academic and non-academic. While the jury is still out on game based learning, and Minecraft is but one option for schools to utilize, educators should strongly explore its potential to foster in the areas of engagement, problem solving, collaboration and communication, and creativity in support of larger learning goals across content areas. While these thinking practices and skills may not be on any standardized test, they are on the test of life for the world that our students are being “prepared” for. All the content we teach students will not matter if we do not prepare students to learn how to learn and to do so in a community of learners.
Minecraft debuts new block – one that blocks Java crapware, that is
All-in-one launcher soothes players’ Java installer pains
Minecraft maker Mojang – now a division of Microsoft – has been rolling out the new launcher over the past few months, albeit without much fanfare.
The game still runs on Java, as always. But rather than requiring players to download the Java Runtime from Oracle and install it themselves, the new launcher bundles a JRE with the executable – one that’s installed and maintained by Mojang itself.
That means Minecraft players soon won’t have to remember to uncheck the box that installs the Ask Toolbar or other superfluous crapware whenever they need to update their Java install.
What’s more, Mojang’s version of the JRE only installs the bits that are needed to run Minecraft. Notably, it doesn’t install the Java browser plugin, which has been the source of multiple critical security vulnerabilities in the past.
Sneaky software installs and security problems aren’t Mojang’s only reasons for bundling Java with Minecraft, though. According to a Reddit post by Minecraft developer “Dinnerbone,” taking charge of Minecraft players’ Java installs will help Mojang ensure that the game runs as well as possible on everybody’s systems.
“A really, really big percentage of our players use 32-bit java on 64-bit machines, and they don’t even know,” Dinnerbone wrote. “64-bit java runs significantly better in a lot of scenarios for Minecraft, so it’s just a waste that they do this.”
Most people don’t install the 64-bit JRE, Dinnerbone said, because it’s hard to find unless you know where to look. The 32-bit installer is the default.
What’s more, a lot of people can’t be bothered to keep up with successive Java updates, so their JRE installs become stagnant. Bundling Java with Minecraft can help keep players up to date. In particular, it means Mojang can start getting more Minecraft players onto Java 8, the current version, which Dinnerbone said includes lots of “pretty cool” features and optimizations that can improve game performance.
For now, the Minecraft launcher with bundled Java is only available for Windows, but Mojang says it plans to have a version for OS X ready for testing early this year.
Windows users can find the new launcher here. If you’re planning to install Minecraft for the first time and you’d like to manage your own JRE, though, you can find the older launcher by clicking the link on the download page that says “Show all platforms.” ®
Mojang responds to demands for Minecraft ban in Turkey
Turkey’s Ministry of Family and Social Policies is calling for a ban on Minecraft following an investigation by its Children Services General Directorate that concluded “the game is based on violence.” The Hurriyet Daily News said the report warned that children could confuse the game world with the real one, leading to increased violent behavior including the torture of animals, and could also result in “social isolation” and greater exposure to online bullying and abuse.
In response to the proposed ban, a Mojang representative told GamesBeat that “Minecraft is enjoyed by many players in a wide variety of ways,” and that while killing mobs is a normal part of the game, it’s not actually a necessary one.
“Many enjoy the creative freedom that’s presented by Minecraft and its tools, some are more interested by the opportunity to explore a landscape without boundaries and to go on exciting adventures with friends. We encourage players to cooperate in order to succeed, whether they’re building, exploring, or adventuring,” the rep said. “The world of Minecraft can be a dangerous place: it’s inhabited by scary, genderless monsters that come out at night. It might be necessary to defend against them to survive. If people find this level of fantasy conflict upsetting, we would encourage them to play in Creative Mode, or to enable the Peaceful setting. Both of these options will prevent monsters from appearing in the world.”
The Family and Social Policies Ministry is expected to file the requisite legal complaint soon, after which the courts will decide whether a ban will be enacted. Turkey isn’t actually big on banning games, but Minecraft is a potential exception because the government views it as exclusively for children. The ban would likely be enforced by blocking the Minecraft.net domain, and Turkey does actually have a history of blocking websites its government deems offensive: It has already dropped the hammer on more than 67,000 of them, according to the GamesBeat report, including 4chan, RichardDawkins.net, and various Wikipedia entries on the naughty bits of human anatomy.
GE engineer uses research tools to market Minecraft books
Book publishing and physics don’t seem to have much in common at first glance. I’ve written several books, but the first time I achieved commercial success was because I had applied lessons learned in my work as an optical engineer at GE Global Research to the publishing process.
My book series, GameKnight999, focuses on tackling cyber-bullying and is based on my eleven-year-old son’s favorite computer game, Minecraft.
Set Goals, Take Risks, Try Something Hard
When I embarked on this project, I hoped it would be a teaching opportunity for my son about setting goals, trying something hard, and taking a risk. I set a goal of not getting pessimistic about finding an agent until I had received 100 rejections. My son and I joke about how I crushed that goal – I received over 150 rejections before I stopped trying to get an agent.
Rather than quitting when I found that no agent would talk to me, I chose to self-publish my book. Initially I saw very poor sales, in fact depressingly poor sales, and realized that the challenge of publishing a book is more than having a good idea and being able to write well.
Where’s Waldo
I discovered I was missing the “secret formula” in the book publishing business, that is, how do you get noticed when there are 4 million books on Amazon. My book was like Waldo from the popular picture books, hidden among millions of look-alikes while striving to be noticed. I knew that if it could be found, my book would be successful: I chose to write a story about Minecraft and the audience was desperate for any fiction in this space. In fact, when I self-published my first book in 2013, there were only three other fiction books about Minecraft available on Amazon. Two of them were by young kids and only 20 pages long. While the third book did sell some copies, it was not marketed well to the target audience.
Before I wrote my book, I did market analysis and studied the demographics. I looked at other books in my market demographic (kids ages 7 – 13) and tried to identify what made the successful books really successful and what made the mediocre book really average, and then I extended these learnings to the book that I wanted to write. I treated this like a typical GE project and did my homework. As a result, when kids started to read my book, it seemed to resonate with them because it was similar to books that were already out in the marketplace. Once word of mouth started to get going, coupled with the marketing I was doing online, things exploded and the book reached No. 30 on Amazon’s top 100. As of the first week of February 2015, it had climbed to No. 9 on the New York Times Bestseller’s list for children’s series.
Marketing my book to its intended audience is not unlike the way researchers at GE Global Research have to differentiate themselves so that their skills will be in demand and they will always be able to get research funding. That means having a product that everyone will want that allows you to stand out among all the rest. Once that marketing is done within GRC, then it needs to be done within the GE businesses so that people who control funds will listen to you and take your calls.
What is Minecraft Anyway?
This is a sidebar to the March 23, 2015 Forbes Magazine cover story, Inside The Post-Minecraft Life Of Billionaire Gamer God Markus Persson.
“Survival mode” is simple: Your protagonist (known as “Steve”) is dropped into a randomly generated landscape and must collect resources and build things to survive. Walk up to a tree and “punch” it to collect blocks of wood, and craft them into a simple shovel or pick; use that to dig in the ground or mine a mountain. Eventually you’ll be able to make stone tools, then iron.
Fail to build adequate shelter and come nightfall you’ll fall prey to dangerous monsters. In “creative mode” you can build whatever you imagine–Big Ben, a disco, a mansion–except this modern-day take on LEGOs lets you interact with others and their various creations.
–Initial launch: May 2009. Downloads to date: in excess of 100 million. That’s more than 47,000 a day.
–Minecraft’s procedurally generated worlds are so large the map can contain up to 921.6 quadrillion individual blocks.
–There are 372,047 subscribers to the YouTube channel Far Lands or Bust!, which chronicles one man’s attempt to walk to the edge of a Minecraft map. At his current pace it should take him another two decades.
–If you search for “Minecraft” on YouTube, you’ll get about 63,800,000 results. Several stars host regular shows updating fans on new features.
–There are more than 431,000 subscribers to Reddit’s /r/Minecraft forum.
–The Danish Geodata Agency created a 1:1 scale re-creation of the country in Minecraft. It contains over 4 trillion blocks, and the file is over 1 terabyte in size.
–Official Minecraft licensees include Scholastic, LEGO, J!NX, ThinkGeek, Mattel and Telltale Games.
–Amazon.com lists 490 different books in its “Minecraft” category, including strategy guides, joke books, fan fiction, teachers’ guides and programming manuals.
–Minecraft users have built replicas of hundreds of different architectural masterpieces–from the Great Pyramid of Giza to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.
–There are 359 different splash texts that can randomly appear on the game’s launch screen, including “Made in Sweden!” and “Call your mother!”
MINECON 2015 announced!
It’s time again to announce the next MINECON!
If you like Minecraft, and you like people who like Minecraft, you’ll probably like MINECON. It’s THE place to see all the cool Mojangstas you fancy, meet people who love Minecraft maybe even as much as you do, and attend panels and events full of YouTube creators and a ton of other talented folks!
This summer we are heading to London, UK to hang out with 10,000 of our closest friends (hint: that’s you!). As usual there will be panels, contests, tournaments, events and a soon-to-be-announced show-of-some-sort for our Saturday night bash.
WHEN: July 4-5, 2015
WHERE: ExCeL London Exhibition and Conference Centre
WHO: You, hopefully!
Since you’re bound to have more questions, I’ll ask myself some in this handy Q&A:
How do I get tickets?
Ticket sales will happen in February, exact date and time will be announced in the next two weeks. You’ll head to minecon.mojang.com to purchase them, but they will go fast! To accommodate different people’s schedules, they will be released in two batches on the same day, different times, 5,000 tickets in each batch. When you buy your ticket you’ll also get access to our discounted hotel pricing, so don’t go booking a hotel room just yet!
How do I become a volunteer (aka MINECON Agent)?
So you want to be a part of the event? We will be taking volunteer submissions next week. You’ll fill out an online form and we will get back to you before tickets go on sale. Watch mojang.com for more details.
I have a great idea for a panel, how can I make it happen?
Our community submitted panels have been some of the best panels we’ve had! Panel submissions will begin in early March. You’ll need to fill out an online form about the panel, who would be best on it, and submit a video of yourself describing the panel and why it should be at MINECON.
I want to exhibit at MINECON. How do I get a booth?
Each year we have a nice selection of awesome exhibitors, and you could be one of them! You can contact us via minecon@mojang.com for exhibition booth requests.
More details and information will be coming in the next couple weeks, keep watching mojang.com for all the answers you seek!
Thanks for reading!
Vu – @vubui
Activision and EA also tried to buy Minecraft
As we all know, Microsoft bought Mojang to get Minecraft for a whopping $2.5 billion. But as it turns out, they weren’t the only company trying to get the brand.
Activision and EA were also interested. This was revealed yesterday in an interview with Marcus “Notch” Persson in Forbes.
As it turns out it didn’t work out with Activision, and Persson won’t say what happened with EA, but adds that he didn’t want to sell to someone “who did game play in a way we didn’t like.”
Microsoft obviously passed that test and everything began after Persson posted a Tweet stating: Anyone want to buy my share of Mojang so I can move on with my life? Getting hate for trying to do the right thing is not my gig.
Forbes writes that Mojang’s CEO Carl Manneh was sitting at home with his family when he first saw the Tweet from Persson. Within 30 seconds of reading it his phone rang. It was Microsoft wanting to know if they were serious or not.
One of the main reasons Microsoft bought Mojang is, according to Forbes, that the platform holder has an anormous cash reserve of $93 billion outside the US that they can’t take home without paying enormous taxes. By buying out Mojang they avoided this and got to use some of this money.
Forbes also reminded Persson of his famous statement where he said that he didn’t want to sell his work to some giant, to which he answered: “You have to be responsible for what you said, of course, but I don’t really feel a lot of shame for saying something that I’ve changed my mind about.”
Microsoft bought ‘Minecraft’ after a single tweet by its creator
We’re only halfway through the decade, but it’s already obvious that Minecraft is the biggest game of the ’10s. Its creator, Markus “Notch” Persson has now been honored for his achievement with a cover story in Forbes. The piece reveals a few interesting tidbits about how he came to leave the game that made his name, including the fact that the $2.5 billion sale to Microsoft was prompted with a single tweet.
On June 6th, 2014, Persson was feeling exhausted with dealing with the Minecraft community, and ventured onto Twitter to release the tension. He asked if anyone would be interested in buying his share of Mojang so that he could “move on with [his] life.” According to the interview, it was mere minutes afterward that Mojang CEO Carl Manneh was being called by a Microsoft executive asking if Persson was serious. Other companies were bidding for control of Minecraft, including Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts, although talks with the latter stalled because Persson, apparently, isn’t a fan of EA’s policies.
Unfortunately, Persson was less happy with the way his post-Minecraft life has been portrayed by the piece. There is a suggestion that he now spends his days running up $180,000 bar bills at Swedish nightclubs.It’s something he has denied, again, using his favorite medium of Twitter. In a series of messages earlier this morning, he said that he isn’t “dedicated to partying his life away,” and it would be difficult anyway, since the interest payments on his $1.5 billion fortune are going up faster than he could spend it on fancy vodka.Read original article here:
Minecraft 1.8 Update, Blockopedia US Release & More
Amazon has given us some more details about the Minecraft Blockopedia book which is heading to the US, so we have news about its release and a lot more. Check it out below.
The Minecraft Blockoedia is a massive book which is going to be launched by Scholastic and new details about it have been made available from Amazon. The book has the ISBN-10 of 0545820111 and ISBN-13 of 978-0545820110 numbers.
The book takes on an hexagonal format and this pays homage to the blocks from the game. Alex Wiltshire wrote the 312 page book and gives details on each of the plants, ores and types of blocks in the game up to the 1.8 update. It also offers trivia and tips on how to use everything.
Minecraft Blockopedia arrives on the 24 February in the US, following on from the success of the video game which is available on various platforms and has been hugely successful.
Minecraft Book: A Blocky Version Of The Bible
It is no secret that a book on Minecraft is getting produced and it is going to get launched tomorrow. Online retailer Amazon has already listed the Blockopedia on its website and indicated the release date to be 24 February this year.
Blockopedia is written by Alex Wiltshire, who is famous for being the editor of Edge Magazine and for being an expert gamer. Like the name of the book, Blockopedia is actually an encyclopaedia for the award winning, open-world sandbox title, Minecraft.
Blockopedia basically covers everything one needs to know about Minecraft. It goes into detail like giving away the properties of every texture, city and elements in the game. Furthermore, Blockopedia also offers players tips on how to make the most of Minecraft.
Even so, it is still unsure on how much the Blockopedia will cost when launched. We’ll update this accordingly when Blockopedia make its debut tomorrow.
Minecraft Minecon 2015 Confirmed to Happen; Mojang Announced to Sponsor the Annual Fan Expo
Minecraft fans are all excited as Microsoft and Mojang announced to make Minecraft Minecon 2015 happen. While some skeptics thought that the game title’s new owner would not sponsor the event, Microsoft announced that they would actually do whatever they can to further develop and promote the beloved virtual sandbox game.
This is for the fact that the game has captivated gamers of all ages and of all races since it was first released in 2009.
Minecraft players and fans are often referred to as Minecraftians, and ever since the game took the entire world by storm, these people would gather in an annual expo that is the Minecon. Unfortunately, Mojang failed to sponsor the event last year for undisclosed reasons. However, in one of their blog entries, the original developers of the game confirmed that they are making the necessary preparations to make Minecraft Minecon 2015 happen.
The event would definitely mean much to all Minecraftians as the occasion would have a lot of things to go about like new announcements, latest updates, as well as the chance to meet and greet Minecraft’s development team from 4J studios.
As for the Minecraft creator Notch, there are no confirmations yet whether he will attend the expo or not. Then again, it is something that fans would like to look forward to.
The much-anticipated Minecraft Minecon 2015 will be in London, England for two days (July 4-5). The dates are already confirmed, so this is going to be much of a good news to all Minecraftians. Tickets began to go on sale this month, with around 10,000 tickets already sold. In addition, Minecraft’s latest TU(Title Update)21 is scheduled to roll out in North America on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, as well as on PlayStation Vita. It carries out bug fixes for the issues on the previous update.
‘JUST MINE AND CRAFT’: Newark Library’s new Minecraft Club draws enthusiasts
NEWARK — If you have a child (especially a boy), you likely know what Minecraft is.
This computer game is all the rage among the younger set. Played on multiple platforms (computers, Xbox, Kindle, iPad, PlayStation, etc.), the game allows players to build three-dimensional buildings and worlds from textured cubes. Players can explore, craft, fight and gather resources in the game. Think of it as advanced Legos in the computer age.
And now local Minecraft fans can meet once a month at the Newark Library to share their passion.
Youth Services Director Krystina Hardter launched the club last Tuesday evening. She did so because she’s seen firsthand in the library how popular the game is. Young patrons ask for Minecraft books, but the shelf where the series is kept is often empty.
“They just fly off the shelves,” she said. “We just know how kids are obsessed with it. They love it — the creating, the survival, the building.”
Hardter had set aside a table with Minecraft coloring sheets and instructions on how to make three-dimensional paper Minecraft figures, but the four young patrons who braved the snow last week were more intent on getting on the computers and playing the game itself.
Since some of them had played on different platforms, there was a learning curve as they started building on the computer. Questions flew as the young library patrons started clicking away with their computer mice.
“How do you eat?” “How do you build a ladder?” “How do you make a door?” were among the queries being traded.
Anthony Merced, 7, was in the water and afraid he would drown. He asked his classmate Ryan Hinks, also 7, what to do.
“Press the space button to float,” Ryan answered.
The Newark youngster has been playing Minecraft since he was 6, usually on his Kindle tablet. He was a little distracted to explain the game in depth, especially to an obviously clueless questioner.
“It’s very, very complicated to explain. You just mine and then you craft,” said Ryan, noting everyone in his family plays except his parents. His mother, he added, has said she might have to learn just to be able to interact with her children.
Ryan said he’s hooked because “you can craft and be creative about it. It’s a real world that you are building.”
As the children pressed their faces close to the screens and talked to both the computers and each other, Hardter and Youth Services Librarian Caitlin Simonse mingled about. They helped as they could and asked plenty of questions.
Hardter said one of the reasons she started the club was because “I wanted to learn from them what the big deal is.”
“I’m impressed with how quickly they are building houses and things,” she said, noting when she tried the game all she was able to accomplish was chasing some bunnies and cutting grass. “I’m kind of understanding the concept … kind of.”
Blake Aldrich, 11, said he has been playing Minecraft “a long time now” and called it his favorite game.
As Hardter complimented his work, she wondered why his house was built underground.
“It’s most common for houses to be built underground because it’s safest,” Aldrich said.
“Who do you need to be safe from?” Hardter asked.
“Zombies, creepers, and skeletons,” the kids answered.
Despite asking the others, Blake still had trouble constructing a ladder. Hardter pulled out her phone, loaded up a YouTube video and showed him how.
Meeting kids where they are at — in the library — is certainly a goal of hers.
“My hope is to start them younger and build their love for the library so by the time they get to the high school it’s still cool,” Hardter said.
Minecon 2015 is Coming, Minecraft PS4 and Xbox One Players Rejoice
Mojang, for some reason, decided not to conduct the popular Minecon event last year, which is a fan favorite expo, where all Minecraft lovers come together.
But, the good news is it is coming this year and it’s time for the Minecraft PS4 and Xbox One lovers to rejoice!
The company didn’t spend any time in explaining why the event didn’t take place in 2014. And, it is obvious that players and the community are not really interested in knowing the real reasons behind an expo that missed a whole year.
It’s all about this year and whether Minecon 2015 is going to take place or not. Mojang confirmed the news in their official blog that they are indeed gearing up to host this grand event this time, where a lot of exciting things will take place, including new announcements, updates and some great time with the development team at 4J studios.
Microsoft’s Acquisition
It’s really surprising to know that the upcoming Minecon 2015 event by Mojang is taking place this year after the huge two billion dollar acquisition by Microsoft. Many critics assumed that the new buyers may not host the expo, because they are keen on making some good money out of the franchise rather than spending more on it.
But, from the announcement, it has been confirmed that the company wants to make sure they promote the game as much as possible, so that it continues to entertain gamers and keep the community alive. Minecon is one such event where everyone, including Minecraft PS4, Xbox One, Minecraft PS3 and Xbox 360 players come together to share their experience. It also includes the iOS, Android and PS Vita mobile platform gamers.
Event Details and Venue
The upcoming Minecon 2015 will be held in London, UK. It’s an amazing place to visit, while you are getting your share of Minecraft. The event dates have also been confirmed as well. It will be held between July 4th and 5th. That’s just two days but it’s more than enough to make you happy about being there.
The tickets will go on sale from February and Mojang confirms that at least 10,000 tickets will be sold for the upcoming event. There will be huge discounts on hotel rooms but there is no word on the founder of the game attending the planned expo. You will get a chance to talk to the panel and drop in your own ideas.
Minecon 2015 Location And Date: Minecraft Convention To Be Held In London On July 2015 Confirmed As Mojang Is Working On A New Installer For The Game!
Good news Minecraft fans as Mojang COO, Vu Bui announced that the Minecon 2015 will be held in London on July 4 to July 5 this year.
Minecon 2015 will be hosted by Mojang it will be held in London for the first time. On Aug. 21, 2014, Vu Bui, COO of Mojang wrote on the company’s official website:
“I’ve been getting a lot of questions about MINECON lately, because before this time last year everyone knew the date and location and ticket info for MINECON 2013. While we don’t have a set date for the next MINECON just yet, I wanted to let everyone know that it won’t be until sometime in 2015. I’m shooting to have it in the spring in London!”
Just two weeks ago on Jan. 22, Bui hinted about Minecon news on Twitter:
“MINECON news is coming soon!”
Bui also revealed the details on when and where will Minecon be in London:
WHEN: July 4-5, 2015
WHERE: ExCeL London Exhibition and Conference Centre
WHO: You, hopefully!
Bui said in the statement, “If you like Minecraft, and you like people who like Minecraft, you’ll probably like MINECON. It’s THE place to see all the cool Mojangstas you fancy, meet people who love Minecraft maybe even as much as you do, and attend panels and events full of YouTube creators and a ton of other talented folks!
This summer we are heading to London, UK to hang out with 10,000 of our closest friends (hint: that’s you!). As usual there will be panels, contests, tournaments, events and a soon-to-be-announced show-of-some-sort for our Saturday night bash.”
Talking about the tickets, Bui said, “they will be released in two batches on the same day, different times, 5,000 tickets in each batch.” He added, “When you buy your ticket you’ll also get access to our discounted hotel pricing, so don’t go booking a hotel room just yet!”
According to The Guardian, Minecon started as an informal gathering of “Minecraft” fans back in 2010 in Bellevue, Washington when Markus “Notch” Persson, the game’s creator, was in town and said he wanted to meet players.
In other news, Mojang developer Nathan “Dinnerbone” Adams announced about the game’s installer on Twitter on Jan. 30.
“Our new installer uses Java 8, so that helps, but we haven’t pushed people to use that – only new players have that right now.”
Video games in museums: fine art or just fun?
Visitors to the “Art of the Video Game” exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
The British Museum posted a message on the website Reddit last September asking for volunteers for its “build the British Museum in ‘Minecraft’” project, hoping for 20 applicants. “It exploded… Twitter went berserk and we had more than 1,000 applicants in a single day,” said Nick Harris, a broadcast assistant and content producer working on the London institution’s Museum of the Future project, in a talk at the British Library last December. One of the respondents wrote: “Yes, please. I love ‘Minecraft’ and I would really like to help build it. I’m ten (my mother knows).”
The Tate received an equally enthusiastic response when it launched a project to recreate works from its collection, including André Derain’s The Pool of London, 1906, in the “Minecraft” video game: within 48 hours, amateur videos on how to navigate “Tate Worlds” appeared on YouTube. When London’s Wellcome Collection released the video game “High Tea”, 2011, a strategy game based on the 19th-century opium trade in China’s Pearl River Delta, to coincide with an exhibition on recreational drug use, the museum discovered that, on average, people spent four times longer playing the game than they did browsing its website.
The popularity of video games shows no sign of waning, and museums have ramped up their interest in the medium. From mounting exhibitions like the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s (Saam) blockbuster travelling show “The Art of Video Games”, which drew 3,400 visitors a day during its run in Washington, DC, in 2012, or the “Game Masters” show at the National Museums of Scotland (until 20 April), to acquiring or commissioning games around their permanent collections or exhibitions, museums are looking at video games as both an art form and a means to reach a wider audience.
“It’s an innovative way to get the public interested in collections, especially audiences that wouldn’t normally engage with them,” says Stella Wisdom, the British Library’s digital curator. She is behind the library’s Off the Map competition, in which university students use items from the collection to design games. This year’s contest—a collaboration with the GameCity festival—is based on Alice in Wonderland, to mark the 150th anniversary of Lewis Carroll’s book, and will coincide with an Alice show at the British Library in the autumn. “There’s a lot of potential for creative industries to work with cultural institutions and vice versa,” Wisdom says. “We’re just at the start of a journey.”
Danny Birchall, the Wellcome Collection’s digital manager, says that the games “are part of a larger strategy of using many different things to engage the public. You use video games to reach those who play games, like you create documentaries for those who watch television. We’re not trying to convert museum people into games players.” The museum has commissioned several games related to its collection and exhibitions. In developing them, the institution follows the cardinal rule that content is paramount. “Our motto is ‘no chocolate-covered broccoli here’,” he says. “We’re not making unpalatable things tasty by wrapping game magic around them.”
The museum’s latest game, “Criminel”, developed by graduates from the National Film and Television School, relates to “Forensics: the Anatomy of a Crime”, which is due to open on 25 February (until 21 June). Inspired by the famous French police officer Alphonse Bertillon, who promoted the use of scientific systems to identify criminals, the iPad-based, “CSI”-style game is set in late 19th-century Paris.
Digital natives
The museum world is now being populated by video-game enthusiasts. Kieran Long, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s (V&A) senior curator of contemporary architecture, design and digital (and a long-time video-game fan), who joined the London institution in 2012, says that games “were a big part of my strategy from the start”. The museum, which has two video games—a copy of “Sonic the Hedgehog”, 1991, which the V&A’s Museum of Childhood acquired in 2004, and the 2013 mobile app “Flappy Bird”—is becoming more systematic and strategic in its engagement with the field. It has hired a video-game specialist on a one-year contract and an exhibition on video games is “in the works”.
Like Saam, which has hosted gaming events such as a pop-up Indie Arcade in its courtyard and “hackathons” that encourage people to create games around the collection, the V&A has held a Games Jam, where designers had 48 hours to create games around the Medieval and Renaissance collections. The museum’s evening based on “Minecraft”, in which players build constructions using textured blocks, proved particularly popular, with artists responding to the collection through a “Minecraft” lens, as well as workshops and DJs playing remixes of “Minecraft”-inspired music. There was also a talk by designers from Mojang, the Swedish studio behind the game. “I’ve never seen 350 teenage boys so wrapped up in the V&A for an hour and a half,” Long says. For another event, FyreUK, a group that makes time-lapse videos of massive “Minecraft” builds, took over the Raphael Court. “They’re engaged in a new kind of folk design,” Long says.
Alex Flowers, the V&A’s team leader for digital programmes, says these events have shown that video games are “powerful tools” for looking at collections in new ways. The actions, emotions, cognition and problem-solving skills of the player breathe life into objects and their rich histories. The V&A also had its first game-designer-in-residence last year: Sophia George created a game inspired by William Morris’s tapestry Strawberry Thief, 1883, in which players sketch and colour in the textile’s pattern. The game, developed with colleagues from the University of Abertay in Dundee, Scotland, was downloaded 60,000 times in its first two weeks.
“Minecraft” was acquired by Microsoft in November 2014, when the computer giant bought Mojang for $2.5bn, and is the game of choice for many museums. Jane Burton, the creative director of Tate Media, says that its big audience and ethos made it attractive. “It’s not heavily commercialised or expensive to join, so it feels fairly democratic. The game’s whole ethos is about being open and encouraging imagination, and for people to create things and share their creations. It’s a very generous and imaginative platform.”
Knee-jerk criticism
“Sorry MoMA, video games are not art” was the headline on Jonathan Jones’s blog on the Guardian’s website after New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) announced the acquisition of 14 video games, including 1980s classics “Tetris” and “Pac-Man”. “All hell broke loose in an interesting way,” said Paola Antonelli, a senior curator in the museum’s department of architecture and design and its director of research and development, in a Ted talk filmed shortly after the acquisition in 2012.
Antonelli says that the negative responses “were based on a knee-jerk, defensive reaction”. She points out that the museum did not acquire these games as works of art, but as forms of interactive design. Similarly, the V&A acquired “Flappy Bird” as a design object. “I don’t think video games are art, I think they are design, and as a design museum, we are committed to collecting all fields of design,” Kieran Long says. When he was tasked with covering the field of digital design, he felt that video games were a good place to start, as they are made by some of the most creative design teams around. “It’s a good way for the V&A to begin to seriously engage with born-digital artefacts and digital design in general, because you have to start somewhere and we weren’t going to collect the whole internet,” he says.
The Smithsonian, however, did not make such distinctions when it acquired “Flower”, 2009, and “Halo 2600”, 2010, in 2013. “We didn’t qualify it; we acquired them as great works of art,” says Elizabeth Broun, Saam’s director. “It’s been important for us for some time to represent games as this fantastic and unique expression among artists,” says Michael Mansfield, the museum’s curator of film and media arts. He says these games were chosen because they represent “unique paths for the artists and the medium”. Broun develops the point. “We understand that video games are their own platform for art and expression in the same way that photography, television or films are. You can have great films or terrible ones, and the same goes for games,” she says.
Broun describes “Flower”, in which players become the wind, as a “thrilling exploration of the American landscape” by the Chinese-born designer Jenova Chen, who found inspiration in the open spaces of the US West Coast. “How is this not like the Hudson River School?” Broun asks. “Land and landscape have always been crucially important in American art.”
Mansfield argues that the video game is not the first medium to have its viability as an art form questioned and certainly won’t be the last. “There were concerns about photography being a viable art form. I think one critic defined it as the bastard child of science left at the door of art. The same issue has been raised with video and performance art,” he says.
The perils of acquisition
Museums have different approaches to how they buy games. The V&A wants to acquire “Minecraft”, but Long is undecided as to how to go about it. “It’s the culture around the game, the amazing creativity of the kind of machinima videos [film-style narratives created in real time with computer graphics] around it, the works of makers like FyreUK that maybe we should collect,” he says.
For MoMA, it’s all about the source code. “It’s the holy grail of the acquisition,” Antonelli says, explaining that it enables the game to be replicated on new platforms. “It’s like the recipe for Coca-Cola. It’s the company’s deepest intellectual property.” When MoMA cannot get the code, it tries for an emulation of the code. If that is not available, the museum acquires the package software, which is not ideal because these items are perishable. MoMA “tries to get as deep as possible within the company” so that if the firm goes out of business, the museum could become the code’s repository.
Even a powerhouse like MoMA does not always get what it wants. “In some cases, we simply haven’t cracked the nut. You’ll notice we don’t have Nintendo games because there was just no way,” Antonelli says. Tracking down the current holders of the intellectual property rights in some early games has also been problematic. “[There are] some games we’d like, but we can’t find them,” she says. “The issues in the acquisition of video games are sociological, aesthetic, cultural, legal, technological and communicative—it’s one of the most interesting and dense kind of acquisitions I’ve ever tackled.”
The Wellcome Collection’s Danny Birchall argues that “museums are just scratching the surface of what’s possible” with video games. “If the same budget for an exhibition was devoted to a game, you could… probably reach the same raw numbers as an exhibition. I think people are less willing to take that risk because it doesn’t have that intimacy of contact with the venue. Knowing that 100,000 people have done something online is never quite as reassuring as seeing 10,000 people walk through your door.” But as museums continue to cross digital thresholds, one senses that this hierarchy between physical and online visitors is beginning to dissolve.
Teaching in the Age of Minecraft
Like many 11-year-olds in Texas, Ethan had to build a model of the Alamo as a school project. Often, students make their dioramas out of paper mache or popsicle sticks, but Ethan’s teacher gave him permission to build his project in Minecraft, the popular sandbox software game in which players build structures out of blocks. With his dad’s help, Ethan recorded a video tour of his scale model of the fort, complete with explanatory signs, and posted it on YouTube. A few minutes into the tour, it started raining unexpectedly over Ethan’s diorama, but Ethan noted, “This is exactly what happened during the battle of the Alamo—it rained.” To his dad—and, presumably, his teacher—this comment revealed Ethan’s familiarity and knowledge with the subject matter that he might not have had otherwise shown.
With more than 18 million downloads to date, Minecraft is the best-selling computer game of all time; the game’s free-form structure has made it popular with kids and adults alike. But little by little, teachers, parents, and students have discovered that the game can be used for educational purposes, too. Former teacher Joel Levin and his colleagues founded a startup called TeacherGaming that aims to bring Minecraft into classrooms everywhere, helping students and teachers of all disciplines use their creativity to design projects, free from the kinds of limitations they would face using traditional methods.
“Teachers already want to use these games in the classrooms,” Levin said. He and his colleagues work to make the software more intuitive and suited to their needs so that teachers—and students—can use the games in classrooms and have fun while they’re at it.
Levin, now 40 with a sandy beard, glasses, and ponytail, first played an early version of Minecraft with his 5-year-old daughter in 2010. He was amazed at how much his daughter was learning from Minecraft; she solved problems on her own, developed a spatial understanding in the game, and accelerated her reading and writing skills because she wanted to be able to interact with other players, he said. At the time, Levin was teaching technology classes at a private elementary school in New York City, so he decided to try out some Minecraft lessons with his second graders. As a self-identified “gamer” who worked with an Internet service provider before the dot-com bubble burst, Levin saw that teaching with Minecraft combined his interests perfectly.
The segment that involved Minecraft was intended to last a week, but Levin used the game for the rest of the semester, teaching students to type by allowing them to communicate with each other in the game and showing them how to do online research by trawling the vast Minecraft forums for specific information. But getting there wasn’t easy; Levin spent a lot of time customizing the game to fit his instructional needs. Minecraft is an open-ended game with a never-ending landscape and digitally rendered resources. In certain game modes, players have to gather resources to craft shelter, tools, and armor to meet basic needs and survive battles with one another. But the part that players seem to enjoy the most is the construction element, in which they build entities like functional computers or reconstruct landscapes such as the entire country of Denmark. Given how versatile the game is, it’s understandable that Levin wanted to restrict some of these capabilities to give his students a safe, age-appropriate experience. He modified the code so that kids weren’t able to fight with one another in the game, and he limited some of their geographic range so that they could find their way back to a central location where they had a building just for their class to use. He wasn’t yet plugged into the online community where teachers were sharing similar modifications to the game, so he coded it all himself.
But it was worth it. Levin’s students learned more than just the hard skills he had intended for them to they pick up—they were also having profound discussions about topics that were notoriously challenging for teachers to communicate effectively. “It led to conversations in the classroom about how we treat these virtual spaces that we all find ourselves in, especially the young people that are coming into this complicated world of social networking,” Levin said. “Are we going to treat our class’ Minecraft world as an extension of our classroom? Do the rules that apply in the school building also apply on our Minecraft server? What happens if someone breaks those rules?” These were lessons in what Levin calls digital citizenship, which were typically being taught in middle school, once students were already deeply embedded in social networks, but not yet in elementary school when they were just starting to use them and the lessons would be most useful. “There was just so much to do and the game was so malleable that I kept being able to bring in all the things I needed to teach in the game,” Levin said. He started a blog to share his experiences with other teachers, and it went viral, making its way to the front page of Reddit.
Though he had heard of game-based learning and knew he was “kind of doing it,” Levin was unfamiliar with the research emphasizing the educational value of some video games. Studies published over the past two decades support the idea that video games can increase students’ spatial knowledge, improving their aptitude for math and science. And video games can help give students the hard skills they will need to function in a digital world, such as physical dexterity with keyboards and touch screens, an understanding of algorithms and search engines, and even basic programming. “Games are also uniquely suited to fostering the skills necessary for navigating a complex, interconnected, rapidly changing 21st century,” Alan Gershenfeld, the president of videogame publisher E-Line Media, told Scientific American.
Levin knew that he had stumbled onto something great by bringing Minecraft into the classroom, so when Finnish educator and gamer Santeri Koivisto found his blog and approached him about founding a company to make a version of Minecraft for educators, he couldn’t say no.
Three years since its inception, TeacherGaming now has nine employees that have worked to create MinecraftEdu, which has been sold to schools in 42 countries and six continents. TeacherGaming licenses Minecraft from Mojang, the small Swedish company that created the game and is now owned by Microsoft, and sells the educational version that incorporates many of Levin’s original modifications. MinecraftEdu also has some new elements based on teacher feedback and beta testing, like the ability to freeze students mid-play.
But Levin and his colleagues knew that, for MinecraftEdu to make its way across the curriculum, they had to lower the technological barriers, replacing complex code with intuitive check boxes or in-game tools designed for teachers to use even if they’re not hardcore programmers. Levin noted that TeacherGaming sells about half its software to technology classrooms, but the other half is evenly distributed across other subjects.
This is where Levin has seen incredible displays of teachers’ own creativity, especially from those who try to use MinecraftEdu to fulfill Common Core standards, the universal math and reading benchmarks for students at each grade level. Though MinecraftEdu is a great tool, Levin admits that the game doesn’t perfectly align with many of these standards, so innovative teachers have developed new ways of using the software to satisfying the requirements. “TeacherGaming does have curriculum, we have Minecraft ‘worlds’ that you can download and use in your own classroom, but teachers didn’t want to download what we were making—they wanted to make their own experiences,” Levin said. History teachers make Minecraft dioramas, English teachers have kids act out Shakespeare plays in a model of the Globe Theater, and art teachers let students recreate famous works of art in the game. Now, Levin says that teachers have created 98 percent of the downloadable “worlds” in the MinecraftEdu forum.
Most of the teachers that I spoke to are part of a Google group for educators using MinecraftEdu and were unanimously enthusiastic about what they had been able to accomplish with students using the software. Sara Richards, an instructional technology specialist in Round Rock, Texas, began her interest in the game after talking with a parent about how to help a student with some learning disabilities. “We thought it would be fantastic if we could harness the excitement of Minecraft into an educational setting, especially to help bolster children who might not always be successful in a traditional school setting,” Richards said. In the 13 months since then, Richards has seen second graders build elaborate digital communities, helped students recreate a scene from A Cricket In Times Square, and watched third graders quickly grasp the mathematical concepts of area, perimeter, and volume.
Diane Main teaches a high-school computer-science class at the Harker School in San Jose, California. She has been using MinecraftEdu with her students for the past two years and has been consistently impressed by what her students have created in the game, especially when they are given the flexibility to follow their own interests, figuring out how to do the desired actions in their own way. “When you have opportunities for creativity and more open-ended situations, it allows kids to figure out that they can try things, they can do things differently—there’s not one formulaic way to do well in this class,” Main said. “A student told me after the class that he learned that first option [to solving a problem] isn’t always the best option. And that’s something you can’t teach kids—they need to have the opportunity to experience it themselves.”
In the past year TeacherGaming has expanded to include another game called Kerbal, which is more focused on math and engineering than Minecraft is. As TeacherGaming makes educational versions of more games, its founders hope to continue to give teachers the creativity and ability to present their students with new challenges. “I’m really proud that we’ve been able to be a vehicle for experimentation in different types of progressive education,” Levin said.
Microsoft To Make Profit On Minecraft Deal By 2016: The Future Is Bright!
It came as a shock to hardcore gamers when mega corporation Microsoft purchased Minecraft developer Mojang, because the man behind the game always lauded independence and had balked at other corporate offers. The modest company with only a handful of staff was snapped up for a whopping $2 billion towards the end of 2014, but as expensive as the deal was, it’s already beginning to pay off.
Microsoft revealed this week that if they continue down the same trajectory they should start making a profit on that $2 billion before the end of they year!
The last set of financial reports revealed that their gaming sector revenue had increased by 79 percent thanks to acquiring Minecraft, which is now available on almost every platform imaginable.
The money began pouring in almost over night, with thousands of copies being sold from day to day. Even before Microsoft took over the sandbox building game had sold over 18 million copies on Windows and Mac in 2014, and another 10 million are expected to be sold by 2016!
Microsoft proved smart in making the original developers an offer high enough that they couldn’t refuse it. Amazon, Google and Facebook had all shown an interest, which Minecraft’s creator appeared to turn down out of principal, but at the end of the day the money did the talking and now it’s Microsoft that are reaping the benefits.
It’s still early days however, and it’s not clear what direction the corporation will be taking the property. Simply sitting on it and taking in the game sale revenue is one thing, but there are signs that they want to expand much further in to merchandise, books, and spin offs. There is even a Minecraft movie in the works, which will introduce a whole new audience to the game.
One area tied to this is the HoloLens technology, Microsoft’s answer to Google Glass. The virtual reality style glasses headset brings games and other media to life by projecting holograms right before the user’s eyes.
A Demo of Minecraft that works with the device, called “Minecraft in the living room” received a great reception and could further help boost sales.
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