These days I'm a bit more intrigued by Roblox. My 11 year-old son and his friends have completely abandoned Minecraft for it.
Roblox is designed for MMO play from the start, but worlds (or whatever they're called) are completely open to modification with their free editor. Then you can script things in Lua. Lua!
The other night my son was antsy at the dinner table. So I asked him why the rush. He said he "had a flight to catch". Turns out he's joined a group that operates an "airplane" that has scheduled flights in and out of an airport that someone has created. He interviewed to become the first officer on the flight.
It's messier than Minecraft, but the players seem to understand the potential. They're hiring, actually. (no I don't work for them). The stats on this page are interesting too:
The idea of a corporate for-profit proprietary video game being the centerpiece of a generation's learning is horrifying and dystopian to me.
It is the same problem the last generation had, in large part, with the public schooling Microsoft monoculture. Kids grew up on Windows 95 and Office and are now indoctrinated into Microsoft tooling, probably for life, as loyal customers. A very valuable investment on Microsoft's part to capture the computer knowledge of a large portion of a generation.
>> "It is the same problem the last generation had, in large part, with the public schooling Microsoft monoculture. Kids grew up on Windows 95 and Office and are now indoctrinated into Microsoft tooling, probably for life, as loyal customers. A very valuable investment on Microsoft's part to capture the computer knowledge of a large portion of a generation."
I don't think this is as big of an issue as you think. I would be part of that generation. Almost everyone I know (and I mean regular people, I don't have many tech nerd friends) has switched to OS X in work and personal life. A few are on Chromebooks too. Most use a mixture of MS Office (when required for work/college) and Google Docs. So although I agree that there was an MS monoculture when growing up through the 90's/00's I disagree that has led to lifelong loyal custom.
As an alternative point of view, I've always heard that HP calculators were killed by TI giving free calculators to schools - which lead to an entire generation that had no desire to learn RPN, even if it has some serious advantages in a lot of areas.
The counterexamples you provide (OSX and Chromebooks) follow basically the same UI paradigms as the Windows machines they replaced (even if some of those might have been copied from earlier Macs). There still may be less overall diversity in the computers we use, even if there are now a number if different logos on the box.
I don't think HP's RPN calculators were ever in competition with TI. The RPN calculators like the 12C are marketed to finance professionals, and TI has nothing like them. The HP graphing calculators like the 50g are infix (although there is a pretty good RPN app available).
Edit: I do see that HP made graphing calculators with native RPN in the late '80s, so perhaps they were pushing these for academic markets, although today they seem to be the provence of surveyors.
Random aside: I first learned RPN from my father, a budget analyst, and have used it ever since. RealCalc is an Android calculator app with an excellent RPN mode, if you're curious.
The 50g is infix? When did HP switch away from RPN? Oh, it's just an option now. I've had my 48g since college in the late 90s, and now use a 48g emulator on my phone.
I have an hp50g and it kind of sucks in infix mode compared to RPN mode IMO. Everything is hidden behind layers and layers of menus sort of like the TI calculators (which is the point I guess?)
There is this mystic and frankly mythology that HP's RPN is a superior entry method for arithmetic. It's not. I knew RPN from my interest in math before calculators were invented, so I liked HP's RPN. However the direct correspondence between written math and the way it is expressed on a TI calculator is a huge advantage. I still have an HP RPN calculator. I liked its physical shape and size. I like the shape of its buttons. I likes the quality and feel. However, my daughter's TI calculator with a high resolution color screen (for a calculator) that graphs functions and understands calculus is so much more capable, and it supports parentheses with a standard order of operations so it is easier to go from a problem or equation description and entry into the calculator.
Before Python, I ordinarily used bc (a Unix command that acted as a basic calculator) for simple calculator calculations at my desk. bc was much more popular that the other Unix calculator dc which used RPN. Now I just use python's REPL. I only use a calculator if I'm away from a real computer (which is rare since I carry a smart phone).
Same here. Born into a Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 household, grew up on PC/DOS and spent the majority of my life on Windows, deep inside the Microsoft galaxy, but now I've settled into Macs and OS X.
I think games used to be the big differentiator for many people, more so than office software, but now the gap is decreasing rapidly on all fronts. Apple needs to revisit the Mac mini as a low-cost entry into their ecosystem and make it an attractive PC in its own right as well. I know they're going to be adamant about GPU upgradability, but they should at least promote the Thunderbolt-based external GPUs and help them be a viable solution.
Sure, because it's obviously better to use closed, proprietary hardware from a single source than one that's not just open to global competition but lets you build PCs yourself....
Like I said, I was born in an era where there were many "closed" proprietary platforms, like the Commodore 64.
It's not necessarily bad, it's just a different philosophy; some prefer computers to be appliances, like their TV or refrigerator, that "just work." Others prefer computers to be DIY-servicable machines, like cars, that require active and regular maintenance but can be improved if one is so inclined.
Just because all the "appliance computer" manufacturers almost went out of business going into the 1990s, doesn't mean that philosophy failed, and the recent resurgence of Macs has proven as much.
I suspect in an alternate universe/timeline with slightly different twists of fate, the IBM PC has died instead and closed proprietary hardware is the dominant paradigm.
It is necessarily bad if you make yourself (or, more important) your business totally dependent on somebody who is a monopoly supplier.
> doesn't mean that philosophy failed, and the recent resurgence of Macs has proven as much.
I think all the proprietary systems failed, and there were dozens if not hundreds of them. Apple was the only significant survivor, mainly for pseudo-religious reasons.
The only areas where proprietary systems survived are in mainframes (perpetuation of IBM monopoly) and in games consoles (where hardware can be sold at a loss).
If the IBM PC had died, the world of CP/M would have continued....
> the recent resurgence of Macs has proven as much
Not really. The recent resurgence is mainly due to the fact that its lack of serious and/or business software is not the barrier it was when (a) most people can do most things online and (b) it has Unix underneath.
Latest Intel HD graphics cards are doing really well. I have a Mac Mini and all games I tried work well on it. I had to reduce the quality settings for some (say Rocket League in 3 player split screen or Dark Souls 2), but every game is completely playable. Some games like Devil May Cry 4, the new Tomb Raider or Bioshock Infinite work well with default quality settings without downgrading quality.
If it were teaching them history, philosophy, science, math, literature, etc. then maybe it'd be disconcerting. But these things seem more focused on algorithmic thinking, programming, maybe math (though not necessarily higher math), logic and a bit more.
MS produced tools, lots of people use them. MS didn't write the textbooks and explain to students that Windows was the be-all-end-all of operating systems, the rest are heathens.
A video game like this, to be successful, requires a well-structured volunteer base (hard), or profit. And it's hardly a monoculture, anyone who wants to put in the time and money is able to produce a competing game.
The public education system is for-profit as well, only difference is that they make their profit by collecting funds coercively, instead of advertising their service and getting paid voluntarily.
The hatred towards for-profit companies is childish. Why would you expect anyone to build games for you for free?
My school district has been an Apple monoculture from the time they got their first Apple ][Es in the early 80s to the present day. Other than occasionally playing with a Win 3.1 machine in Sears or something I never touched a Microsoft product until I got my first computer at home when I was 17.
I've used many different tools, but always come back to the Microsoft office suite. Why? it's better.
Mac concentrates on a few niche features that work really well (like IOS/iphone) and Linux on the desktop (not on the server) is always 10 step behind.
The big difference here is that indoctrinated MS kids ended up being stuck with that as a work tool later in life.
Minecraft, actually teaches logic, and other skills that can be applied anywhere - and these kids will naturally move onto other tools for work in life - I don't see anybody stuck using minecraft at work (which did happen with MSO).
Roblox is designed like an MMO. But that also has drawbacks. They charge like an MMO (monthly subscription), and you are beholden to their system/servers.
I don't think I've ever gotten more value from a software purchase than buying Minecraft for €9.95 in 2010.
I think you can do a lot on the free tier, my son only recently started spending a little to unlock some of the upgrades.
Personally I'd rather see subscriptions fund a server that's always up. I've researched running my own Minecraft server for the local kids, but it's really not worth it.
That's a strange sentiment to hear, and somewhat disheartening. Minecraft servers are easy to set up, and can easily run in the background of an old server or PC.
I've been running one for over a year on my gaming PC and home internet connection.
I'm running a vanilla minecraft server for 4-6 people on the Raspberry Pi 3 and it runs beautifully, never had any problems. Pi2 was a bit slow at times, but the latest Pi3 has enough horsepower to support that many people without a problem. So really, setting up a minecraft server costs $30 for the Pi + $10 for the sd card. At 5W power usage it can stay on all the time.
You can do okay on a DO VPN for say $20/month. I did this for a while but it was only me and a few friends, and when we wanted to use a modpack I moved the server an oldish computer in my house as it needed more grunt.
Calculating the power costs put it at about $30/month in electricity, ignoring all the time wasted getting it running.
Being a free format helps. But it isn't necessary. The main thing is that you can access the data reliably even if the original software or servers disappear (may require you to make your own periodic backups).
ROBLOX has Builder's Club which is subscription, but you can also just buy some ROBUX from time to time if you don't want to subscribe. It is pretty playable with very little spend, most games on the platform aren't play to win (because the players themselves make the games).
Well, if you are impressed by Lua scripting in a game, go back to Minecraft, then install OpenComputers.
They have it all. Those computers have firmware, an OS (LuaOS), filessystems, network routers, you name it. You can do pretty interesting things with the peripherals. You can also program robots.
I'm a big fan of computercraft. You can quickly build turtles (robots) and program them to do almost anything a player can do. So you can automate almost everything and it's really fun. (Also in Lua.)
Open computers does have robots, but they are much more difficult to actually build, and have more constraints. I did try to get into OpenComputers, but everything felt so much more limited and expensive, and I just wanted to program cool things.
Parents, watch your kids on this if you haven't already taught them about Internet safety. Many players creatively get around the kid-friendly chat filters and behave in ways you may not want your younger ones to mimic.
Source: my 8 year old daughter who tattled on strangers and said "didn't their parents teach them to keep stuff private?"
Just downloaded it, fyi it tries to get you to buy money with money literally at the very beginning of the first two games I tried, definitely don't recommend this game.
Haven't head of that game before. I looked at a few minutes of game play on Youtube and their website. This feels a lot like Second Life: A blank world were everything has to be developed in order to do anything meaningful. I might be totally wrong with my first impression so I'm curious it's comparable.
Ah good old tekkit. Now there is test pack please ignore which shows promise but to be honest the modding scene slowed down after the bukkit/forge mess and due to the fatigue of never receiving the promised stable api.
The moment ic2 stopped development I lost interest.
Buildcraft spawned factorio however, so my logistic nerd needs are satisfyed :)
That said, not just any pack will do. My absolute favorite is TPPI2; I think it's by far the most professional one, but it does require a pretty hefty machine. If it doesn't work, then there are a number of smaller/more specialized packs that likely would.
Sat down with my son and Minetest a few weeks ago. The look on his face when he first succeeded in writing up a Lua mod that gave him super powers that worked in the game? Priceless.
Great article, and I loved the mooshroom in a pen with pressure plates hack. That is indeed very creative thinking. But this ...
>> “My art teacher always says, ‘No games are creative, except for the people who create them.’ But she said, ‘The only exception that I have for that is Minecraft.’ ”
I guess his art teacher didn't play many computer games. If she was familiar only with board and party games then perhaps this comment would make sense, but "builders" have been a part of computer gaming for a long time, as any obsessed fan of Railroad Tycoon or Civilization can attest to. In Fallout 4, a relatively new title, you can build entire towns.
Last year my daughter, then nine, discovered Minecraft and fell in love with it. The wonderful and surprising result was that it seemed to make her fall in love with problem-solving and architecture in general. Suddenly programming wasn't boring, it was empowering.
I was skeptical at first; now we have it on every device in our house and we have a family server that we share with my sister and dad.
When there's a vacation or something I recommend trying out mods for it.
TerraFirmaCraft is a total overhaul mod that is 'more realistic' (not fully, but more so) and teaches a general outline of how to progress from the stone age to the ages of metals (different packs also exist that add other mods to extend that up through, say, the (steam) Industrial Age).
If automation and distributed systems are a topic you want to cover the automation you setup in something like FTB's recently released Infinity Skyblock pack/map (there are numerous letsplays and streamers doing that now) is pretty fun, if extremely time consuming. I would not play this without a dedicated server (it is VERY nice to leave chunks loaded overnight...).
Working in a startup circa 2008, we had a trial-run hire who apparently had some old experience and was trying to get back into things... He was confused why he couldn't telnet anywhere, and I had to explain what SSH was and why nobody used telnet anymore.
I interview people like this all the time. I'm long enough in the tooth to have been using telnet regularly, and it terrifies me that so many people doing what I was doing 20 years ago have found a path to obsolescence in an industry with such a critical skills shortage.
This bothers me. How are people interviewing for (presumably) admin positions without this knowledge?
When I interviewed for my first real job they included a programming "test". It was basic C stuffs (really, more C pointer focused). Things like 4 swap functions, each incorrectly implemented, what are the resulting values of a and b after running swap(a,b) or swap(&a,&b), etc.
Apparently, I found out after getting hired on, I was the only one to have ever gotten every question correct (note: I was not their only hire, the code there made sense once I heard this, I'm not there anymore). So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that sys admin jobs see similar problems. But it still really bothers me for some reason. This is fairly basic knowledge (telnet/ssh for admins, C and pointers for embedded systems programmers).
How are people interviewing for (presumably) admin positions without this knowledge?
Because once you've logged in to the box, administration via telnet and SSH is exactly the same. It's not that they don't have admin skills, they just don't have updated security skills.
It's not awesome, but if the interviewer doesn't think to ask about SSH skills, and the interviewee doesn't realize their skill is out of date, it's easy to miss.
How often is the focus on what to do once logged in, as compared to how to log in in the first place?
Not sure if this is sarcasm or not. But I would specifically say it's not that hard to show someone a different way of logging in, which is why I find the other reactions of shock so weird. I work with one system where I log in via two bastion hosts to a network where there is no direct network access to any host except via load balancers for applications and the bastion host itself. From the bastion host, I SSH to the individual systems on virtual machine network, but I could just as easily use telnet with basically no loss of security since the traffic never leaves the host, and doesn't even hit the network card.
It doesn't help that you have either FTPS or SFTP depending on the platform. I call it FTP as a generalization, but if I ever saw it as an actual FTP implementation I'm outta there.
From the way the article describes the Minecraft community development, I thought it was possible that the choice of telnet was deliberate. It's easier to log in to, for one- no key configuration. And while the connection is insecure, I would bet a lot that nothing of value can be accessed from the people actually telnetting in- I bet that all non-game related write permissions are limited to SSH users. And if they are hacked, then they are (probably) inconvenienced, think about their passwords, and really understand why people use this thing SSH instead of telnet.
The Minecraft modding scene is amazing! The Japanese have been doing wonders. You'd be amazed not only by the content but also by the visual effects of some of the mods.
Some examples (Not Japanese):
ComputerCraft: adds programmable computers in Lua. With in game applications; programmable robots called turtles.
Botania and Thaumcraft are two magical mods with stunning visuals.
Buildcraft and AE2 are logistics-oriented mods.
All in all, vanilla Minecraft is definitely unplayable once you try it with mods.
Edit: Probably worth mentioning that Mojang hired the guy who created the modding API. (See SquareWheel's comment below for correction/details)
Edit: Just finished reading the article (I check the comments first). They mentioned the Redstone logic. Probably worth mentioning as well that a 16-year-old built a scientific calculator using Redstone. https://youtu.be/wgJfVRhotlQ
Just a quick correction. Mojang hasn't hired the guy that created Forge. They hired Dinnerbone and grum, two guys from Bukkit (a server plugin API). They also hired developers from MCP (Searge and Professor Mobius), which enables Forge to do what it does.
Forge's early contributors have mostly moved on from the modding scene, but the current maintainers are cpw and LexManos. They've worked with Mojang on a few issues, such as the block model format, but haven't been hired by them.
Additionally, I'm not sure if you meant it this way, but the mods you mentioned aren't by Japanese developers. There is a significant modding scene in Japan, but there's little overlap with the more common mods such as you listed above. Some notable mods from that community are StarMiner[1], RealTrainMod[2], and Helicopter Mod[3].
By "modding API" in my first edit I was actually referring to MCP. I couldn't think of a better description.
The mods I mentioned aren't indeed by Japanese developers but I can now see how my wording is wrong. I meant to say that the Japanese modding community is also active and doing wonders. Thank you.
The minecraft modding scene is horrific. Forum posts as homepages, adfly for file hosting, closed source mods whose maintainers are hostile to feedback, compatibility issues between everything...
... and yet somehow it WORKS, and probably provides kids with a better introduction to having to hack with computer technology than anything most kids have had to deal with since having to edit HIMEM in your autoexec.bat to get a soundblaster to work with Doom was a thing.
Actually, most mods are not closed source anymore and most modders moved to CurseForge over adf.ly (which is not perfect, I admit, but much better). This is not 2012.
You should definitely look at Electrical Age as well.
I mean... I'm biased, because I'm one of the (non-core) devs, but it's a reasonably accurate DC electrical simulator, in Minecraft! What's not to love?
Watching that helps explain why MS paid $2.5b for Minecraft. Maybe the most incredible visual computing artefact I've ever seen. Having a channel to that young man's brain... Priceless
Skyrim and Starcraft 2 are recent examples with huge mod scenes. They are arguably far less flexible than Half-Life, but subjectively mods like Requiem can completely change the style of game-play. Hell, Requiem is a few hundred MB's.
IMO, the real shift is you don't need to mod an existing game to make significantly different games. Further, AAA games are simply huge now so it's hard for a small group to change everything.
To be fair, less flexible than Half-Life still leaves a lot of a room for something to be flexible. What you're saying about AAA games in general though, is a good point. The days of being able to unpack Quake are over, and some of these games are pretty hard even for their creators to manage from update to update.
I'm a bit younger than many of you (talking about your grandchildren and sons playing this game!). I'm 20, and played a lot of Roblox and then Minecraft before they were this popular. I even interviewed Notch on a cute little podcast called "MineCast" I made back then.
Administrating a medieval-themed role-playing server back then taught me a lot about server administration and general diplomacy (handling bans and choosing admins), chatting on the MinecraftForums and its IRC showed me how to function well in online communities, and now children are experiencing this all over again.
I'm a lot older than the majority of fans, but it's a great touching stone when chatting with younger cousins. My haircutter's son was playing Roblox on a computer a few feet away from me last time I got my hair cut there, and she went on and on about how much time he spent on that game. It really brought me back to those days.
It's going to be fun watching these little nerdlings growing up with such a great toy. Minecraft's popularity goes to show that we don't need to worry about a lack of modding-friendly games (Doom/Quake/Garry's Mod), the kids will find them :)
If you'll boy or girl is interested in Minecraft, and you want to teach them programming, then I strongly suggest ScriptCraft - a Minecraft server mod that allows scripting in JavaScript.
Interesting. Any idea how the interop works? I couldn't see a Javascript engine in there (Rhino?). I wrote some integration based on web services for Forge but I've never been able to muster the motivation to finish it.
I like the expectation Minecraft sets up in players, that the world is going to respond to them in some kind of meaningful way. I hope that expectation drives broader development over time.
It's amazing what you can do with redstone these days. YouTube effectively turned into the GitHub of redstone. I can't imagine how much more powerful this could be if you could "fork", "clone", and "pull request" red stone designs and compose them as easily. Most people rebuild each and every single bit from scratch.
I love minecraft. It is actually through redstone circuitry in minecraft that I understood many things of digital design, for example I discovered the contamination and propagation delay all by myself while playing. When the professor taught us those things, I instantly understood he meant this. I had trouble with my redstone circuits when I built a combination lock because, while the circuit was settling to a stable state, the door would open and close erratically. I then had to build something like a timer that isolated the door from the circuit until it settled to a stable state.
I have two kids, a son 5 and a daughter 8 who spend a lot lot of their free time on Minecraft(pocket edition on Kindle Fires). I'm kind of amazed at the kind of stuff they come up with. My daughter mostly uses for "artwork" building sculptures and statues and things like that, basically an extension of the drawing she does when she's not on her Kindle. That was basically my expectation when I got Minecraft for them as I was familiar with the "virtual lego" aspect of it, but my son has really surprised me. He uses pressure plates, switches, dynamite, red stone, etc to build all these little machines(my daughter does too, but not to the same extent). Looking closely at what he builds I didn't expect my 5 year old to have the kind of grasp on programming-like logic.
I had originally set up a Raspberry Pi to hopefully teach him some beginning programming(my daughter has a Chromebook with regular Linux installed, and I've taught her some Python and HTML) with Scratch, but he had not interest in it at all, but he did find Minecraft on the Pi and for the first few days both kids where gathered around it until I put in on their Kindles to give them a newer version and one where they can play together.
>> “An adult mentor opens up these new worlds that wouldn’t be open to them,” she adds. Of course, critics might worry about kids interacting with adults online in this way, but as Ito notes, when there’s a productive task at hand, it’s similar to how guilds have passed on knowledge for ages: knowledgeable adults mentoring young people.
Kids can't interact with adults online? What has this world come to?
The article describes it as 'clunky'. But, I think much of its popularity is due to its accessibility. It's a very intuitive system, and even my 1 year old gets it. She messes around with it on the tablet and enjoys moving and looking around and watching the cows and chickens.
My kids love Minecraft, but more recently they have been playing an open source, highly extensible, and much faster game called Minetest. The mods are all written in Lua, and it runs so much faster on the older hardware I make my kids use, it even runs well on Raspberry Pis.
Roblox is designed for MMO play from the start, but worlds (or whatever they're called) are completely open to modification with their free editor. Then you can script things in Lua. Lua!
The other night my son was antsy at the dinner table. So I asked him why the rush. He said he "had a flight to catch". Turns out he's joined a group that operates an "airplane" that has scheduled flights in and out of an airport that someone has created. He interviewed to become the first officer on the flight.
It's messier than Minecraft, but the players seem to understand the potential. They're hiring, actually. (no I don't work for them). The stats on this page are interesting too:
http://corp.roblox.com/careers