It’s a simple thing, really. Just a matter of philosophy.
I play video games with my four year old daughter. Maybe that makes me a terrible father, but it’s a way to show her what I do for a living and how I have fun. And, well… she loves Minecraft. She calls it her “daddy-daughter game”, something that just the two of us play with sometimes. I believe kids need that, and to be honest, I think parents need it too.
Before Minecraft, though, her favorite was World of Warcraft. She really just loved my Druid in Travel form and making it jump when I was running around. Kids love that sense of control; she could make Daddy’s character change into a cheetah and then make it jump. She also loved to go play in water and change into the Aquatic form, but really, the cheetah is what she loved most.
These days, she still loves to make the character jump, even though the Minecraft avatar is typically first person, not third. And yet, Minecraft gives her another layer of control over the gaming experience. She can go anywhere and do almost anything she wants to in the game world. If there’s a hole in the ground, we can go explore it. If she gets the itch to find some clay to make some bricks which then can be made into red brick building blocks, she tells me to drive to the beach (she’s still learning how to use the WASD steering and is usually content just telling me where to go). She can swim upstream and upwaterfall. She can punch sheep and take their wool. She can plant flowers or dig up snowballs. She’s excited by finding coal to harvest, even though sometimes she still asks why we need it. She can place torches in the dark spaces that she might find scary, or just tell me to wall off the really spooky caves.
I’ve recently started a Dwarven Hunter to share some more time with her, because she loves the pets in WoW. (A Druid/Hunter hybrid would be perfect for her; shapeshifting and the Pokemon itch, all rolled into one.)
So when I took her for a spin through the newly revamped Stormwind on the way to Bloodmyst Isle to tame yet another blue moth (she loves blue, and those BI moths are just so… blue), she naturally spent a fair bit of time looking around for things to do. She asked if we could explore a well we rode past. I had to tell her “no, sweetheart, we can’t do that”. As children are wont to do, she asked “why not?”, to which I had to fall back on the old copout answer of “the designers don’t let us do that, dear”. Naturally, she asked “why?” to that, too, and I had to stifle an insult to the designers and just answer with the unsatisfying “that’s just how they do it, I’m sorry”. She then asked if we could go catch fish in the canals, and when she made my Dwarf jump into the canal, she saw the crabs and naturally wanted to go grab them. Since we didn’t have the fishing skill or a quest to gather crabs, again, we couldn’t do much more than swim around and wish.
She lost interest in the town until she happened to notice an apple tree.
Ah, to see things come full circle. She got excited and wanted to pick the apples. She is truly her father’s daughter, a quirk which is quite heartwarming. When I told her she couldn’t pick the apples, she got quiet for a while. She then announced that she wanted to play Minecraft.
Ah, they grow up so fast.
I hugged her, and we went to go work on our spider trap. We need some more chicken feathers, too, for the arrows she loves to shoot at the spiders. She’s getting the knack of fishing, too, even though she still wishes she could go underwater and look for fish rather than just fish for them.
So, if WoW is going to be lambasted for being on rails, for me and mine, it has nothing to do with overwrought quests, pacing issues or the race to the endgame (though those can certainly be a concern, they are irrelevant to our playstyle). It has to do with the complete inability to go out and change the world or explore wherever you feel like. You can’t dig out a cave and call it home, you can’t just go wherever your whimsy takes you (because the wildlife will eat you). You can’t really partake of the world of WoW and make your own mark in it, you just play on a stage. It’s a marvelous, intricate stage, with plenty of things to do, but it’s just not the same as going and remolding the world with your own hands, digging into something just because it looked interesting.
Minecraft scratches the Explorer and Scientist itches in ways that WoW is flatly unequipped to. They are both fun in their own ways, but for my daughter, all the glitz and dings of WoW, even her beloved blue moths, can’t compare to the simple joy in making the world of Minecraft her own. The best part is that she doesn’t get that from me directly, it’s just how she’s wired and how the games appeal to her. Like daughter, like father, and I couldn’t be happier.
Tomorrow, we’re going to try to make some sound effects. I showed her the DVD extras for WALL-E, and the bit on sound design really intrigued her. There’s just something wonderful about seeing a little one learn and experiment. “Why” and “How” might bug some parents, but they have served us well in our home. We probably won’t be putting lava in buckets any time soon, though.
Ed: I’m actually still having fun with the new Shattered content in WoW, it just doesn’t scratch the same itch that Minecraft does, and it’s not working for my little one. Gaming time together is all Minecraft these days.
It’s not just her, there are lots of folks playing Minecraft these days. Almost just as many at my workplace play Minecraft as WoW. I know of at least 3 playing Minecraft and 4 of us playing WoW.
Minecraft is just plain more realistic, and by realistic I mean interactive. Any but the most sheltered, walled-in, stiffled child expects to be able to pick up a stick, throw a stone, play in dirt and dig. They don’t expect to build a house, but the world is something that they can change on a tiny level.
It takes many years of being told to walk on the sidewalk and don’t pick that up before we can live on rails.
I find myself in a similar circumstance. My daughter is just noe 3 1/2 and getting into “daddy’s games”. For the longest time I have had to log into Warhammer while she directs me where to go and which “monsters to get”. She also seems to insisit that all high elves are “princesses” despite me correcting her. She is my first child and and what I have come to learn is that everyday is not just a learning experience for her, but for me as well.
🙂 Great story. My brothers are into Minecraft now and they gave up WoW ages ago. I wonder if Lego Universe has any of this or has even considered having it…
I thoroughly approve of your daughters selectivity (not that my approval matters by default).
No one seems to call out traditional, current mmorpgs as essentially just being a bland, undulating planes. The trees you can’t climb, the bushes you can’t cut, the water you can’t drink, all these static, untouchable images – no one seems to mention they are pointless?
But in the theme of the emperors new clothes, your daughter has pointed out how the mmorpg emperor is naked! While a crowd of millions congratulate him on his finery…
I will say I heard darkfall allows you to harvest from any rock or tree, so that’s a step toward a game world where trees and rocks aren’t just props but part of gameplay.
On the subject of legos, I pray that you have plenty around the house. And I don’t mean “around the house” as in “at the house”, I mean around the house. Legos are meant to be scattered to the winds, to be gathered as needed like some sort of action movie where the heroes must be found and convinced to join.
Ohh, yes, we have Legos. Lots and lots of Legos, with an alarming tendency to migrate. Between my little girl and her little brother, the Legos find their way to the most obscure places.
It’s awesome. 🙂
[…] Tish Tosh Tesh has been playing video games with his daughter, and one particular paragraph in his latest article struck me as particularly insightful: So, if WoW is going to be lambasted for being on rails, for […]
Your daughter is awesome. 🙂
Dunno, minecraft is worse because it gives the illusion of exploring-you are exploring a shabby, restrictive world, picking illusions of apples and smudges of wells. Both are equally bad compared to a book, or a real orchard.
Maybe I’ve gamed too much, but I think it’s better in the long run to ground yourself in the natural world and then approach the virtual.
Well, sure, that’s a given in my mind, too. A diet exclusively or dominantly comprised of gaming isn’t going to be healthy. Good thing that’s not all we’re feeding her.
Books are definitely a priority, and she’s really starting to get the hang of reading on her own. She’s loved being read to ever since she was a few months old. She loves coming up with stories and crazy names, pretending to be a dozen different characters in a half hour. Play and whimsy is part of being a kid.
Oh, meant to mention there’s a small mmorpg (small massive?) called wurm online IIRC, where as I understand it you can shape the terrain, digging holes and such.
Right, that’s the name of it. I knew it was something like that, but couldn’t remember it. Thanks for the reminder. 🙂
I suspect the internet generation is actually more interested in playing Black Ops or shooters where you can destroy everything you see rather than building.
[…] a taste of Minecraft, then returns to a game where you CAN’T do anything you can think of? Tesh faces that very dilemma… Will there ever be an MMO that really lets you change the world? Maybe Tesh’s daughter […]
Spinks, next generation? I loved building with legos, but only so they could battle it out and get blown to bits. At which point I’d rebuild them exactly to have another fight. Though technically I am within a generation, I refuse to be associated with the younguns of today.
[…] town today, so let me refer you to Tesh’s post about playing online with his daughter, “How Minecraft Ruined World of Warcraft“: She then asked if we could go catch fish in the canals, and when she made my Dwarf jump […]
Wait a minute… I play Minecraft with my 4 yo daughter. Except she calls it the chomp-chomp game, and then thrashes her arm wildly in a chopping direction to emphasize her point.
Mostly we pick flowers, drop torches, and “get” animals. “Go get that cow!” Still unlike many other games, I can do almost everything she asks.
Fun times… when I play MMOs, she always wants me to play a girl character. Sad when my main is a dude.
Many years ago a childhood friend and I made a hideout in a “cave” carved into the sandstone embankment running alongside the train tracks outside of town (we lived in a small country town in rural Victoria), while in the back paddocks of a farm we found an “island” where the river doubled back on itself. These two places featured prominently in many of our childhood adventures, such that as a young man in my 20s (still many years ago now 😉 I would occasionally return to them, and each time never fail to be astonished at the simplicity of what I found.
The “cave” was really nothing more than a very narrow crack in the sandstone, narrow enough that it could still support the sandstone roof. Although when I returned it had widened over the years and the roof had fallen in. The island had not changed much, but I had, and it no longer held the magic for me that it had for my younger self. The memories were still there but nothing more.
WoW is a visually splendid game but greatly limits how the user can interact with the world. Minecraft is an ugly game, by contrast, but it allows for far greater exploration and manipulation. But in the end, neither game can hold a candle to a child’s imagination.
Forget sandbox games, give your child a real sandbox and watch their eyes light up…at least until they get sand in them.
“give your child a real sandbox”
We have one of those, and we’re planning on building a “fort” that they can tinker with this summer. As much fun as Minecraft is, they still do prefer playing outside. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sandboxes are lame, which I know because my neighbor had one and he was lame. Much better is a part of the yard where they can play in the dirt. My family’s was in an area next to our back porch where I think they used to deliver coal or dump ashes. It probably gave us cancer and was possibly flammable if dried out, but that’s part of the fun of childhood.
Other good toys are random scraps of wood, with or without rusty nails, and rocks.
Awesome story, Tesh. I’m looking forward to my son getting just a bit older so I can start sharing some of these experiences with him as well.
It’s my 5 yr olds favorite game as well. It’s fun having him direct the experience. He’s starting to get better at te controls too (but he still prefers I use the keys, he uses the mouse.)
He’s a builder more than an explorer 🙂 is there a KEAS test for kids? (please dont be K.. please please please 🙂
He does like ‘harvesting’ the animals, and ridding the night of the bad guys though :).
[…] like these make me happy. (And yes, if I could fly in Minecraft, you can bet your favorite great aunt that I’d spend a lot of time doing so. It’s not […]
[…] alliteration is a bit of a stretch.) We build the systems that make a game function. If players want to pick up an apple in Stormwind, they have to have a shopping list for permission. Otherwise, there is an absolute, unbreakable […]
[…] How Minecraft Ruined World of Warcraft […]
[…] movies. There’s a place for story in MMOs. I just think that MMOs work best with greater freedom and a more malleable world, largely because it’s those crazy moments out in the game’s world that really make them […]
Lego would be kicking themselves when seen Minecraft, lol!
[…] But then, I am a Minecraft fan. […]