My daughter is 8 years old and wants to play a game called Minecraft.

I took a look at the game and felt she might be a little to old, it is a game just like Lego Universe were you build things with blocks, but a lot less on the graphics side.....kinda looks like a game from the 80's if you know what I mean.

Was wondering if others have their kids playing it and what their thoughts are?

Originally posted by Atraeus123

My daughter is 8 years old and wants to play a game called Minecraft.

I took a look at the game and felt she might be a little to old, it is a game just like Lego Universe were you build things with blocks, but a lot less on the graphics side.....kinda looks like a game from the 80's if you know what I mean.

Was wondering if others have their kids playing it and what their thoughts are?

8 too old because it looks like Lego Universe? Damn, I'm almost 22 and I still like playing with Legos. 

I don't have children myself, but, in my opinion, I feel it's pretty much suited for all age groups. There's no blood or gore, the violence in it is hardly what you could call violence (smacking things with cardboard-esque looking weapons and them poofing into dust), and no foul language. 

You can set the game type to creative mode and just go around and build things with unlimited resources. Otherwise, you have to go around and harvest resources yourself, fight monsters (unless you're on peaceful difficulty) and survive. I've made massive sprawling cities with castles, walls, draw bridges, massive tree forts, etc. etc. etc. It's pretty fun solo just to log on and build stuff to your imaginations content, but it really shines when playing with others, IMHO. 

Minecraft can be and is played by all ages.  There's nothing mature or anything that only appeals to young children.

It's a game of exploration and creativity.  It's a relatively new game that uses the latest ideas while being easily accessable.

My suggestion is for you both to play it.  You'll both be hooked.

Minecraft is for teens+   its a creative game played by a whole bunch of teenagers (a army of millions)   and a decent adult community that play the harder mods like tekkit (http://www.technicpack.net/)   its used in schools to learn teens the basic of mechanics and electric circets

dont let the games base textures fool you,  whit the right texture pack it can take down even the most modern computers even if it looks blockly.  its due to the nature of having a endless world of blocks.

anyway, i would say that you have to look for a decent server for  the kid to play on yourself , or atleast monitor the behavior on the server she would play on atlest for a while to see its "fitting"for a 8 year old.  or just play offline , workt to for creativity , its less fun tho.

Originally posted by Eladi

Minecraft is for teens+   its a creative game played by a whole bunch of teenagers (a army of millions)   and a decent adult community that play the harder mods like tekkit (http://www.technicpack.net/)   its used in schools to learn teens the basic of mechanics and electric circets

dont let the games base textures fool you,  whit the right texture pack it can take down even the most modern computers even if it looks blockly.  its due to the nature of having a endless world of blocks.

 

anyway, i would say that you have to look for a decent server for  the kid to play on yourself , or atleast monitor the behavior on the server she would play on atlest for a while to see its "fitting"for a 8 year old.  or just play offline , workt to for creativity , its less fun tho.

Thats only if you want to play online though. you can make your own private server , or just never play it online.

My wife calls it the adult version of Legos. However, it has a few different modes of play so it's not just digital Legos. You have Creative Mode, which is the Legos mode, with unlimited resources and invulnerability. There is also a Survival Mode, with a few different levels of difficulty. In Survival Mode, it's more like a traditional adventure game, but with sandbox building ability. There are also public and private multiplayer servers.

Finally, there are mods for the single player and multiplayer versions of the game so you can have a variety of experiences playing. I've been playing for several months now, my wife players, her friend plays and my sons play. A friend of mine lets his 3 year old play in single player and my wife's friend's server has an 8 year old player. The public RPG server I play on has a wide age range of players, from about 12 to about 22 or so. I'm probably the oldest player on the server.

I don't think you need to worry so much about the game being too 'young' for your kid. You might need to worry about them spending too much time playing and not enough time on homework though. :-)

DO NOT BE PUT OFF BY GRAPHICS

My 9 yr old and 12yr both play it

Its amazing what they do on it, they have recreated their house in the game, which is very creative with them actually ensuring the number of stairs match etc

Infact I wanna move in as they have added a pool to the back yard

However as already mentioned be aware of who they are playing with, personally I would not let them freely join any server, but restrict to single play or create your own restricted server if in future want to invite friends or play with parent on 2nd comp

There are plenty of videos on youtube to give ideas of what to do from recreating cities, structures to making the biggest explosion ever seen on a planet and numerous mods and skins to download but again beware have had to reinstall windows twice after 12yr old didn;t check for viruses before installing mod.

Well worth the price,  infact buy 2 and play yourself, you will get hooked

Final warning fire and wood buildings do not go together http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnjSWPxJxNs

lol... I'm almost 40 and I think Minecraft rocks