It’s all about Steve; the world according to Minecraft

Chances are if you have anyone in your home under the age of 14, you’ve heard of Steve … just Steve. That’s all he goes by.

In that case, you may have intimate knowledge of the powers of redstone, the allure of mining diamonds, the confusing and complicated world of mods, maps and skins, or, worse yet, Stampy Longhead and his annoying British accent streaming into your brain via YouTube.

At this very minute, some of our kids are with Steve, evading Creepers, shooting zombies, forging a fake life in survivor mode and raising digitized chickens, cows and sheep, and, principally, constructing bulky but elaborate structures and worlds out of 8-bit blocks.

Minecraft. If you hadn’t already guessed.

For the children who cause us those deep, throbbing tension headaches and are a nuisance better left to their own devices, Minecraft is the best game ever created — the modern babysitter and BFF making your job hand’s free.

But if you crave the sight of their cherubic cheeks and toothy grins, their bright eyes fixed lovingly on yours, Minecraft is the fruits of the devil, as all human interaction with your child will be put on pause until that (insert electronic device here) is yanked from their tender grasp and smashed.

Me, I’m somewhere in between. When the kids are good, they’re great; fun, playful and all, “I love you Daddy!” When they’re annoying or I’m tired, the folks at Mojang can run interference for a while.

Mojang is the Swedish company that brought Minecraft to the world in 2009 and, really, unleashed it on suburban America around 2012 or 2013, the point where it started to become a household name among schoolkids.

Parents who haven’t heard of this phenomenon aren’t paying attention — as of June, Mojang reported it had sold more than 15 million copies of the game on PC and a whopping 54 million copies across all available platforms.
Minecraft is the No. 3 bestselling video game of all time, only beaten by No. 1 Tetris, with 143 million copies, and No. 2 Wii Sports, 82.5 million.

My children have been blessed/spoiled with paid versions on PC, iPad and Kindle, and early free versions (the gateway drug of gaming) on Mom’s cellphone.

It’s the double-edged sword of parenting with that famous throwback idea of being raised by the blue screen, eating dinner from the TV tray. Yet this modern twist has our children’s eyes flitting from one screen to another, both magnificently multitasking in a way we never could have imagined as children and conversely obsessed by indoor activity, sedentary and isolating for long periods from human interaction that doesn’t take place over Minecraft’s chat function or a tablet Facetiming in the background.

In many ways, I admire the skills my 9-year daughter has acquired, the creativity and dexterity and the need to become computer literate in setting up servers and installing skins and overlays of premade worlds. My 3-year-old impresses me every time he logs on and builds another four-walled structure or intentionally torches his sister’s creations.

When I was Riley’s age the world was less complicated, slower, and my mind was wired accordingly. Collecting Star Wars toys, comic books or Hot Wheels was as much as I could muster. Yet those things took me outdoors to simulate a Sarlac pit dug in the backyard or to jump my bite-size General Lee over a sidewalk ramp.

I guess it’s the isolation thing that concerns me, what seems like an obsessive desire at times to do nothing but stack cubes on a screen and get lost in a world outside ours.

And I know for a fact this isn’t just my children. It’s some of yours, too.
Several weeks ago, as we drove around San Diego spending the day as a happy family, Riley chimed in from the backseat. She wanted to know when we were going home; there was Minecraft to be had.

At almost the same time, a good friend was Facebooking about his daughter not wanting to leave the car during a whirlwind tour of Civil War sites. Again Minecraft.

While it’s hard to stomach at times, isn’t that what we did as children? Wasn’t that comic book collection meant to be enjoyed alone? Who could be bothered in a truly epic imagined battle between G.I. Joe commandoes and Cobra?

No, many of us didn’t have the electronics or the need to do 10 things at once. But had the tech been around, we would have wanted it and our parents probably would have given in if they could.

We grew up with the earliest hints of it in the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision. Today, it’s Minecraft’s turn, I suppose. It’s Steve’s world, and we’re all just living in it, simulated and for real.

This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, Aug. 1, 2014.