Like a lot of other kids these days, my grandkids are really into Minecraft. They love it. If they had their way, they’d probably play it for hours. Because the players themselves design everything as they go along, they are literally in their own little world. If I happen to drop by while they’re playing it, they are only too eager to tell me all the details: where they’re at, what this and that is, what they’re doing. Once they were in London and built Big Ben; they were genuinely excited! I feigned understanding, and I think they saw right through it. I’ll admit, I just don’t get it.

The closest thing I can compare Minecraft to is blocks, but using a mouse to manipulate a virtual one just doesn’t seem to render the true experience of holding a real block, nor does it require the use of imagination to place and balance it one way or another. It doesn’t even seem the least bit challenging. Of course, what do I know? I remember Pong and Pac Man coming on the scene (can it really be more than 30 years ago?) and though I enjoyed them the few times I played, I never became addicted. Unless playing pinball and shooting pool count. But, since I love to learn anyway, I thought I’d research Minecraft and at least try to have some idea of what Maeby and Bobby talk about. As it is, my brain automatically goes into “I have no clue” mode when they do, and I really don’t want to be that old person. At least, not yet.

I began to google ‘Minecraft for grandparents,” and simply typing the first couple of letters of the word ‘grandparents’ resulted in a plethora of potentially helpful links. At least, at first, that’s how it seemed. Descriptions of a YouTube video entitled,”If GrandParents Played Minecraft,” and a grandparents’ chat forum about Minecraft were enticing and made me think that I could find out everything I need to know, in a nutshell, preferably. My encouragement was short-lived, however, when the video proved to just have grandparent-looking characters and the only grandparents in the chat room were wandering around the internet as clueless as me.

I was flustered that there wasn’t a quick fix to this trivial–yet important-to-me–dilemma. Then it dawned on me to simply google “minecraft,” and what do you know? The first link, https://minecraft.net/, took me to exactly where I needed to find the information I wanted. Lesson: See the big picture instead of focusing on me.

“No, it’s not,” by Maeby (2015)

Skimming through the pages of the website, I came across phrases like “watching the sun rise over a blocky ocean. It’s pretty…” which I have a hard time wrapping my head around. After all, how can pixilated blocks even remotely capture a splendidly indescribable sunrise across the ocean? I guess that’s where one’s imagination comes in.

When I found the Community Resources page (on the very easy to navigate website, I might add), I congratulated and high-5ed myself when up popped supportive links to forums (in several languages), Minecraft wiki (“learn anything and everything about Minecraft”), and of course, Facebook and other networks found on social media. There’s even a Minecraft Paper Studio that gives instructions on how players can make their favorite characters in 3-D. It claims that “arts and crafts has never been this much fun,” so I’ll pass this along to Maeby. She’s the creative one in the family.

And so, I’ll dabble little by little into their world via the Minecraft website, and hopefully get a handle on what the big deal is all about. (As an aside, Minecraft’s home page has a counter of times the game is downloaded…14 million and counting. That’s how popular it is.) This will be like eating an elephant, a metaphor for something seemingly impossible…one bite at a time. I may getting older but there is always something to learn, and that seems to be a good way to pass time which is going to go by anyway (quicker and quicker as one gets older.) That being said, I better get to it!