Minecraft: Why Playing Creative with A Seven-Year-Old Can be a Bad Idea

BECAUSE THEY ARE DESTRUCTION INCARNATE!!

But let's back up.

Behold the blocky!

For those of you who don't know, Minecraft is an open sandbox game that has no form of linear progression. It was based on the idea of building for building's sake, using stylistic boxy and heavily pixeled graphics. Basically, Minecraft has two main modes. There is survival where you will be forced to survive through monster filled nights by building yourself a shelter, producing food and making yourself new shinies from things you've gathered. Then there is the calm and quiet creative where you have unlimited access to whatever blocks you want and you are allowed to just build (and flyyy!). I prefer building in the challenge of survival because creative, while fun, can get a bit boring after a while.


I love the threat of falling to the doom from the top of my castle with a wicked splat! And believe me, I am very familiar with that splat. But mostly, I enjoy playing on an online server where I can pretend to be modest while soaking up the compliments of others; this is versus single player mode where you build for yourself, alone, for no one to see. It kind of reminds of me eating a tub of ice cream alone on the couch. I keed! It can be a lot of fun by yourself, but I also don't mind playing with my nephews. Well... one of them.

My Desert Palace from two years ago that still needs to be completed, built in Creative and got bored so the other parts are incomplete.

I have two nephews. The oldest is fourteen and the youngest is seven. The older one is a bit laid back, but as you expect of a fourteen-year-old, he is a pervert 70% of the time. He's a weird mix of jock and nerd with next to no common sense. However, we establish a flow when we play together so stuff gets done. It's not half bad. We gots a system. But the youngest is a cuddly apocalypse in the form of a small fleshy child body. He can be very sweet but lawdy help us if he is tired or hungry. Mostly, he's a tad of a pain. Kids.

Example: In Minecraft there can be randomly spawned villages, where NPCs remarkably similar to Squidward from Spongebob Squarepants walk around and do nothing. The youngest nephew finds it highly amusing to drown them in buckets of lava and then proceed to explode anything that's left with TNT.

They stare in your soul.

The Event:

Father's Day
My Grandfather's House
Minecraft on the Xbox 360
Both Nephews




We TRIED survival but it turned into a slaughter fest as we continuous killed each other with our blocky little fists. We then settled into creative. I had found a nice spot and began to build on it. The oldest wanted to help so he IMMEDIATELY began to place blocks before I was done conceptualizing my idea, which was highly annoying because he got in the way as I expanded things. I built an octagon four or five squares high and was content to makes a blacksmith tower with a lava pillar in the middle. After a few complaints about the oldest trying to help too soon, I walked away for a meal... and that's when the youngest blew up one of my walls, and the ground underneath it, with TNT. His aim was to destroy what the oldest had done. Well, he succeeded... and left a crater under a part of my building. In an attempt to TRY to salvage it, I began filling the ground in, but I realized it was just too tedious and annoying. So I stopped, and, if I remember correctly, I think that's when the little monster began blowing up other parts of the map, and finishing with a resounding, "I'm bored."

I don't even.

But maybe I deserved it because before we began, I annoyed them to death by playing "Rock Lobster" on my phone, and then singing to it as the oldest started getting annoyed, and then dancing to it to push more buttons, all before Minecraft got started up. Then I stabbed him. With a wooden sword. In Minecraft. I also may have tried to punch the youngest one off a cliff. I JUST DON'T KNOW.

We finished with Black Ops 2, and me sucking at FPS as usual. A fourteen-year-old and a seven-year-old are far superior than I in the pew pew skillz area. It was a fun time, despite... things... yeah.

ROCK LOBSTAH!!!