Do you know what Minecraft is? Well, our littles are still too young for it (at least, that’s what we continue to tell them), but when we read this post from Mother Words blogger Jennifer Raphael, we were tempted to take up minecraft ourselves. And, while we’re talking about how awesome Jenny’s blog is, we should let you know that you can subscribe to her newsletter to get regular updates on her blog!
Imagine you walk past your 8-year-old son’s bedroom on a Saturday morning and hear this dialogue emanating from his computer:
“Oh God!”
“Oh God!”
“This is harder than it looks.”
“It’s pretty big, my God!”
“It’s huge!”
“Ohmygod”
“Ohjeez”
“Wow, I didn’t know you’d come that quickly.”
“What on God’s green are you watching?” I asked Ezra.
“Minecraft videos,” he said, eyeballs locked on the screen.
“Oh.”
If you didn’t know that videos of adults narrating their Minecraft games sometimes sound like porn – well, they do.
Minecraft is a creative building video game — think of it as LEGO for the computer — where players have limitless options for construction within worlds, and several modes of gameplay. In addition to playing Minecraft, many kids, including mine, also watch videos of other people playing Minecraft.
It’s not more interesting than it sounds.
Ezra watches a LOT of these Minecraft videos. In fact, instead of watching cartoons, Ezra spends his weekend mornings on YouTube watching adults play Minecraft. Ezra’s favorite gamer is Stampy Cat, a 24-year-old British man named Joseph Garrett who speaks with a lilting Monty Python-esque tenor and hosts one of the 10 most watched YouTube channels in the world. His videos average about 30 million hits per week.
Playing Minecraft is Stampy’s full time job. He narrates his Minecraft gameplay on X-Box, often with his friend Ballistic Squid. When not sounding like porn, a Stampy and Squiddy interchange sounds like this:
“10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ready or not, here I come! Oh it’s a witch! (har har har) It’s a witch attacking me!”
“You’re the worst hider ever! (har har har)”
“Why are we here? What is going on? Why is this sword lost, who lost it?”
“I don’t think that matters. I think we are here to show off this amazing kingdom.”
“We have an amazing fireplace!”
“Oh, I’ve got antennae on my head! I’m picking up a radio signal!”
“Why am I eating potatoes when there is cake on the table? What has gotten into me?”
“There’s a lot of Googleys in this cave. Ooooh, we can go in here!”
“A snow cave!”
“It’s Christmas! There are candy canes! A big gingerbread man, look at this place!”
“Oh, now the spiders are helping!”
Yeah. This dialogue makes my son roll with laughter, and it makes my brain cells dry heave.
To read this post in its entirety, click here.
Jennifer Raphael is writer of as-yet-unpublished fiction, a freelance marketing writer and a blogging balabusta for the Jewish Exponent. Jennifer started her career in journalism, writing for TV news and a suburban newspaper before joining the staff at Philadelphia Magazine. As a freelancer, she has written articles for Glamour, Mademoiselle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Men’s Health, to name a few. You can see more of her work on her website: www.jenniferraphael.com, and join her intimate band of Twitter followers @jenniferaphael. Her weekly parenting blog, Mother Words, can be found at http://www.jenniferraphael.com. She describes her parenting style as Method.