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Minecraft Gives Children A Voice

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In our gaming stories series we pull together positive results of having video-games as part of family life. This week we want to highlight a feature in the Guardian from Keith Stuart about how Minecraft gave his son a voice.

"But then I brought the Xbox version of Minecraft home, and watching Zac play, it was like a light switching on. He just got it. He got that he had to mine for materials and chop down trees to make a home; he knew that when night fell he had to get inside to avoid the zombies. Within its clearly defined rules and systems, Minecraft provided a creative structure that freed him. I was elated."

"But most important was the way in which, after talking to each other while playing, they came to talk to us. Zac never really tells us much about what he does at school; his short-term memory isn’t great and a lot of it doesn’t seem to filter through... But he talks to us about Minecraft. He talks and talks. We were getting bored of it, to be brutally honest, but then my wife read an article that said if you listen to your children when they’re young, they’ll tell you more when they’re older. It’s sort of an investment of care. So we always listen, even though we don’t really get what the ender dragon is, or why it matters."

Read the full article.

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Andrew Robertson
Andy Robertson is the editor of AskAboutGames and has written for national press and broadcast about video games and families for over 15 years. He has just published the Taming Gaming book with its Family Video Game Database.