Read on Twitter
I played Minecraft with my son for the first time today and it was a transcendental experience
We messed around in there before but today we REALLY played. I mean, I saw the little spark happen in his mind. Built our first little dirt house with a bed and a stove and a box.a door on the house to run inside from the rain. Put some torches up for the night. The essentials
you realize watching a child play it, that we all kinda create meaning out of the smallest little things... that mean little on their own, but as we string together increasingly complex ideas we use them understand and then build our own reality with our own rules
i was trying to teach him how to do somethings that were more effective but also a bit more complicated. Which turned into a power struggle. So i relinquished control to the guy, and i thought would it make the experience more meaningful? I dunno, maybe not for a 4 year old.
there were some huge moments though. We suddenly fell down a deep ravine and died, and re-spawned super far away from our settlement, lost all our shit. our tools, our minerals, our building materials. the narrative we had created was gone instantly. an abrupt change in mood.
so we stood there for a bit in silence, and i said, i dunno where our house is. and he got worried i could tell. so we started walking in silence it was getting dark. i started realizing i was kinda walking in circles. where is our house dad? are we lost? damn i felt that.
