>A few days later, I was walking toward the railroad crossing I often had to wait at between my house and campus, and just for a moment looked at those tracks and I seriously thought about where I should place the Minecraft blocks to build a bridge and avoid waiting for the train.

This is called the tetris effect. I've had it with, you guessed it, tetris. Whenever I get a bout of addiction and play tetris for an hour at a time I get up from the computer and just start seeing the stuff around me start fitting together in an interlocking fashion.

Happened with 2048 as well, I vividly remember being stopped at a red light and feeling the car in front of me fusing the one ahead to make a bigger-numbered car. Very weird.

Happens when coding as well, in fact it is happening right now as I type this! I'm having this very strong urge to wrap all "key" words in this post [like so], in ocaml documentation syntax.

(* Brains are weird! *)

Try spending ~20 hours in a week playing serious racing sims complete with wheel and real-feeling pedals, then hopping into your car on the weekend to drive cross-state to visit family.

I also got this with programming at least once. I had been spending all night trying to get something with my WPF view models working (and failing). When I finally got into bed, I was having trouble falling asleep because I was just "seeing" endless lines of code scrolling through my head. I very distinctly remember thinking, "What order do I have to call these methods again to successfully enter sleep mode?" Quite a bizarre experience.

I once was woken up in the middle of the night by stomach cramps. The project I was working on for a financial customer was in crunch mode, so as I sat down on the crapper I started thinking if I was pooping from a balance or an off-balance account. A moment later I realized that was a dumb question: you can't keep the food you've eaten on your balance sheet! It took me a minute more or so to finally come to my senses.

I've had experiences like that with a crying newborn in the middle of the night. I visualized a terminal full of log messages and considered what commands to run or if I should just reboot and see if that fixed the problem. Started laughing when I woke up a little more, haha.

I've had some similar experiences. When that happened I couldn't sleep very well and pretty much dreamt of code.

My sleep code always compiles and always works as intended.

It was really easy to tell dreams apart from reality until the compilers started working.

This happened to me back in college when I was into NFS Underground which gave players points for swiping as close to oncoming cars as possible ("Near Miss"). After a few long and intense sessions I would have the urge to swipe close to cars IRL anytime I went out in my car. It was fascinating and a bit scary; not only did I have the urge, it was really strong as well.

Happened to me with Portal.

I blew up on CivIII in the 90s and have not been able to play anything more intense than "Just Get 10" on my phone since then.

I mean, this is better than the time I stayed up all night playing GTA San Andreas in a friend's dorm room during college and while drowsily stumbling home felt an intense need to flee when I heard police sirens approaching.

I was relieved when that story didn't end with you taking your money back from a dead hooker.

I received Shenmue for Christmas, 2000. The in-game date shows on every loading screen, starting on December 3rd. I played it so much that first week, the dates intersected and then passed the real life date. Until I beat the game, I kept thinking it was the Shenmue date in the real world. It was a surreal experience.

My kids are obsessed. Literally everything they say to me starts with "Daddy, on minecraft, ...." It's all they talk about, including with each other. They even act it out in playtime. Although as someone who has never played I basically understand nothing they are telling me.

It seems pretty creative tho, and they seem to be learning a lot from it, so not too bothered. That said they are limited to 1 hour per sat and sun.

Mine got into it aged 8 and 9 and at least one of them still plays occasionally. She's 14 now. No regrets, it’s been good for them. It’s 21st century Lego. They create homes and worlds and share them with their friends, play competitive building games online, play team games of all sorts. It seems like a great online play space with a strong creative streak in it.

I think it's a much better use of their time than watching cartoons. Although I did get my girls into Sailor Moon and the modern run of My Little Pony. I'm a strong believer in giving kids a grounding in the Classics.

The classics for me were Urusei Yatsura, Lupin III, Captain Tsubasa, Mirai Shōnen Conan, Goldrake/Grendizer... man, I feel old.

"...a grounding in the Classics." Thanks, that made me laugh!

Minecraft is one of the few games that I think everyone should try. It's not just "another video game", but something quite unique. It hits a certain part of the brain in both "creative expression" and "exploring the unknown" that we exercise so rarely in day to day life (or in other games). It's no wonder it really sticks with kids and becomes a way for them to express imagination. Make sure you sit down and try playing with them at some point, it'll be a fun learning experience for everyone involved.

I don't know; I tried minecraft, and just...couldn't get into it. I did play dwarf fortress briefly, though, and I think that gave me some of the feelings people who get really sucked into minecraft get.

most people find it more engaging with friends (like most games), but df will definitely scratch a lot of similar itches

I prefer to explore alone, no creative mode. I let my kids in my world sometimes.

You should give slime rancher a go. It has some neat mechanics while still being somewhat open world.

What would be a sensible minimum age for minecraft?

As soon as they can use a mouse and keyboard or controller. Seriously though, there's no mature themes in it at all, and if the gameplay is too difficult there's always creative mode which is literally digital legos.

There's also a multiplayer where they can connect to servers and play with other people. That's where you might want to use some discretion, as the experience will vary from server to server.

Solo modes: whenever they can manipulate the interface.

Online/shared server modes: when they understand the evils of the internet well enough to be safe.

Setup and admin a server yourself. Watch how they play. Dont let it get too big. A dozen or two per server. Dont let them play with thousands of total strangers. That always ends in tears.

Can a server be hosted at home, or does it need to be on a proper hosting platform? Windows or linux?

The server is in java, so can be run where you want really. You can check this out: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/download/server/

You can host the java version of the server on any machine.

You can also just expose any client's game instance to your local LAN - that's all I do when playing with my grandkids.

There are ways of doing multiplayer on your local LAN with a single account as well by simply editing your name in a single config file per machine. Google is your friend there. :)

On top of what others have mentioned:

There are basically two version of Minecraft at this point. The "classic" Java version, and the MCPE version, which is what you get on Apple devices, Android and the "native" Windows 10 version.

The latter has "realms", where you can just pay to have Microsoft host it for you, and is tied into Xbox Live.

The official names of the different versions are "Java Edition" and "Bedrock Edition".

Java Edition is the one that lets you run your own server, is more moddable, and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Bedrock Edition is the one that works on Windows, consoles, and mobile. People can invite people into their own world as long as they're online. Your only private server option is Realms, which is a subscription service. (Edit: Apparently there is finally publicly-available server software for Bedrock Edition. I doubt it's very moddable though, so don't expect to be able to run a public server with all the modded tools you'd expect if you were familiar with running Java Edition servers. Also, I don't think the console versions of Minecraft can join arbitrary servers.)

The Java Edition and Bedrock edition are not cross-compatible with each other. They are fully compatible within each-other though. Bedrock Edition supports cross-play between different consoles and PC, etc.

I play what I thought way the recent version and I can play with my daughter (on the same LAN) by selecting Friends and clicking her game.

you can run a server at home, also the java client can run as the server so if people are on the same LAN they can connect directly to whoever opens their world to LAN. If you want to play with friends or relatives remotely then the easiest, but not the cheapest, option is Minecraft Realms which allows you to control the player access list.

There is a Bedrock Edition server now. Very light on resources over the Java version too.

I've used this:

- https://gamocosm.com/

to host an Internet-accessible server pretty easily (on a DigitalOcean droplet).

For playing alone in the game? 5 years old.

For playing with random internet people? 30 years old

My daughter started around 4 after she could hold an Xbox 1 controller. She could hardly push any buttons or move the characters around in the beginning, but within a few weeks she had mastered the common stuff. She usually sticks to creative mode because the monsters used to scare her. She got over that too after learning how to spawn them herself and then it became: how many skeletons can I fit in my house? It's been amazing to watch her growth.

As soon as they always want the tablet you're better off compromising on Minecraft than fighting screen time head on

My littlest were scared of the zombie pigmen. I'd say around 7 or 8.

You can set the difficulty to 'peaceful' to get rid of all the scary stuff.

the tedious mining is definitely unique...

holding down the mouse button to mine is creative expression?

There’s always Creative mode if you don’t like the resource constraint dynamic. The mining in Survival mode is a challenge to think your way out of. You have to be smart to know the most productive ways to get the resources you need. You have to evaluate trade offs between your ideal structure and materials against what’s available in the environment. Sometimes you have to strike out to explore for greener pastures.

It’s way better than automated skinner boxes that pretend to be games...

>holding down the mouse button to mine

And football is just kicking a ball in a pitch, and racing games is just going in circles in a track. Obviously there's more to it than that simplistic reduction. In particular, you have to think where you mine, how you organise your explorations. Then, you can run into myriad things as you explore: caves, water, lava, dungeons, monster spawners, many types of ore and rock...

And if you don't fancy that and just want the equivalent of a bottomless box of legos, just fire up creative mode.

> you have to think where you mine

Never straight down. Or straight up. Ye gods, the lava.

You might have missed the point.

Sounds like a good time for a valuable life lesson about gauging counterparty interest in the topic at hand. Which so many people in the CS program at uni could have used.

shudders, remembering a 20 minute "conversation" about DnD crossbow rules I somehow ended up in

Eh, sounds like these are young kids. It's more important to let them be excited about something and share that with you. Besides, what shared interests do you really have as a parent? It's not like your kids are going to discuss politics or their critique of Avengers: Endgame.

(not the gp)

I agree with you, ethbro, it is a valuable life lesson. I can personally attribute most of my social successes to the ability to gauge the interlocutor and their interests, and such a skill will gain one a rep as a good listener.

Not in reference to the aforementioned children, because that's normal behavior for kids, but I think of active listening as not being a conversational sociopath.

I'm convinced some people instead have a mantra of "When do I get to talk again?" looping in their head whenever someone else is speaking.

On the other hand, I feel like some people have internalized this idea a bit too well, and apply it in places it doesn’t belong, becoming offended (for social-norm-violation reasons) when someone gives a tangential reply in a threaded comment system like HN’s or Reddit’s, because the tangent is “derailing the conversation” or “not addressing the topic.”

Except, of course, that’s impossible; a tangential reply likely won’t even be the first reply people see in the sub-thread, after they get re-sorted by vote, so the only people who will engage with it are the people who never cared about the original topic in the first place.

Sounds like you caught a drift of the Tetris Effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

When I was playing Assassin's Creed I kept analyzing buildings for the best way to parkour to the top. Now I'm playing Stardew Valley and every vacant space looks like a good spot to plant strawberries.

The difference is that empty spaces really are a good place to plant strawberries.

I always get these weird experiences when I've been really into playing some game, and then happen to half wake up in the middle of the night. I'll be in this bizarre half-awake, half-asleep state where I'm quasi-dreaming that I'm living in the game world and I won't be able to get the dream/hallucination to stop.

Right now I'm getting seriously into Factorio, and I had this experience a few nights ago. I half-woke up and kept having these thought-hallucinations about the best method to use to optimize the way my resource refiners were feeding into my main bus, because I needed to make X% more sleep-cogs in order to go back to sleep.

It's actually kind of infuriating when it happens, sometimes it keeps me in that half-awake state for as long as thirty minutes. Been happening to me since I was a kid.

I have the same thing but with Breath of the Wild. I want to climb buildings and hang glide across the city.

That reminds me of when I first discovered emulators as a kid and was playing a lot of SNES Mario classics and shamelessly abusing the quicksave/load functionality. I was playing so much I remember walking around IRL and having the thought pop into my head "this would be a good time to quicksave"

Similar thing happened to me—I downloaded it in the evening, because I'd heard people talking about it and it sounded interesting. My wife came down at 3:30 in the morning wondering where on earth I was.

It happens to me with Google, When I lose something at home the first thing I think about is how do I google where to find it

The first time I played it (infdev or indev) I think I played it nonstop for 24h+, then I basically never played it again.

As for the "seeing blocks". I had a period where I played some form of match-3 game, and while walking around I couldn't stop imagining arranging people walking into threes.