Kids

10 Reasons Why Kids Love Minecraft

by Kevyn Gohu
August 4, 2021

Kids love Minecraft so much that they can spend the next 8 hours watching streamers play. These are the 10 reasons why they love Minecraft so much.

Especially with ECQ coming up, kids will be stuck inside again and they’ll probably spend 8+ hours watching YouTube videos of Minecraft streamers like TommyInit, Quackity, Tubbo, and TechnoBlade. We tried to balance it out by enrolling them in summer online classes but they end up doing that again towards the end of the day. So, why do kids love Minecraft so much? Here are possibly some of the reasons why they do.

1. Minecraft is a video game.

Kids love video games and Minecraft is no exception. Especially with the bright colors and many activities to do within a small space, kids would enjoy playing it. Unlike teen and young adult gamers, kids don’t really mind the graphics or stories. They’re don’t mind that the creatures and people look like blocks as long as they can play with all the brightly colored things in the Minecraft world.

2. Minecraft lets them do anything!

Kids love Minecraft because the game lets them do virtually anything! They can go slay a dragon, build a castle, hunt for fish, mine caves — all in one area. As a sandbox-genre game, Minecraft tickles kids’ ability to imagine, create, and think themselves out of situations that most feature-specific games don’t. Minecraft indulges kids’ desire to explore and experiment and since it’s all simulated, it’s not as dangerous.

3. It allows them to meet up with their friends.

Minecraft has multi-player and if we’re worried that kids don’t have social interaction because of the pandemic, Minecraft offered the solution by creating servers where they can play with one another. While we may have our doubts about how gaming helps kids, some studies have shown that games with social aspects (i.e., meeting up with friends, multiplayer) serve as an alternative route to helping kids develop their social skills and self-esteem.

4. Kids love the sense of achievement Minecraft gives.

While we do enjoy our kids building things with LEGO, it frustrates us to no end when they just leave it all scattered on the floor. Which is why kids love Minecraft: they get to build things and no mess means no scolding or cleaning up. Although it’s not something physically taking space in the house, kids can enjoy admiring their creation on Minecraft and the game does award you with its achievement system if kids perform certain things in the game.

5. Applied Math in the most concrete way possible.

Our biggest frustration with teaching Math is teaching our kids how to imagine it in their heads. However, Minecraft has a crafting system that teaches kids ratios and costing to create certain items. Although it doesn’t teach them angles and shapes, it will teach them how many pieces of something will it take to create something and also how much profit they can get after creating it and selling it. It’s Business Math for them in the most basic and fun way possible.

6. If they’re angry and frustrated, kids can vent out their rage by killing creatures.

Especially because of how the pandemic shot our plans for kids and stopped them from going out again, kids are probably full of pent-up aggression right now. Their emotions are all squished into a ball and that ball will explode if they don’t have a place to release it healthily. Minecraft has creatures that kids need to kill to defend their home from being destroyed or if they need items. Kids, to help process their frustration or their explosive tendencies, can run to Minecraft and kill the Enderdragon so they’ll feel a lot better about talking about their emotions after.

7. Minecraft has no linear story structure.

The biggest frustration with kids about games is that they have to go from Point A to Point B and that it has to be done within a set time. Kids love Minecraft because you don’t have to do that. There’s no time duration and it gives kids the chance to explore and do whatever they want. The best part is, that’s how kids learn. With lands free of everything, kids can even construct big cities in Minecraft which will open the door to them to learning more about a certain thing.

8. All content is age-appropriate.

There’s a reason why video games have a rating system similar to movies and if you notice, its rating is E10+. E meaning everyone but the 10+ is usually for 10 years old and above. However, that doesn’t mean they need to be 10 years old to play. It just means for them to really understand and enjoy all the content, it’s best they’re around 10 years old. But for building and just exploring, it’s okay even for kids as young as 5 years old to play Minecraft.

9. It’s a game they can play with you!

Yes, Minecraft is a game they can play with you. With a simple user interface (UI) and account creation, you can easily play Minecraft with your kids. And during this pandemic, we’re sure they would be more than happy to have a game they can play with you. Plus, since the violence is not as graphic, it’s more family-friendly. You can even use Minecraft to help you progress through your homeschool learning guides since now you’ll have a visual representation. It even adds the fun factor which kids need to learn better.

10. It’s a game that doesn’t need high-end computers.

If you have older children who are gamers, you’ll probably hear them tell you that “Minecraft is a game that people can enjoy even with a potato”. That’s gamer-speak for “even computers not designed for gaming can run Minecraft”. Kids can also enjoy playing Minecraft on the phone or tablet so it’s easy for them to enjoy on the bed or the sort. Your only issue then will be controlling how much screen time they’re allowed for Minecraft. As long as there’s a proper negotiation, we’re sure your kids won’t mind not spending 8 hours playing Minecraft.

Kids love Minecraft because of the variety it offers!

While we’re quite on the fence about gaming, it’s clear that Minecraft is a game that offers a ton of benefits to kids. It creates an alternative route for us parents to teach our kids especially when some lessons are best learned on the fly or through simulation. But like all things, we have to make sure kids don’t get too addicted to it. We can balance the time by maybe putting time limits or letting them do the stuff they do in Minecraft actually do it in the house like crafting through Arts and Crafts or helping you cook by checking how much of a certain ingredient we need.