Minecraft Part 2: Getting Banned

Last week I wrote about Minecraft online gaming, known to non-parents as pvp (player vs player) - an arcane universe inhabited by ten-year-olds and their demonic alter-egos, where good times can turn to crap at the tap of a birchwood block.  

At some point in their recent Minecraft career, my kids discovered the shock and horror of being BANNED.

At this point you may want to refresh yourself with the PvP glossary presented in Minecraft Part 1.  

Being BANNED is worse than being KICKED. Being KICKED just means you've been kicked off the game (disconnected from the server), and you can get back in another time. Being BANNED means the Admin (owner/moderator) has BANNED you from the server, probably forever! (At least in most cases).

To cheer up my kid and out of curiosity, I googled "reasons for being banned in Minecraft" and the result is very funny. You can be banned for all sorts of reasons, from legitimate ones like griefing or trolling or killing other players, through minor infractions like speaking in all caps or asking for "OP" one too many times, to baffling ones that apparently involve saying or doing the wrong thing in front of the wrong Admin.

Most of the ones below came from this Minecraft forum thread.  They made me chuckle.

Some reasons for being banned from a Minecraft PvP server

Upsetting an Admin

For being impatient

For unintentional destruction

For following your architectural dreams

For not obeying the laws of gravity

For being too badass

Because you peaked

For solving a game challenge too quickly

For asking an annoying question too many times - like once

For possibly being a Brony

For saying Hi

For wanton destruction

For committing two horrible crimes at once:

For unrepentant warmongering

For being American

For annoying the French

For being called Dylan

For swearing

For hate crimes against art

For inverting a Minecraft element to reference a pop culture trope

As a result of a complex battle which ended with mutual respect

For killing everyone and taking their stuff - actually this ban sounds pretty legit:

For inadvertently playing against someone's political beliefs 

Just because

And perhaps saddest of all: FOR NO REASON

These cheered up my kids and gave me an entertaining evening's reading. 

But I still don't quite know how to play Minecraft.

galaxybackground.com Wallpaper 15

Minecraft Part 1: What the hell are you talking about, kids

I thought I was a very tech savvy parent and secretly felt pretty smug about my preparedness for my kids to gradually enter the fray of online life.  Then along came Minecraft.

I'll admit, gaming has been a bit of a black hole for me. What little I know about gaming I have gleaned from 9Gag and Gamergate (which, you know, both make gaming seem super awesome).

I am, however, a technophile and ambitious to know it all. I mean, I switched from an iPhone to a Samsung two years ago, so I'm like, pretty cutting edge.

Now that the kids have an Xbox, I fully intend to give up some Netflix time to learn how to steer the goddamn Need for Speed car down the middle of the highway instead of careening from barrier to barrier and getting stuck in reverse, and I am looking forward to trying a first-person shooter game to see how violent it makes me.

But commanding the Xbox controller is, like, hard. Why are kids immediately so dextrous at this stuff? I cannot get all my fingers plus my brain to work in unison. I cannot get my car or skateboarder to go more than a couple of metres without crashing. This is a good way to immediately feel like your own parents as your kids try and keep the laughter out of their voices while they show you how to use the technology. Karma.


Back to Minecraft...

The kids have long loved Minecraft and spend a borderline unhealthy amount of time glued to their screens building stuff and playing interactive games.  And here's where I (also) got caught napping. I had no idea you could play Minecraft online.

When my kids started having run-ins with online etiquette and trolling, they came to me with complaints and lengthy descriptions of online interactions I could barely understand. And I thought I knew about online interactions! I was a bit shocked and had to have some quick tutorials from my ten year olds on what the hell they were talking about.

Here's the deal: you can join servers run by other people and build stuff in their world, or play battles or racing games where you are playing against, and interacting with, other players. This whole world is subject to a whole lot of arcane rules and etiquette the kids pick up fairly quickly, but is also obviously subject to the whims of the people running it.

There are also the usual dispiriting online spats between friends where someone gives some people access to a game but not others, or kicks one person out for bad behaviour but lets their best friend behave worse, etc. There are days when this seems to be happening all the time and I have to tell the kids to take a break from it and do something else, and sometimes they even listen to me.

The thing with online play is that your kids can be sitting calmly in the lounge room tooling around on their iPod and you can be sitting a metre away, and a whole world of turmoil can be going on where they show no sign and you have no idea.

For me (and I'm trying not to sound smug here, as I know I don't have this solved) the answer is to try and be involved enough to understand what's going on and be interested in the games and the online world so they will talk to me, and we can talk about the problems as they come up.

There are millions of kids playing Minecraft. Most Minecraft players these days are probably under 13, but there are a lot of adults too.  My kids and I have talked a lot about this, what it means and what they need to keep in mind. We've had a couple of ugly moments, but for the most part, it's been fun and educational and the girls have been handing it well.

There are Minecraft glossaries and guides online you can Google if you want to know how redstone is used, or what a creeper or an Enderman is - this one is a good place to start - but they don't have the words my kids and their friends are using when they talk about interactive play.


Here are the Minecraft words I hear all the time and what they mean:

Minecraft online play words and meanings 

Seed - the code that Minecraft uses to generate terrain and content in worlds you create. There are online directories where people have shared good seeds or people pass them on through word of mouth. The reason these are valued is that without a good seed you have no idea where you will "spawn" to start your game: it could be awesome terrain, or it could be "a bland, uninspiring world full of flat grassland and the odd chicken" (that sounds familiar as that's what I got the one and only time I tried to play Minecraft on my own)

Server - any Minecraft player can set up a game on a Minecraft public server and others can join if they have the IP address of the server (which is passed around by word of mouth or found in the Minecraft public server directory)

Admin - person who runs the server, gives access to players and polices behaviour

OP - "give someone OP" - full access to all the available commands. The Admin as someone who is already OP gives OP status to other users. If you are given OP, it is generally bad form to give others OP without permission from the Admin.

Donate - Admins will sometimes ask players to donate money to the server, which is fair enough when it's a couple of dollars to help with the cost of an established game, but can be a bit rich if players are asked to donate as soon as they join, or if it's more than a couple of dollars, or if it's in return for getting a ban removed, etc.

PvP (player vs player) - term refers to interactive play with other online players, but my kids and their friends (in which case others they play with online as well) are using it as a noun to mean the server/game hosting the play, e.g. "I was on an awesome pvp yesterday but I updated my iPod and now I've lost it"

Grief (verb), Griefer (noun - person who griefs) - destroying things others have built, generally causing trouble in the game

Lag (verb) - perform moves that cause the game to lag - a major infraction that can get you banned. Eg flying.

Kick - to be "kicked" is to be kicked out. Not as bad as being banned because you can usually get back in, but it is done as a warning, or in a fit of pique

Ban - you can get banned for griefing, lagging, trolling, speaking in all caps, using annoying phrases like "lol" or "yolo" or... all sorts of things really! I will cover that in Minecraft Part 2...

Wallpaper image by dkjjr at Minebook

Great idea!

My daughter M has a cunning sort of cleverness about her that I am sure will serve her well in life. When she uses her powers for good, she comes up with some smart stuff.

Here are three of her recent ideas - two just from today - that I think are pretty good:

• Sweets van:  Like an ice-cream van but selling sweets, like lollies (candy) and cakes

• Digital devices (cell phones, tablets, etc) that are charged by the energy in your body

• A high-powered hot-air fan that dries and warms your body as soon as you step out of the shower

I told her today that she comes up with some pretty good ideas. She said, "Well, that's because I want a lot of things in my life that I don't have."

I guess all inventions come from wanting things that don't yet exist.  The more I think about it, the more I want the third one too.

Tomorrowland

When I was a kid my favorite ride at Disneyland was It's a Small World, but my favorite of the four lands was Tomorrowland.

Tomorrowland entrance 1967
Tom Simpson/Flickr CC

Tom Simpson/Flickr CC

ATIS547/Flickr CC

Loren Javler/Flickr CC

Loren Javler/Flickr CC

Space Mountain was awesome - and the first proper roller coaster I liked.

The Monorail was kind of cool, though I never really understood the grown-ups' enthusiasm for it.

The People Mover was fun, because it took you past (or through) all the other good stuff.

But my favourite ride in Tomorrowland was the Adventure Thru Inner Space.


I loved every minute of it - from sitting enveloped in the blue, egg-shaped chairs, to entering the dark tunnel and being "miniaturised", even the huge creepy eye "looking" at us through the telescope. For a kid steeped in afternoon reruns of The Twilight Zone, and who loved science and daydreaming, it was perfect.

ATIS547/Flickr CC

I loved waiting in line and seeing the riders go into the telescope and then come out tiny at the other end:

ATIS547/FlickrCC

Yes, on our first time there I asked my parents if those were the real people...

ATIS547/Flickr CC

Recently all this came back to me, suddenly, when I read an article about retrofuturism (you know the sort of thing: The Jetsons, houses under glass domes, meals in pill form, flying cars, etc). That shiny, happy, optimistic vision of the future reminded me of Tomorrowland.

My kids and I often talk about the future, as I started a kind of game with them about a year ago, where we imagine what cool things will exist in the future, and what their lives will be like. We talk about driver-less cars, working whatever hours you want, making meals at the touch of a button, flying to work with a jet-pack, things like that.  It's a lot of fun, and I do think kids should always be excited and optimistic about the future.  Kids these days can sometimes seem cynical and somewhat pessimistic, which may be a function of the times they're living through, or perhaps they always were. We do underestimate how canny kids are after all.

"The Future" by A 

I showed the kids the Corning video A Day Made of Glass on YouTube and they (and I) were in awe. We talked about how their houses in future would be like this, or at least partly like this, and I made no mention of the fact they'd probably have to be rich to have it, or that they might not ever be able to buy a house at all, or that even at best this vision of the future, like all others have ever been, is likely completely wrong.  We do also discuss whether some of these things - like flying cars - will ever really happen, or it they are too impractical, and to what degree we can or cannot imagine the future.

But mostly we just let our imaginations go and talk about what cool, awesome, labour saving inventions they will have when they are grown up.

Kids should see the future as a world of awesome and enriching possibility.

Retaliation

My daughter A. is a pretty sensitive kid, easily upset by playground shenanigans. She is also, unlike her sister, utterly guileless.  M. can be cunning and manipulative at times but her sister is unable to even THINK of any schemes, lies or tricks, let alone implement them.

When the kids fight at home, the outcome is often A. incoherent with rage, crying and yelling that M. hasn't told the truth or M. did such-and-such first or M. is pretending to be 'the good one' when both were to blame.

At school A. is not great at standing her ground or fighting back. M. is both naturally resilient and able to keep up with shenanigans, so is not picked on as often or if she is, I don't know about it. (It's not all easy street of course - she has plenty of friendship dramas and gets upset over different things).

A. has attracted more than her share of teasing and unpleasantness.  She's a popular kid (as I see whenever I observe her at school), but there is something a bit 'young', naive and 'good girl' in her manner that seems to attract teasing.

Also unlike M., A. is not a skinny kid. She's what used to be called 'sturdy'. She is not fat - and lest you think I might be a delusional fat mum with a fat kid, the school nurse and her doctor both agree she is not fat. She's rounded instead of angular.

Her friend V. is the same. Both sometimes get called 'fat' by other kids, not always in a mean way, but it still hurts.

I've talked to A. a few times about this, and explained some kids are skinny and some kids are not, and the ones that are not are sometimes called fat by other kids, but you are not fat. And that kids sometimes say hurtful things without realising how much they are hurting you. And that some kids are just mean and you have to stay away from them. And if they're your friends or kids you have to deal with every day you tell them 'Stop it, I don't like it', 'You're being mean', and all the other wholly useless things the school tells the kids to say to each other.

When A. was in daycare she was confident and outgoing and sunny. Since she started school I have watched her confidence shrink and her light dim, to the point where she was seeing a counsellor for anxiety and depression and regularly saying things like 'I hate my life' and 'I want to kill myself', when she was six and seven. That broke my heart. It still does.

In the last year she has made great strides and is closer to her old self, and she has grown much more resilient. But she is still easily upset by teasing, and struggles to keep her self confidence.

Today when I picked her up from after-school care she told me that a boy had teased her at lunchtime. This kid is a serial pest, not just to A, and is often disruptive or mean to other kids. I will call him 'Alex' for that is his real name.

Today Alex said 'Hey A,' and when A. came over he said 'You're fat.'  She tried to ignore him and he kept saying 'You're fat, you're fat.' Then 'What are you going to do, hit me with your fat head?' and 'Well, are you going to cry?'

Eventually A. cried.

When A. told me this she kept her composure and her voice only wobbled a little, but I was furious. I'd had enough. I abandoned everything I've told her before, and this is the advice I gave her:

'That kid is rotten. He's a horrible kid, and next time he says anything like that to you, you tell him: YOU'RE UGLY.  And - I know this is hard, because it happened to me too, and I remember it, but: don't let him see you cry. You try your best not to cry in front of him, ever. Be strong.'

'You're not allowed to be mean back,' said A.

'I know,' I said, 'And usually that's right. But that kid is horrible, and sometimes you just have to fight back. You have to stand up for yourself, and with some kids when ignoring or doing all the other stuff doesn't work, fighting back and standing up for yourself is the only way to make them stop.  So next time ANYONE calls you fat, you tell them: YOU'RE UGLY. And if they say anything else, tell them YOU'RE A ROTTEN KID.  And if you get in trouble for saying any of that stuff, you tell me and I'll talk to the school.'

She liked everything I said, she was comforted by it, and she understood this was special, exceptional advice for difficult situations.

The anti-bullying stuff the schools teach is all good stuff. 'Stop it I don't like it', ignoring, telling a teacher, are all fine. But at some point, when those things don't work, your kid has to get tough and fight back. They either figure this out themselves and manage it, or you end up having to tell them.

THAT'S ME IN THE PINK SHIRT

adplayers/Flickr creative commons

Children's Chanting Games

I love the chanting games kids play. Some of them have been around for years, some are new. They are invented by children and some survive with minimal changes for generations; others get reworked and change rapidly.  Often snippets from one chant work their way into another.

The benefits of chanting games are hand-eye co-ordination and memory training, but most of all friendship bonding. It's interesting to me that they are mostly played among girls.

Skipping rope chants

This one was what we chanted jumping rope when I was a kid, and I heard it all through my primary school years - but my kids had no knowledge of it (until I taught them):

Cinderella dressed in yella

Went upstairs to kiss a fella

Made a mistake, kissed a snake

How many doctors did it take?

One, two, three....

Here's one my kids do know:

Teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around

Teddy bear, teddy bear touch the ground

Teddy bear, teddy bear jump up high

Teddy bear, teddy bear say good night! [jump out]

Hand Clap Chants

Years ago I taught my kids the classic Pat-a-cake chant:

Pat a cake, pat a cake, baker's man

Bake me a cake as fast as you can

Pat it and prick it and mark it with B

And put it in the oven for baby and me

That one appears in every nursery rhyme book and was probably written by an adult.


But more interesting are the chants that are made up by children and passed around between them, from primary school to primary school, between cousins and friends, and morphing with generations.

These come with more complicated hand-clap routines, which I was never good at as a kid. I learned the chants in my head but rarely got to say them as I couldn't do the hand-clap routines.


I remember this one from when I was a kid:

Under the bamboo bushes under the trees, boom-boom-boom

True love for you my darling true love for me

When we get married we'll raise a family

Of fifty children, all in a row-row-row your boat, gently down the stream, 

Throw your teacher overboard, listen to her scream [make loud scream noise]

My kids don't know that one.  They do this one:

Armela

Kiss a fella

Naughty boy

Ping pong

Armela, kiss a fella, naughty boy, ping pong

Turn around, touch the ground, push your friend, freeze!

...and this one. I remember my cousin's daughter chanting this with her friends years ago, too:

Apple on a stick
makes me sick
makes my heart beat two-forty-six
not because you're dirty, not because you're clean
just because you kissed the boys behind the magazine
Girls, boys, having fun
here comes the baby with the big fat bum
with a jiggle and a wiggle he can do the splits
but I betcha, I betcha, you can't do this:
Close your eyes and count to ten,
if you don't muck it up you're my best friend
One, two, three..... [continue complicated hand-clap routine with eyes closed]
You didn't muck it up so you're my best friend! [hug]
[or]
You mucked it up but you're still my best friend! [hug]

I have a video of my kids playing Apple On A Stick (with cameo from Harry the dog) - I haven't been able to upload it here (too big, and having trouble compressing it) but you can see it here on my Flickr.

Here are some other kids doing it:

Counting games

These are the chants you use to count off among a group of friends to see who will be "it".  They're variations on Eenie-Meenie-Miney-Moe.

Ibble obble black bubble 

Ibble obble out

Turn your trousers inside out

If they're black, turn them back

Ibble obble black bubble

Ibble obble out

Or:

Mickey Mouse had a house

underneath the movies

when the movie started 

Mickey Mouse farted 

What colour was it?

[child landed on chooses a colour, then all spell out the colour to finish counting off]

Songs

At our primary school in LA we learned this one:

Great green gobs of green grimy gopher's guts

Marinated monkey's meat

Carbonated birdies' feet

Ten bear eyeballs floating in a pool of blood

Oops, I forgot my spoon

But I have a straw.... [make gross slurping noise] 

The kids have learned a couple of variants on Happy Birthday, the most recent one being:

Happy birthday to you

Put your hands in the loo

If you feel something squishy

It's a present for you: poo!

I love this stuff!

Do you know any more? Remember any from your own childhood?

Edit: here are a couple more.

Here's another hand clap game my kids and their friends play:

Two kids face each other and do hand-claps saying: 

Tick tack toe, give me a high give me a low

Johnny got hit by a UFO!

On the syllables "UFO" they do rock paper scissors.

The loser then turns around and the winner pokes the loser in the back with one or more fingers, then holds their hands out in front of them.

The loser turns back around and has to guess which finger or fingers were used.

This is pretty funny, because it's impossible to work out which finger has poked you in the back.

But they all look over the winner's hands and try hard to guess.

And here's a "new" song for them:

While looking for a YouTube video for Apple on a Stick I came across "Sally was a baby", and I thought my kids would like it.

So I taught it to them and they LOVE it, and they have taught their friends.  Yesterday it was going around the playground and one of their friends performed it for their PE teacher.  It's a hit!

)

Words for Wednesday: a Christmas story

'Words for Wednesday' is a writing prompt held by Delores at Under the Porch Light.
Use some or all of the week's words, write a poem or a story or a fragment, and visit Delores' current week's prompt to let her know you've joined in.

This week's words are:

surprise

aromatic

elfin

toboggan

steep

dashing

It appears that the festive season is upon us.  So, let's begin.

* * *

Marcie opened her eyes to the distant, pleasant sounds of her parents getting breakfast in the kitchen and the aromatic scent of fruit toast.  She remembered it was only two days till Christmas and smiled to herself.  Christmas Eve Eve, she thought, the family phrase immediately bringing back memories of other Christmas Eve Eves where she had thought the same words.

Marcie padded down the steep wooden stairs to the loungeroom. She glanced only a minute at the little Elf on the Shelf her dad had set up on the mantlepiece, just long enough to confirm he hadn't moved during the night. He sat motionless against the wall, his creepy smile and unnaturally rosy cheeks bright in the morning sun. Marcie shivered and hurried round the corner to the kitchen. 

"Dad," she said. Her parents were buttering toast, clearing the dishwasher and chatting. They turned when she came in. 

"Hey! Good morning." Her dad handed her some toast. Her mum smiled over her coffee.

"Dad, the elf didn't move last night."

"Well," said Dad, "I guess he had a rest last night." His face was a little tired-looking. Marcie knew he and Mum had stayed up quite late last night, as their neighbors had visited for drinks. "But I'm sure he'll get up to some tricks again tonight!" 

"I don't want him to," said Marcie. She sat and started on some toast.  "Can you actually put him away, Dad?"

Her father raised his eyebrows. "What? But he's part of the family now! And he only gets to come out at Christmas!"

"I don't really like him," said Marcie. She'd lowered her voice a little to say this, as if to make sure no one else could hear.

Her mum smiled. "I'm not crazy about him either," she said. "Gordon, let's call it a day on the elf. Maybe he can come out again next year."

Dad shrugged. "Okay," he said. " I'll pack him away today."

That day was fun. Mum took Marcie out for some last-minute shopping, and the shops were all beautiful and sparkly with Christmas. People were rushed but seemed happy and there was festivity and goodwill in the air. Marcie and her mum stopped at a cafe and had hot chocolate. The cafe looked out on a park with grassy slopes at one end. Some kids had made a toboggan out of a big piece of cardboard and were sliding down the slopes squealing and yelling with glee.

When Marcie and Mum got home, the elf was gone. Mum checked the hall cupboard, opened a red box, and said "Yep, there he is." She put the box back on the top shelf, closed the door and smiled at Marcie. "All gone!" she said. 

Marcie felt immediate relief.

That night she helped Mum wrap the last presents they'd bought and put them under the tree. Dad made her laugh by pretending to jump up on the mantelpiece to take the place of the elf. She was allowed to stay up a bit late, and they all watched The Polar Express on TV. 

When Marcie went to bed she felt warm and relaxed, and it wasn't long before she was asleep.

She heard the sounds sometime late in the night. 

At first she didn't know what had woken her, and then she heard it. It was a slow tapping sound, like something on wood. Tap...tap...tap. Marcie lay very still and told herself she was dreaming, or that she had imagined it. Tap...tap...tap.  Her heart thumping, Marcie listened again. It was a branch outside, she thought, or ...what did Mum say about strange noises? It was the house settling.   

Tap...tap...tap.  Like something on wood. Something.... on the wooden stairs.  Tap...tap...tap.  It was louder, she was sure it was. It was closer.  Marcie drew the blankets up to her chin and squeezed her eyes shut tight. Go away, she thought, go away, go away, go away....

After awhile she opened her eyes. The sound had stopped. She waited. There was nothing.  Still scared but exhausted from her fear, Marcie at last fell back asleep.

In the morning Marcie's room was golden with sunshine. Marcie woke up and for a moment she had no memory of the sounds during the night. She opened her eyes and looked out the window. The garden was bright and cheery, with birds tweeting and the sun shining on everything. She could hear a lawn mower next door and her parents moving around downstairs in the kitchen.

She remembered the sounds from the middle of the night. The fear seeped back into her; the sunny morning did not dispel it.  Marcie sat up slowly. Her bed faced the bedroom door. Outside was the landing that gave onto the wooden staircase that led down to the loungeroom.

Marcie got a horrible shock but it was not really a surprise. Sitting on the floor just inside her doorway was the elf. Its head with the cherry-red cheeks and knowing smile was turned slightly to face her, and its bright blue eyes were staring straight at her.

* * *

Merry Christmas!

Photo: InspiredinDesMoines/Flickr