The votes are in, and Mob B – aka “The Monster of the Night Skies” has won the vote. The flying manta ray monster will be added in a future update… which we'll talk about now.
The new Mob will arrive as part of a new expansion coming to the game, dubbed The Update Aquatic, coming spring 2018.
Mojang is calling this the biggest update ever to the game's oceans, adding new creatures (including dolphins), explorable shipwrecks, and a Trident weapon that can be enchanted to add new magical abilities.
Original story: As part of its Minecon Earth event taking place this Saturday November 18, Mojang has announced that it will be holding a special event to allow fans to vote for Minecraft's next mob.
The options available are in the gallery below, with descriptions below of each beneath:
Mob A, The Monster of the Ocean Depths – an ocean monster which will attempt to drown you with its “tongue-like tentacle”.
Mob B, The Monster of the Night Skies – a flying, “manta-ray-like” monster which targets players who haven't slept.
Mob C, The Great Hunger – a “cute-looking” mob that sinks into the ground and waits for things to fill into its “huge mouth”.
Mob D, The Hovering Inferno – a master Blaze that appears in the Nether with a powerful shockwave attack.
While all of these sound delightful, it will be up to fans which one is added to the game; details on how votes will be cast have not yet been revealed, other than an instruction to tune in to the Minecon Earth livestream, which begins Saturday November 18 at 5pm GMT/ 12pm EST / 9am PST / Sunday November 19, 4am AEDT, with a pre-show starting twenty minutes before. You can watch the show here.
Monuments to the 1917 Revolution’s leader Vladimir Lenin can be found in most Russian cities, but Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk may now have the most unusual one. Unlike the original, the pixelated Lenin won’t live forever, as it is made of cardboard.
The cardboard Lenin statue looks like it has come right out of the world of popular computer game Minecraft. It was unveiled in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk as part of an art project at a local state museum on Thursday. Incidentally, it is situated in Karl Marx street.
The pixelated Lenin stands in his iconic pose with left arm outstretched. The statue is placed atop one of the platforms near a local museum center, which was itself named after the revolutionary leader until the collapse of Soviet Union in 1991.
The creator of the “Minecraft” Lenin, Aleksandr Zakirov, told Russian media that his work of art is meant to honor Lenin’s “visual image” as it had become a kind of “brand” long ago.
“Monuments to Lenin have recently been demolished only, but I have erected one,” Zakirov said. He added that his creation will last only one month, as it is made of cardboard and will soon get soaked in the snowy city.
Not everyone is happy with such an image of the leader of the October 1917 Russian revolution, which marked its centennial in early November. The leader of Krasnoyarsk’s Communist Party denounced the idea and called it “a mockery.” Speaking to Govorit Moskva radio station he vowed to demolish the monument.
Looking for the best Black Friday gaming deal? Want an Xbox One S 500GB with 3x amazing games? What if I told you that there's an Xbox One S bundle with Fallout 4, DOOM, and Minecraft for £169.99. Would you buy it? Oh my – yes you would. Well, Currys is selling exactly that right now, and it'll be a deal that gets snapped up VERY fast, so get on it. It's one of the best Black Friday deals right now. Alternately, you can get the Xbox One S + Assassin's Creed Origins and Forza 7 for £169 from eBay (and it's brand new).
There are heaps of other Xbox One S deals this Black Friday, and a bunch of Xbox One X bundles too. None, however, offer such amazing value as this one. Don't forget that the Xbox One S does support HDR, so it'll still look great on your new 4K TV, if you have one. Sure, you've maybe already played Minecraft, but the addition of DOOM and Fallout 4 offer 100s of hours of genuinely great Bethesda action for an absolute steal.
Want something a bit different? You can get an Xbox One S with Assassin's Creed Origins and Forza 7 for £169.99 too!
Computer games and healthy eating might not seem like a natural combination, but the two go hand in hand for Year 5 students at Methven Primary School in Canterbury.
Using Minecraft's education edition, the pupils are building a virtual village, complete with a free range chicken farm, crop fields and shops to sell the produce.
Teacher Adele Warburton says Minecraft is more than just a fun computer game. She says using Minecraft as a learning tool encourages 21st century skills such as collaboration, communication, creativity and problem solving. It also teaches the children about being good digital citizens.
“We talk about how you wouldn't rip someone's book up, therefore you wouldn't tear down their house in Minecraft.”
Warburton admits that her students are all better than her at Minecraft.
“They're digital natives after all. Accepting differences is one of our school values and the kids have to accept that I'm useless.”
Director of Minecraft Education Neal Manegold said his goal is to make Minecraft: Education Edition accessible to all teachers, not just the techie types.
“We've baked a tutorial world into the game that is designed not only for teachers who have never played Minecraft, but teachers who have never played a computer game.”
Microsoft introduced Minecraft: Education Edition just over a year ago and the tech giant has been working hard ever since to keep up with teachers' growing demand for the game as they begin to recognise its value as a teaching tool.
At the Bett Asia 2017 education technology summit held last week in Kuala Lumpur, teachers from all over the world got hands-on with the game in Minecraft Teacher Academy sessions.
Manegold says Minecraft can be used in and across all subjects.
“It's not a case of teachers saying ‘ok, now it's Minecraft time'; it's about seamless curriculum integration.”
He points to a growing bank of Minecraft lesson plans shared by teachers, for teachers.
Most of the plans are multidisciplinary. One lesson plan tasks students with building a sustainable community on an island with limited resources, touching on literacy, geography and environmental sciences.
Manegold also says there needs to be clear evidence of students' learning. “It's not enough for teachers to say, ‘I'm cool, I'm using Minecraft'. Students need to be able to show the benefits of what they're doing and what they've learned.”
There are tools within the game – such as virtual blackboards and non-moveable players – to allow teachers to plant resources and information. Students have access to a camera tool to take pictures of their work, and a digital book for recording and sharing their learning. They can also use Code Builder to replicate code they've created and use it in other applications, and pull their 3D models out of Minecraft and into other projects.
Minecraft helps kids understand the basics of coding and computer programming.
Partnering with the global Hour of Code initiative, Microsoft launched last week a new Minecraft tutorial for this year's event in December.
However, Don Carlson, director of education for Microsoft Asia Pacific, says there's more to Minecraft than learning to code.
“Coding empowers young people, giving them the tools they need to not only express themselves, but also transform the way they think critically and solve complex problems.”
Dr Richard Campbell of Coding Heroes in South Korea agrees.
“We shouldn't be teaching coding for coding's sake. It's the creativity, critical thinking and other 21st century skills that kids utilise that are important to take away from the coding experience.”
Minecraft: Education Edition
•Launched in 2016
•2 million licensed users
• Used in 115 countries
• 70 million Minecraft Hour of Code tutorial sessions
Mojang has officially published all the big announcements from this year's Minecon Earth live show—a much more convenient replacement for the traditional convention the company throws for its world-building game. Before we chat about the new aquatic content comign to Minecraft, we'll get the bad news out of the way first: The game's Super Duper Graphics pack isn't going to arrive this year.
Instead, says Mojang, the optional downloadable content—”crammed full of excessive visual razzmatazz” for console and mobile players, including 4K HDR graphics—is going to arrive next year. Mojang didn't offer a specific release date, but says that it'll be updating Minecraft.net with new information as it becomes available.
Similarly, a new version of Minecraft for the Nintendo Switch that allows for cross-platform multiplayer is also being delayed until 2018.
“Nintendo has been a great partner and we're really excited to fully bring Switch players into the fold, however, we need to make sure we deliver the best experience possible. So the new version of Minecraft will now be coming to Nintendo Switch next year. Xbox One, PC, mobile and Nintendo Switch, all playing multiplayer Minecraft together in 2018 – I'm getting emotional just thinking about it,” write Mojang's Tom Stone.
The big content announcement from Minecon Earth is Mojang's ‘The Update Aquatic,' which will add lots of new watery features to Minecraft, including new fish, dolphins, coral, water physics, and explorable shipwrecks. Players will also be able to wield tridents as they adventure around—weapons you jab enemies with or throw at them. And, yes, you can enchant your trident to ensure it always returns to your hand once you've tossed it, the world's most awkward boomerang.
In Mojang's update, players will be able to catch different kinds of fish depending on the temperature of the water they're in, and they'll be able to create and populate aquariums for their collections. Minecraft builders will also get a chance to drop new bubble columns into their creations, and all players can go on hunts for treasure around their worlds—dolphins can help point the way to the loot, found in various structures like shipwrecks and icebergs.
Mojang didn't indicate when The Update Aquatic would land, only that it would arrive in a future Minecraft update.
A large part of Minecraft‘s allure is showing off your work. And now, it should be relatively easy to do that in real time. Mojang has released an update that lets you livestream directly to Microsoft Mixer (its parent company's service, naturally) from within the game on Android devices, Windows 10 PCs and Xbox One consoles. If you've just finished recreating an entire country, you can take people on a live tour without starting a broadcast in a separate app or service first. And your audience doesn't have to simply watch, either.
Mixer support also lets you make aspects of your Minecraft session interactive. Viewers can vote on spawning objects (including enemies) or even change the environmental conditions. They can turn day into night to see whether you'll survive the trip back to safety, for instance. If you've ever broadcast a Minecraft stream and thought it was too predictable, this could add just the right amount of chaos.
The feature isn't available in other versions of Minecraft just yet. A mod to bring it to the classic Java-based game is coming later in 2017. Even so, this promises to make the world-building game a more social experience, whether or not your friends are ready to play.
