Since I started covering the Minecraft Marketplace, one thing I’ve learned is that many of the community creators have spent years working on their content. While the Marketplace is under a year old, it’s not strange to find people who have done this for four or five years, like creator Flavien Sphax who is one of the primary people responsible for the PureBDcraft comic-book resource pack for Minecraft.

PureBDcraft is one of the best-selling pieces of content in the Minecraft Marketplace. It changes the look of nearly every object in the Minecraft world to give it a comic-book makeover. While it is extremely popular on the Marketplace today, it started as a mod way back in January 2011.

“I’m just a mix between an artist and a developer,” Sphax explained in an email exchange with GamesBeat. “I have passions and dreams, and I do my best to reproduce the ideas coming from those in my work. That’s maybe why PureBDcraft had success on day one, at least, I hope so.”

Sphax is 34 years old, and he partnered with fellow community creators Hanfox and Eskimojo14 on PureBDcraft. In a past life, he worked as a project manager in “big French enterprises” — but now he’s all in on BDcraft and other personal projects.

“I quit my job in 2013 to be fully dedicated to my own passions,” he said.

Those passions include improving PureBDcraft as well as creating other resource packs and mods. He is also actively developing Cubik Studio, which is a 3D modeler for Minecraft and other indie games. Sphax also plans to launch his own games at some point in the future.

But one of his biggest passions through the years was getting PureBDcraft into Minecraft as an official resource pack similar to the downloadable content you would find on the console versions.

“Back in the day, I did my best to nudge some guys at [developer] Mojang so I could have a chance to discuss with someone who could help me bring PureBDcraft to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3,” said Sphax. “That was my main goal at the time. I tried email, Twitter, and Minecon Paris without real success. In fact, I did it all wrong — I’m not a community manager or a marketing boy.”

Four years later, though, Microsoft reached out to Sphax to talk with him about PureBDcraft.

“I was truly excited,” said Sphax. “After several exchanges with the The Minecraft Team about the specifics of PureBDcraft — mainly its HD textures — and several Minecraft updates, PureBDcraft was ready for the Marketplace.”

This is where Sphax always felt that PureBDcraft belonged. He and his collaborators were able to get the resource pack ported to the Bedrock version of Minecraft, and they’ve updated it over time to get it as close to their original vision as possible.

He has now expanded his focus beyond PureBDcraft. The team has multiple projects in the works, but he welcomes feedback and even bug reports from people who purchase it through the Marketplace.

“By the way, I’m open for dialogue,” he said. “So if anyone wants to talk with me about Minecraft, BDcraft or indie games, they are very welcome. Many people don’t hesitate to do that already knowing my Twitter DMs are open.”

You can reach Sphax at @#Sphax84 or @PureBDcraft, and you can find his creations in the Marketplace or at BDcraft.net.

“Making Pure or any BDcraft content or project come alive by creating anything new for the player to discover is a true passion and a dream which came true,” said Sphax. “Every time I draw or develop something new, it reminds me why I quit my job and why that’s the best thing I ever did in my life before my son was born.”

PureBDcraft is available now in Minecraft on Xbox One, Xbox 360, Windows 10, and mobile — it’ll hit the Switch when the Marketplace launches on that platform later this year.

PureBDcraft’s four-year journey onto the Minecraft Marketplace

While Pokémon Go is geared toward adults and teens, a lot of parents are playing it with their children too. I helped my kindergartener install it yesterday, and we spent an afternoon at a park looking for Pikachu. There are some safety concerns, but lots of potential for exercise and learning, too.

If you’re still not sure what this game is all about, read our explainer. It’s a free game where you walk to places in the real world to collect in-game supplies and characters. You can catch the pokémon characters almost anywhere, but if you want them to battle, you have to go to real-world locations called gyms. Supply stops and gyms are usually places like libraries, churches, and parks.

For a kid to get the most out of the game, it really helps if they can read and do simple math. You can read them the instructions at the beginning, but they’ll keep encountering creatures and objects that have names and stats.

To involve toddlers and preschoolers, you can play the game yourself, and offer the kid a chance to help at spin at each pokéstop. They can also try to throw pokéballs to catch the pokémon you find. That job takes a little dexterity, but if you have enough pokéballs, why not let them practice?

Once kids are old enough to have their own phones and transportation, they’re certainly old enough to play the game without help—but now you have to worry about where they’re going and whether they’re paying attention to their surroundings. More on that in a bit.

Set Up a Phone to Play Pokémon Go

You can install Pokémon Go on your own phone, of course, but if you hand it to a pokémon-happy kid, you may never get it back. Instead, see if you have an old phone or tablet around that has GPS capabilities. Even if it only has wifi and not a cellular data connection, you can still play the game.

You can do this by sticking to areas with wifi, of course. It’s even possible to catch pokémon without leaving home. Or you can use your own phone as a wifi hotspot, if your data plan allows, so you and your offspring can tour pokéstops together. Be aware that the iPod Touch doesn’t have GPS, so it needs to connect to stationary wifi spots (not your phone’s hotspot) to know its location.

Since Pokémon Go has lots of opportunities to spend real money, you may want to limit in-game purchases. On an iPhone, there’s a setting to turn off in-app purchases. On Android, make sure your phone is set to ask for a password for every purchase (and don’t blab the password).

I go a step further, on my kids’ phones. I have a throwaway google account that’s just for their games, and I don’t enter a credit card for payment. I just buy Play Store gift cards, so if they somehow find a way to spend money, the worst they can do is drain the $25 from their account.

Getting Started With Your Child and a Google Account

The first thing the app does is ask your birthdate. For adults, it then asks if you want to log in with your Google account or with a Pokémon Trainer account. For kids (13 and under), it doesn’t offer Google as an option. Unfortunately, since Pokémon’s servers are currently overloaded, it may be impossible to create a Pokémon Trainer account. You may want to create a dummy Google account (technically belonging to you, the parent) and have them log in that way.

When you begin, you can customize an avatar, and then it’s time to catch your starter pokémon. (You don’t have to wander around for this one.) If your kid’s heart is set on Pikachu, there is reportedly an easter egg that lets you catch Pikachu as your starter. It may not be easy to actually catch the little guy, though, so remind the kid that you can always go looking for wild Pikachu later.

Stay Safe—Especially Around Lures

Remember everything you taught your kid about watching where they’re going, holding hands near busy roads, and looking both ways while crossing streets or parking lots? They’re going to completely forget all that when they have their eyes glued to their phone. It’s worth having a little talk with them before they get run over by a car, about how to be careful and how maybe we’re going to put some more rules into effect—like only crossing a street when their phone is in their pocket, perhaps.

If your kid is old enough to wander around on her own, remember that she may now be walking around oblivious to her surroundings (even if she promises to be careful). You may want to revisit rules in this case, too: are you still okay with her traveling to the same places she’s usually allowed?

Lures make the situation a little more complicated, from a parent’s perspective. A player can set out a lure to attract pokémon for 30 minutes, but since these lures are visible to nearby players, they have the effect of luring people too. This can be fun: a bunch of kids can catch pokémon together, or a library or museum can set out lures to help attract people for an event. It can also be concerning to parents. Who’s setting out that lure, and why?

It would be possible for someone to set out a lure to attract kids for nefarious purposes—maybe a potential abuser, or just the neighborhood bully.

Have Fun, And Learn Something

Roaming around may be the most worrying part of playing Pokémon Go—but that’s also what makes it worthwhile. How many video games come with built-in exercise, education, and opportunities to learn about art and the natural world?

The exercise is a given: you have to walk to incubate eggs, for instance. Driving doesn’t count, and the app knows the difference. Parks will often have a bunch of pokéstops close together, so even if you have to drive to get there, you can walk around to monuments, statues, and historical signs to collect supplies and look for new pokémon. Different kinds of places have different pokémon. I caught a goldfish-like Goldeen today near a lake.

But there’s more. A lot of pokéstops are at interesting places, including historical markers. Yesterday my son and I visited a cannon in a cemetery (dedicated as a war memorial) and a chestnut tree nursery in a park. I had driven by those trees a million times without knowing what it was, but signs explained how the area’s chestnut trees had been devastated by a fungus and park workers were trying to protect some of the trees so they could reach maturity.

While you’re out wandering, you may even find real animals. Some wildlife experts on twitter are now monitoring the hashtag #PokeBlitz to help you identify the birds, bugs, snakes, plants and other things you might find while looking for pokémon.

The game intertwines so many interests that it’s a natural for family outings. And since you can play it almost anywhere, it works for city strolls as well as nature walks. Watch out for safety concerns, to be sure, but don’t forget to have fun.

A Parent’s Guide to Playing Pokémon Go With Your Kids

Dundee games firm given cash boost by Minecraft developers

Minecraft is getting ready to introduce a whole slew of new aquatic features to the mix, and players can now get a look at them a little early. The Minecraft team is now rolling out features from the Update Aquatic to for beta testing on Windows 10, Xbox One, and Android.

Not all of the features that are planned to accompany the update when it finally ships are available as part of this update, but it does give players a look at some of what’s coming. That includes new Drowned mobs, along with new swimming animations and stripped wood. The update also brings the new Trident weapon, along with enchantments meant to help players explore the depth. Of course, a number of fixes are tagging along as well. Here’s a look at all of what’s new and fixed:

• Added Drowned mobs
• Added the Trident and new enchantments (Channeling, Loyalty, Riptide and Impaling)
• Added Stripped Wood
• Added Slabs and Stairs for Prismarine, Prismarine Brick, and Dark Prismarine
• Iron Golems no longer spawn when Mob Spawning is disabled
• Rain, smoke particles, and shadows are no longer visible through lava
• Disabling “Visible to LAN Players” for one world no longer disables it for all worlds
• Buttons cloned in a “pressed” state no longer remain pressed forever
• A warning now appears instructing not to close the game when exporting a world
• The power output of Redstone Comparators is no longer lost after a world is converted from Xbox One Edition
• Pick Block no longer replaces the item currently selected in the hotbar if other slots are empty

When the update ships to everyone, it’s planned to include coral reefs, shipwrecks, new oceanic species, and more.

If you want to try out all of these features ahead of everyone else, you can opt in to beta test Update Aquatic by downloading the Minecraft beta for Windows 10, Xbox One, or Android and toggling on the “Use Experimental Gameplay” setting in the Game Settings menu.

Minecraft’s Update Aquatic comes to beta testers on Windows 10 and Xbox One

Minecraft Beta 1.2.13 Release Date

It currently does not have a release date.

How to Take Part in the Minecraft Beta

Windows 10 players can opt in and out of the beta from the Xbox Insider Hub App. However, while previewing the beta, you will not have access to realms or be able to join non-beta players.

It’s also worth noting that beta builds are likely to be unstable and finished releases may not include all the changes and fixes from the beta.

Make sure you backup your world before joining the beta.

How to Activate Experimental Gameplay

Some features from Minecraft’s upcoming Update Aquatic are being tested on the beta via experimental gameplay. However, these features are incomplete and are not representative of final gameplay.

Experimental gameplay can be toggled in the world settings menu. To prevent your world from crashing, a copy of your world will be created with an [EX] before the world name.

Once experimental gameplay is enabled for a world, it cannot be disabled. Any progress will not be saved to your original world.

Minecraft Beta 1.2.13.8 Patch Notes

Experimental Gameplay

• Added Drowned mobs.
• Added new swimming animation.
• Added the trident and new enchantments: channeling, loyalty, riptide, and impaling.
• Added stripped wood.
• Added slabs and stairs for prismarine, prismarine brick, and dark prismarine.

Fixes

• Iron Golems no longer spawn when mob spawning is disabled.
• Rain, smoke particles, and shadows are no longer visible through lava.
• Disabling “visible to LAN Players” for one world no longer disables it for all worlds.
• Buttons cloned in a “pressed” state no longer remain pressed forever.
• A warning now appears instructing not to close the game when exporting a world.
• The power output of redstone comparators is no longer lost after a world is converted from Xbox One Edition.
• Pick block no longer replaces the item currently selected in the hotbar if other slots are empty.

Fixes for bugs introduced during beta

• Increased stability and fixed several crashes.
• Abandoned mineshafts no longer generate above ground.
• Fixed improper mushroom block obtained from giant red mushrooms when using pick block.
• Tools now work properly and no longer shake in-hand.
• Sticky pistons no longer turn into regular pistons after being renamed.
• Tripwire hooks once again appear in jungle temples.
• Players can once again stand on top of ladders.
• Mob heads can no longer be duplicated by placing them in water.
• Strongholds once again generate with mossy stone brick and cracked stone brick.
• More than one line of text can once again be placed on signs.
• The B button no longer has to be pressed twice on the controller to deselect a skin in the skin picker.
• Heads and skulls that are placed on a walls no longer have incorrect hitbox positions.
• Invisible vines no longer appear on jungle trees.
• Torches can once again be placed in the same block occupied by a player.
• You now descend more slowly in water.
• Fixed world updates occasionally not rendering.

Minecraft beta update 2.1.13 – drowned mobs, swimming, and new enchantments

While the whole world is talking about Fortnite, there’s another pretty popular cross-platform game out there called Minecraft [$6.99], and it’s a game that continues to grow even after all these years. Minecraft, as you probably know if you follow the game’s development, is getting a huge update called Update Aquatic (the echoes of Life Aquatic are not accidental). And for once, Android players get all the luck since they can jump into the Update Aquatic Beta and check out all the new features. iOS players, we get to sit this one out unfortunately, as is always the case with Minecraft Betas. If you want to get into the Beta, you should head this way and follow the pretty simple guide provided. It really is a pretty simple procedure, so if you do want to experience the fun before everyone else, you can do so with barely any trouble. Just remember to back up your worlds, just in case.

Why would you want to, well, take a dive into Update Aquatic? Let’s start off by saying that this update will add something to the game I’ve wanted to see ever since the early days of the PC version beta: breathe life into the huge oceans that cover most of the game’s maps. The oceans will now have a lot more plant life, with things like Seagrass, Corals, and Kelp rescuing us from the endless monotony of sandy ocean floors. These new materials will give builders more to play with but also make buildings by the beach—or even underwater—look like they belong. We will also encounter bubble columns, which will change the buoyancy of anything floating above it. Initially the developers considered making the bubbles push things to the surface, but then they decided that it’s actually more fun to pull you down (even though there’s also the pushing up version but is more of an Easter Egg). I can’t wait to see the crazy ways the community will use these bubbles and all the contraptions that will come of them.

We are also getting sea turtles, a mob that has been redesigned since it was originally announced. They are now much bigger and more complex. They have a beach home, which they will always return to no matter how far they swim away. Baby turtles will also remember where they were when they hatched, so we’ll be able to use them as homing beacons by having them hatch at locations we want to return to. But keep in mind that some mobs will attack the baby turtles, and I hope you’re not inhuman enough to let them die.

In addition to turtles, we are getting the Drowned, a new mob that will haunt your oceans as well as river and swamp biomes. They will often come from drowned zombies and can even carry a trident, which they’ll use to attack from afar. Dolphins will also join the fun as will a ton of fish mobs, the latter being perfect for that aquarium you always wanted to build. And we are getting the Phantom, the flying mob players voted for during the last MineCon; make sure you get some good rest because this mob will attack those who stay awake for too long.

Update Aquatic is also adding icebergs, underwater ruins, shipwrecks, underwater caves and ravines, and much more, all of which should make exploring the ocean worth the time. And we are getting the Trident too, a weapon perfect for jousting underwater. It comes with some fun enchantments that can make it return to your hand after throwing or even drag you along as you toss it. Finally, the update will also add a few smaller touches that will make living underwater easier, including new swimming animations, faster underwater movement, and a tweaked light level so players can see slightly further.

As you can tell, Update Aquatic will open up great possibilities for building and living underwater, and I’m actually quite excited to get my hands on it. As is always the case, we don’t yet have an official release date, but with the Android beta going live, full release shouldn’t be too far out.

The ‘Minecraft’ Update Aquatic Beta Is Live

When your kid shows interest in a popular phenomenon, usually there’s not much to understand—you just help them turn on the videos, and put the toys on their birthday wish list. But it’s a little trickier when your kid comes home and insists that they need to play Minecraft. You have some learning to do.

If you’re nervous about letting your kid log on to a server with other people, it may help to know that they don’t have to. We’ll discuss below how to set up a multiplayer world, but there are plenty of ways to do that while keeping the world private. Minecraft is also tons of fun in single player mode. If you do end up introducing your child to public servers, you’ll probably want to have a talk with them about online safety, and it may be a good idea to play with them at first.

Pick a Platform and Install the Game

There’s a version of Minecraft for every platform. The cheapest, and easiest to install, is the Minecraft Pocket Edition app. It’s $6.99 on iOS and Android. Once it’s installed, you just hit Play, create a world, and you’re off.

Pocket edition has a limited set of inventory items and commands. You can still do a ton of fun things, but currently the game lacks large “boss” monsters to battle, and you don’t have access to some of the lesser used items. The mobile app will do almost anything you can think of, but if you want the most flexibility down the line and the physically largest worlds, go with the desktop version. We imagine though, that your child will probably have a preference as to the platform you buy and install on.

The traditional and most full-featured way to play is on a computer, with the version that runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux. The software is free to download, but you have to pay a one-time fee of $26.95 to create an account. The program won’t run unless you log in.

Minecraft is also available for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and 4, Wii U, and a handful of other console and mobile platforms,at varying price points in the $20-$30 range, with licenses available either through direct download or physical copies, whichever you prefer. Once you’ve installed the version Minecraft of your (or your child’s) choice, create a Single Player world for starters, and begin exploring.

Learn the Controls

Even if it’s your kid that will be doing the gameplay, you’ll want to have a sense of how to move around and use objects in the game. I can’t count how many times a kid asked me how to do something, I googled and confidently told them the answer, and then felt a little clueless when they handed me the device and said “Show me how.”

On a computer, the w, a, s, and d keys control which direction you walk, and your mouse position controls where you look. Left click destroys a block; right click places the block you are holding. Similarly, interact with objects with a click: left click to hit, right click to use an object. So, for example, hold a bone and right click on a dog to give the dog a bone. Left click to smack the dog with the bone.

The space bar lets you jump, and in creative mode (more about that below), you can fly. Double tap the space bar to start flying, and tap it again to move higher. Shift lowers you down, and another double space drops you to the ground.

On a touch screen device, you’ll have arrow buttons on the left side of the screen for walking, and a separate button for jumping or flying on the right. Swipe the screen to look around. Place blocks with a tap, and destroy them by tapping and holding. You can use some items by tapping, others by tapping and holding, and still others by looking for a special button to appear at the bottom of the screen. For example, if you hold an apple and approach a horse, there will be a “feed” button. You can read more about all the different controls for all the different platforms on the Official Minecraft Wiki.

To manage your inventory, press “e” on your keybord (on the desktop) or tap the “…” button next to the row of nine empty boxes at the bottom of the screen (on mobile.) Scroll through to see what you’ve picked up, if you’re playing in survival mode. In creative mode, you can also search and scroll through hundreds of items that are yours for the choosing. Those nine empty boxes, by the way? Those are your “hot bar” of readily accessible objects. You can drag items from your inventory into them to use them quickly, like with a single tap or keypress, which comes in handy later.

So, What Do You Do?

So what do you do in Minecraft, anyway? What is your kid trying to accomplish when they spend hours at the computer playing? You already know the answer, actually: you mine blocks from your surroundings, and you use them to craft new things. Imagine walking through a world made of lego blocks as far as the eye can see. You can break off a block from the ground, from a tree, anywhere you like, and then you can use the blocks you’ve gathered to make something new.

In survival mode, you arrive in Minecraft land with literally nothing. You can karate-chop the world with your hand to gather blocks of dirt and wood. You can make a pickaxe out of wood, and use it to mine for stone. Then you can make a better pickaxe out of stone. In the meantime, you’d better create a shelter before dark, because that’s when the monsters come out. If they get you, you die:

Survival minecraft can be challenging and fun, but young kids are often more interested in building things, spawning animals, and exploring all the different types of objects that exist in the universe. (Me too, honestly.) You can do all that without fear of being killed by Creepers if you play your game in creative mode. That means you don’t have any damage or hunger meters, you can fly, and you can have as many as you want of anything. Diamond armor? Golden apples? Potions that let you see in the dark? All yours!

Fun Things to Try with Your Kids

Here are some things you can do right away. They’re easy in creative, and possible (if you can gather the materials) in survival. Best of all, if you’re new to the game, you can do them yourself, or if you’re installing for your kids or playing along with them, they’re fun for everyone involved.

• Watch the Sunset: A new day dawns in Minecraft every 20 minutes. You get 10 minutes of daylight, 90 seconds of dusk, seven minutes of night, and another 90 seconds for sunrise. It’s kind of beautiful.
• See in the Dark: If a young child starts crying for seven out of every 20 minutes while playing, now you know why. After dark, just snag a Potion of Night Vision from your inventory. On the computer you can search for items by name; on mobile, scroll until you find it. It’s dark blue. Right click, or tap and hold, to drink the potion.
• Change Your Skin: Gameplay is typically in a first person point-of-view, but if other players are around, they’ll be able to see you. You can also switch views while playing and see yourself in the third-person. If you’d like to tweak your look, visit minecraftskins.net, where you can choose a new skin. Hit Edit to customize it to your liking, and if you play the desktop edition, hit Change to submit it to Minecraft’s account servers. (Your skin is considered part of your account profile.) If you play on the mobile editions, Download the skin and save it to your device’s photo library. Then you can change your skin from within the game.
• Tame a Wolf: No wolves? Look in your inventory for an egg called “spawn wolf.“ It does exactly what you’d think. Feed one of your new wolves a bone, and it will start following you and exuding hearts. Once the wolf has been tamed, it wears a red collar and is a dog. Do not hit your dog with a bone. They attack as a pack when one is hurt.
• Ride a Pig: Hold a carrot on a stick, and all the pigs around will follow you. Place a saddle on a pig, and then you can ride it. The pig will walk constantly, but you can steer with your mouse as usual. To stop the pig, take the carrot and stick out of your hand.
• Teleport: If you’re playing with your kid in multiplayer mode, they’re almost guaranteed to wander off. If you type a forward slash, you’ll find you can enter commands. A handy one is /teleport, or /tp for short, followed by your kid’s player name. You’ll teleport right to where they are.
• Build a Beacon: Especially in survival mode, you’ll want to find a way to get back to your home. Build dirt, or whatever you’ve got, into a tall tower that you can see from a distance. While there are other ways to find your way home when you get lost, this is the simplest.

I learned all of these tricks from my six-year-old son, who in turned learned them from watching YouTube. As an adult, you may not have noticed, but roughly half of YouTube is just videos of people playing Minecraft. You can find a guide to the best channels, with notes on their kid-friendliness, at Common Sense Media.

Be warned: these videos often show features that go far beyond what you can find in an ordinary Minecraft installation. There are mods (modifications to either clients or servers), resource packs (which change game features like the appearance of blocks), maps (pre-built worlds), and mini-games (maps set up for solo or competitive games).

Playing With Others

A Parent’s Guide to Playing Minecraft With Your Kids

It’s hard to say exactly why children with autism are some of the greatest devotees of Minecraft, the computer game in which you build endless worlds out of Lego-like blocks. Stuart Duncan, a father of two, believes it’s because it’s a perfect union of two opposites. On one hand, Minecraft offers structure—everything from the water to the doors to the falling lava behaves with a certain predictability that they need. On the other hand, it gives the player infinite freedom. There’s no story, no levels, no bosses presenting participants with quests to complete. Behind the shield of their computer screen, players can do whatever they want to do in a sensory-friendly space—recreate the Taj Mahal, light up a house with torches, or hide in a cave.

“Having the freedom to do anything you want while simultaneously feeling safe and secure within a structured set of rules and routines is liberating,” Duncan says.

Duncan has autism, as does his oldest son. About six years ago, the family started playing Minecraft, and loved it. But there were challenges. On social media, Duncan kept seeing parents reach out to other parents, asking if their children with autism could play the game together because they kept running into bullies and trolls whenever they played on public servers. Players would destroy everything they tried to make, steal their resources and kill them over and over again. It was then that Duncan, a web developer in Canada, decided to build a Minecraft world just for kids on the spectrum and their families. He bought a $2.50 starter server and called it Autcraft. Today, the game is so popular that Duncan manages it full-time and gave a TED Talk about it.

What makes Autcraft unique is that it’s whitelisted—you must apply to play. The server is intensely monitored by volunteers who understand autism. They know how to defuse arguments, solve problems and spot bullying. Before selecting admins, Duncan watches them play. “I can teach anyone how to play Minecraft and to learn the commands to manage the server, but what I can’t teach is how to handle someone else’s child when they’re furious, hurt, depressed and suicidal, all at the same time,” he says. Autcraft has its own ranking system. You earn titles by being helpful, kind and respectful to everyone on the server.

Within the game, Duncan has created “calm rooms,” modeled after Snoezelen Multi-Sensory Rooms to ease anxiety. Some are bright with flashing lights, while others are very dark with tiny star-like white dots. Players can choose what type of sensory input they need in that moment. “The in-game chat is disabled so there’s nothing to read and no one to bother you,” Duncan says. “You get to stay in the game but also take a break from the game at the same time.”

Some parents have told Duncan that Autcraft been able to do what years of therapy has not. It’s helped their children to express their needs, ask for help, and recognize that their actions affect others. Even those who are nonverbal can communicate through chat. The environment of Autcraft gives them an outlet to make friends, all without the pressure to track facial expressions or the distractions of an unfamiliar environment. Duncan hopes that children will learn and grow on Autcraft so that one day, they can go out and play on public servers—and out in the world—without fear.

Here are some tips from Duncan (aka AutismFather in the Autcraft community) on how to introduce a child with autism to Minecraft, and particularly Autcraft:

Play With Your Child

“It’s an incredible bonding experience,” Duncan says of playing Autcraft with your child. “I know video games or technology can feel foreign to parents but honestly, it’s not that bad. Being able to build an entire world with your child is an experience that you just can’t get anywhere else. You’ll laugh, be creative together, work as a team and dream together. There’s just nothing like it.”

He encourages parents to see what their kids see, and talk to the people they talk to.“Quite often, I find that the parents who aren’t actively involved in their child’s online life have no idea what their child is actually like online,” Duncan says. “Some children come to my server and behave very much the same way that bullies had treated them elsewhere. I’ll contact their parents and explain what they’re doing and the language they’re using—and the parents, almost every single time, will be totally shocked. Their child will always say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in real life, never swear, and generally just be shy, but once on the internet, with no supervision, they become the trolls that they are usually trying to avoid.” He reminds parents often: If you are not teaching your child how to behave online, someone else will.

Let the Child Become the Teacher

For parents who are new to Minecraft, Duncan suggests letting your kid be your guide. “This allows the child to feel important, confident, in control and useful,” Duncan says. “The role reversal really allows both the child and the parent to see things from each other’s perspectives.”

Continue the Conversations Offline

On Autcraft, players learn to talk, plan and work things out with others, which can be difficult when you’re not used to having any sort of relationships.

Duncan advises parents to look out for new behaviors at home. “Most of the time these ‘small’ conversations that happen on the server can seem unimportant, but then later I’ll hear from parents who tell me that their children started sharing and even giving things away to other kids, or that they started making friends at school, or that someone broke something of theirs and they didn’t even get mad,” Duncan says. Reward those good behaviors, and talk about the bad ones. Encourage more of what you want to see.

Take Breaks

If your child is getting upset online, have them take a break or enter one of the calm rooms. Remind them that anything someone says online is never personal. “How can it be?” Duncan says. “They don’t even know you. It’s an important lesson to learn.”

Duncan’s biggest piece of advice for parents is to not shy away from the game because they don’t understand it. Sure, Autcraft is a fantasy world, where kids with autism play behind pixelated avatars, but it may just be the world where they can be the most real.

How to Introduce a Child With Autism to Minecraft

It’s the biggest event in the UK gaming calendar and has been around for more than two decades.

Now Insomnia62 is preparing to celebrate 21 years of working and playing hard with a blockbuster event at the Birmingham NEC from March 30 to April 2.

Over four glorious days, attendees will get to try out the latest games as well as state-of-the-art virtual reality technology.

Some of the biggest stars of YouTube will be there, whilst you’ll be able to watch the best players in the world go into battle against each other and take part in huge tournaments against the most talented gamers on the planet.

You can visit the festival’s What’s On page to hear about all the action. 

Here are a few reasons why Insomnia62 is an unmissable weekend and a brilliant way to spend your Bank Holiday.

You can bring your own computer

Insomnia62 will let you buy a special BYOC (Bring Your Own Computer / Console) ticket which allows you to bring your PC or console to the event for the weekend.

This means you’ll be able to connect to the local area network (LAN) and join in all the action.

Here what’s Insomnia62 says about this amazing network: ‘When Insomnia62 started back in 1999, the internet wasn’t as fast as it is today, so in order to get high-speed multiplayer gaming experiences players attended LAN events like ours.

‘Thanks to the Internet, we don’t need to do that anymore, but LAN means so much more to the people who are part of it. It’s a community of gamers that you won’t find anywhere else.’

There will also be special LAN tournaments on games like Overwatch, Footfall Manager, Battalion1944, League of Legends and Heartstone.

Visitors can learn all about the history of gaming

We all know the pleasure which comes from beholding the latest graphics on a hot new game.

But wait until you experience the warm and fuzzy feeling you’ll get while playing the classics in the Insomnia62 Retro Zone which lets you journey back in time to the dawn of gaming.

Past games on display have included F-Zero, Donkey Kong, Excitebike, Frogger, Bubble Bobble, Double Dragon, Out Run, CastleVania and many more.

The biggest YouTubers will be there along with the stars of Twitch

Caspar Lee is just the latest YouTuber to announce an appearance at Insomnia62.

He’ll be there on April 1 – and you’d be a fool to miss him.

Other superstars in attendance will include Syndicate, Mini Ladd, Terroriser, Yogscast, Yammy, B0aty and more.

Just keep an eye on the gaming festival’s website for all the latest info.

You’ll witness an epic Call of Duty battle.

Insomnia62 is an official partner of the 2018 Call of Duty World League Global Circuit.

This means some of the best players and team in the world will be battling it out for dominance, with a massive $80,000 first prize on offer and a total pool of $200,000.

It supports indie developers

Obviously, Insomnia62 will let you see the biggest gamers in action playing blockbuster titles.

But there’s still a lot of love for the smaller developers.

At the Indie Zone you’ll be able to play some of the biggest indie titles and talk to some of the developers making them.

Past indie games at Insomnia62 include Gangbeasts, Super Rude Bear: Resurrection, Perpetual Night and Blockships

You can try out the latest VR tech

The organisers of Insomnia62 says ‘it’s the most exciting development to hit the gaming world since Mario first dropped Bowser into a pit of lava’.

Now you’ll be able to try out the latest VR tech at the VR Zone.

You’ll travel to strange worlds, battle aliens and witness things which you’d never experience in boring old normal reality.

Will you want to go back to the real world?

The world’s top cosplayers will put on an amazing Cosplay Masquerade

This year, a huge Cosplay Masquerade will be held on the main stage.

It’s a chance to see all the incredible customers dreamed up by games fans.

And a chance to show off your own.

You can check out some classic and new games tabletop games

Once upon a time, you didn’t have to plug in to have fun.

At the TableTop zone you can play games including Magic the Gathering, Cardfight Vanguard, and Final Fantasy.

You can also get lessons from the experts and even buy some of the games to take home.

No batteries or plug sockets needed.

There are plenty of non-gaming activities

Insomnia62 features daily ticketed evening events including Fight Club Pro Wrestling and much more.

There are plenty of things for children to do and you can also get a family ticket.

You’ll be able to enjoy some retail therapy

Visit the Exhibition zone to pick up the latest gaming merchandise and games.

Whether it’s the hottest title or a t-shirt celebrating your favourite game, there will be lots to buy.

If you only go to one gaming event this year make it Insomnia62

It looks like Activision may be planning another remastered version of a classic Call Of Duty, and for a surprisingly reasonable price.

E3 isn’t going to have any secrets left at this point, if the latest video game leak is true.

It certainly sounds plausible: IGN Italia caught the Italian Amazon site listing Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered for Xbox One and PlayStation 4, a listing which was then quickly taken down once everyone noticed.

The release date was April 30, which is surprisingly close. It’s also just a couple of weeks before the main reveal event for Black Ops 4. Although whether that makes it more or less believable is hard to say.

The other key point is that it was down for just €19.99 (£17), which seems unusually reasonable given that the work put into the first remaster was actually quite substantial.

Although it can easily be found for not much more than £20 now, the first game is officially £34.99. It was also a PlayStation 4 exclusive on its initial release.

Of course, the controversy with the first remaster was that it was originally only sold as part of the expensive Legacy Edition that came with that year’s Infinite Warfare. But if this leak is true that’s not what’s happening with Modern Warfare 2.

So either Activision are completely changing their approach this time round or… the rumour isn’t true.

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Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 remaster spotted in Amazon listing

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Games Inbox: Tomb Raider movie reaction, State Of Decay 2 impressions, and Skyrim VR on PC

Resident Evil 4 was released in the UK exactly 13 years ago today, and a celebrates the fact by looking back at one of the best games ever.

On the 18th March Resident Evil 4 is 13 years old in the UK! I’d never been into the previous games in the series much but this new style, which seemed more action-packed, just grabbed my attention and I bought it (and a GameCube to play it on!) on launch day. Quite simply it blew my mind and still does today, even after countless playthroughs on multiple consoles over the years.

Here are some of the things that I think make it so special:

Perfect pacing
I’d played a lot of games before it, and even more after it, but I can’t think of any other game that is so well paced. It’s constantly outdoing itself with new enemies and set pieces but considering it’s a pretty long, linear, single-player game (my first playthrough was well over the 10 hour mark) it never puts a foot wrong. Nothing ever gets repetitive or outstays it’s welcome, which I feel is a rarity in games.

Memorable encounters
Some of these are traditional boss fights, others not, but Resident Evil 4 is packed with so many memorable encounters. The first one for me is meeting Dr Salvador (the iconic dude with a sack over his head as he wields a chainsaw!) near the start of the game. Then over the course of your adventure you also get to fight Del Lago, a beast of a fish, while you’re stuck in a little rowboat (which thoughtfully has an endless supply of harpoons); El Gigante, who’s a huge, hulking giant so he earns his name well; Chief Mendez who transforms into a grotesque monster who’s a pain to finish off (seriously, stop swinging about in those rafters!).

Then there’s the Garrador, who’s blind but has huge deadly claws; Colmillos (wolves with tentacles sprouting out of their backs!) that leap out at you as you navigate your way through a garden maze; Novistors, disgusting giant insects that can go invisible, walk on the ceiling and puke acid over you; Verdigo, which becomes a deadly game of hide and seek in the sewers; and Salazar, first you get chased by a giant clockwork version of him, then after battling up a tower you confront the little creep personally.

The sinister Regenerators live up to their name as when you shoot their limbs off they grow back (you need a lot of firepower to take them down or the thermal scope to shoot the parasites in them). And there’s Krauser, who you first go up against via a very cool QTE knife fight and then confront properly later on in a game of cat and mouse. The monstrous U-3, who mutates halfway through the fight to have a giant set of pincers, and finally the guy behind it all Saddler, who transforms into a weird spider-like creature.

Gandos
Even the basic cannon fodder Ganados are brilliant, screaming and cursing at you in Spanish! I love how they react to your attacks: aim too long at their heads and they will cover their face with their hands or move themselves away from where you’re aiming, shoot them in a limb and they will react in pain and drop weapons. Then there’s the whole shoot their heads off and tentacles burst out – eek! Making these regular enemies so responsive really adds to the brilliant gameplay.

The Merchant
Got a selection of good things on sale, stranger!

Even after all these years The Merchant is still one of my favourite non-player characters. In a world where almost everyone else is trying to kill you, having a friendly guy (with an awesome voice!) willing to trade with you makes for a little oasis of calm.

Two interesting facts about my favourite purveyor of armed goods:

1. He’s voiced by the same guy (Paul Mercier) who voices Leon (talk about vocal range!).
2. At times in the game he is showing the same red eyes as the Ganados! Is he infected too? I’m just glad he doesn’t turn murderous with all the weapons he has!

Leon S. Kennedy
OK, so I know he’s got a ridiculous haircut, and he certainly isn’t the greatest or deepest video game character, but I like him! While Chris Redfield is so serious and brooding (probably the effect of having to put up with Sheva for a whole game!) Leon is far more laid back and has plenty of time for cheesy one liners, making his company far more enjoyable.

Salazar and Saddler
These two are amongst my favourite antagonists. Salazar is like a Looney Tunes character: not very bright, prone to temper tantrums when things don’t go his way, and ridiculously funny. Saddler on the other hand is more controlled but is also so sarcastic, constantly sneering at Leon. When the time came for both of them to meet the business end of my rocket launcher, I was very pleased indeed!

Guns
From basic pistols (including The Punisher you can win by shooting blue medallions that are hanging up around the place) to the crazy power of the rocket launcher and the Chicago Typewriter (a Tommy Gun with unlimited ammo), and not forgetting a wide assortment of shotguns, Magnums, sniper rifles, sub-machineguns, and even a mine thrower in between. Even after all this time every weapon is a joy to not only fire but reload (the reloading animation for the Broken Butterfly Magnum is so cool!) and you can also upgrade them as you go via the ever helpful Merchant.

The little touches
It’s the little things that add atmosphere. Freeing that dog from a trap in the woods (the dog later returns and helps distract El Gigante while you fight him); the chickens on the farm that get all agitated and flap around if you get too close to them (they also lay eggs, which are good for your health and throwing at people!); going fishing, which usually means lobbing a grenade in the water but you can pick up the fish afterwards and use them for health; shooting at bird nests, which usually have ammo or money in them; and last but not least the shooting galleries provided by The Merchant, which are a lot of fun and can earn you a lot of cash.

The controls
After playing games such as Uncharted, where you can run and gun, Resident Evil 4’s controls feel so incredibly rigid but that’s what makes it so special. If you could run around spraying bullets everywhere the game and its gunplay would lose so much of its brilliant tension.

The end is only the beginning
Once you’ve completed the main game there’s so much more. Firstly there’s New Game+ where you can carry over all your awesome weapons, Assignment Ada is a separate mission playing as Ada Wong on the PlayStation 2 (and later editions). You also got five new missions in Separate Ways where again you got to play as Ada, this includes new weapons (explosive crossbow!) and a new environment which sees you sinking a battleship! Then last but certainly not least is the brilliantly addictive Mercenaries mode where you have a limited amount of time to rack up kills.

So that’s my thoughts on what is one of my most favourite games of all time, 13 years old and just as awesome as ever! Happy birthday Resident Evil 4!

By reader LastYearsModel09 (PSN ID)

The reader’s feature does not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. As always, email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk and follow us on Twitter.

Celebrating 13 years of Resident Evil 4 – Reader’s Feature

GameCentral readers discuss their favourite female characters, from Lara Croft to Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn.

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Mesomex, following International Women’s Day earlier in the month. We wanted to know which female character you think is the most interesting and what you think of the representation of women in video games in recent years.

You can probably guess what some of the nominations were, although opinions were divided on the qualities of Lara Croft as a character. Bayonetta, Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, and the women of Uncharted were all popular though, with most readers feeling things are more positive now than they used to be.

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Weekend Hot Topic, part 2: The best female video game characters

Minecraft is a popular video game that’s sort of like virtual Lego. Players find and build stuff by themselves, or online with friends.

It’s a simple formula that’s attracted millions of fans — and Southern Methodist University professors.

Corey Clark, deputy director for research at SMU Guildhall, and John Wise, an associate professor of biological sciences, are part of a team hoping to take advantage of the game’s large user base in the search for better cancer-fighting drugs.

On their quest to disable a biological pump

Wise: These pumps are normally in our bodies, protecting us from exposures to toxins. They keep bad things out of our cells, and that’s a really good thing. But this good thing gets perverted in cancers. A cancer cell will over-express these pumps, and it will eliminate cancer chemotherapeutics from the cancer cells, which causes the cancer to become resistant. So the goal of our research at SMU is to — with high-performance computing facilities and biochemistry — discover compounds that will temporarily turn these pumps off during cancer chemotherapies.

On how Minecraft is helping the search for treatment

Clark: Video games themselves are all about learning — how to play a level, how to progress through a game — and so what we want to do is use that human intuition piece and take datasets from medical problems, like the chemotherapeutic problem, and then integrate that into the game, so it’s part of the natural game itself. Every time somebody does something in the game, it’s actually helping in the science. The idea that you’re making a positive impact is something the players really enjoy.

We visualize the data problems in exactly the same format as Minecraft. So there are colored blocks and you’re moving some blocks around to try to find specific properties of these compounds that John’s working with to see which of those properties are the most important in being effective in the treatments. When they’re playing the game, all of the data returns to the back-end of the platform for analysis.

On how hard it is to find new drugs

Wise: Discovering a molecule that has an effect in a biological system like this is the first step. In the last three years or so, we’ve probably found 20 different molecules that positively affect this problem. Getting those drug-like molecules — they’re not yet drugs — to the point where they could be entered in a clinic is difficult. The success rates of molecules that enter such a program and actually end up in people are maybe between 1 and 5 percent.

We’ve identified some really good compounds that we believe we can develop to be pharmaceutical-like compounds that we can put into animals and eventually, people. As I said before, maybe 1 percent of these molecules can make it to humans. That means at the beginning you need 100 of them. Finding those 100 starting molecules with what we’ve learned from Minecraft is going to be a really big deal to us.

Minecraft Players Are Helping SMU Researchers Find Better Cancer-Fighting Drugs

Sonic is getting a new racing game, but will it have more in common with Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing or the Saturn’s Sonic R?

A new Sonic-themed racing game by Sumo Digital has been rumoured multiple times, with the assumption that it would be a third entry in the Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing franchise – just with more Sonic and less Sega.

The new teaser trailer below certainly seems to suggest exactly like that, but there is an unexpected wrinkle: the logo tease at the end looks very much like Sonic R on the Sega Saturn console.

Sonic R was a race game by Traveller’s Tales (who now make the Lego games) that was released in 1997. It wasn’t very good, but it did feature Sonic and co. racing around on foot.

The teaser clearly implies there will be actual cars in the new game, so it’s hard to reconcile the two. Unless being on-foot is going to be an option of some kind?

Sega’s less mysterious Sonic the Hedgehog announcement (at the SXSW event in the US, where they previously announced Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces) also involves references to obscure old games, with an expanded version of Sonic Mania called… Sonic Mania Plus.

The new version of the excellent original will feature two new playable characters: Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel. Both are taken from the obscure SegaSonic the Hedgehog coin-op, although they did cameo in Sonic Generations as well.

Sonic Mania Plus will also introduce a new Encore Mode, which adds ‘new ways to play, and new ways to explore’ for the existing levels. Sonic Mania’s split-screen multiplayer mode will also be expanded to allow four-players instead of just two.

And… that seems to be it. There’s no sign of any new levels, which is very disappointing, and it’s not clear what Sega is going to charge people that already have the original version.

They do have a natty looking retail edition planned though, so we think it’s more just a re-release to appeal to those that never got it, or heard of it, the first time round.

There’s no date for the Sonic racing game, although we’re willing to bet it’ll be out sometime this autumn. Sonic Mania Plus will definitely be out this summer for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Sega’s final announcement at the weekend was confirmation that Yakuza Kiwami 2 will be getting a worldwide release on August 28, so fans in Europe will not have to wait any longer than anyone else.

Like the first Kiwami game (Kiwami means ‘extreme’ or ‘ultimate’) it’s a remake of one of the original PlayStation 2 releases, so if you’ve only got into the series recently it should be a good way to catch up on the story.

As usual though it’ll be a PlayStation 4 exclusive.

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Sega tease new Sonic racing game and Sonic Mania Plus (and Yakuza Kiwami 2)

As the mobile version goes live for selected players, other publishers are worrying the success of Fortnite could cut into their profits.

It didn’t seem as if Fortnite had any more records to break, after overtaking PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and becoming the most watched game on Twitch, but now it’s also the most searched for video game on Google – surpassing even Minecraft.

Fortnite also got more searches than the term ‘bitcoin’ and is now estimated to have been played by 45 million people worldwide.

This is of course great news for Epic Games, who confirmed today that invites to play the iOS version of Fortnite Battle Royale, have gone out to certain fans.

But analysts are worrying that the success of Fortnite means problems for other video game companies. 

‘We believe the strong growth of Fortnite creates tactical risk to the video game publishers’, said analyst Evan Wingren, as reported by CNBC.

‘The game is gaining momentum in Western markets, which is likely to impact engagement for all AAA games to some degree. We believe Fortnite is growing the overall gaming TAM [total addressable market], but some cannibalisation is likely.’

Rather than forcing EA and Activision execs to eat their rivals, what this means is that other publishers are likely to make about 10% less revenue from their own multiplayer games – because everyone’s spending their time and money on Fortnite.

Fortnite only seems destined to get more popular though, especially considering the mobile versions haven’t even launched properly yet.

Footage of the game on iPhone and iPad is starting to appear around the Web though, and if you want to try and sign-up yourself the link is here.

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Fortnite passes Minecraft as the world’s favourite video game

To explain where the idea for the Nintendo Switch came from, Yoshiaki Koizumi puts his hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out a Nintendo-themed playing card, placing it on the coffee table in front of him. Look back 127 years, he continues, to Nintendo’s founding in September 1889. “Nintendo made playing cards,” says Koizumi, 48. As deputy general manager of the company’s entertainment planning and development division, he’s been one of the leading creative influences behind the Switch. “Playing cards are something that you enjoy eye-to-eye with another person,” he says. “Think about a deck of cards. It’s something that is small, many of the games have rules that are easy to learn and people of all ages can enjoy playing them together.” For a deck of playing cards, his thought experiment goes, substitute a games console. The secret to Nintendo’s innovation, he concludes, is simple: “It’s not necessarily about technology.”

Nintendo’s philosophy for making games has often been counterintuitively low-tech. “A lot of the history of gameplay, up until this point, has been people looking at a screen, not necessarily seeing the facial expression and the body language of the person next to them,” says Koizumi. “So that became a very important, fundamental concept for us moving forwards on Switch: how to preserve that, how to bring people back to that kind of experience.” Whenever he attempts to explain Nintendo’s thinking with Switch, and its approach to game development in general, Koizumi comes back to playing cards: play anytime, anywhere, with anyone and always see how they react. “If I were to put it into incredibly simplified terms, we don’t necessarily view this as a gaming machine, we view this as a tool for play,” adds Shinya Takahashi, 53, director and general manager on the same team as Koizumi. The word “play” – and its distance from the word technology – crops up a lot at Nintendo. In an interview with Edge magazine for the GameCube’s launch in 2001, Nintendo’s late president Satoru Iwata said the company’s ambition with its software was to “satisfy people’s need to be happy.” The GameCube sold 21.74 million units to the PlayStation 2’s 155 million. The Wii, Nintendo’s next console, sold 101 million units to the PlayStation 3’s eighty-five million.

I meet Koizumi and Takahashi in a hotel room in South Kensington, London. Both sit on a sofa flanked by oversized, floral cushions, attentively listening to my questions in English before turning to an interpreter. Koizumi is the more smartly dressed of the two, the fringe of his hair swept carefully to one side, a Nintendo Switch lapel badge pinned proudly on his grey jacket. Takahashi, livelier and more excitable, fixes me with his gaze whenever I speak. “You’ve both worked for Nintendo for a couple of decades, is that right?” I ask. “Twenty-eight years,” says Takahashi, pausing to do some mental arithmetic. “Nineteen-eighty-nine!” he adds. “Nineteen-ninety-one,” chirps the ordinarily straight-faced Koizumi.

Takahashi and Koizumi’s curriculum vitaes read like a birthday wish list from my childhood. One of Takahashi’s first jobs was as a designer on Wave Race 64, he was also producer on Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and general producer on Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training. Koizumi was assistant director of Super Mario 64; director of Zelda: Ocarina of Time; Majora’s Mask; Super Mario Sunshine; Donkey Kong Jungle Beat; Super Mario Galaxy; Super Mario Galaxy 2; Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World. The pair, with their combined half-century of service, have played a key role in shaping the company’s next big hope.

The joyous idiosyncrasies in the Nintendo games I played, and still play, are what make them stand out. Accompanied by countless others, I am the intrepid explorer in the worlds it creates. In 1997 I glided through the serene landscapes of Pilotwings 64, watching the Space Shuttle take off from a virtual Cape Canaveral on Little States Island. My childhood friends and I raced around the upper deck of Block Fort in Mario Kart 64’s Battle Mode. Galloping across the fields of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, it felt like I was venturing out alone against an insurmountable enemy. At their best, Nintendo’s games have always had an intangible, brilliant weirdness. That happy knack has a lot to do with heritage, which is more keenly felt at Nintendo than other games companies. For Takahashi, who has spent his entire adult life building on that heritage, the feeling of pride is clear. His favourite moment as a developer remains the time he saw someone playing a demo of the first game he had worked on, a little-known SNES title released only in Japan. “To see their reaction, to see the joy on their face,” he says. “That’s a memory that I’ll always keep.”

Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The launch of Switch comes at a tumultuous time for Nintendo. Its debut smartphone game, Super Mario Run, was released in December 2016, five years after Iwata warned that doing so would cause Nintendo to “cease to be Nintendo”. In March 2015, as the company announced plans to develop games for smartphones, Iwata admitted it would be “a waste” not to. “It is structurally the same as when Nintendo, which was founded 125 years ago when there were no TVs, started to aggressively take advantage of TV as a communication channel.”

In 2014, it was Iwata, in collaboration with The Pokémon Company’s Tsunekazu Ishihara, who conceived of the idea of Pokémon Go, inspired by a Pokémon-themed April Fools’ Day gag on Google Maps. Launched on July 6, 2016, the game now holds the record for most revenue grossed by a mobile game in its first month ($206.5 million), most downloaded mobile game in its first month (130 million), most mobile app store charts topped simultaneously (70) and the fastest mobile game to gross $100 million (20 days). Nintendo owns a thirty-two per cent stake in the Pokémon franchise and an undisclosed stake in developer Niantic. Something, somewhere, had changed Iwata’s mind.

Iwata passed away in July 2015 at the age of 55. He wasn’t around to admire the record-breaking success of his collaboration, but his way of thinking still dominates Nintendo. “On my business card,” he said during a speech at the Game Developers Conference in 2005, “I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But, in my heart, I am a gamer.” Iwata, like Mario-creator Shigeru Miyamoto, composer Koji Kondo, GameBoy-inventor Gunpei Yokoi, Takahashi, Koizumi and many others, all got what it meant, and still means, to work for Nintendo. “Typically, you go to a programmer and tell them what you, as a designer, want to do. They then tell you all the reasons why you can’t do that,” Shigeru Miyamoto told The New Yorker in December 2016. “Mr. Iwata was different. He felt it would be shameful for him to say something was impossible.” It’s a cliché that listlessly flops out the mouths of many company executives, but Iwata’s sentiment feels different – and it all rests on the word “shameful”.

For Nintendo’s rivals, achieving the impossible is oft-linked to rapid growth and big profits. Nintendo is, at times, confusingly different. In a speech delivered in 2011, Iwata drew a clear line between his company and its smartphone competitors. “Their goal is just to gather as much software as possible, because quantity is what makes the money flow.” Nintendo, he implied, was different. That same year, Iwata finished the point he had started: “I believe my responsibility is not to short-term profits, but to Nintendo’s mid-and-long-term competitive strength.” It’s an attitude that helps explain the company’s stoic response to its failures: Nintendo had expected to sell 100 million units of its Wii U console, in the end it shifted closer to thirteen million. The Switch must do better.

The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images

When it launches on March 3, the Switch will cost £280. Nintendo is releasing the two major day-one titles – 1-2-Switch and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – with Konami’s Super Bomberman R, Activision’s Skylanders: Imaginators and Ubisoft’s Just Dance 2017 completing the line-up. Before the end of 2017, Nintendo will add Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey and ARMS, a new, fast-paced fighting game that makes full-use of the innovative Joy-Con. Fire Emblem Warriors, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Sonic Mania and a clutch of other high-profile titles from third-parties will also be available before the year is out. As ever, Nintendo will be hoping a small selection of big names can help lift an otherwise lacklustre line-up.

In recent generations, Nintendo’s home console successes have tended to come in fits and starts: the Nintendo 64 sold relatively well, the GameCube poorly, the Wii was a runaway success, the Wii U a runaway failure. But, from Wii to Wii U to Switch, Nintendo’s thinking has become clearer. The Wii, with its intuitive motion controls, opened up play to everyone, while the Wii U’s tablet-like controller laid the groundwork for the Switch’s far more polished, portable design. Takahashi describes it as a “unified system”, a blend of handheld and home console, finally made possible by the technology available to Nintendo. “It just so happened that various technologies were coming together,” adds Koizumi “And we saw that we could combine them together to solve exactly that problem. And that, I think, was the real inception of the Switch.”

The careers of Koizumi and Takahashi, both arts graduates who have worked for Nintendo their entire adult lives, are typical for a company whose employees pride themselves on lifelong devotion. “We started just a few years before the N64 era,” says Takahashi. “When we were making that shift from 2D to 3D gaming with the N64, we were two of the main individuals within Nintendo who were really leading the designers and helping to draw them out of that 2D world and into 3D game design,” he adds, pausing thoughtfully. “To put it more simply, the two of us like doing new things.”

While much of the press attention, and Nintendo’s own marketing, has focussed on how the Switch is both a handheld and home console, Takahashi seems more enthused about the new Joy-Con controllers. The palm-sized red and blue batons, packed with accelerometers, gyro sensors, infrared cameras and no fewer than 22 buttons, promise both confusion and potential. Takahashi asks if I’ve played a 1-2-Switch minigame where you have to guess the number of balls inside the controller, an impressively realistic sensation created using HD rumble, another feature squeezed into the palm-sized Joy-Cons. It’s a seemingly inconsequential feature that, for Takahashi, could change the way people play games. For the first time, players are asked to play a game where they’re not meant to look at the screen. It’s a very ‘Nintendo’ idea.

Takahashi asks what other 1-2-Switch minigames I’ve played. I reply while miming milking a cow. He laughs enthusiastically. “You seem like you liked that,” he says, laughing again. Whether guessing the number of balls, milking a cow, having a Wild West shootout or unlocking a safe, all the minigames in 1-2-Switch have one thing in common: you look at the person you’re playing against, not the screen. “If you play 1-2-Switch you get a sense for what we were trying to achieve with the hardware,” Takahashi continues. “We didn’t start with the idea of trying to create an integrated device that combined a home console with a handheld. Instead, we started with the idea of wanting to create a device that had a versatility of play that could appeal to as broad of an audience as possible.”

Nintendo’s games have always had the ability to turn us all into children again. When someone gets nostalgic about their childhood, I tend to warp-pipe back to a time of leaping plumbers, drifting go-karts and Pikachu electrocuting Captain Falcon. And as with any great creative work, a great game needs a soul. “Those of us who are working on the software side are always worried about one thing: how to get players to empathise with what they’re seeing in the game,” says Koizumi when I ask about the role of emotion in Nintendo’s games. “We’re always looking for ways to make different elements of the game the exact balance of surprise and empathy, which kind of play opposite one another to create that experience.”

Nintendo

For Nintendo, nowhere does that balance play out more than in Zelda, a franchise Koizumi has worked on for nearly two decades. So what can people expect from the latest instalment? “I think you’re going to find a lot of elements that really bring it back to the very first Zelda game, in the sense that people will find puzzles as they explore and get to solve them,” he says, referring to Breath of the Wild. Previously, Link’s world was alive to a point, now it teems with weapons, secrets and foes. “It also brings in some new elements like this idea of a wild, natural world surrounding you and challenging you to survive,” explains Koizumi. That battle to survive is not just at the core of Zelda, but also a challenge Nintendo must face as it approaches the launch of its latest console. “In that sense this Zelda has a story to it, of course,” says Koizumi. “But the adventure is bigger than that, it’s about the entire world as well. And that world is very wild.”

Despite the commercial ups and downs, Nintendo continues to innovate and surprise. “The source of our creativity, really, for the past thirty-to-forty years has come from the fact that we don’t look at what other companies are doing and try to replicate their success,” says Takahashi. “The core of Nintendo culture is this feeling that if all we do is replicate somebody else’s success, we’ll never actually achieve the same level of success that they had.” That, continues Takahashi, is the reason for Nintendo’s reputation as a highly-secretive company. “We’re so busy thinking about things that other people aren’t doing,” he says, half-smiling. “We don’t want to tell people what we’re thinking about because then other people might do it.”

Nintendo Switch isn’t just a console, it’s a 127-year saga that began with a deck of cards

Parents – don’t worry about your children spending all their time online playing games. It may actually be improving their performance at school.

That’s according to new research from RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. The institution found that playing games could help students in sharpening skills learned at school, and then applying them elsewhere.

Research was conducted by Alberto Posso, associate professor at RMIT’s School of Economics, Finance and Marketing. Posso investigated data from the globally recognised Program for International Student Assessment, scraping the test results from more than 12,000 Australian 15-year olds.

Posso looked at tests covering maths, reading, and science, while also collecting data on students’ online activities. Those who played online regularly saw sharp improvements in academic performance over those who did not.

“Students who play online games almost every day score 15 points above the average in maths and 17 points above the average in science,” said Posso.

“When you play online games you’re solving puzzles to move to the next level and that involves using some of the general knowledge and skills in maths, reading, and science that you’ve been taught during the day,” Posso added. “Teachers should consider incorporating popular video games into teaching – so long as they’re not violent ones.”

The integration of gaming and education is nothing new – educational games have existed almost as long as personal computers. However, recent years have seen the growth of collaborative, online learning experiences using the medium, with the likes of Minecraft having its own Education Edition.

Mojang

However, while gaming can have beneficial results, social media may have the opposite effect. Posso’s research found that students who visit Facebook or other similar sites daily are actually more likely to fall behind in subjects such as maths, reading, and science – some as low as 20 points worse than those who never use social platforms.

“Students who are regularly on social media are, of course, losing time that could be spent on study – but it may also indicate they are struggling with maths, reading and science and are going online to socialise instead,” suggested Posso.

“Teachers might want to look at blending the use of Facebook into their classes as a way of helping those students engage.”

Posso does highlight that other factors could have major impacts on teenagers’ academic progress though, suggesting that repeating a school year or skipping classes has a far greater negative impact than a Facebook addiction.

Real-world community divisions could also influence development to a worse extent than social media. The study found that “indigenous students or those from minority ethnic or linguistic groups” were at “greater risk” of falling behind than teens that engaged in high use of social media.

Posso’s full research, Internet usage and educational outcomes among 15-year-old Australian students, has been published in the International Journal of Communication.

Playing online games can make children smarter (just don’t let them use social media)

The following is a republished account written by Kate Hedin, who recreated some of Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous projects on the popular video game platform, Minecraft. Her work is known as Wrightcraft. This was first published on the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

I started with one of my favorite Wright buildings: the Robie House, in Chicago. I had visited the house in person several times, and even took one of the multi-hour in-depth tours, leaving me with a whole album of photos from my trip and a memory of being in the space. Next, I did a bit of research online. I found blueprints and floorplans of the house, as well as additional photos from angles and locations I didn’t have access to on my trip.

Now came the task of recreating this structure in Minecraft.

One of the biggest challenges of building in Minecraft exists in the very premise of the game: every item occupies a one cube unit of space — there are no curves, no diagonals and no angles other than right ones. Furthermore, there is also a rather limited color/texture palette to work with. Though initially this set of fixed variables might seem restrictive, I found this type of problem-solving puzzle quite exciting.

I knew I wanted the build to be as close to scale as possible (rather than up-scaling it to gain a finer granularity of detail) — I wanted to actually be able to walk around inside the house. Reviewing the blueprints of the house and Minecraft’s set of fixed variables, I decided on two elements to help set my starting reference point: Minecraft’s “door” block and the height of your character in-game. From there, I was able to lay out an outline and get a sense of scale, and then I built up from there. The Prairie Style of the Robie House lent itself quite well to the block-palette of Minecraft, and I was quite pleased with how my first build turned out.

I enjoyed the process and the outcome so much that it sent me down the rabbit hole of wanting to recreate more and more Wright buildings. So, just as I’ve added Wright buildings to my collection by visiting them over the years, I’ve now begun literally adding Wright buildings to my collection — all inside this virtual space.

A Wrightcraft recreation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House | Kate Hedin

A Wrightcraft recreation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home & Studio | Kate Hedin

Each house provides its own set of challenges and puzzles, especially with the limited palette of Minecraft. For me, that’s part of the fun: puzzling out how I can use these resources to create the desired effect.

To date, I have done builds of the Robie House (Chicago), Oak Park Home & Studio (Chicago), Hollyhock House (L.A.), Pope-Leighey House (DC), Darwin D. Martin Complex (Buffalo), the Ravine Bluffs Development Bridge (Glencoe, IL), and the Rookery atrium (Chicago), with plans to do many more.

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  A side-by-side of the original and the Wrightcraft recreation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House showing the exterior and pool | Kate Hedin

To see more of these builds, including steps in the process, as well as side-by-side comparison photos (actual photos of the houses next to their Minecraft counterparts), follow Frank Lloyd Wrightcraft on its website, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Top Image: A Wrightcraft recreation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home & Studio | Kate Hedin 

Wrightcraft: Minecraft Meets Frank Lloyd Wright