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Now Serving Mindcrack for Kids
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How do brands build momentum to last for generations? Maybe we can track this newly minted one for answers. My seven-year old daughter, Maddy, seems addicted to the video game Minecraft. So we jokingly call it “mindcrack”. Then I discovered everyone calls in mindcrack. Left to determine her own free time, Maddy is the worse mirror of myself from that age, when I was addicted to Atari in the 1970s. Only now the games are so brilliant with video and multiplayer functions that I can’t imagine who wouldn’t be hooked. Some of the T for teen and M for mature rated games that my nephews play are worthy of Oscar nominations for all the video animation that’s included. Only that’s not Minecraft’s cubism style. There are other games, the apps, that send notifications about dragons who are starving and neglected without immediate attention on the video game. None of those have Maddy captivated like mindcrack.
Minecraft started in 2009. According to Minecraft Stat page as of today there are over 18-million owners of the software moving along at about 15K new users a day. Minecraft to me is like LEGO on a computer, which is a soaring compliment as I’m a huge fan of the LEGO brand. I think Minecraft works on the mind the way Tetris hypnotized so many players into reporting that after hours of playing, they saw falling shapes when they closed their eyes. Luckily, there is evidence that video games are great for kids.
Maddy plays in creative mode, or if in survival mode, she sets it to peaceful. Her friends, mostly the boys, all play in survival or hardcore modes so you must build your house before nightfall to survive attacks from the skeletons, zombies, spiders and creepers. In creative mode, Maddy creates three-dimensional story worlds with unlimited resources one square pixel at a time. The worlds she creates are extraordinary. For this reason I am okay serving mindcrack in limited doses to my daughter.
As I started writing this post, Maddy is beside me watching these YouTube videos by stacyplays who narrates a “mod” of the game called Dogcraft. Now the neighbor boy is at the front door with a sense of urgency. There is something amazing about Mindcraft he must show Maddy the update on his computer version. There goes Maddy. She just bolted next door.
Image Notes: I asked Maddy to screen shot some of her favorite worlds that she has created and saved. The peace sign above as the featured image and the animals below are actually buildings with complex interiors architected entirely from her imagination.
