If you haven't Heard of It

The post started as a long email to some researchers I work with who study user experience, especially with families (they're the ones who created the fun Nokia/Sesame street things). I thought about the email today and realized that there was no reason I couldn't publish it here, too because I find it an absolute delight to read.

My nine-year-old son Alex was playing with me recently over at our house - after a while, he wanted to show his friend Minecraft Pocket Edition, which I just got for our iPads (we both have one, my best investment so far in his education). He and I had played for a couple hours on a Saturday, creating virtual castles and underground caves and so on. It was a lot of fun.

If you haven't heard of it, Minecraft is an independently developed block-building-slash-survival game that hit it big over the last year, and they just came out with a tablet version a few weeks ago for both Android and iPad. The tablet version of Minecraft is a lighter version. minecraft servers There's no zombies, fighting and so on. Just the ability to create things, similar to the PC version. At first I wasn't going to purchase the iOS version, as it costs $7 on the iPad, but Google has been advertising apps for Android and Minecraft was available for sale for only 10 cents so I decided to purchase it for my Motorola Xoom (which I mostly use to test). Then I discovered how much fun the game was! I purchased the iPad version and Alex and I have been playing with it for years.

That said, I was unsure if Alex's friend would be as enthralled as it's kind of geeky however it was an instant hit. Because the Android and iPad versions of the program are compatible, we could all be a part of the same world with all three tablets simultaneously. We spent around two hours in the living room each using one of our tablets creating cool things, then running around the virtual world and looking at what others had made. There were no bad guys to blast and no puzzles, no challenges. It was pure virtual creation.

For me, there are so many parts to this experience that I consider quite novel.

- Minecraft PE isn't a 'game' in the traditional sense. It's a Sandbox. Minecraft PE is a sandbox similar to Lego blocks, but more exciting because you actually create the world you're creating. - The interface is so simplethat anyone can pick it up and have fun with no prior experience - not normal for video games or virtual worlds. It's amazing how quickly you can go from constructing a tiny tunnel or shack, and then wanting to clear 10 virtual acres of land to build the biggest castle ever. It was amazing to watch the boys leap ahead of themselves, then scale back, support each other and more. The social aspect of sharing what you've built is very compelling, even although I had to chide both kids at one point or another to check out what the other was working on, as they were so engaged in their work that they couldn't stop. There were many "Oh! Cool! I'm here to assist! Please take a look at my work! This is the first time I have ever witnessed this type of lesson in any kind of game. The ability to join the two boys and guide them along in case they stalled was a huge help (in terms of new ideas or just being lost - one kid tunneled straight down to the border of the virtual world, and then couldn't figure out how to return to the surface. ((:) ) Cross platform compatibility - this is almost obvious, but it did enable all the above. The boys finally found a game called Hide and Go Seek. This was quite hilarious, especially considering you can make your own endless tunnels.

It really was fascinating to watch the boys slam into the game together, start creating new stuff and having fun without hassle. Even though we all sat next to each other, with our respective devices, the experience was still more personal than a co-op game, where you all communicate with elbows and grunts. Instead, we were all sitting in the living room, and would glance up and chat with each other, leaning over to check what the other was doing, etc. It was a much more normal social experience than a shared-screen one.

Again, I am truly amazed by the leaps in technology that tablet computers are making. Touch can make UIs more accessible and user-friendly. The tablet form factor blends seamlessly into social settings without imposing barriers, such as the laptop or game console.

I think this is just another convincing proof of the magnitude of a technological advancement tablets actually represent. Rather than being a third type of computing device that appears to be an odd fit compared to the mobile phone and PC I'm convinced that tablets will become the primary computing device of the next age. They might be considered mobile OSes or computers with touch interfaces however, they are the form factor we have been waiting for over the last several decades.