Mojang and Microsoft, Minecraft Realms
We are starting our club in rather interesting times for Mojang, company that developed Minecraft idea. It looks like Mojang are actually considering selling the game to Microsoft and many Minceraft fans are not too happy about it. We will see what impact the sales will have on us, but for now we can only hope that if the sales comes through the new owners will care for the game community and functionality as much as its original fathers did.
In the meantime we have subscribed to our second Realm to allow our kids play freely. Originally we have planned to use one Realm – safe, closed Minecraft environment to allow our club participants to build our town there.During our summer testing of Wantage Tales Realm we, parents, have learned, however, that kids also need space to play, destroy, experiment with their ideas without the limitations of ‘reality’. They don’t like to follow instructions all the time – and actually they are right! Following instructions limits creativity and we do not want that.
We hope to find the right balance between fun and free creative play and the actual building process of Wantage in Minecraft. And so we have now subscribed to two Realms – one for our club called ‘Wantage Minecraft Club’ and one for those, who wish to focus on building our town in ‘Wantage Tales’ Realms.
We will discuss it in our session in more detail, but for now we are keeping an eye on the industry to see if the game will change owners and how that might affect us.