Smallest, aged all of 5, has become the second minecraft addict in the family.
This means we are buying a second copy of minecraft. And because I’m fed up of her bothering her brother to set it up, sort it out, I’m going to understand it this time.
Step 1) – buy minecraft for desktop from minecraft.net.
2) Install on required computer – this means logging in with newly created mojang account, and downloading minecraft.exe Note – the username chosen during mojang account creation is displayed when you play on servers, so best not to include the child’s real name, or any identifying characteristics.
3) once installed, you get a login page, you login with the created account, and bob is your sister’s husband.
4) click play.
5) once you get into the single player menu, you Create a whole new world, and you choose the mode for the world, from creative and survival. For a 5 year old, we’re going to start with creative (rather than survival or hardcore). We will also be able (later) to network the two accounts we have here, which will lead to lots and lots of happiness.
We also set the difficulty level to peaceful, so as to avoid monsters.
(The alternatives of multiplayer [networking the game] and minecraft realms [paid servers] aren’t within the scope of this first attempt at understanding it all!)
Minecraft comes in lots and lots of different versions for different platforms. Here we have PCs, so that’s what we’ve gone with. We could have gone with Pocket edition but I don’t think we could network that, or program mods and for me, that’s one of the big draws educationally.