That is at least part of the fun. I bought it when it (Minecraft) when it first came out. It was FPS Lego as far as I was concerned. At the time, and still, more or less, it was a game with none of the Psy Ops modern game makers employ to get people hooked. It was just intrinsically rewarding to make stuff. My son learned to use a mouse on Minecraft (he is 11 now). Now my kids and I have a long running world where we have been working on th same castle and world for years. It is cool seeing kids grow up with this game. Watching their building skills and ideas grow with thier minds is pretty cool.

So, it isn't intuitive, but my 6 year old can do pretty much everything in the game now. Mostly her older brother showed her. So, I dunno, maybe it is lonely, but in the same way building Lego is lonely.

I did not mean "lonely" as negative. But people sometimes go "oh I dont get it instantly I must be too old for it, cant do it and kids get it naturally". And that is not the case, kids are figuring it out slowly and their play is more incapable then they think at first. However, they "feel" like they know what they are doing whole time, so learning is pleasant.

But also, I dont really think Minecraft is like lego. You can play it like lego, but you dont have to.

True. Original Minecraft had no story or game. The game was survive. You could "win" within 30 minutes of your first time learning things. The plot and end dragon and all were added a lot later.

My kids have never finished the game and pretty much only play creative mode.

I didn't think you meant it negatively. Just an interesting way to describe it.

The beauty of Minecraft is that you do your thing and gameplay emerges - it does not pushes you in any direction. And you can switch game playing style whenever you want however you want. You can be explorer, you can learn, you can build, you can roleplay, you can care about aesthetics or not, you can care about ecology or not, you can go to caves and catch monsters. Most importantly, you can mix approaches. And when you get bored by it, you change gameplay style and game dont care, there is no penalty.

All that while whole game is remarkably low stress and zen-like. In survival, you will dig for hours for material. And you can also get stress if you want to and you can put yourself in danger if you want to.

>My son learned to use a mouse on Minecraft

Funny how that works out -- I learned to touch-type because of Runescape.

> or someone shows it to you.

I heard there's websites with videos demoing game play.

(There was this youngster with an ipad that seemed to spend quite a few hours watching them. Perhaps more than playing the game.)

Lol, most kids who play Minecraft actually watch Minecraft videos a lot more then they actually play. So, you would not be out of normal.

However, fining good beginner videos is not that easy (how to move, set it on creative at first, look you can fly etc) and watching videos is time consuming for adults. The ratio of noise vs information is very very low.

Kids actually love repetition, and being able to act on it.

The better documented example of this is when Blue's Clues needed to run the same episode multiple times a week. Everyone thought their ratings would tank, but instead they spiked.