Minecraft coming to all Northern Ireland Secondary Schools for free

The popular block-building and exploration game Minecraft will be given for free to all post-primary schools in Northern Ireland. The initiative is a part of a project organized by CultureTECH, Northern Ireland’s annual festival who have obtained funding from the Department of Culture, Arts and leisure.

Minecraft is a sandbox video game that allows players to create their own world by using various 3D blocks. They can explore, construct buildings and engage in mining for minerals with which they can make useful objects. They can also explore creations built by other players. This hugely popular game owned by Swedish company Mojang has been downloaded more than 100 million times since its release in 2009.

CultureTech will supply the MinecraftEdu, a special version of the Minecraft game for educational purposes, to 240 sites in Northern Ireland including more than 200 schools, 30 libraries and community organizations as well as several coding clubs. Through this game, students can learn about construction, architecture, mining, agriculture and renewable resources. More than 5,000 teachers in over 40 countries use MinecraftEdu to teach students STEM subjects, computer coding, history and arts.

MinecraftEdu has been created by TeacherGaming, a company formed by a group of educational game developers in Finland and US. This version has teaching tools and additional features including networking options to interconnect students using different devices.

“This project is truly a world first and demonstrates the innovative and disruptive role that the creative industries can play in education and economic development,” said Culture Minister Carál Ní Chuilín. “Game players regularly exhibit persistence, risk taking, attention to detail and problem solving skills, all of which they would ideally also demonstrate in school. By making Minecraft available we hope to encourage this kind of behaviour.”

CEO of CultureTECH, Mark Nagurski added, “As anyone with a child will know, Minecraft is huge. but what is really exciting is how it is being used by educators to help young people express their creative skills and develop their understanding of technology.”

CultureTECH says that it will work towards providing support and training to teachers interested in using this program.

Minecraft coming to all Northern Ireland Secondary Schools for free

It Took One Guy Two Years To Build A Megacity in Minecraft

If you don’t know what Minecraft is, its a game where you gather resources and build things. You can also explore the near endless mass of land in minecraft. Its just a huge world in there.

Players of Minecraft have used Minecraft to express themselves artistically and to build structures from movies, tv shows, videogames, and structures from real life as well.

What you see in these pictures is a Minecraft creation, its called Titan City. This is so insane. The level of detail and the work that went into this is just astounding. What is it that makes people make these things without the expectation of any real reward? Since I have never been able to make something like this, I won’t understand.

The creator of this city is Ducan Parcells. He is an art student, he takes interest in interactive design. He is also known as the YouTube user Colonial Puppet.

The fact that he made all of this on his Xbox 360 is amazing in itself. Once this city is finished, it will be moved to PC and expended even further.

Ducan said regarding Titan City:

 [...] all the blocks were hand placed on the map since it’s Xbox but I have over a dozen or so PC buildings set aside for when it’s moved to PC for good and those collectively took like a couple hours with Minecraft edit. I guess the medium is part of the message in this case.

You can download the latest version of this map and check it out for yourself. Here are the download links for both Xbox 360 and PC.

It Took One Guy Two Years To Build A Megacity in Minecraft

Microsoft Acquired Minecraft for $2.5 Billion

Microsoft has announced this week that it has acquired Mojang, the company which developed “Minecraft” for $2.5 Billion. Microsoft expects the acquisition to break even in FY15 based on a GAAP basis. The acquisition is expected to close in late 2014 after the customary closing conditions and any regulatory review has been settled.  Mojang was a Stockholm based company which created the game 5 years ago.  Minecraft was launched in 2009 by a team of game developer, Markus “Notch” Persson, Carl Manneh and Jakob.

Over the years, the game was downloaded for more than 100 millions on PC alone, making it the most popular video game in history. Moreover, it is also the most popular online game on Xbox and among the top paid app in iOS and Android in the US. The Minecraft community are among the most active players in the online gaming industry with over 2 billion hours played along on Xbox in the past 2 years. For the PC platform alone, almost 90 percent of the players are paid customers and they have signed in within the past 12 months.

The next step after the acquisition is that to make Minecraft available across all platforms with PC, iOS, Android, Xbox and Playstation, being a few of the example. Unfortunately the creators of the game will be moving on to start new projects thus they will not join Microsoft in developing the next version of the game.

“Minecraft” is one of the most popular franchises of all time. We are going to maintain “Minecraft” and its community in all the ways people love today, with a commitment to nurture and grow it long into the future,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox.

Microsoft Acquired Minecraft for $2.5 Billion