Mine it Out

So Minecraft fever has hit the bava household hard over the last month or so. All three of my kids are pretty deep in, including my 4 1/2 year-old Tommaso. He does some basic mining and battling, but more than anything Tommy’s into the seemingly endless Minecraft user-created music videos. In fact, those videos are what started the Minecraft rage we’re currently living through at my house. Miles came home from school talking about Minecraft music videos like “Don’t Mine at Night” (playing off Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night”), “Like an Enderman” (playing off Psy’s “Gangnam Style”), and “Fallen Kindgom” (playing off Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida”) to name just a few of the early endless refeshes. My personal favorite music video is “Mine it Out” (playing off will.i.am’s “Scream and Shout”).

The videos refer to themselves as Minecraft parodies, and I guess that makes some sense. But having watched and heard a fair number of them now, many of them don’t really feel like parodies at all. They’re often catchy and tongue-in-cheek reworkings of the original, but they don’t seem to be trivializing Minecraft or the song—-rather they’re often a creative celebration of both. I’ve come to love these music videos, the amount of creative energy invested in each of them is mindblowing. And that’s just a small indication of just how amazing the Minecraft moment has been more globally for an outpouring of shared creativity. It’s gotta be one of the most hopeful elements of the internet I’ve seen over the last three or four years. And if my kids are any indication, it’s got some life left yet.

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12 Responses to Mine it Out

  1. dkernohan says:

    It’s all about “TNT” in my house

    “TNT” – A Minecraft Parody of Taio Cruz’s Dynamit…: http://youtu.be/k2rDbRUDkds

  2. Hello Jim and kidlets,

    I will never forget the great Nobody statue on the shore of Lake Macguffin. Has it been two years already? I have many fond memories of camp with our counsellors @cogdog and @mburtis, and still wish that there were some magic portal back to The Monkey House where my bunk mates and I hung out.

    If your kidlets are looking for a great MineCraft community of teachers and their kids, I have made my new home on the GamingEDUs server — let me know if you and the kids would like a tour sometime. Coming events later this summer will include the Marathon Run of The Great Wall of Gumby, and the opening of the Great Undersea Intercontinental Subway between the Survival Centre and HorsieField Castle. Both promise to be well attended event! Watch for details on my blog at gumbyblockhead.com.

    • Reverend says:

      Hmmm, I think I remember you, Gumby. I’m definitely interested in a Minecraft server, we haven;t made that leap yet, so send me details and we’ll jump on. My kids would lvoe the community aspect now give they are fairly fluent in the specfics of the game.

      Let me know, you beautiful ball of clay.

  3. Tom says:

    My kids are fans as well. It’s interesting that they like them without having any real association with the originals.

    I wonder if the parody tag is more about fair use.

    • Reverend says:

      Ha, never thought about Pardoy tag as fair use, that’s interesting. The other thing I am wondering is if kids are making these parodies. Some of them seem pretty freaking slick, and I know Mine it Out also sells a lot on iTUnes. This is bug business 🙂

  4. Minecraft is big here, too. Evan even has his own YouTube channel of demo/howto videos!

    http://m.youtube.com/channel/UC9t68BG-LH9zzW2I4up3Gmw

    • Reverend says:

      D’Arcy,
      So awesome, a stellar edtech in the making. Narrate your work, baby!

    • Reverend says:

      After watching Evan’s Let’s Play Episode 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXQCDgMsJqU), it’s truly mindbloing to me the inclination for us to share and narrate what we’ve learned. And that’s often the case when we’re excited about waht we learned. Just a simple, truly powerful concept. Alos, I love how he inhereited his dad’s humilty, “I’m all right at Minecraft, not the best, but I’m not too bad.” As you might guess, my son would unqalifyingly say he ruled all Minecraft 🙂

  5. Minecraft is astonishing, isn’t it? It’s like an alternate history version of what Second Life wanted to be.

    My kids are also into it. Owain likes to play “Don’t Mine At Night” from his phone when he walks home from the bus.

    • Reverend says:

      Bryan,
      I constantly think about Second Life when we are playing together. And the same thing struck me about Minecraft as the popular Lego video games in the early 2000s, despite the seemingly unquenchable push for verisimilitude lofi can be far more compelling at times. I’m not pretending Second Life was that, but this sense of a world like ours we occupy online and do that same boring shit is not all that compellign in the end. Shopping in malls, presenting pwoerpoint slides, dry humping in a park, etc. That said, you could fly. And even while I write this a part of me still has a soft spot for the Linden economy of the internet. It’s just crazy how these things rise and fall. Unlike Minecraft, Second Life was always somehow a bit more serious than a game. I wonder if that had something to do with it’s demise.

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