Comments on: How to let my kid play minecraft sans all the cursing

Question: How to let my kid play minecraft sans all the cursing

jseven — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:18:34 -0800

How to let my kid play minecraft sans all the cursing

My kid and his friends have really taken to playing minecraft. The problem is now there are a bunch of people saying some nasty things on there.

Is there anything we can do to eliminate all the cursing?

Are there any "family friendly" servers? Is anyone aware of an ip for one?

Is there a way for them to stay on the server they are on? (apparently they have done a lot of work they don't want to lose)

My son thanks you for keeping him playing.

By: nrobertson

nrobertson — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:41:51 -0800

Metafilter's own gaming club, Mefightclub, has a really great Minecraft server, the Aporkalypse. I won't say there is no cursing, but all the players are very responsible and we have some excellent moderators. There are members' children on the server from time to time.

By: upatree

upatree — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:49:18 -0800

After some crappy stuff happening on various servers, we finally just got one of our own through McLayer (I found a coupon code in the official Minecraft forums, even). Now she plays with her friends on her own server.

By: anonymisc

anonymisc — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 16:56:26 -0800

I think you may be able to use one of the 3rd party editor programs out there to copy the area containing most of your son's work and graft it in a world on your own server, but I haven't tried to do this so I don't know how complex it is.
If you do this, perhaps don't reveal the details of how to him - using a world editor instead of the game - even just knowing about editors - can poison the sense of achievement (from doing things in the game) that is part of the joy of minecraft.

By: ShutterBun

ShutterBun — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 17:30:15 -0800

What about simply implementing some kind of profanity filter?

By: jeoc

jeoc — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 18:20:18 -0800

We have been going through this with our daughter.

The folks over at MeFightClub are terrific, and I think their server is a kid-appropriate in the sense that it is supportive, respectful and cooperative (or as they say, rotato). I understand there is occasional non-aggressive swearing (although I've never actually seen it), but that also describes my household and is a non-issue for me.

But they are also maintaining a community of players that work together to collaboratively build a world. My daughter enjoys playing there (and they were very welcoming and gracious), but the level of discourse is a little bit above her (she's late elementary school-aged). I think the Aporkalypse is a good option for a mid- to older teen, but not as much for a younger kid.

So we set up a server in our house, upon which we can whitelist her friends. My husband set it up with info from Minecraft wiki and youtube. You don't need a dedicated computer or anything like that.

By: jferg

jferg — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 19:04:53 -0800

Thirding nrobertson and jeoc - check out the Aporkalypse/Reporkalypse over at mefightclub. Lots of good people on there. I fully intend to let my kids on once they have a decent machine to play on.

By: BlahLaLa

BlahLaLa — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 19:16:53 -0800

Google Intercraften. Its a family friendly server.

By: jseven

jseven — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 14:25:07 -0800

Thank you all for your help.

I went to treepuncher.org and he now has his own server setup (with a white list) and thinks he's "tha man" as a result.

He's into me for $15 bucks / month, but he's figuring out how to make some money from his friends to pay for it and pad his pocket a bit.

This will be interesting....

Thank you.