Age recomendation for Minetest

[gigomaf]

I would to ask about age recommendation of base game. Does it contains night monsters or some cartoon violence like Minecraft? It's the game appropriate for 7 years old?

[rubenwardy]

Hi! The age rating for Minetest is PEGI 3, as certified on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... t.minetest

Note that PEGI does not cover online play. I recommend supervising your child if they ever play online

You can disable the server list by setting "serverlist_url" to empty text in the advanced settings menu. This is obviously easily by passable

Note: IANAL

[Wuzzy]

The “base game” of Minetest is called “Minetest Game”.
And yes, in my personal totally unprofessional opinion, it is definitely suited for 7 year-olds in singleplayer mode. You almost can't get any more harmless than that.

In Minetest Game (without any mods, that is), singleplayer mode, all you really do is walk around a blocky world, mine blocks, collect items and build stuff. There's not even a goal, it's basically just a big sandbox. There are no monsters at all, not even animals or basically any living things (besides other players, when online). You can die, but you just instantly respawn and damage can be disabled anyway. You cannot really “lose” or “win”.

That's a bit simplified, but it really boils down to this. I make no promises in that Minetest Game is actually fun and not boring. :P

Online it's a different story. Obviously, it is possible to meet other players and you can kill them (but servers can disable this), but it is very rare to actually find a “pure” unmodded Minetest Game server. In reality, most Minetest Game servers are heavily modded, that means they have a ton of new features in an attempt to make it more interesting. Every Minetest server is different with different rules and mods; they can host something that's even a different game altogether which may or may not include things you find disturbing (from my experience, most of the time, it doesn't go above “cartoon violence” as you call it). You will never know until you join the server. Servers may or may not tell you in advance about these things in the server description. One example for such a “wildly different” server is Inside The Box (it's also completely harmless IMO).

Finally, of course, the usual dangers of “being online” apply, like everywhere else on the Internet: Don't tell them your private information, people can be arseholes, etc.

[gigomaf]

Thank you so much.
Now I try to add a mod with some friendly animals (KPGmobs looks nice). I see it ingame at MODs tab, but unfortunately I can't see any mobs ingame..

[Wuzzy]

Mods don't install themselves. ;-)

Minetest comes with no mods installed by default (except those part of Minetest Game). You still have to browse the forums the download and install them.

https://wiki.minetest.net/Help:Installing_Mods

[GreenXenith]

Mods don't install themselves. ;-)

Minetest comes with no mods installed by default (except those part of Minetest Game). You still have to browse the forums the download and install them.

https://wiki.minetest.net/Help:Installing_Mods

I see it ingame at MODs tab

He already downloaded it.

@gigomaf you need to enable it if you haven't already; do this by selecting the world and pressing 'Configure', selecting the mod, ticking the 'Enabled' box, and saving. Do note that many mods have dependencies that are required for the mod to load. I mention this because most mob mods require the API mod to run, in this case it would be mobs_redo.

[TillCoyote]

I think restriction to play any game based on age is very ageistic, which is the same as racism. The only recommendation is to not play multiplayer MT if you have weak psychic setup, ie you can't look at blood for example.

[bhree]

Rating should be everyone ESRB for offline MT dan MTG. Only one thing of my concern is when damage enabled, player can die and some players seem enjoy dying by drowning or jumping off the cliff. I think that is psychologically unhealthy. Certain command like kill me or kill singleplayer also has suicidal aspect which seems unsuitable for children. Parents should accompany kids and should make sure settings like damage is unset.

[Festus1965]

now the 2nd time that a post here is not taken

3rd try (a short is taken !)
It is not only the age, it is also a question of brain, education and culture.


enlarge:
As a Parent I always check a game first myself, may be with my daughter sitting beside, to judge the game myself depending on our education in knowledge, culture and local also religions behaviors!

Also I check her reaction on the game about
* complexly
* reality
* safety (register data, control data via browser, chat moderation, ...)
* age kind game-play and possibilities

Example:
* monsters are not real - it took long time to take them in as a fun
* killing animals (so also monsters), allowed from me/us as WE human eat chicken, cow and pick also - and they have to be killed - I talk with her long time where the food on our plate is coming, and as we have own fish and chicken killed for restaurant, she know !
* complex about production chains is good to understand (milk comes from supermarket haha, got it ?) I find it good education and knowledge that wheat (crop) need to be prepared (hoe), have water, time to grow (sunlight or else) not violated, harvested, prepared cooked to bread to eat ... so she understand the worth of something needed time and work to invest !

[Wuzzy]

I think restriction to play any game based on age is very ageistic, which is the same as racism. The only recommendation is to not play multiplayer MT if you have weak psychic setup, ie you can't look at blood for example.

I couldn't agree more!

The whole idea behind “content ratings” making them based solely on age is a laughable oversimplification and I am very sceptical of it. Every human is different. I'm not saying we should give 5-year olds the latest splatter party but this whole “child protection” idea is hysterical often enough.

The ratings are not scientific and they are arbitrary, based often on moral and culture that they are made in. They are thus doomed to be biased. This is demonstrated by the simple fact that there disagreeing on a concrete rating is common.

Proponents of the system often say the ratings are just “recommendations” but it's not as simple as that. I see so often the sad case of self-censorship from the game makers themselves in order to get a low age rating (because the higher the rating, the harder the game will be to get). Heck, even rubenwardy from the Minetest project proposed that for 5.0.0 certain mods and games be outright banned from the upcoming Content DB so Minetest gets a low PEGI rating … You can't make this shit up!

[TillCoyote]

now the 2nd time that a post here is not taken

3rd try (a short is taken !)
It is not only the age, it is also a question of brain, education and culture.


enlarge:
As a Parent I always check a game first myself, may be with my daughter sitting beside, to judge the game myself depending on our education in knowledge, culture and local also religions behaviors!

Also I check her reaction on the game about
* complexly
* reality
* safety (register data, control data via browser, chat moderation, ...)
* age kind game-play and possibilities

Example:
* monsters are not real - it took long time to take them in as a fun
* killing animals (so also monsters), allowed from me/us as WE human eat chicken, cow and pick also - and they have to be killed - I talk with her long time where the food on our plate is coming, and as we have own fish and chicken killed for restaurant, she know !
* complex about production chains is good to understand (milk comes from supermarket haha, got it ?) I find it good education and knowledge that wheat (crop) need to be prepared (hoe), have water, time to grow (sunlight or else) not violated, harvested, prepared cooked to bread to eat ... so she understand the worth of something needed time and work to invest !

I eat horse meat. Will you restrict your children contact with me?

[Festus1965]

I eat horse meat. Will you restrict your children contact with me?

You misunderstand I think,
as horses are possible in game, and could be killed - would be the question if I allow her/them to join such server ... yes, as they should learn to kill and eat everything - as the future will be hard.
It is not about the gamer/players are on the server, it is about what options the server ... or a game itself offers - to decide as a parent.
So I guess for a server country/language/region with major Moslem, the pig killing might be better off. That could be a problem of this parents to allow there kids to join. So even as a server offer should think about how will join mainly ... haha

The contacts gamer I see then beside, and the command "/revoke privs TillCoyote shout" solves also that problem then.

As that is the other big point with kids, how good that server is watched against ... bad people.

[TillCoyote]

I eat horse meat. Will you restrict your children contact with me?

You misunderstand I think,
as horses are possible in game, and could be killed - would be the question if I allow her/them to join such server ... yes, as they should learn to kill and eat everything - as the future will be hard.
It is not about the gamer/players are on the server, it is about what options the server ... or a game itself offers - to decide as a parent.
So I guess for a server country/language/region with major Moslem, the pig killing might be better off. That could be a problem of this parents to allow there kids to join. So even as a server offer should think about how will join mainly ... haha

The contacts gamer I see then beside, and the command "/revoke privs TillCoyote shout" solves also that problem then.

As that is the other big point with kids, how good that server is watched against ... bad people.

Now I want to eat pork.

Yes, my eating of horses makes your children sociopaths.

[BirgitLachner]

I think that Minetest in SIngle-Player mod i okay for 7-year old kids. Add mods with nice new blocks like furniture. Or use Etherreal Mod to have a world with more different biomes with fruit, vegetable an different plants.

Birgit

[rubenwardy]

The whole idea behind “content ratings” making them based solely on age is a laughable oversimplification and I am very sceptical of it. Every human is different. I'm not saying we should give 5-year olds the latest splatter party but this whole “child protection” idea is hysterical often enough.

It's a simplification, but a simplification that mostly holds. It's also established by law and regulation.

Minetest, or at least nerzhul, has a legal contract/obligation to make sure our app follows PEGI 3. The only choice in this is to increase the rating

Heck, even rubenwardy from the Minetest project proposed that for 5.0.0 certain mods and games be outright banned from the upcoming Content DB so Minetest gets a low PEGI rating … You can't make this shit up!

1. I didn't say ban, I said remove
2. This has already happened. I've removed all mature content from CDB until I introduce content warnings

[paramat]

TillCoyote > I think restriction to play any game based on age is very ageistic, which is the same as racism.

Erm, so a parental-advisory indication of extreme content that is almost certainly going to severely disturb a young child, is as bad as prejudice against someone due to their race? Do you know many 2 year olds who are comfortable with hardcore pornography, extreme horror and violence?

The parent will decide of course, and nothing stops a parent showing such material to a young child, so there is no reduction of 'freedom', but such an indication is helpful to parents and saves time.

> The only recommendation is to not play multiplayer MT if you have weak psychic setup

Young children are not guilty here due to having a 'weak psychic setup', they're simply highly sensitive young children. They are also not capable of making a mature decision to stay away from extreme content, so it is not their responsibility to decide to stay away.

Sad to see someone "couldn't agree more" with this astonishing nonsense.

[Linuxdirk]

Do you know many 2 year olds who are comfortable with hardcore pornography, extreme horror and violence?

I guess as many as there are 3 year olds playing Minetest on mobile. (Hint: trying to keep PEGI 3 rating in Play Store by actively removing content from the CDB.)

[TillCoyote]

TillCoyote > I think restriction to play any game based on age is very ageistic, which is the same as racism.
Do you know many 2 year olds who are comfortable with hardcore pornography, extreme horror and violence?

Yes, 99.999% of 2 year olds aren't, but I talked not about "hardcore pornography, extreme horror and violence", I talked about that we need to remember that 6-7 year olds are not infants, and even some smart 4-5 year olds aren't infants, so they can play MT, but they are restricted to do so because they are "under some age". We need not to judge by age, but by period (infant, kid, teen, adult, middle age) or by education ("To play MT you need to end at least primary school to be possible writing and reading"). And yes, life periods don't start at a constant age and can differ from culture to culture, for example, in some caucausian tribes there are girls who get adolescent by 9 y/o! These age restrictioners don't consider that some other cultures, where are other periodisation standards, and I think that that's racistic.

Also, at least by my culture, teens (in average people from 12 years) are comfortable with violence and blood, and, by my opinion, teens can see this if they want cuz their mind is already developed because they all are biologically adult.

My opinion is very unusual and it's ok if you don't agree with it. Say if I'm unright.

[ShadMOrdre]

I've let my son play Minetest since he was 3. He is now 7. While MC, being the more advertised and "popular" game, has his attention, he constantly makes reference back to the fact that MC doesn't have anything like what we've modded (what I as his father has approved, allowed, installed, and modified) into MT. NOTE: I've purposely left MC as the basic package, no mods, no fluff, no $$$. I also do NOT allow him to play online.

As such, and from a parent...

Do not ever rely on content ratings, or anyone elses idea of what is appropriate for your children. What are you thinking!?! As a parent!?! REALLY!?! While they may be a great guide, they can also be gamed. This happens. NOTE: I recently advocated for using the ESRB ratings as a guide to determining the ContentDB ratings. So I am not against ratings. I, in fact, STRONGLY advocate their usage. Much like I prefer a government meat inspector keeping my food supply healthy, I do like folks looking out for my, and my childrens', best interest.

However.....

Monitor what your child is doing, both in real life and in their screen lives (online and offline). If you are OK with what they are doing, then the problem is solved. If you are not OK, then do something about it. BE A PARENT!!!. If you think for one second, that anyone other than yourself is a good judge of what is appropriate for your child, realize, that NO ONE but yourself will ever advocate for your child like you should.

Are you OK with cartoon violence? Are you OK with magic? Are you OK with evolution, science or any other possible contrivance that may arise by your child being exposed to the world around them?

The Lego series of video games are great for kids... if... you, as a parent, are OK with the content of those games. They are rated for children in this very age group in question 5-8 year olds.

When I create a mod, I am not always mindful of whether something is child appropriate, unless I am making something for my child. Not all developers or modders are parents, and so may not think likewise.

Is MT safe for your kid? Yes, if you make it so, and maintain it as such. If you lapse, it can become, just like walking out the door, unsafe.

Shad