Tadeu

Easy to learn, impossible to lose

In Minecraft, users move around a virtual world, harvesting resources like wood, gold, and iron ore that they can use to build whatever they like. Everything is made of textured 3D cubes. The graphics are extremely low-fi. There are bad guys to watch out for and defeat, and technically a dragon you can slay to beat the game, but what has captivated millions is the total freedom Minecraft offers to wander around and build, often collaboratively, a huge world of you own. "It’s not a game exactly, or a social network, although it has elements of both," says Pakman. "It’s a canvas that offers near total freedom to build your own world, and that has turned out to be extremely appealing to a lot of kids and adults."

Steven Sorka, a 36-year-old software developer from Toronto, has never beaten Minecraft, at least not without cheating. He always gets killed by the Ender Dragon, but it doesn’t matter. "You can spend a lot of time enchanting swords and trying to defeat the Ender dragon. But lots of kids are also perfectly happy just riding pigs, building houses, and exploring cities," says Sorka, who plays with his 20-year-old stepson and 11-year-old daughter. He sees the game’s flexibility as the key. "There are other games that have crossed generations, but Minecraft seems to be a perfect storm of Lego and adventure that has appeal for all."

Another big reason Minecraft appeals to younger players is that it’s easy to learn and impossible to lose. "There’s no minimum skill level," says Sorka. "If you die, you respawn. Maybe you dropped some stuff, but that probably doesn’t matter if you just like running around and following your big brother." He has played with big groups of adult friends, but now spends the majority of his time playing with his children and their cousins. "I’d love to play more video games with them, but there’s few that have a low barrier to entry and capture the attention of young ones."

Of course, just because you can’t lose doesn’t mean things can’t go wrong. Just like at school, in any group of kids there will be a few bullies, known as "griefers" in Minecraft parlance. But because parents can set up their own servers for their children to play on, they can exert a level of control and protection that isn’t always possible in the real world. "I got a frantic call at work," remembers Pakman. "Some kids had come into the server and were destroying homes and killing players. So, I banned a few of the wrong-doers. Now we have griefing-protection tools and anti-cheat technology on the server to help bring a little order to the world. Not too much, but just enough to keep the community healthy."

Mods, makers, hacking, and learning

A lot of parents are especially happy to spend time and money on Minecraft for their kids because they see it as a teaching tool. Minecraft teaches kids about architecture, and players can use something called redstone circuits to create simple mechanical devices, even entire computers, out of Minecraft blocks. And while Mojang offers a number of different versions and upgrades of Minecraft to download, the incredible variety of worlds to explore and items you can build comes from "mods", modified software created by the community that can be installed on a server to reshape that world or the rules that govern it. For many young players, mods become a gateway to the world of computer programming, something parents, and perhaps Microsoft as well, are keen to encourage.

Peter Grace says his son became interested around the age of three after him play. "He became very fond of the game very quickly, as many kids with autism do." Grace started a family-friendly server called Blocktown.org, which now has a few dozen dedicated regulars. "It has definitely prompted my son to want to build custom mods for Minecraft. I just recently purchased a beginning programming book for him so that he can get the basics before we move on to Java."

Trei Brundrett, the chief product officer at The Verge’s parent company, Vox, played with his two sons Aedan and Jospeh. They started out by sitting together on the couch playing in the same world over a local LAN network. "It felt like playing LEGO with him, but obviously much more interactive. We'd spend hours building giant cities, dividing up responsibility for different parts that would connect together." Soon, however, the boys wanted to progress to custom games, which meant adding on mods, software that changes the physics, materials, and rules inside your Minecraft universe. "Aeden taught himself how to find, download and install the mods on his own local machine. He quickly cycled through many of them. And inevitably he wanted to make his own."

For a while Aedan just watched as Brundrett learned the basics of how to create mods. Then he enrolled in a summer camp to learn Java. "Eventually he created his own simple mod - just his own block that he could insert into the world. The mystery of programming, of software, of Minecraft and mods disappeared. I've never seen him more proud. And man I was proud too - my kid didn't just play a game on his computer, he had hacked it - just like I did on my Apple IIe. Sitting next to my kid writing code, hacking on a game together is an amazing experience."

Minecraft village via Flickr

Microsoft as manager

Microsoft is not doubt eager to own a profitable game which can give them a foothold among young consumers, especially a platform with strong social and mobile elements. Minecraft has consistently been one of the most downloaded apps in the paid category on iOS and Android. But Brundrett and many other parents thinks it goes much deeper than that. "Honestly, I think there is a Minecraft generation, one that is learning that you don't just have to use computers, that you can make things with these machines, that you can hack it."

There have been more than 12 million downloads of Minecraft on the Xbox console, and over 16.6 million copies sold for Mac and PC. Hacking Minecraft requires owning an honest to goodness computer, not a tablet or smartphone. That’s a potential upside for desktop operating systems like Windows. Hacking also means learning about how servers and APIs work. If kids are learning that stuff while interacting with Microsoft’s cloud, they might be more willing to use it other services and products down the road.

Whether Microsoft can maintain the momentum of Minecraft, and perhaps absorb some of it’s goodwill, remains to be seen. "I really do worry that Microsoft may not understand this ecosystem," says Brundrett. "However, as someone who worked quite a bit for Microsoft (through my own software firm) I know they that do get what it means to create a turn-key world for their developers with great tools and documentation." Brundrett, like many techie parents, says there is plenty of room for improving how players interact with Minecraft and how different communities play together.

But fixing all the rough edges, could also lessen the charm. "It just might not be the same as having to sort through the mess," Brundrett says. "There is something unique about not just following instructions, but bridging the gaps through extra research, wild leaps of experimentation."

Charlie Brooker’s Emmy-winning drama Black Mirror is returning with a feature-length Christmas special called Yuletide.

Three interwoven stories will come together in the new film which Channel 4 says is “the most mind-bending Black Mirror yet”. The drama has not yet been cast.

Brooker said: "I always enjoy a good ghost story at Christmas, and I'm a sucker for the Amicus’ compendium horror movies of the 70s. Our aim is to create the Black Mirror equivalent of that."

Phil Clarke, Channel 4’s head of comedy, added: “I’m delighted that we have a Black Mirror Special this Christmas. Charlie Brooker has penned a dystopian future festive tale, that intertwines three stories to deliver a dramatic and thrilling twist. It’s satirical, comic, disturbing, and thought provoking. Not to be missed.”

The anthology show, which is ironically made by the channel's comedy department, began life in 2011 and has already aired two series of three episodes each.

Brooker has written most of them, including all of series two, but the episode The Entire History of You from series one was written by Peep Show writer Jesse Armstrong.

Black Mirror explores the sinister and troubling side of technology in self-contained stories with different cast members.

In series one, t The National Anthem concerned a fictional Prime Minister played by Rory Kinnear who was forced to have sex with a pig in order to save the life of an (also fictional) member of the royal family.

In series two, the episode Be Right Back saw Hayley Attwell play a grieving girlfriend who buys a robot to take the place of her dead boyfriend.

In February, RadioTimes.com broke the news that a single episode of Black Mirror was planned for this year – and with the festive timing it appears C4 has got it in under the wire just in time.