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Ross, age 10, says he has Minecraft mania.

“My record is playing five hours one day,” says the Virginia fifth-grader. He lowers his voice so his mom won’t hear. She doesn’t like him to play for more than 90 minutes a day.

When Ross isn’t playing Minecraft, he reads about it. Or he watches Minecraft videos on YouTube. Or he talks about the game with friends.

Once he dreamed that he was in the

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Compare and Contrast Look for similarities and differences as you read the stories of Minecraft and the LEGO® brand.

UPCLOSE

LOOK FOR WORD NERD’S 5 WORDS IN BOLD

Minecraft world. “That was a good dream,” he says. It might seem that Ross is Minecraft’s

biggest fan. Yet many other kids are just as fanatical.

Parents rave about the game too. Some play it themselves. Even many teachers love Minecraft. More than 2,500 U.S. schools now use the game to teach math, history, architecture, and more.

Since 2009, more than 100 million people worldwide have logged in to play.

Minecraft mania, it seems, has swept the world.

Exploring and BuildingVideo games are a big business. In just

three months last year, Americans spent more than $2.88 billion on them. The most successful games tend to come from huge companies. Creating a hit game can cost tens of millions of dollars. It can involve hundreds of people. For instance, FIFA 14 was made by the company Electronic Arts (EA). EA has 9,000 workers. It has offices worldwide. Hundreds of programmers, designers, and other experts worked to create FIFA’s precision shots and other effects.

Minecraft is different. It was created by

Mania!How the world

has fallen in love with Minecraft

BY LAUREN TARSHIS

Minecraft is now being used in thousands of schools around the world.

one man, Markus Persson. He grew up in a small town in Sweden. By age 8, he had learned basic computer programming. At 13, he and his friends were making their own games. He didn’t finish high school, opting instead to work as a programmer in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm. In 2009, he began creating Minecraft. He worked alone at home. Persson is now 35.

Minecraft looks old-fashioned. The colors are almost drab. The blocky players look a bit like LEGO people. The game is simple. Even young kids can play. Players move through an onscreen wilderness. Trees, rocks, and dirt can be “mined” and then “crafted” into tools and shelters. In the game’s creative mode, players can just explore and build. Want more danger and

excitement? Play in survival mode, complete with (not-so-scary) monsters and packs of wolves.

There are no flashy special effects, no instructions, and no levels to beat.

“It’s just about exploring and building,” Persson says.

That may explain Minecraft’s success. “You can be as creative as you want,” says

Alex, a Connecticut fifth-grader. “It’s not like you have an objective and then you’re done. You make your own objective.”

“And as soon as you finish, you come up with another idea,” says Oscar, a fourth-grader from Brooklyn, New York.

“It’s really more of a toy,” says Jon-Paul Dyson, director of the International Center

for the History of Electronic Games. Dyson says Minecraft has as much in

common with blocks and dollhouses as with modern video games.

Each player is guided by his or her own ideas.

“Minecraft is like the best building toy you’ve ever had,” Dyson says. “The possibilities are endless.”

Ross agrees. “Every time I play, I can do something different,” he says. “That’s why I keep playing.”

400 Billion LEGO Bricks—and Still Counting

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In what ways are the histories of Minecraft and the LEGO brand similar? How are they different? Write a paragraph explaining your answer, using at least three details from each article.

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12 S T O R Y W O R K S

1931 was a hard year for Ole

Kirk Kristiansen. Ole was a carpenter. He lived in a small village in Denmark. Like many people, Ole and his family were struggling. An economic crisis known as the Great Depression gripped the world. Ole had three small sons to support. His wife was expecting their fourth child. The future looked tough.

A Growing BusinessOle was rich in

one thing: wood. His village, Billund, was surrounded by many birch trees. Ole used the wood to make ladders and stools. He built them in miniature first, to get their designs just right.

That’s how he thought of building toys. Even poor farmers could

afford a few toys at Christmastime.

Ole drove from town to town selling his wooden trucks and animals. Often he was paid with food.

Time passed. The business grew. Ole started making plastic toys. Plastic was cheap. It didn’t peel or chip.

Ole’s son Godtfred worked with his dad. It was his idea to create a set of plastic blocks that kids could

use to build and rebuild. Ole loved the idea.

They called their invention LEGO bricks.

A Flop at FirstThe first

LEGO bricks were a flop. They were

just hollow plastic squares. They came apart too

easily.

The bricks needed “clutch power.” They had to cling to each other until small hands pried them apart. Godtfred designed bricks with studs on top and tubes underneath. In 1958, they released Town Plan, one of the first LEGO sets. Ole died a few months later.

Play WellIt’s safe to say that the

LEGO brand has succeeded beyond Ole’s wildest dreams. Over the past 56 years, the company has made more than 400 billion LEGO bricks—62 for every person on Earth. There are thousands of different LEGO sets. There are LEGO theme parks, a hit movie, video games, and more.

But the company’s vision is the same as it was when Ole was making blocks from wood.

The word lego comes from the Danish term leg godt. It means “play well.”

–Lela Nargi