The MineMania Hardcore Experience
Hi everyone! It’s admin reddust on the scene today, where we’ve just introduced our new HARDCORE server! For the uninitiated, hardcore Minecraft is when a world is set up so that after you die once, then the world is locked and you can only observe (in spectator mode). It gives you that feeling of danger at every turn, as you never know which of your key presses will be your last… After some testing, we brought a bunch of our players on and enjoyed that new world smell. I intentionally left it as close to vanilla as feasibly possible, so there’s no fancy sethomes and teleport requests (sorry!). Player-vs-player combat was also turned off, as we agreed that it would give a better experience to everyone if we could get along rather than being at each other’s throats the whole time. But that’s enough of the boring explanations, now it’s time for the results! The deaths scoreboard at the end of the session At the end of our session, after only one hour, we had a whopping total of 4 deaths. That’s over half of the players! Unfortunately, I, the one with the most experience, died first because of a stray arrow from a skeleton. Then came cheesetoastboi, who fell foul of a creeper and suffered a case of explosion-itis. Rachel died next, although truth be told none of us thought she would last that long! Finally, right at the end of the session, FrodoWaffles fell too, bringing the day to a close. All in all, I’d say it was pretty eventful! If you’re on our server, you can use the /hardcore command to head over and try it for yourself! That’s all from me now, so have fun! -reddust9
Minecraft Club is back from 13 Jan – end of March 2024!
Thanks to Sandwell MBC’s funding ‘Creating a Playable Sandwell’, Creative Active Lives CIC are able to run their Inclusive Family Fun Club until the end of March 2024! This means that our Saturday morning in-person LAN club can also continue! We are thrilled as we have so much fun every Saturday. You can come and use one of our laptops, or bring your own! You can build and PvP with other children if you want to (you can turn off PvP if you don’t want to do that), go on raids and mass mob battles, play in CraftyLand Theme Park, and take part in build challenges. We also have a range of adaptive controllers for PC, and an eye gaze tracker which works with Special Effect’s open source code to allow children with different mobility needs to join in the fun and games. As well as Minecraft Club, lots of other family activities are happening – circus skills, crafts, beading, Lego, board games, Nerf games, Laser Tag, the floor is lava, go karts and lots more! Sessions are FREE of charge thanks for funding from Creating a Playable Sandwell. When: From 13th Jan, every Saturday 1030am-1230pm Where: Rowley Learning Campus Hub, Curral Road, Rowley Regis B65 9AN
Gaming Fun Day for Children with SEND
Our first Gaming Fun Day! Last Sunday we hosted our first, but definitely not our last, FREE Gaming Fun Day for children with SEND, their friends and families, as part of the Mayor’s Celebration Weekend. It was a huge success! We can’t wait to do it again. We took our pop up Minecraft LAN Gaming set up, assistive set of joystick and buttons, all of our workshops and entertainment equipment, and invited some hand picked inclusive activity providers along to Rowley Learning Campus, where we welcome 73 children to our fun day! We had: Minecraft LAN Gaming Mario Kart Virtual Reality Gaming Black Country Brick Show Lego workshops Sensory Room Giant Bubble shows Circus Skills workshops Board Games Crafts Dungeons and Dragons role playing for beginners Fire Engine visit Hula hooping Comfy Book Corner Coffee and cake mobile bar Archery Smoothie Bike
Funding Success!
Funding success! We are thrilled to announce we were awarded funding from the Heart of England Community Foundation to support the start up and first year costs of our server! We are so grateful and this has already made such a difference. This has allowed us to have this fantastic new website designed by the wonderful Eighty3design, funded the first year of server hosting costs while we try and develop the server and what we offer to allow it be financially self-sustainable, bring in The Wizard Keen of Wonderquest to work with our groups, and support promotional costs. Thank you so much to the Heart of England Community Foundation for believing in our server and the power of Minecraft, and of Community, to change lives. With the breathing space and support that this funding allows us, we will increase the number of our online sessions, and plan an in person celebration event to bring us all together next year!
Online Safety
safeguarding Online Safety is often the biggest concern when your child wants to play online. When I’m approached by a parent who is unsure about their child playing online with other children, I make sure they know all the safeguarding procedures I have put in place. I thought I’d put them in a blog post for anyone who is on the website and wondering if this is safe for their child. Safeguarding is at the forefront of what we do. Parent involvement and communication is a vital part of this. That’s why we love to connect with parents on the phone, via email or social media so that we all know who we are talking to. Rachel Conlisk is Designated Safeguarding Lead, and completed Level 2 Safeguarding Training in 2022 and Level 3 DSL Training in 2023. We do not allow anyone to join the server unless we have manually approved them. For this, the parent needs to apply to join on behalf of the child, we verify age and identity, and then we send joining details out. Once the child adds the server, they cannot enter our worlds until we manually add their Minecraft user name to the approved players list, adding a further level of safeguarding. Our server is always open, so you might wonder who your child could be playing with. One of our young players came up with a solution and hand coded a program and uploaded to our website. They are amazing. So – if you want to know who your child is online on our Server with at any time, you can see which user names are playing and which world they are playing in. Visit http://status.minemania.co/ We have an automatic log of all ‘text-chat’ communication within the Minecraft server worlds and log of the gameplay stored on the server, so we can retrieve any conversations or game interactions at any time if any parent or child has any issues or concerns. Although there won’t be an adult Admin online on the server 24/7, we can be contacted via email hello@minemania.co or via our Facebook Page. We recommend to parents/carers that your child plays in the room with you in earshot and you can see what we are doing as well. We also like it that if parents are in the background during our scheduled sessions, we can all get to know each other as well! We have made some lovely friendships this way. We have game rules and a code of conduct (displayed on entry to our game world and on the website) that all players must abide by, or they can be temporarily or even permanently ejected from the server. Our volunteers who are over 18 are DBS checked and undergo the NSPCC Online Tutor Safeguarding Course. Any external tutors will hold a DBS check. We encourage our players who have reached a certain level of experience to level up to becoming volunteer Admins and Developers on the server. This builds self confidence and leadership and is great experience with opportunities for more learning and upskilling. So you may encounter Admins who are under 18 as well as adult Admins. Admin roles would only be offered after consulting parents/carers. Our booking form is only accessible to members who are registered and who we email the password to. Our forum that parents and children are welcome to use to communicate is also password protected. You can find all of our safeguarding policies on our parent company website at https://creativeactivelives.org.uk/policies/
FREE Thursday Clubs & Update on the Future!
FREE Thursday Clubs & Update on the Future! Our Thursday Minecraft socials are starting again from the 12th October! Sorry we are late starting this year – it has been an exceptionally hectic Summer with our new pop up LAN gaming workshops and organising a summer camp, and a Gaming Fun Day for children with SEND their families and friends! We can’t wait to be back again. This next year will have a lot going on as we develop our server with the wonderful work of our group members and some special guests! Once Thursdays are back up and running, we will be planning some daytimes sessions ideal for children who are not in school or home educated. Thursday sessions will be hosted by Rachel of Creative Active Lives CIC, and are a relaxed, social build, play and chat session, with Zoom running alongside Minecraft to allow for voice chat. Non-members who wish to attend Thursday Club must register for membership and allow 2-3 days for your membership to be processed and our safeguarding processes to take place, and for the Minecraft User Name to be added to the whitelist to allow access to the server.
