Minecraft PC newbie here.

[ksr5377]

My 3 older children all have Minecraft PE on their tablets.  They love it.  This past week they went to a friends house who has the PC edition and they are all begging for it for Christmas now.  At under $30 it's something that I can budget in at the last minute, BUT I have some questions.  We only have one PC, can we have three different players (accounts I guess) on one computer?  Do I need to pay for each account? I would assume only one could play at a time, so I suppose I can deal with regulating turns with that, but will it be worth it?  Is it really that much better than pocket edition?

 

And, if you have any ideas on how to put a downloadable game under the the Christmas tree, I would appreciate it.  =)

[kirstenhill]

At Target in the checkout line the other day I saw "Minecraft gift cards" you could purchase which would (I assume) contain a code for downloading the game after you purchase it from Target.

 

The pocket edition has improved greatly over the past couple years. The game play is very similar now, but you still can't do mods on the P.E. And you can't connect to desktop version servers.

 

They could all share one account if you only have one computer - if they are ok finding a user name they all agree upon. As of right now, you can't change the user name after you select it. The only benefit I can think of to a separate account for each player when you have only one computer is that they would each have a name they personally liked, and they could pick their "skin" (customizing what the player looks like), and not have to always change it after another kid changed the skin to their preferences.

 

We have three PCs and three accounts, so that three people can play at once. When we only had two accounts and three computers, we could install Minecraft on all three but only two could play at once (unless we turned off the wifi on one computer so that someone could play a local world...but I think that was cheating the system, really, so we bought a third user name/account eventually).

[nd293]

And, if you have any ideas on how to put a downloadable game under the the Christmas tree, I would appreciate it. =)

As it happens I do!

 

I printed out a Minecraft picture and some 'gift vouchery' words and glued them to each side of an old store card, and wrapped that. Ds thinks it's an iTunes voucher under the tree - he is going to be over the moon when he finds out what it is. You could also pick up one of the cheap Minecraft books and attach a homemade voucher to that. I believe you actually do get Minecraft gift cards in some places, but not in Australia.

[Carrie12345]

Dh handles the Minecraft stuff, so I'm pretty useless for the main question.

That said, ds has a Minecraft game band, which allows him to take "his" MC to friends' houses.  Because of that, I have to assume it's possible to have multiple accounts on one PC.

[happypamama]

Thanks for asking this question. DD wants it, but I'm a little bummed that we can only put one user on it. Or maybe that doesn't matter, and even one user can create different worlds like on PE?

 

At any rate, I need DD's preferred email address before I download it, so I'm just going to print out a picture and wrap that.

[ksr5377]

It's still not entirely clear but the one thing I know is that with one computer we would still need three accounts.  That's probably not going to work.  Yes, unfortunately, my kids would be the ones mad that the sibling that played earlier that day had changed everything.  I love how the PC version can spur interest in coding, but now I'm thinking we may wait a bit for PC.  

[Hypatia.]

I would get different accounts for each kid. My older four have accounts and it would not work well with them sharing an account! Mine would be upset if their siblings had changed something for their character or worlds also, they each have their own "skins" (basically just changing the appearance of their character) and DS1 likes to use many different mods.