So Your Kids Want Their Own Minecraft Server

At our house, Minecraft is the most popular video game with my boys who are ages 10 and 12. Sure, they like Disney Infinity on the xBox 360 and various apps on the iPad, but Minecraft leads the pack. Dinner conversations often focus on “Minecraft this” and “Minecraft that.” I’m always trying to change the subject to something else. Although I admit that I’ve never played Minecraft, I am well versed on what a “Creeper” is and what “spawning” means. I even helped build a Creeper head as a Halloween costume. The game seems rather harmless if not graphically inferior; didn’t we do bitmaps back in the 70s? Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to survive my child’s Minecraft addiction.

It all seemed so innocent when my boys asked to buy Minecraft on the PC several years ago. I paid, and we downloaded, and then the work began.

“Mom, I need help installing a mod.”

“Everything you need to know is in this YouTube.”

Sure, installing some of those mods required every bit of computer programming skill I have. I was so frustrated. Then came the Minecraft Launcher along with the boys getting a bit older, and now they are more self sufficient installing mods and updates. I love that Launcher!

Over Christmas I got the latest request. I was innocently reading my book half paying attention to the football game that was on when they hit me. “Mom, can we have our own Minecraft servers?” Huh? They had asked me this before, and we even tried to configure our own server–another hair pulling intensive computer skill fiasco. I had tried to explain that servers were a lot of work and that their computers probably weren’t powerful enough to support a server with multiple users playing the game. I thought we had put the whole server issue to bed. Apparently not!

Introduce GForce Servers. The boys explained that you can now buy a server running on someone else’s computer but still manage it yourself. One of their Minecraft friends already had one running and configured, and he was volunteering to get them started. It sounded to good to be true.

GForce offers several Minecraft server options, and we chose the Iron option at $5 a month which comes with 1GB of memory, a dedicated IP, and all the options any Minecraft enthusiast could want. They used their allowance, I paid, and I hoped I wouldn’t regret it. Of course they each wanted their own server, and I couldn’t see a reason why not as I hoped this would be a good computer programming learning opportunity.

The boys have been up on their new servers for a couple of weeks now, and everything is running smoothly. They each have a log-on to a GForce control panel, the Force Panel, which allows them to manage and configure their servers.

They can manage mods and plugins for their server.

They can set-up their Minecraft world just how they like it.

They can even get the thrill of entering console style commands.

I haven’t heard one complaint, and I haven’t been roped in to help. Happy kids and a happy mom.

I’d like to point out that one benefit of having a personal server is that you can control who your kids play with. With a dedicated IP, only kids that they share the IP with will be able to log onto their server. So, if you want to have more control over who your kid plays Minecraft with, this might be the right solution for you.

GForce has game servers for several other games including Grand Theft Auto and Garry’s Mod. They also offer a free trial.

There are other hosted Minecraft server options too. Do a Google search on hosted Minecraft server and review the links.