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Here is a valuable lesson I have learned about parenting: never tell your children not to touch your Minecraft save file.Of course, this should always have been obvious - children are irrevocably drawn to anything placed enticingly out of reach, especially if it involves video games. My two sons, aged four and six, are obsessed with Minecraft - it's pretty much all they talk or think about. While they used to enjoy playing all the Lego titles, now they just want to load up Mojang's creative masterpiece and batter zombies with pickaxes. They were always going to take a peek at my saved world, eventually. I sort of knew that - I just didn't realise what they'd do when they got there.
There's a reason I was being protective. Being a complete nerd and a fan of modern architecture I had spent around 12 hours of game time building a scale replica of Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier's seminal modernist show home, built in the town of Poissy, France in 1929. It turns out the game's large, uncompromising blocks and its insistence on angular design, make it a perfect palette for the sort of severe construction the Swiss pioneer was famed for. I'd looked jealously at the architectural marvels that others had produced in the PC version of the game, but without a creative mode on my Xbox edition I decided to try something reasonably modest, yet still recognisable. So I got out my Le Corbusier book (as you do), picked a building and got to work. For two days.
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