First of all, you need to know who the creator is...Notch.. The owner right now is Microsoft, though, ever since Notch decided to sell it to Microsoft for a 2.5 billion dollars, because Minecraft wasn't suppost to be super popular but it became popular and Notch decided it gave him too much stress.

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There are 4 different kinds of ways to play Minecraft...
Creative-You get unlimited resources you want and you can fly. Just for being creative.
Survival-You're supposed to look for resources and keep yourself alive, Hardcore-Same as Survival mode but locked at hardest difficulty. And if you die the world goes away forever.
And Adventure. When you first make a world you can not make it instantly adventure. Adventure is designed for making Adventure Maps so that the players won't just break everything. You can though make a LAN world and make the other people adventure mode. I will tell you about LAN world later in the article... If you keep on reading.
There is also a mode called Spectator mode, meant for use in servers. It is designed to help you watch other players do things and you can fly through walls and watch other players play the game while you may have died or decided you didn't want to play said game.

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There is also a variety of enemies... They're called mobs. They can be
Creepers-They blow you up.
Skeletons-They try to shoot you.
Zombies-They try to eat your brains.
SIlverfish-They hide in blocks and try to eat your legs.
Blazes-They try to burn you to death.
Wither- They try to run up to you with a stone sword and hit you to death. They give you a deadly effect that kills you faster.
Zombie Pigman-They are sort of like what the last mob we talked about it was, but is half zombie half pig. They spawn by a pig being struck by lightning. They also can spawn in The Nether Dimension (Mentioned later.)
Wither Boss- They're flying skeletons that drop bombs. They can only be spawned by creating a statue of the boss. You need 4 Soul Sand and 3 Wither Skeleton Skulls.
Spider-They jump on you and bite you.
Cave Spider-They do exactly what Spiders do but they poison you.
Slime-Their giant bodies crush you to death.
Magma Cubes-Exactly like Slime but they're made out of springs & fire & set you on fire.
Enderman-They're really good guys as long as you don't look into their eyes or provoke them by hitting them. Then they are similar to Slenderman.
Ghast-They're like ghosts that shoot explosive fire balls at you.
Endermites-They're like silverfish but have a chance to spawn when Enderman teleport (Yes, they can teleport too).
Guardian- Some creepy fish thing that sucks out life energy from you and squids.
Elder Guardian-The mini-boss of minecraft that is just a big guardian with more health.
Rare Killer Bunny- Little rabbit that tries to kill you. 1/1000 Chance of spawning whenever a rabbit spawns. The rarest thing in Minecraft.
Ender Dragon-The Dragon of Minecraft.
Shulker-Little cubes that hide in blocks and when you come near them, they come out and kill you. I'm not sure if this is possible to find in the game yet, though.

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There are also good mobs that are on Minecraft.
Bat-A bat that cannot hurt you..
Pig-A pig Food Source.
Sheep-A sheep Food Source Wool Source. Name one "jeb_" and it will change colours.
Cow-They drop leather,that you can make armor out of,drop meat and every cow can be milked once,Which cures potions(during potion effect).
Chicken-They drop meat and they drop feathers that you can use to craft book and quills with.
Squid- Just a squid pretty much.
Wolf-They can be tamed with bones and then they'll fight for you.
Mooshroom-A strange cow-mushroom hybrid. Found in the rare Mushroom Island.
Ocelot-You can tame them with fish but they run away when you're in battles. Creepers are also scared of them.
Rabbits-The none killing kind, will drop things like Rabbit Feet when they die, and you can make stew out of them.
Horse-More information at the end, and last but not least:
Villager-You can trade with them using emeralds. You can get emeralds by trading with villagers or by mining (rare). All Villager trades must be in some way associated with an emerald.

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There are also LAN worlds and Servers I mentioned earlier. LAN worlds are where you go onto Singleplayer, press Esc on your keyboard, and press Open To LAN. Only people with your internet connection can join, though. But then there are servers. They totally cure that problem. But it costs money to run a server and it's also really hard to do. You get onto them by pressing Multiplayer on the main screen. But you need the Server IP to go on. It doesn't give you a list of servers unless you do this. It means you put in the name of the server(does not matter) and the IP(Matters). When you have a lot of servers like that they will build up in the Multiplayer list. You connect to LAN worlds on the Multiplayer page. It's under the 'Scanning for games on your local network list. Your servers are over that thing. Direct Connect means you just put in the IP. But there isn't any list for those so it's probably not worth it. Edit means change the Server Name(just on your computer) and the Server IP. Join Server is pretty self explanatory. The server can also have a picture there next to the server on your Multiplayer list. There is also something called Minecraft Realms. They're like private servers. You can either pay a certain amount of money a month to host one, or join one for free. You must be invited to play in their realm.

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There is also a material in Minecraft called "Redstone". This is a material used to power machines of all different sorts. You can create a plane, a robot, a minigame, a giant clock, something with pistons, cannons, powerful doors, traps, or maybe just something as simple as a light source.

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So some of you may have watched a South Park episode where it talks about Minecraft. So some of you may be wondering "How
do I tame a horse in Minecraft?" Well it's pretty simple. You right click a horse, and spam on the arrow keys. So if you see your kids spamming the arrow keys, don't think they've gone insane, they're just trying to tame a horse. Or they're insane, but let's not get into that... (No, Minecraft does not make you insane.) Another way to tame a horse (Although very expensive) is to feed them some Notch Apples, but unless you're in Creative Mode just trying to tame a horse for whatever reason, it's probably not worth it, as it costs a lot of gold.

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The final thing I want to talk about is the old Minecraft myth of Herobrine. He is a steve with fully white eyes, and is said to be able to glide, summon lightning, and is said to only be able to place down signs and redstone torches. While this is fully not real, the developers write "-Removed Herobrine" as a joke in their update logs.

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Overall, Minecraft is a building game for kids and you can build new things. It is also very fun so do please try it.

Now you know what minecraft is! Now you can either just be a randon Minecraft noob(do not deny it) or just want to talk to your kids about it. There you go!