Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft - if you somehow forgot, the Minecraft Movie opens up next weekend - April 4.

And the promotions are everywhere:

Special Popcorn tubs and drink buckets at Regal Cinemas

AMC has Movie themed merch

McDonald’s is doing themed meals for kids and adults - with in-game unlocks

Minecraft (the actual video game) is having movie themed events

NYX Minecraft Movie Makeup

And my personal favorite - MLB x Minecraft Movie - with a bunch of teams doing Minecraft Movie Day at the Park with specialized jersey giveaways:

I’m sure I’ve missed some but it’ll be everywhere!

Take Economics 101 or Just Play Video Games?

For many gamers, a lot of what they know about finance, business, and economics they learned through playing video games.

World of Warcraft was a lot of people’s first introduction to a virtual marketplace and auction house where they had to deal with supply and demand, arbitrage, wholesaling, pricing and cornering a market, seasonality, and more. If you played this game within the game well, you could be swimming in gold. If you didn’t, well, better get to farming some dungeons to recoup your losses.

A St. Mary’s College professor even has a course curriculum for Teaching Economics through World of Warcraft. Best-selling author Josh Kaufman even says that everything he learned about business was through World of Warcraft.

When Animal Crossing New Horizons came out in 2020, a lot of gamers learned first hand about real life - especially in areas you wouldn’t think for a video game like Loans, Financing, and Home Ownership, Supply and Demand, Producers and Consumers, Goods and Services, Interest and Return on Investment, the Stock Market.

Just look at the plethora of stories that came out of this cozy game around its economic education from Investopedia, The Atlantic, Polygon, The Washington Post!

TDBank Treat Island Tycoon

TDBank believes that it’s time to focus on building gaming experiences that directly teach money management and financial literacy to kids, with a significant focus on 10-14 year olds. These are kids who may be saving money in real life from birthdays or chores or odd jobs and lemonade stands.

So TDBank built an experience within Roblox to help drive that education, in an engaging way.

Kids start our as an entrepreneur that must navigate a fun, engaging island to gather fruits to ultimately turn into frozen treats for sale.

You start with almost a virtual lemonade stand and then through work and success you can upgrade to a full factory production. To progress through the game, kids must balance their budget, take out loans to expand their businesses, and ultimately build a successful frozen treat empire on the island.

They are trying to make it educational but not too heavy handed and so far have had nearly 11,000 visitors to their game

If you want to give it a go, it’s free and can be found here

• Minecraft Live 2025 was a virtual event spilling the tea on all the new updates coming to Minecraft - improved lighting, warm and cold variants to mobs, movie content, and ghastlings.

• A new survey of over 1,000 American parents shows more parents are supporting their children's gaming interests but a balance in screentime is key. More than 2 in 5 parents believe esports could provide a more fulfilling future than traditional jobs such as working as a teacher or a lawyer and 1 in 3 parents believe gaming might help their kids secure a college scholarship.

• The Vatican unveils a 3D digital twin of St. Peter’s Basilica that people can explore for free in Minecraft

• Another survey, from USF, on kids usage of smart phones reveals some interesting findings: Kids with smartphones report greater well-being than kids who don’t have one. They are more likely to hang out with friends. They are more likely to exercise. They also are more likely to feel good about themselves, and are more likely to seek help when they need it.

I actually forgot when the Minecraft movie was supposed to come out until I saw all of these promotions! Guess I know one thing I’ll be doing next weekend!

Until then, GL HF!

Chris