Exploring Minecraft: Ethnographies of Play and Creativity (Palgrave Games in Context) 3030599078, 9783030599072

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PALGRAVE GAMES IN CONTEXT

Exploring Minecraft Ethnographies of Play and Creativity Larissa Hjorth · Ingrid Richardson Hugh Davies · William Balmford

Palgrave Games in Context Series Editors Neil Randall The Games Institute University of Waterloo Waterloo, ON, Canada Steve Wilcox Game Design and Development Wilfrid Laurier University Brantford, ON, Canada

Games are pervasive in contemporary life, intersecting with leisure, work, health, culture, history, technology, politics, industry, and beyond. These contexts span topics, cross disciplines, and bridge professions.Palgrave Games in Context situates games and play within such interdisciplinary and interprofessional contexts, resulting in accessible, applicable, and practical scholarship for students, researchers, game designers, and industry professionals. What does it mean to study, critique, and create games in context? This series eschews conventional classifications—such as academic discipline or game genre—and instead looks to practical, real-world situations to shape analysis and ground discussion. A single text might bring together professionals working in the field, critics, scholars, researchers, and designers. The result is a broad range of voices from a variety of disciplinary and professional backgrounds contributing to an accessible, practical series on the various and varied roles of games and play. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16027

Larissa Hjorth •  Ingrid Richardson  Hugh Davies • William Balmford

Exploring Minecraft Ethnographies of Play and Creativity

Larissa Hjorth RMIT University Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Ingrid Richardson RMIT University Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Hugh Davies RMIT University Melbourne, VIC, Australia

William Balmford RMIT University Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Palgrave Games in Context ISBN 978-3-030-59907-2    ISBN 978-3-030-59908-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustrations: J Forsyth. Used with permission. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Abstract

This book seeks to take Minecraft seriously as a situated creative and cultural practice. By drawing on empirical ethnographic research conducted with families over three years, we focus on the intersection between informal digital media literacies, play and creativity. This is not a descriptive text that explains how to play the game, nor is it a textbook primer for educators. Rather it seeks to address the complex ways in which Minecraft occupies the everyday lives of players across cultural and generational contexts, fostering a spectrum of multimodal, socio-material and sensory literacies. In particular, through the practices and cultures of Minecraft, we argue for three interrelated features—creative literacy, social play and quotidian platformativity.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project Games of Being Mobile (DP140104295) for all their insights and for allowing us into their homes. We hope our words reflect their creativity, sociality and play. The authors would like to thank RMIT University for its support and acknowledge the great work by research assistants for the ARC DP 2014–2018 fieldwork including Dr Brendan Keogh, Dr Olivia Efthimiou and co-author Dr William Balmford. We also thank J. Forsyth for the cover image. This book is dedicated to the next generation—Zoë, Jamie and Jesper.

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Contents

1 The Phenomenon  1 Part I Context  25 2 Exploring Play 27 3 Understanding Play 49 Part II Spaces of Play  75 4 Play Practices and Modalities 77 5 Metagaming and Paratextual Play 99 Part III Places of Play 121 6 Playing at Home123 7 Games in Institutional Spaces145

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8 Playing During COVID-19167 Index183

Abbreviations

DIY do-it-yourself DML Digital Media & Learning HCI Human Computer Interaction ICT Information and Communication Technologies Indie independent LAN local-area network LP Let’s Play (documentation of a videogame playthrough with commentary) PC Personal Computer STEAM Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Maths STEM Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 5.5 Fig. 5.6 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

Connected Camps. Mizuko Ito, Tara Tiger-Brown and Katie Salen Tekinbaş8 Playing Roblox Mad City on iPad while listening to Minecraft LP on the laptop 18 Minecraft at home on the iPad 40 Minecraft playable installation at Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI) 42 Image from the video advertisement for Minecraft Earth48 The loungeroom, the interface and the space of the game 58 Participants negotiate screen-time on iPads by interspersing education with play 63 The Minecraft “Cheats” interface 82 An early iteration of Niam’s “Contraption” to cycle day and night 83 Minecraft’s seed entering option (left) and subsequent world generation (right) 87 The avatar of Oliver Brotherhood aka Minecraft YouTuber Mumbo Jumbo 104 Fiona’s skyscraper before (left) and after (right) the application of a texture pack 107 A tiny floating island in a SkyBlock custom world 109 A branch mine in Minecraft111 A Minecraft themed LEGO set 112 Participants often compared LEGO and Minecraft114 Traces of touch on the mobile screen device 130 The competing uses of a family smartphone device for gaming and work 131

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List of Figures

Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4 Fig. 6.5 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4 Fig. 8.1 Fig. 8.2 Fig. 8.3 Fig. 8.4 Fig. 8.5 Fig. 8.6

Interview participant playing Minecraft in the living room 133 Screen-time rules in a participant family home 137 Participant bedroom with Minecraft collectibles 139 Minecraft: Education Edition146 Participant doing homework on iPad 150 Social and emotional learning Courseware in Minecraft: Education Edition157 Classroom setting for codesign 162 Ray Chambers retweet #playaparttogether 168 Minecraft stay safe, stay apart campaign 169 Minecraft Education: a fun option for teaching kids at home 170 Minecraft reinforcing social distancing messaging 172 Minecraft as a space to host virtual concerts 173 A Minecraft COVID-19 challenge 174

CHAPTER 1

The Phenomenon

Minecraft…isn’t it dead? —Jason, eighteen-year-old “gamer” and university student

On a typical Saturday afternoon in a suburban Adelaide (Australia) home, we find two sisters—Eileen (aged eight) and Chloe (aged ten)—with a neighbourhood friend, Amy (aged ten), sitting on the lounge talking and playing Minecraft together. Each wields an iPad. Through these devices they enter the Minecraft world where they each contribute elements to a co-created house. They work independently, but in concert, discussing their creations as they materialize. They traverse the interrelated digital, social and material worlds seamlessly. They parallel play, dipping in and out of the weave of the game space and their general meandering discussion. “What is it?” Chloe asks, and Eileen responds: It’s like a swimming pool but you can’t go in yet, I’m not finished. Ok, I’m in the swimming pool. So if I put a diving board up here I could dive into the pool down there and the trees kind of give it a bit of serene privacy so if I put maybe another block’s worth I could, if I put another block’s worth around here… Ok so maybe I could add on to the structure. Ok so now I’ve got 4 pillars and I was thinking that I could have some potted flower beds around the place. Chloe, look over here.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9_1

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At first glance, the girls are in both physical and virtual domains, but there are more worlds at play. Across the haptic iPad touchscreens, multisensorial engagements emerge that involve a range of lived experiences, skillsets and tactile ways of knowing. They chat about school, friends, family, pets and their gameplay. Here, as at other junctures of their domestic life, Minecraft moves ambiently from the foreground to background and back again, weaving through the rhythms and routines of everyday life practices, social networks and memories. Far from being “dead” as eighteen-­ year-­old Jason suggests in the opening provocation, Minecraft has become pervasive and quotidian, grounding the social fabric of interactions of many young people as exemplified by the three girls. Minecraft has shifted from perceptible centrality to invisible ubiquity. With special attention to the Minecraft phenomenon, the ethnographic research in this book sets out to explore the role and significance of creativity and social play in everyday life. We examine Minecraft as not just a game but as a rich informal context of learning, creativity and literacy. In order to analyse Minecraft—and videogames more broadly—as current and emerging media practices, we ask: what new methods and convergent disciplinary fields are needed? How is Minecraft an effective lens for the critical interpretation of these informal and intergenerational literacies, across the spectrum of contemporary media practices? How does Minecraft intersect with education, media studies, learning institutions and life in the family home? How has Minecraft allowed for ethnographic innovation across digital, social and material worlds? In particular, how might we understand Minecraft as a cultural phenomenon with digital, social and material dimensions that inform how we define literacy, play and performativity? To introduce these deliberations, we return to the trio of girls in an Adelaide loungeroom, together discussing and playing in and through Minecraft. Through their interactions in Minecraft, the girls can make “hanging out” physically more playful, creative and social. They often enact a kind of reflexive narrativization of their gameplay, constructing, co-curating and performing their own stories around the game (Beavis and O’Mara 2010; Beavis et  al. 2014; Burn et  al. 2013; Marsh 2010). Their banter often involves elements of co-design and elaboration of narrative structure as a form of social play. This talking-while-making was a common practice with our participants, revealing the way that digital play is both social and performative, invoking a kind of double or parallel enactment of play (i.e. playing and describing one’s play at the same time) that

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is found more broadly throughout the popular YouTube Let’s Play phenomenon. The girls are not alone. For example, thirteen-year-old Austin is a skilled Minecraft player. Like many players, Austin enjoys Minecraft across a range of online spaces, social networks and conversation forums. As he talks to us, he plays across platforms, moving effortlessly from YouTube to Discord to Twitch, his choices dependent on which facet of the game he wishes to access. As part of his engagement with Minecraft, Austin is also an avid consumer of Let’s Play videos. He lists the independent Let’s Players as among his primary sources of information about the game. Austin notes, CaptainSparklez, is probably my favourite… But I also watch a lot of UnspeakableGaming, PrestonPlayz, and Mumbo Jumbo. Whatever’s happening in Minecraft, they usually know about it pretty early and I find out about it from them. But most of all I watch them because they’re fun.

A Let’s Play (LP) is video documentation of a videogame playthrough typically featuring commentary and a webcam inset that captures the player’s face as they play. Rather than being an objective source of information such as a how-to, walkthrough or strategy guide, LP emphasizes the individual player’s casual and subjective experience with the game, typically with critical and irreverent commentary from the player creating clever comedy appeal for viewers like Austin. LP exemplifies what Burgess calls “vernacular creativity”—a term which describes the many modalities of everyday creative practice “from scrapbooking to family photography to the storytelling that forms part of casual chat” that are being increasingly remediated as public culture through digital technologies and platforms (Burgess 2007, n.p). LP has emerged as a form of media entertainment in its own right, with many LP YouTube channels featuring Minecraft, enabling new ways of sharing, performing and narrating the spectacle of play. It is a parallel text or paratext which is integral to the experience and enjoyment of Minecraft. Similarly, as we saw in Chloe and Eileen’s dialogue previously, their parallel Minecraft play highlights the way in which the game affords unique forms of shared creativity and sociality. As our research has revealed, Minecraft is most often played in domestic settings. In many cases, Minecraft was integral to families’ social interactions and collaborative play. Within the homes of our participants, Minecraft frequently dominated conversations and was played by a

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number of family members across a variety of mobile and static devices, revealing emergent intergenerational patterns of play (Erstad and Sefton-­ Green 2013). Sometimes children had introduced their parents to the game, other times vice versa. Minecraft also offers a fascinating case study of haptic play, both in terms of touchscreen use and the way it calls upon our embodied familiarity with “block-based creativity”, or making things out of blocks. More than the physical or virtual experience alone, Minecraft demands material, corporeal and digital ways of knowing, requiring a multisensorial literacy enacted by the body (Mills 2016). Sensory literacies, as proposed by Mills, foreground the role of the body and the senses in literacy practices (Mills 2016) and extends theories of the history and cultural anthropology of the senses (Howes and Classen 2014). From the perspective of sensory literacies, the mind is always embodied, and both are integral to literacy practices (Mills and Park 2015). Through its virtual evocation of physical space and its physical impact in everyday lived reality, Minecraft calls these sensorial literacies and understandings into being. This book seeks to take Minecraft seriously as a situated creative and cultural practice. Throughout the book we focus on the intersection between informal digital media literacies, play and creativity as they are revealed through ethnographic methods. This is not a descriptive text that explains how to play the game, nor is it a textbook primer for educators. Rather it seeks to address the complex ways in which Minecraft occupies the everyday lives of players across cultural and generational contexts, fostering a spectrum of multimodal, socio-material and sensory literacies (Mills 2016). Here we see digital, material and social worlds interrelated within definitions of digital media literacy. In particular, through the practices and cultures of Minecraft, we argue for three interrelated features— creative literacy, social play and quotidian platformativity. By drawing on empirical ethnographic research conducted with families over three years, along with a series of play sessions coordinated in institutional contexts, and interviews with primary and secondary school educators, Exploring Minecraft seeks to critically interpret the prevailing discussion around creative, informal, and multisensorial modes of learning and creativity. In particular, through the innovative and interdisciplinary application of sensorial ethnography, this book aims to reveal the diversity of Minecraft gameplay and paratextual practices, and to understand Minecraft’s significance as a mundane but important form of creative, informal learning and social play.

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As we explore in this chapter, Minecraft is interesting as a cultural phenomenon for creative literacy, social play and quotidian platformativity because it is mundane and quotidian. In millions of households worldwide, Minecraft occupies mobile devices and computers, moving in and out of the rhythms of everyday life. In the next section, we reflect on its identity as mundane media and then as a site for quotidian platformativity. Then we discuss a brief history of the game along with key concepts and methods relating to Minecraft as a mundane cultural practice. Finally, we identify some of the key strengths of interdisciplinary research, and finish with a summary of chapters to set out how the discussion in the book will unfold.

Minecraft as Mundane Media During our three-year ethnographic fieldwork into the use of mobile media and games in Australian homes, Minecraft gameplay was uniquely prevalent. It was intergenerational, creative, and moved ambiently in and out of everyday life routines. In the opening quote, Jason alludes to Minecraft as having become “old media”. Describing the game as “dead”, Jason articulates how the game’s veneer of newness has worn away. It has become mundane. And this is when it becomes interesting—an embedded part of our everyday lives. This mundaneness is precisely why Minecraft offers crucial insights into more sedimented and collective informal literacies around digital and social play. Unlike new media—which is often rarefied—established and even old media practices allow us to understand the routines of mediated social and cultural practice. As media scholars such as Wendy Chun (2016) remind us, understanding new media isn’t about chasing the rapidly growing cycle of obsolescence. Rather, new media is most interesting when it becomes almost-forgotten—or as Jason identifies, “dead”—and absorbed as part of everyday and habitual rituals. Moreover, Minecraft articulates ways of bringing the old and the new together. This weaving of old and new is highlighted in fieldwork with single dad James in Adelaide. His nine-year-old son Hayden is, like his father, a “fanatic” of LEGO building blocks but is also a keen Minecraft player. “LEGO definitely came first for us” James tells us “but it kind of evolved into Minecraft a couple of years ago. A pretty natural transition really. Both are just messing around and building stuff with blocks. It just sorta makes sense.” James and Hayden sometimes play with LEGO together,

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and the big box in the lounge even has some old bricks from when James was a kid. James has bought Hayden some Minecraft LEGO for his birthday—the two companies joined forces in 2012 to cross promote. For James, LEGO provides a link to his own childhood and a portal into the world of his son. For Hayden, Minecraft provides more than a connection with his Dad, it also offers a digital version of his LEGO play. Some of his block-based creations appear in both the physical and the virtual world. For the uninitiated, Minecraft is often described as Digital LEGO (Overby and Jones 2015; Mørch and Thomassen 2016). It can be played on a variety of devices and platforms (i.e. phones, tablets, computer desktop, offline, online) in both single or multiplayer modes as Hayden and his dad often play. Players are the architects of their own worlds, building shelters, learning to hunt and gather, managing resources, problem-­ solving, and befriending wolves, horses, sheep, dolphins, or pandas as pets. There are also monsters to fight (or avoid, for the novice player) such as Creepers, Zombie Pigmen, Endermen and Ghasts. Players gather digital assets such as tools and gems to create environments and can play socially with others via multiplayer online servers or through their own local area networks (LANs). These digital assets can also be created and remixed in complex ways, revealing surprising possibilities for invention. Minecraft also involves co-curation, modding and hacking—a kind of playful and creative labour that Julian Kücklich calls playbour (2005), which describes the “work” carried out in and around computer games and popular culture more broadly. It is this maker culture, that happens both inside the actual game and across other digital media platforms like YouTube, that adds to the complex fabric of Minecraft and its attendant digital media literacy. Indeed, understanding Minecraft requires us to traverse across the digital, social and material worlds that oscillate in and around the actual game play. This requires us to become more attuned to the complex fabric of creative literacy and social play, and the performative frameworks involved (Dezuanni 2016).

Minecraft as Quotidian Platformativity The Minecraft player community discuss and share their gameplay and creations online, generating a rich paratextual culture around the game (Apperley and Walsh 2012). For Michael Dezuanni, Joanne O’Mara and Catherine Beavis (2015), Minecraft enables the performative play across online and face-to-face contexts to be assembled and reassembled in

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creative and social ways. As they argue, Minecraft is indicative of new forms of digital play, leisure and childhood, and also involves a new kind of contemporary literacy (ACMA 2010; Holloway et al. 2013; Marsh and Richards 2013). Drawing on Judith Butler’s (1990) thinking on gender as a performativity—that is, the way repetitive iterations and rituals of gender become habitualized as embodied routines—Dezuanni et  al. explore how their young female participants used “spoken language, creative digital production and Minecraft gameplay to bring themselves into being and establish social viability within classroom affinity groups” (2015, p. 149). Similarly, in many of our fieldwork play scenarios, the collaborative and co-design elements of Minecraft play became an integral part of the game’s vernacular. For Dezuanni et al. games such as Minecraft invoke a complex repertoire of “skills, textual practices, performance and identity work” (2015, p. 149). In particular, Minecraft involves not just a relationship between practice, perception and performativity (i.e. playing) but also, Minecraft as a platform affords specific forms of performativities—what Thomas Lamarre would call “platformativities” (2017). Acknowledging that each platform has its own affordances that shape, and are shaped by, the communities of practice, Lamarre’s concept allows for a more nuanced notion of performativity that recognizes the technical, haptic and material affect of the digital platform on the human body. These dimensions of platformativity are not just digital but have material elements too—from the materiality of devices to the materiality of making. Dezuanni’s research on Minecraft in terms of digital media literacy is crucial in this book. In particular, Dezuanni argues for a framework that not only acknowledges the socio-cultural and humanist accounts of media participation, but, as he rightly identifies in the case of Minecraft, the importance of digital making practices (2016). Dezuanni compellingly outlines a materialistic and performative literacy approach to digital media literacy frameworks, accounting for digital materials, media production, conceptual understanding and media analysis (2016). As we explore in the book, these maker cultures in and around the actual gameplay are crucial to understanding new creative literacies. These creative literacies traverse digital, material and social worlds in ways that are interrelated, connected and converging. The power of Minecraft to traverse mundane yet creative informal literacies has inspired key international play scholars like Mizuko Ito and

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Fig. 1.1  Connected Camps.  Mizuko  Ito, Tara Tiger-Brown and Katie Salen Tekinbaş

Katie Salen Tekinbaş (2018) from DML (Digital Media & Learning Hub) to establish Connected Camps  (Fig. 1.1). Connected Camps is a nonprofit organization that supports building an online community for kids to share, build, code, play and learn from each other. The organization deploys Minecraft as a platform and engagement methodology to develop both coding skills and a deeper understanding of STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) (Hooper and de Byl 2014). Here the interweaving of material and digital worlds is integral in the understanding of media literacy. It also connects to the rise in maker cultures paralleling digital media ubiquity, whereby the digital emphasizes, rather than diminishes, the significance of materiality (Gauntlett 2011). We discuss this further in Chap. 4. As a game that cultivates a creative mastery of virtual building and construction, Minecraft also exploits dimensions of haptic and sensorial play that can be applied to diverse learning contexts such as engaging players with autism (Ringland 2019). As we explore in our methods discussion in

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this chapter, the rise of haptic media studies and digital ethnography has helped to develop nuanced approaches that allow us to understand how Minecraft is not just a game but a cultural phenomenon. Let us now turn to this phenomenon in terms of a short history.

A Short History of Minecraft Minecraft first appeared in mid-2009 as a Java Applet by an unknown developer called Markus Persson (aka “Notch”). As a sandbox game, Minecraft had several obvious forerunners. Dwarf Fortress (2006), Dungeon Keeper (1997) and RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999–2016) are all recognized as major influences (Goldberg and Larssen 2013), however, the discontinued Infiniminer (2009) stands as the most evident inspiration. Identical to Minecraft, Infiniminer was an open-source multiplayer game centred on building and digging in a block-based sand-box world. Minecraft appropriated the appealing aspects of each of these games and merged them in a potent new formula. Perhaps the most significant innovation was how Minecraft’s developer Persson cultivated a loyal community from the earliest stage of production, responding to its collective feedback and interests. Notably, Minecraft’s beta release successfully employed an early access business model whereby players paid a lower fee to access an in-progress version of the game. Through this model, Persson was able to tap into the ideas, frustrations and feedback of players before the completed game went live. These pre-release sales also enabled Persson to quit his day job in 2010 to focus exclusively on developing Minecraft and forming Mojang AB, an independent games studio, around it. From this point, Minecraft expanded quickly through word-of-mouth and media coverage, growing from one million registered accounts in February 2011 to 10 million six months later. Minecraft’s official launch occurred in September 2011, accompanied by a significant price increase, literally doubling in cost. Increased exposure grew Minecraft’s popularity—by April 2013, the “Pocket edition” and original Java edition had sold over 10 million copies each. In June 2014, Persson had become tired of Minecraft. Raising interest from several major companies including Electronic Arts and Activision/ Blizzard, Persson ultimately sold Minecraft to Microsoft for a staggering $2.5 billion. With the brand reputation, corporate structure and financial heft of Microsoft behind it, Minecraft expanded into new territory.

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Making use of the game’s growing popularity with younger children, Minecraft worked with LEGO to develop Minecraft-themed LEGO kits. The game also expanded to encompass a much broader array of platform accessibilities. But Microsoft’s most significant change appeared with the release of an “Education Edition” (2016) specifically created for use in classrooms. In 2017, the “Better Together” update brought cross-­ platform multiplayer functionality across almost every platform on which Minecraft existed. As of October 2018, Minecraft had sold around 150 million copies and boasted a monthly player count of 74 million. The Education Edition was also beginning to seriously enter the pedagogic space, with clubs, lesson plans and extra-curricular activities proliferating through the platform. Minecraft was not only becoming institutionalized, it had itself become an institution with a trusted reputation and global following. In 2018, following transphobic Twitter comments by Persson, Microsoft removed splash screen references to him stating his views did not correspond with Minecraft’s community and audience. Today, Minecraft has completely outgrown its indie origins to become a vast videogame monument. More than just an established feature of the game landscape, Minecraft is now found prolifically in education, cultural and institutional settings such as classrooms, museums, libraries and in family homes. In this book we consider how these changes in Minecraft’s accessibility, ownership and reputation have affected the attitudes and activities of its players. What has Minecraft come to symbolize and represent? In the following section we reflect upon our ethnographic methods and how this approach brings sensorial depth to the analysis of Minecraft gameplay and communities of practice, enabling us to capture the way informal literacies traverse digital, social and material worlds.

Innovative Ethnography for Haptic, Sensorial and Informal Ways of Knowing We are sitting in the lounge of eleven-year-old Clara and interviewing her about her Minecraft play and engagement with a few other games. But right now she is drawing on paper and is more interested in interviewing us about our research. “So just your job is to talk to people about videogames all day? Does it get boring?” she asks while colouring in.

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“Not really,” we reply. “Sometimes we get to play too.” “That sounds cool,” she says, “but why, what are you trying to find out?” “We’re not sure yet,” we explain. “Some of it has to do with what people are learning by playing videogames without even realizing it.” “Like learning by accident?” Clara asks, “How do you even do that?”

Ethnography—as the narration and writing up of cultural practice—has, much like culture itself, evolved significantly over the past century. Once a method used exclusively by sociologists and anthropologists, ethnography is now a widely deployed conceptual framework and approach used in contemporary media research to understand the nuances of “the everyday” through the observation and analysis of cultural practice (Pink et al. 2015). Over the past decade in particular, ethnography has emerged as an important qualitative method within digital media studies (Pink et  al. 2015) and the techniques of digital and virtual ethnography have been developed as a means of gathering participant experiences in online and networked spaces. Yet importantly, digital ethnography understands that digital and online domains are always entangled with socio-material and offline practices, and thoroughly imbricated in lived experience. In our research on Minecraft, we developed fieldwork techniques informed by digital ethnography, to uncover and explore the informal knowledges and literacies that are acquired through habitual body-technology relations in everyday life. Digital ethnography has also been usefully applied to research contexts that articulate the merger of digital media, new materialism and sensory studies, particularly within the subdiscipline of haptic media studies (Parisi 2018). As a number of scholars such as Parisi have identified (2018), the turn to “touch theory” (or the “sensory turn”) is complexly interwoven with the emergence of haptic technologies and, in media studies, is most often applied to the analyses of computer and touchscreen interfaces. As Richardson and Hjorth (2017) note, haptic technologies such as smartphone screens are impacting our sensorial experiences of being-in-the-­ world, being-with-others and being-with-media. Haptic media studies is an approach that invites us to explore the ways that touchscreens and haptic technologies are transforming our embodied enactment of these social and communicative experiences. For example, Nina, a twenty-year-old university student in Melbourne had been an iPad user throughout her high school years. When she went to university, she began using a laptop for both study and gaming.

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Discussing gaming on the laptop and using the WSAD keys, she tells us: “I distinctly remember feeling disconnected when I first started—I guess I was just getting used to it, but I really missed the immediacy of screen contact.” While playing Minecraft on the laptop helped Nina to become accustomed to the new controls and interface, she admits, “the touch screen controls of some devices, for all their limitations, give you a sense of connection to the virtual world that keyboards and handsets just don’t do for me.” Haptic screens realign our somatic attunement away from the primacy of the visual and aural towards other sensorial knowledges. Otherwise put, haptic screens require us to develop different techniques and methods in our ways of understanding the world. Accordingly, much of the research in this field reorients the predominance of audiovisuality in traditional media studies towards a more critical awareness of touch and its complex affective, sensorial and social effects; for example, when exploring diverse learning styles and literacies in terms of Minecraft on the iPad (Ringland 2019), or focusing on the intimate, social and playful nature of mobile touchscreens (Hjorth and Richardson 2014). As cultural and media researchers seek to better understand the prolific rise of haptic media (such as mobile touchscreens) and their surrounding practices, ethnography has adapted to include multisensorial ethnography (Pink 2009), tactile ethnography (Pink et al. 2017) and haptic ethnography (Richardson and Hjorth 2017). In particular, haptic ethnography effectively captures our contemporary embodiment of mobile media and the material, sensory and corporeal habitudes of touchscreen use (Richardson and Hjorth 2017). This process requires deploying methods and techniques that effectively elicit the complexities of mediated lived experience and the attendant informal knowledges and literacies we apply to our traversal through quotidian life. Regardless of subject matter, ethnographic research seeks deep interpretations of everyday practices, and insists that researchers must be empirically and contextually informed. That is, the often unintentional, creative, ad hoc usage of media can only be gleaned from the critical observation of actual practices. Through careful observation and critical interpretation of body habits, gestures and participant narratives, we can “reveal” our ways of being-with-media. For example, the observation and interpretation of mobile media use is often a kind of “researching through the hands”, as the way users touch and handle their mobile devices is

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intrinsic to their affective or emotional experience of the interface and the way it functions (Pink et al. 2017). As aforementioned, part of our interest in Minecraft is its quotidian taken-for-grantedness—in short, its everydayness. We are interested in how Minecraft can be used as a lens for documenting and interpreting informal literacies, everyday body-media relations, creativity and social play as they move across digital, social and material worlds. Understanding Minecraft as a cultural practice requires deploying ethnographic methods that put media into context—socially and culturally—within the everyday. As is the case with all ethnographic methods, the field reshaped our methods as the methods shaped the field. We deployed a variety of methods to consider the multisensorial dimensions. We also used video re-­ enactments and media “walkthroughs” as a way of capturing participants’ experience of mobile media and gameplay. Like tactile digital ethnography (Pink et al. 2017), this mode of observation and recording enabled us to elicit tacit body memories and routines as participants deliberately reflected upon their activities and movements. Technology or media “walkthroughs” required participants to take us on a guided tour of their household media, explaining where devices are commonly placed in the home, and why, and whether they are for shared or individual use (and in each case, when, where and how). In addition, we deployed play sessions in which researchers played in parallel with participants. In these ways, throughout our Minecraft research we sought to uncover the often tacit and multisensorial ways in which the game became intertwined in the everyday lives of our participants. Using Minecraft on a tablet or iPad is very much a haptic sensory experience—in fieldwork in homes, we noticed that participants often leaned into their devices. Many sat on couches and let the device be enfolded into their body. Through hand movements on the screen, they travelled through their digital worlds. The haptic play of the tablet or smartphone was a very different sensory experience (as opposed to Minecraft on the desktop) for our participants. Younger players seemed to find tablets more fun and playful, while Minecraft on the desktop was more frequently used by older players who had familiarity with desktop functionality. Informed by and informing this haptic digital ethnography approach, many researchers are increasingly focusing on the intimate, social and playful nature of mobile touchscreens. The role of haptic technologies is especially important when it comes to vulnerable agencies—that is, elderly, disabled or more-than-human users. Haptic technologies allow for

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multisensorial approaches to media that encourage different lived experiences and skillsets. In this way, haptic screens require us to develop different techniques and methods as we access the world and connect these understandings through the role of play and touch. Touchscreens also allowed for non-normalized bodies to engage differently with games— allowing for diverse audiences to be included. As we argue elsewhere, we need a theoretical interrogation of how we come to knowledge “through the hand”, one which offers a deeper understanding of what and how we might learn through a tactile approach to digital ethnography (Richardson and Hjorth 2018). In other words, there is a growing need to understand screens as part of a haptic ecology that moves in, across and around the screen. We need to consider what researching through and by the hands might add to our methods and theorization as they relate to games, including mobile media and screen research. These haptic practices inform how we interact, experience and understand games in our everyday lives. Indeed, understanding the role of Minecraft in the home requires methods attuned to the multisensorial and often tacit ways in which the game moves in and out of focus in the rhythms of everyday life. In visiting participants’ homes, we have in turn been invited to observe and document how games in the domestic sphere are about ambient play (Hjorth and Richardson 2020). Understanding the role games play—as part of broader cultural practices—is core to understanding Minecraft as a cultural phenomenon. In turn, this requires an interdisciplinary approach. In the section below we briefly discuss why understanding a cultural phenomenon necessitates an interdisciplinary approach.

Play as Interdisciplinary Research Part of the complexity of understanding social play and informal media and creative literacies is that they cannot be contained neatly within one discipline. Rather, they are interdisciplinary and contested, involving translation and adaptation. Across the sciences and humanities, one of the ways such research is carried out is through the application and deployment of formal and informal modalities of play as part of designed innovative methods (Lury and Wakeford 2013; Hjorth et al. 2016). Play and playfulness have attracted much needed attention in recent research (Frissen et al. 2015). In contemporary debates about digital cultures, play and the playful (Sicart 2014), and ludified (Frissen et al. 2015)

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and gamified notions have become seemingly all pervasive. Play can take multiple roles, such as cultural probe, mode of inquiry and practice (Hjorth and Byrne 2016). Play is culturally and socially specific (Sutton-­ Smith 1997) and far exceeds the confines of just digital games. The interdisciplinary and universal nature of play has meant that contesting understandings of play can be found from the contributing disciplines of sociology, game studies and psychology, to name but a few (Simon 2007; Flanagan 2009). Scholars such as Brian Sutton-Smith, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2003)—who draw upon early play theorists Johan Huizinga (1955) and Roger Caillois (2001)—have discussed the sociocultural dimensions of play and games in detail. Understanding play as interdisciplinary research (Lury et al. 2018) acknowledges the role of play as part of a sensorial engagement with the world that traverses across digital, social and material contexts. Klein and Newell note that: [Interdisciplinary studies is] a process of answering a question, solving a problem, or addressing a topic that is too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline or profession … and draws on disciplinary perspectives and integrates their insights through construction of a more comprehensive perspective. (1997, p. 393)

For Lury et al.: Interdisciplinarity is characterized as interaction across and between disciplines. Importantly, this interaction is not oriented toward either a synthesis or a disappearance of disciplines. Instead, interdisciplinarity emerges through interferences between disciplines and between disciplines and other forms of knowledge. (2018, p. 1)

For Lury et al., interdisciplinary methods are not mere links or associations between disciplines that somehow stand above or outside their objects of study, but dynamic conduits for relations of interference in which differences and asymmetries between disciplines are explored and exploited in relation to specific problems, in specific places, with specific materials (Lury et  al. 2018, p.  21). Throughout this book, we employ these dynamics and apply the insights of interdisciplinary research and multisensory ethnographies to the messiness of playful sociality and creativity within and around the Minecraft gameworld, and explore the

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generative spectrum of informal and everyday literacies enacted by Minecraft players. While the research focus for this book centres on Minecraft, we also invited participants to discuss alternate mimetic games they have played, specifically those that emulate or simulate physical real-world situations and actions. In seeking to gain a deeper understanding of players’ relationships between digital and virtual worlds, we enjoined players to tell us about their favourite game worlds and virtual locations—both in Minecraft and across other games—and to reflect on what they liked about them, which were the best and why. For all its prominence, Minecraft is of course only one of many videogame experiences that occupy the lives of players. In the next section we turn to an overview of the chapters and provide a road map of our exploration of the cultural phenomenon that is Minecraft.

Chapter Summaries Exploring Minecraft involves much traversing—across digital, social and material worlds, in the home, school and museums. This is not just about the explicit game play but the attendant creative literacies in digital storytelling practices. Minecraft and its paratexts becomes a world in which to explore cultural practices, generational digital literacies, platformativities and social play. Given the nebulous formation of Minecraft as part of contemporary digital cultures, situating the phenomenon requires complex mapping. Given this, Exploring Minecraft is divided into three parts. In the first part, Context, we situate Minecraft culturally, socially and creatively. This part considers Minecraft in terms of its cultural presence and as a barometer for informal literacies, creativity and social play. Chapter 2, Exploring Play, begins with a critical discussion of nascent playful and creative practices within contemporary media culture and reviews the scholarly literature across relevant disciplines (including game studies, media studies, education, visual culture, and digital/haptic ethnography). The chapter then identifies diverse modalities of play, including core gameplay across devices and platforms, gamified learning, sandbox games, metagaming and paratextual community practices such as Twitch and LP. Finally, the chapter discusses how Minecraft is situated in these contexts in terms of its influence on creativity, sociality, and intergenerational and informal literacies. With the Minecraft phenomenon increasingly interpreted as a historical moment, we examine the transformative dimensions

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of Minecraft play and consequent effects in domestic, social and educative domains. The chapter ends by clearly articulating the key themes and issues that provide the foundation for our deeper exploration of the contexts and modalities of Minecraft in Parts II and III. Chapter 3 turns the focus to Understanding Play—that is, providing a more focused and detailed investigation of playful, creative, informal and incidental literacies—and identifies both the interdisciplinary and innovative methodological approaches that are used to analyse and interpret playful literacy practices. We suggest that Minecraft has become a locus for new interdisciplinary approaches, both methodological and conceptual, as well as a unique platform for the development of ethnographic innovation and qualitative research. In Part II, Spaces of Play, we consider the various types of practices that have emerged in and around Minecraft. Chapter 4, Play Practices and Modalities, focuses on Minecraft’s core gameplay and provides a critical exploration of the game’s diverse affordances. Framed around insights gained from our ethnographic research, we examine how the design of the game offers a range of different ways to play. These include: the expressive and inventive power of creative mode, the interactive challenges of survival mode, play across devices, and the risks and benefits of multiplayer online gaming and LAN gaming. Each of the modalities of play are discussed in terms of their implications for literacy and creativity. Through an analysis of ethnographic play sessions, the chapter details how creative mode is used to play with the structure of Minecraft itself, and allows players to play and pursue creativity “without stress”. We describe the various scenarios of use—both material and digital—that are entangled in such imagining, and the ramifications of Minecraft’s design philosophy for other games and wider creative disciplines. In the context of survival mode, we identify the way that this riskier and progress-driven modality invites role-playing, multiplayer engagement and competitive play. In Chap. 5, we explore the creative metagaming and paratextual play practices that surround Minecraft, apprehending the many ways that the game encourages and enables sociality and informal literacies beyond the core gameplay. The terms metagaming and paratextuality describe the way players engage outside the boundaries of the primary game, understand the “ways to play the game”, challenge the limits of the game environment and create user-generated content through game and fan blogs, through cosplay events and via various modes of watching and sharing gameplay

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and game-related content. These activities are forms of vernacular or everyday creativity, and integral to the formation of game communities and emergent informal literacies. Through insights gained from our ethnographic research, we will discuss the way players engage with Minecraft through Twitch, YouTube and LP, alongside the numerous face-to-face and networked activities that take place outside the core gameplay (Fig. 1.2). We then turn to Part III, Spaces of Play. In Chap. 6 we explore the multiple and complex ways in which Minecraft occupies domestic spaces. Through ethnographic research conducted in Australian households, we explore the multiple and complex ways in which Minecraft occupies domestic spaces. We share sensorial ethnographic insights into how it is played in the home as a vehicle for intergenerational literacy and intimacy. In Chap. 7, we turn from the home to consider how the use of Minecraft is being deployed in institutional contexts, including school classrooms, extra-curricular workshops, libraries and museums. In this chapter we draw from workshops and interviews conducted in Victoria (Australia). This context is important as it is the largest educational jurisdiction in the Fig. 1.2  Playing Roblox Mad City on iPad while listening to Minecraft LP on the laptop

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world to provide every government school student with access to Minecraft: Education Edition (December 2018). Featuring interviews with both teachers and students, we bring a critical yet constructive set of perspectives to the use of Minecraft in and as classroom, to further highlight how Minecraft is being engaged as an instrumental and instructional tool beyond leisure activities. We then conclude with Chap. 8, which serves as an overview of key themes and insights to be gained from the book, and investigates some of the broader issues for the future of social play, informal creative literacies and quotidian platformativity. We reflect on the recalibration of the digital in light of COVID-19 and social distancing. As we highlight, COVID-19 revealed how digital games occupy a crucial role in social play—especially when physical distancing is enforced. As we see in the #PlayApartTogether campaign, public opinion about games quickly changed. In its support of the initiative, the World Health Organization (WHO) shifted their perspective on games as being bad for health to recognizing their function as an important tool for social connection (Businesswire 2020). As we will discuss, Minecraft played a specific role in this shift; as a cultural phenomenon, the game demonstrated how we can do things differently—from in-game memorialization of the Wuhan hospital workers to modifying our daily and habitual practices. We hope you will enjoy the journey of exploring Minecraft as a cultural phenomenon. As we argue, Minecraft offers us many ways to rethink creative literacy, platformativities and social play, especially at a time when our modalities of working, learning and living are being recalibrated by the digital in uneven and complex ways.

References Apperley, Tom, and Christopher Walsh. 2012. What Digital Games and Literacy Have in Common: A Heuristic for Understanding Pupils’ Gaming Literacy. Literacy 46 (3): 115–122. Australian Communications and Media Authority. 2010. Report: Trends in Media Use by Children and Young People: Insights from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Generation M2 2009 (USA), and Results from the ACMA’s ‘Media and Communications in Australian Families 2007. http://www.acma.gov.au/ webwr/_assets/main/lib310665/trends_in_media_use_by_children_and_ young_people.pdf.

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Beavis, Catherine, and Joanne O’Mara. 2010. Computer Games – Pushing at the Boundaries of Literacy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 33 (1): 65–76. Beavis, Catherine, Leonie Rowan, Michael Dezuanni, Christie McGillivray, Joanne O’Mara, Sarah Prestridge, Colleen Stieler-Hunt, Roberta Thompson, and Jason Zagami. 2014. Teachers’ Beliefs About Learning and Digital Games. E-learning and Digital Media 11 (6): 568–580. Burgess, Jean. 2007. Vernacular Creativity and New Media. Doctoral dissertation, Queensland University of Technology. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16378/. Burn, Andrew, Chris Richard, Jackie Marsh, Julia Bishop, and Rebekah Willett, eds. 2013. Children, Media and Playground Cultures: Ethnographic Studies of School Playtimes. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Businesswire Editorial. 2020. Games Industry Unites to Promote World Health Organization Messages Against COVID-19; Launch #PlayApartTogether Campaign. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200328005018/ en/Games-­Industry-­Unites-­Promote-­World-­Health-­Organization. Accessed 4 May 2020. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London, New York: Routledge. Caillois, Roger. 2001. Man, Play and Games. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2016. Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. Dezuanni, Michael. 2016. Material and Discursive Learning with Minecraft. In Learning with New Media Seminar Series, 15 September 2016, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC. (Unpublished) https://eprints.qut.edu. au/99959/. Dezuanni, Michael, Joanne O’Mara, and Catherine Beavis. 2015. Redstone Is like Electricity’: Children’s Performative Representations in and Around Minecraft. E-Learning and Digital Media 12 (2): 147–163. Erstad, Ola, and Julian Sefton-Green, eds. 2013. Identity, Community, and Learning Lives in the Digital Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flanagan, Mary. 2009. Critical Play: Radical Game Design. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Frissen, Valerie, Sybille Lammes, Michiel de Lange, Jos de Mul, and Joost Raessens. 2015. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gauntlett, David. 2011. Making is Connecting. London: John Wiley & Sons. Goldberg, Daniel, and Linus Larssen. 2013. Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and the Game that Changed Everything. Penguin, Random House.

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Hjorth, Larissa, and Lisa Byrne. 2016. Design & Play Exhibition Catalogue. RMIT Design Hub. https://designhub.rmit.edu.au/wp-­content/uploads/2019/ 12/d-­p-­catalogue-­phase-­1-­web.pdf. Hjorth, Larissa, and Ingrid Richardson. 2014. Gaming in Social, Locative and Mobile Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2020. Ambient play. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hjorth, Larissa, Ingrid Richardson, and William Balmford. 2016. Careful Surveillance and Pet Wearables: At Home with Animals. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/careful-­s urveillance-­a nd-­p et-­w earables-­a t­home-­with-­animals-­63883. Holloway, Donell, Lelia Green, and Sonia Livingstone. 2013. Zero to Eight. Young Children and Their Internet Use. London: LSE, EU Kids Online. Hooper, Jan, and Paul de Byl. 2014. Towards a Unified Theory of Play: A Case Study of Minecraft. DIGRA: 1–3. http://digraa.org/wp-­content/ uploads/2014/06/29_hooper.pdf. Howes, David, and Constance Classen. 2014. Ways of Sensing: Understanding the Senses in Society. London: Routledge. Huizinga, Johan. 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Ito, Mizuko, and Katie Salen, Tekinbaş. 2018. Connected Camps. https://connectedcamps.com/about. Ito, Mizuko, Crystle Martin, Rachel Cody Pfister, Matthew H. Rafalow, Katie Salen, and Amanda Wortman. 2018. Affinity Online: How Connection and Shared Interest Fuel Learning. New York: NYU Press. Klein, Julie Thompson., and William. H. Newell. 1997. Advancing interdisciplinary studies. In J.  Gaff and J.  Ratcliff (Eds.), Handbook of the undergraduate curriculum: A comprehensive guide to purposes, structures, practices, and change, 393–415. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kücklich, Julian. 2005. Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry. Fibreculture 5. http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-­025-­precarious­playbour-­modders-­and-­the-­digital-­games-­industry/. Lange, Patricia G., and Mizuko Ito. 2010. Creative Production. In Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media, ed. Ito Mizuko and Judd Antin, 243–293. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. LaMarre, Thomas. 2017. Platformativity: Media studies, Area studies. Asiascape: Digital Asia 4 (3): 1–31. Lury, Celia, and Nina Wakeford. 2013. Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. Routledge. Lury, Celia, Rachel Fensham, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Sybille Lammes, Angela Last, Mike Michael, and Emma Uprichard, eds. 2018. Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods. London: Routledge.

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Marsh, Jackie. 2010. Young Children’s Play in Online Virtual Worlds. Journal of Early Childhood Research 8 (1): 23–39. Marsh, Jackie, and Chris Richards. 2013. Play, Media and Children’s Playground Cultures. In: Children, Media and Playground Cultures: Ethnographic Studies of School Playtimes, edited by Rebeka Willett, Chris Richards, Jackie Marsh, Andrew Burn and Julia Bishop, 1–20. London: Palgrave. Mills, Kathy A. 2016. Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Mills, Kathy A., and Ji Yong Park. 2015. Race, the Senses, and the Materials of Writing Practices. In Teaching Writing in Today’s Classrooms: Looking Back to Look Forward, ed. J. Turbill, C. Brock, and G. Barton, 298–312. Norwood, SA: Australian Literacy Educators’ Association. Mørch, Anders, and Ingvill Thomassen. 2016. From Wooden Blocks and Lego to Minecraft: Designing and Playing with Blocks to Learn in a 3D Virtual World. CoPDA@NordiCHI. Overby, Alexandra, and Brian L.  Jones. 2015. Virtual LEGOs: Incorporating Minecraft into the Art Education Curriculum. Art Education 68 (1): 21–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2015.11519302. Paterson, Mark. 2009. Haptic Geographies: Ethnography, Haptic Knowledges and Sensuous Dispositions. Progress in Human Geography 33 (6): 766–788. Parisi, David. 2018. Archaeologies of Touch: Interfacing with Haptics from Electricity to Computing. University of Minnesota Press. Pink, Sarah. 2009. Doing Sensory Ethnography. London: SAGE. Pink, Sarah, Heather Horst, John Postill, Larissa Hjorth, Tania Lewis, and Jo Tacchi. 2015. Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practice. London: Sage. Pink, Sarah, Kerstin Leder Mackley, Roxana Morosanu, Val Mitchell, Tracy Bhamra. 2017. Making Homes: Ethnography and Design. London: Bloomsbury. Richardson, Ingrid, and Larissa Hjorth. 2017. Mobile Media, Domestic Play and Haptic Ethnography. New Media & Society 19 (10): 1653–1667. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461444817717516. ———. 2018. Haptic play: Rethinking media cultures and practices. Convergence, 25 (1): 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856518815275. Ringland, Kathryn E. 2019. “Autsome”: Fostering an Autistic Identity in an Online Minecraft Community for Youth with Autism. In Information in Contemporary Society. iConference 2019, ed. N.  Taylor, C.  Christian-Lamb, M.  Martin, and B.  Nardi. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 11420. Springer. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Sicart, Miguel. 2014. Play Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Simon, Bart. 2007. Geek Chic: Machine Aesthetics, Digital Gaming, and the Cultural Politics of the Case Mod. Games and Culture 2 (3): 175–193. Sutton-Smith, Brian. 1997. The Ambiguity of Play. London: Routledge.

PART I

Context

CHAPTER 2

Exploring Play

I play anywhere. —Clara, eleven-year-old Minecraft player on iPad

This chapter sets the scene for the diversity of Minecraft techniques and modes of play across devices in the Australian context. Beginning with a discussion of ambient play as a way to understand contemporary contexts of and for play, we then turn to fieldwork to illustrate some of the specific contexts for play of Minecraft. This section is followed by reviewing the contemporary modalities of play—including core gameplay across devices and platforms, gamified learning, sandbox games, metagaming and paratextual community practices such as Twitch and LP. We then turn to how Minecraft is situated in these contexts in terms of its influence on creativity, sociality, and intergenerational and informal literacies. With the Minecraft phenomenon increasingly interpreted as a historical moment, we examine the transformative dimensions of Minecraft play and consequent effects in domestic, social and educative domains. The chapter ends by clearly articulating the key themes and issues that provide the foundation for our deeper exploration of the contexts and modalities of Minecraft in Parts II and III.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9_2

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Ambient Play: Understanding Contexts of Play Mobile games have become an habitual part of contemporary everyday life and thus they operate as a barometer for understanding how forms of sociality and play move between digital and material worlds in often seamless ways. As mobile games move across different genres, platforms, practices and contexts, they become ever-present in our everyday lives, and for many of us, an important means of experiencing and navigating a digitally saturated world. Through the notion of ambient play, Hjorth and Richardson (2020) take mobile games seriously as they expand across different public and private settings in ways that are social, ecological and even political. As a term, ambient play conveys how games and playful media practices have come to pervade much of our social and communicative terrain, both domestic and urban, and our sensory and quotidian experience. Deploying ambient play is useful in recognizing the complex ways Minecraft inhabits mundane and quotidian spaces and practices. Ambient play acknowledges the complex ways in which humans and more-than-humans interact across digital, material and social environments that move across the domestic and public spheres (Hjorth and Richardson 2020). In particular, ambient play recognizes how contemporary haptic screens emphasise proprioception (the knowing, moving body) and diverse modes of engagement from distraction to the habitual. Central to understanding Minecraft is the acknowledgement of its ability to transverse multiple contexts, platforms and modes of play. This requires understanding and interpreting not only play but also the way in which context frames and shapes play. Concepts such as ambient play allow us to address the complex ways in which play happens in everyday life. Play and playfulness have been subject to increased focus in contemporary research (Frissen et al. 2015), and as an interdisciplinary concept, the meaning of play has been contested terrain across many fields of study (Flanagan 2009). Interdisciplinary and multispecies scholar Hanna Wirman (2012) creatively combines the study of animal play with game design, arguing that our definitions of play have been limited by their human-centric focus, despite the intra- and inter-species complexity of play. Playfulness within urban spaces have a long history that can be linked to historical motifs like the flâneur—a person of leisure who surveys and contemplates society

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as they stroll through the streets—and the 1960s movement Situationist International (SI) (de Souza e Silva and Hjorth 2009). In Play Matters, Miguel Sicart fleshes out the many dimensions of play as an activity, and playfulness as a contemporary attitude (2014). Through a variety of tropes derived from politics and architecture, Sicart maps how play and playfulness migrate across all facets of life, spanning cultural practice (Sutton-Smith 1997), animal play (Myers 2010), to current do-it-­ yourself (DIY) and tinkering strategies (Gauntlett 2011). In this way, play is seen as fundamental to being human, with multiple cultural, social, historical and emotional entanglements. More specifically, Sicart explores “playfulness” as the key characteristic of everyday media, as we increasingly participate in gameworlds and deploy playful media practices as a way to communicate with each other. A number of media researchers have made similar claims, arguing that we are in the midst of cultural turn towards a lusory or playful sensibility. Play is mobilized as a key concept for thinking through our mediated interactions, as all media interfaces become part of the “collective playful media landscape” (Frissen et al. 2015). Within this framework, we suggest that mobile media and mobile games in particular engender a mode of ambient play—that is, play that moves with us across social networks, platforms and devices, public and private domains, mediated and face-to-face contexts. Gameplay is now part of our everyday realities, not an escape from them. As mobile games stretch across digital, material and social worlds, they are also deeply enmeshed with our movement across online and offline spaces, or what we might call digital wayfaring. Notions of the ambient, as well as atmosphere (Böhme 2017), have taken on a certain currency for some scholars who seek to explain the increased digital mediation of everyday life, and how this is reshaping our experience of being-in-the-world. From Malcolm McCullough’s (2013) Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Information to Paul Roquet’s (2016) Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self, the ambient has been used as a way of understanding how contemporary media changes our engagement with spaces and places, and our modes of interaction. While the concept of ambience has received significant attention in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and the study of the relation between ubiquitous computing and urban environments—exemplified by McCullough’s analysis—we think about ambience and play as a way to understand the embodied, intimate and affective relations between mobile

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media, people and their animal companions, both in the home and the urban environment. Ambient play captures how the increasing popularity of mobile gaming lies in its capacity to move between and across co-located and networked spaces, and its easy adaption to the routines and patterns of everyday life. As we argue elsewhere, ambience is also about the sensory and affective texture or atmosphere of a place (Hjorth and Richardson 2015). McCullough suggests that ambient awareness reflects “a more general mindfulness,” a social and embodied sensibility of our immediate and mediated surroundings (McCullough 2013, p. 13). There are many features of gameplay that are ambient—most explicitly the soundtracks that play a pivotal role in developing the mood, genre and emotional cues for the player. In mobile games audiovisual ambience is enhanced by the haptic, social, networked and locative elements of the game experience. However, in a broader textural sense, what creates ambience within the context of mobile gameplay—especially as it moves across different modes of mediated and co-located presence, and thus different experiences of place—needs to be more robustly developed and articulated. Ambient play is a useful concept in framing how Minecraft inhabits everyday life. What did become clear during our research in the field, is that media use such as Minecraft is not just about media—it is digital, social and material. Sensory, material and digital “stuff” are interwoven in the messy construction and experience of space, place, knowing and being in the contemporary world. So, when we look at how we engage with mobile games like Minecraft, we can’t focus solely on the online and the digital, but must also capture the material, social and embodied experiences within and alongside them.

Play in Context One of the key features of Minecraft is that it can be played everywhere, on almost every device. This makes it fascinating in terms of how context can shape different forms of gameplay and how the same game in different contexts can be experienced differently. The different modes of Minecraft, along with its ability to be played across various platforms and consoles, makes it a powerful lens for understanding play in context. Let us begin with the home of Nick (aged twenty-two), a male university student participant. Nick lives with his partner and two others in a rundown university share house in Melbourne’s Northern Suburbs. The

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rambling house features two lounge rooms. One has been set up as a communal living space with dining table, chairs and heater, the other contains a massive TV set against one wall, faced by two rickety chairs. A stack of games and consoles are falling out of some IKEA shelves, power chords spaghetti the floor. The game collection in the shelves sit alongside a classic Nintendo 64 and a PlayStation VR headset. Nick tells us about his historical use of Minecraft across different devices (iPad and PlayStation): So there was the free version and the paid version. Back then the free version was really good. So we’d all just fuck around on our phones, we’d just kind of gotten smartphones so we’d muck about and build. That was kind of my introduction. Then I got it on the PlayStation which is the full version, so I got more into it. The phone stuff was just the free mode; on the PS4 it was more kind of story-ish, or at least a degree of progression to the game, so I got more into that when I played the PlayStation version… [the difference between the PS4 and phone versions]…. Ahh, well the phone thing is 100% social. We’d all be sat in the lounge room chatting about what we were doing. Whereas on the PS4 I actually did the ‘story’.

As Nick identifies, the distribution of Minecraft across different platforms not only allows for different styles of digital play but also for a variety of social and material engagements within the domestic space. Understanding Minecraft as a cultural practice requires that we engage with the multiple platforms, devices, spaces and places of play as well as recognizing the manifestations of play by varied audiences with differing literacies. Minecraft coalesces contemporary modes of play in ways that allow for diverse learning styles across generations and sociocultural agencies. As we argue throughout this book, Minecraft and its playership have come to demonstrate in practice much of what has been theorized in relation to media engagement in recent decades. From the perspective of game studies, Minecraft exemplifies the rise of the indie game model, the early access paradigm and the resurrection and perfection of the open-­ worldcrafting sandbox genre. Within media studies, Minecraft and its community of players typifies the contemporary nature of audience engagement, the environment of participation, the way appraisal creates value, the economic and cultural value generated through these media activities, and the transnational flows at the heart of these phenomena. In education, Minecraft has become the best-practice model in terms of integrating a range of classroom lessons into videogame contexts. At the

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heart of these discourses celebrating the adaptability of Minecraft is the perceived agency of consumers, not simply within the virtual world of Minecraft but more broadly as a technologically facilitated global community of discourse. Across web forums, online communities, wiki sites and video sharing platforms, the agency of players as they create, share and discuss Minecraft knowledge, skills and experiences has cemented its importance as a media phenomenon. Minecraft’s “everywhere-ness” has transformed it from foreground to background, from remarkable to mundane. Of the many participants we interviewed, Minecraft was often not the game they most wanted to discuss. But it was the game that all knew well and with which they had numerous personal and shared experiences. It was the sharing of these experiences, not just with friends and family but with the global community of players, that reinforced players’ experience of the game. One of the prominent examples of Minecraft’s community of activity involved the numerous forms of video-sharing. Many of our participants were keen viewers of LP, Twitch streams and YouTube videos. These social and performative aspects of digital play became evident in our co-play sessions with participants. They would be playing Minecraft, guiding us through their worlds while describing the worlds they have created in the past, the activities they were performing in the present as well as their ambitions for the future. We return to thirteen-year-old Austin—as mentioned in Chap. 1—who exemplifies this phenomenon. When we interview Austin at his home, he is absorbed in an intricate dungeon he has previously built. His PS4 is set up through the big screen television in the family room and he sits on the couch wearing a headset. Initially we are unsure if he is talking to us or to friends online. He barely gives us eye contact as he chatters away. We ask him to show us around his in-game world and he happily does so, even standing up on the couch to excitedly point at the screen. We are caught between two worlds. It’s a whirlwind experience, but one in which his skill and confidence in balancing reflection, action and motivation during digital game play constitute a compelling skill in performative storytelling. “Check this out”, he says. “I’ve got full diamond armor”. Austin’s avatar runs from chamber to chamber of his vast hand-made dungeon, and the architecture spins around him as he searches from room to room. “It’s in here somewhere” he says. Austin leaps from discussion of what he is doing in moment-to-moment play, to tales of what he has built previously, to his plans for the future in an endless stream of thought, all while deftly

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navigating the complex game space. It’s an intricate world he has created, and it evidences deep in-game knowledge and skill. “Do you know any Redstone?”, we ask. “Sure”, he replies and begins assembling a Redstone device while describing its materials, workings, and how he came to know how to build it. “I know heaps of Redstone now. Mostly how to make booby traps. Like iron spikes that shoot out or holes filled with lava. You can booby trap any block or chest.” “Where online did you learn how to do all this?” “I saw other people doing it on YouTube then I searched and found out for myself.”

Austin has a significant and evolving diet of YouTuber channels, Twitch streamers and LP, some of which he no longer follows, some that no longer play Minecraft. As we observe the performativity of his actions, we enquire if he too wants to become a YouTube game personality. As Austin states, “I used to want to be a Twitch streamer or YouTuber, but I think something even better will come long eventually.” This comment evidences a shrewd evaluation of the evolution of social media—a clear recognition of the fleeting transience of platform popularity and modes of play, and an awareness that the economic arrangements of games and their surrounding culture is a fluid and rapidly evolving landscape in which empires of consumption ebb and flow. Well beyond Minecraft, Austin’s play takes place across a complex range of online spaces. He watches Minecraft YouTubers as much as he plays the game. He participates in online discussions, plays Minecraft mods and makes Minecraft memes. For Austin, the game is but one small part of a vast digital ecology that Minecraft and videogames embrace. LP and YouTube are but a few of the multiple visual cultures through which Minecraft play has manifested. Minecraft has also become a medium for developing storytelling tropes as we see in the following narrative of two Minecraft players: An astronaut floats above a vast ocean. Hovering alongside him, his companion—a bright red zombie—wears a tuxedo. Beneath them a vast structure of thousands of blocks is having the finishing touches applied. The two work efficiently, placing and deleting blocks with single taps. Soon their construction is finished. Up close it appears to be an abstract assortment of random of colors, shapes and lines. But, as the astronaut floats away from it,

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the structure reveals itself as a giant sculpture of the Pokémon “Charizard”. Satisfied with their work, the two companions take screenshots of the monolith and log off Minecraft for the evening.

Using “pixel art” the two Minecraft players use creative mode to build the blocky visual style reminiscent of early videogames. In Minecraft, this art style is easily achieved by having each block represent a single pixel. Players are able to build highly detailed sculptures through the use of thousands and thousands of blocks pulled from an endless inventory. The vast resources required for such projects often means they are created collaboratively in Minecraft’s “creative mode”. Pixel art is a distinct play practice that we observed several times throughout our fieldwork. Pixel art creation is not an inherent game mode or play style in Minecraft. Rather it is one that has emerged out of the broad affordances Minecraft offers its players. It is a form of playing Minecraft that has evolved from aesthetically playing with Minecraft’s digital materials. Throughout our ethnography with players, we explored the many modes of play the game intrinsically offers in terms of its original mechanics, and what it affords through player innovation. Minecraft offers creative modes of play through inventive possibilities and unorthodox engagements. Our play sessions with Minecraft players of all ages revealed scenarios of play from pixel art, to immense castle-building in creative worlds, to world generation gameplay and even modes of play revolving around watching grass grow. Minecraft’s imbrication throughout digital media culture sees its players develop knowledge and literacy in a much broader range of contexts. None of these technologies or media are approached with circumspection or uncertainty but are equally embraced as tools and spaces of play. In this way, we argue Minecraft exemplifies and extends the playful attitude with which contemporary youth view the technology environment they are surrounded by—as a rich and open space for play.

Contemporary Modalities of Play At its core, Minecraft enables such a wide variety of play through its positioning as a sandbox game. This means that rather than fitting into strict definitions of a game with a set of rules or objectives, or even a specific platform of play, Minecraft instead offers a rich virtual context in which emergent play can occur. Sandbox games differ radically to other game

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genres, manifesting not as a specific game structure but instead as sites of play that invite the expansion of imagination through material engagement. As Seth Giddings (2014) notes in his study of everyday digital play, there is a need to put this form of play into context across social and material worlds. In Making is Connecting (2018 [2011]), David Gauntlett argues that through making we connect with the social and material world, and that while the importance of maker cultures has existed for centuries, the digital allows us to connect in powerful ways. Understanding Minecraft in the space of the everyday requires us to frame it as an extension of material and social play, rather than just as a digital game in vacuum. Putting Minecraft into context—socially, culturally, historically and materially—is key. And yet we also need to put it into context digitally—especially through the genealogy of “sandbox” games. “Sandbox” refers to a style of play in which few limitations are enforced on a game character, and players are also afforded the agency to change aspects of the virtual world. The term recalls a playground sandbox in which open and emergent play can evolve uninhibited by rule sets. In the context of videogames, sandbox modes allow players a high level of autonomy to explore the virtual world while also providing the ability to transform the environment. In contrast to a progression-style game in which the narrative and game mechanic drive the player to achieve or complete tasks, sandbox games allow for free roaming and player creativity. Scholarship diverges with varying definitions and histories of sandbox games. While computer games have developed open-world concepts since the late 1970s with the text game Colossal Cave Adventure (1975), the genre took distinct shape through the 1980s and 90s with games that extended creative player agency, such as Elite (1984), Starflight (1986), Pirates! (1987), Star Control (1990), Hunter (1991), Privateer (1993) Age of Empires (1997) and The Sims (2000). The arrival of Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Second Life (2003) and Garry’s Mod (2006) each set new standards in terms of allowing the player the freedom to transform in-­ game environments. Some sandbox videogames may offer structured elements such as tasks, mini-games and storylines, but crucially, these can be ignored by players—they are not a necessary part of the play. Sandbox games offer an open world in which players can explore not just the space, but their own creativity. “Open world” and “sandbox” are sometimes used synonymously to describe these games styles, however the two terms are not interchangeable. While open world games enable players to freely explore rather than

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be restricted to certain pre-defined areas, sandbox games afford the player the ability to create, modify or destroy their surrounding environment. Minecraft’s creative mode and survival mode articulate the crucial differences in these respective contexts of play. While survival mode offers an open world game of unrestricted exploration, in-game constraints of hunger, resource limitations and mortality are enforced on players; creative mode represents a pure sandbox game with no objective other than to modify the virtual environment at the player’s whim. But as we have explored, sandbox games have existed for decades, so in what way is Minecraft unique? We argue that in the context of sandbox games, Minecraft’s success lies in its ability to capture a mainstream “ludified perfect storm” by exploiting the recent rise of touchscreen tablets and smartphones as a mundane part of everyday life, a discussion we will take up further in Chap. 5. As we will argue, it is the ability to tap into the zeitgeist of quotidian haptic play that has made Minecraft so successful across the generations and formal and informal contexts. Moreover, with two key modes—creative and survival—Minecraft offers different modes of play that can be adapted to diverse learning and play styles.

Playing Minecraft: Playful Modes, Devices and Haptic Play The creative and survival modes offer profoundly different experiences of Minecraft play. Where survival mode emphasizes resilience, subsistence and battle, creative mode privileges expression and creativity. Survival mode, as the original and default mode of play, sees players struggling to stay alive in an often-harsh landscape. Creative mode by contrast removes all resource, hunger and health restrictions, allowing players more agency over where, how and what they build. The challenges of survival mode are familiar to experienced videogame players, whereas the expanded possibilities and open world of creative mode can be unexpected and even challenging for those accustomed to linear and goal-focused play. Both modes of play invite the player to reflect, invent and explore. We noted in our ethnographic fieldwork that many players tend to preference one mode of play over the other. For some players, Minecraft’s survival mode offered the rules and structures that they were familiar with through other videogames. As fifteen-­ year-old David tells us: “Survival mode seems more real and

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immersive because the stakes are higher. You have to work hard to stay alive. But in Creative mode you can do whatever you like without even trying, so there’s no real challenge to it.” For David, the attraction of Minecraft is as a set of competitive challenges to overcome. However, as fourteen-year-old player Elliot reports: “I really like the open-world of Minecraft and pretty much any open world games. Just being able to explore and do whatever without having rules or having to solve puzzles or whatever.” For Elliot, this freedom from the narrative-­ driven confines of many videogames, and indeed most other entertainment experiences, allows him to develop his own stories, ideas and goals, providing an open space for creativity. We asked David if he felt that that the rules of survival mode inhibited the level of creativity he could use in the game, which he firmly denied: “You just can’t go through Minecraft without being creative.” Indeed— and as we will explore in Chaps. 4 and 5—survival mode invites and compels player creativity albeit within a different and more challenging framework. Herein lies the nature and appeal of sandbox games; they provide a location and a context of play for the player to explore their own limits. In our fieldwork, intergenerational differences often played out in terms of motivations for using creative and survival modes. We will explore the two modes in greater detail throughout Part II. Here we continue to focus on the overall context of play and Minecraft’s presence in the everyday. Playing Minecraft across different devices brings distinctive affordances and modes of haptic play. Some devices such as mobile media enable more “social” interactions due to their more “ambient play” dimensions—that is, allowing for integration of screens as part of socializing. These social dimensions were found to also be influenced by the regulation of device use in the home. A common rule of “no devices in the bedroom” in many Australian homes saw players layering their screen use with other media devices, as well as in other family and social situations. As thirteen-year old Sam tells us: I’m not allowed to play in my bedroom anymore so I usually sit on the couch in the lounge and play. Or maybe in the kitchen. It depends. Like, if I need to charge, I’ll sit close to the power point, but if the battery is ok I might lie back on the couch if the TV is on.

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Haptic play acknowledges the importance of the knowing body and social proprioception in how we play—a process whereby participants’ body habits, gestures and narratives can “reveal” both individual and collective habitudes of being-with-media. Haptic play recognizes the significance of the senses, and demands that we adapt our ethnographic techniques to uncover the often-tacit ways of being in the world. It requires us to develop different methods in our ways of understanding the world especially in terms of diverse learning styles and literacies (Ringland 2018). As ethnographers in both physical and digital contexts, we endeavour to be attentive to these textured experiences and nuanced understandings of play as they arise in the everyday lives of participants. For example, in one of our discussions with Sam, he mentioned: “[P]retty often I’ll play while I’m doing something else—like TV or something. After a while Minecraft is pretty easy, even Survival mode. It’s like coloring in or something.” In this brief reflection, our participant draws an implicit comparison between the actions of moving fingers across the iPad screen and colouring in. Important here is Sam’s evocation not of freely drawing but the more prescribed activity of “coloring in”. As we ask Sam to elaborate, he explains: “I don’t know, it’s like moving your hand around the screen and being creative but in a kind of limited way.” Bill Gaver in his work on design ethnography deploys the notion of the “cultural probe” to playfully invite participants to articulate the implicit and taken-for-grantedness of everyday, mundane practices (Gaver et  al. 1999). So too, Deterding has explored how game design as a probe requires participants to more explicitly reflect on the modalities and rules of play across digital, social and material worlds (Deterding et al. 2011). Across disciplines such as psychology, sociology and anthropology, play is recognized for its ability to enhance creativity and diverse modes of expression. For Sicart, contemporary digital culture is defined by its “playful” attitude (2014). In the “ludified” cultural turn (Frissen et al. 2015), concepts such as “playful design” across game and non-game worlds (Walsh et al. 2010) have emerged. More recently, playful design in health has begun to explore how games and play might be applied to aging well and wellbeing more generally (McGonigal 2011; Van Vleet and Feeney 2015). In short, play—and the design of play—has become crucial in understanding diverse forms of creativity and literacy.

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Sensorial Literacy and Diverse Learning Styles Minecraft on iPads fully exploits the multiple dimensions of haptic play, affording more sensorial experiences of learning that conventional educational contexts might not address. For Kathy Mills (2016), it is important that we understand the complex ways in which the social, cultural and sensory all inform ways in which literacy is interpreted and practiced across different informal contexts. The sensory literacies approach is a revitalized way of thinking about the multisensoriality of literacy and communication practices, including their technologies of mediation and production. Such a view is grounded in an established research tradition in the social sciences that has foregrounded the sensorial nature of human experience, perception, knowing and practicing, and draws from anthropology, sociology and philosophy of the senses (2016, p. 137). Much has been made of the sensory turn in media studies, especially through the rise of haptic technologies (Parisi et al. 2017; Richardson and Hjorth 2017). Yet, as Mills (2016) notes, the “sensory turn” in culture (Howes 2005) has also had a palpable impact on literacy. In the context of digital literacy and haptic screens, it is about highlighting the often-tacit gestures and ways of being in the world that often remain implicit and unarticulated. For Mills “by acknowledging different communities of practice and their diverse bodily ways of making meaning, socio-cultural views of literacy can support sensory approaches by illuminating cultural frames of reference for somatic literacy practices across culture, sub-­ cultures and social sites” (p.  138). Mills discusses the importance of motion-sensing and haptic technologies across platforms and devices as further magnifying the significance of sensorial literacy (p. 138). As she notes, the recent changes to the purview of interactive technologies for responding to human movement, touch, breath, gaze and other sensory forms calls for new approaches to literacy research that foreground the body and the senses and go beyond disembodied views of texts and textual practices (p. 138). Such findings emerged in our fieldwork with players in terms of recognizing how their play is contextualized within other tactile literacies. Eleven-year-old Clara tells us, “With Minecraft I use thumbs, but with a lot of games I just use one finger or one hand I should say…. It’s definitely helped with hand-eye coordination.” Clara and her mother Joanne are both neurologically diverse and Clara is home schooled. Her iPad is a central site of reading, learning and play, and literacies shift seamlessly

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across each context. Clara’s screen is a slippery surface upon which entertainment, communication and education rapidly flow together at the touch of her fingertips, but Minecraft remains a recurring constant, always accessible through its dominant place on the device’s dock menu (Fig. 2.1). As Kathryn Ringland notes in her work with children with autism, Minecraft allows for different modes of play that transgress “normative” types of digital literacy and play (2018, 2019). The sensory turn in approaches to media culture and especially literacy has allowed for diverse and neurodiverse learning styles and modes of play to be experienced and articulated. In our interactions with Clara and her family and throughout our ethnographic fieldwork, we encountered scenarios that corroborate Ringland’s findings. The alternative pathways of communication that Minecraft (and other online communities) can allow for a more varied spectrum of sociality, better accommodating intellectually diverse players who may struggle in traditional face-to-face social interactions (Ringland et  al. 2017). As Clara’s mother Joanne observed of her daughter’s Minecraft play: “It also helped (Clara) to communicate, I think. Like it’s something you can talk about and do with other kids in the Autcraft

Fig. 2.1  Minecraft at home on the iPad

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community”. According to Ringland, the use of Minecraft on the “Autcraft” server (a Minecraft server for those on the Autism Spectrum) illustrates the benefits of increased sociality (2018). As she notes: They spend time with their online friends by interacting through forums, instant messenger, and “hanging out” in the Autcraft virtual world. Although not typically physically collocated, members consider these relationships to be meaningful friendships. Autcraft, by its very nature of blending social interaction with strict rules of behaviour and appealing game mechanics, comes together to form a space of cohesion, not difference, and of support, not scorn. (Ringland 2018, p. 1260)

Ringland’s observations find resonance with Clara and her mother Joanne who also notes that many neurodivergent people “seem to be drawn to Minecraft”, and that her daughter would socialize in Minecraft “with some kids who never socialize”. Joanne tells us that through Minecraft Clara has friends who don’t normally have friends. The ambience of Minecraft affords different forms of sociality through and around play. Yet despite social difficulties experienced by many individuals, Minecraft—at least according to Joanne—served as a kind of bridge connecting interests and encouraging conversation both inside and outside the neurodivergent community. As Joanne notes, while “not everyone likes Anime, fantasy or sci-fi, everyone loves Minecraft.” The power of Minecraft to engage diverse learning styles and sensorial literacies has also been explored by Melbourne’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) through a series of Minecraft workshops. These workshops are popular among a variety of children, from those just learning the controls to self-professed “Minecraft experts”. These workshops consist of a range of challenges such as building an underwater fortress, constructing a giant monumental statue, designing and making pixel art, or using Minecraft to make “machinima” (animated movies created with in-game footage). According to the workshop coordinator many of these challenges are designed with a cooperative lens, intentionally facilitating safe co-playing environments (Fig. 2.2). A majority of the children who took part in the ACMI workshops experience difficulty in traditional social situations and have primarily played Minecraft in solo player mode. Through the emphasis on uniting Minecraft with co-present play, ACMI’s workshops aim to create embodied socialization through a digital interface—what Ringland defines as “sociality as

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Fig. 2.2  Minecraft playable installation at Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI)

an embodied experience… mediated by playful place” (2018, p. xv). The workshops further encourage this social development for children with special needs through the use of trained facilitators (adult helpers) and specific learning plans for those children that require them. Through the use of these strategies ACMI’s Minecraft workshops are seeking to build, consolidate and encourage a healthy videogame ecology that addresses the literacies and needs of all children. Much of the work in education explores the role of Minecraft in facilitating children’s activities of creative digital making. Dezuanni writes that digital literacy in Minecraft both requires and develops skills of collaboration, cooperation and a respect for player achievements and acquired possessions. Furthermore, Dezuanni finds that the game enables a willingness to learn from others (2018, p.  246). In this way, the innate sharing of knowledge, resources and experiences that Minecraft facilitates serves to encourage participation from children across all levels of learning and sociality.

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Anthony Pellicone and June Ahn have also written about Minecraft’s ability to facilitate communication between children (2015). Building from Gee’s notion of “affinity spaces” (2007) they argue that Minecraft— as a shared passion between children—allows for common affinity and the development of social bonds. Similarly, Dezuanni, Joanne O’Mara and Catherine Beavis’ article “Redstone is like electricity” explores how knowledge of Minecraft’s inner workings and complex crafting recipes can “mobilise contested displays of knowledge and expertise via social interactions” (2015, p. 161). In this way, Minecraft can provide players with extensive solo-player experience an opportunity to remediate their isolated videogame engagement into social engagement and status, further highlighting the capacity of Minecraft to build familiarity, facilitating deeper connections and shared experiences (Balmford and Davies 2019). For example, we encountered one group of friends who had bonded over a shared Minecraft server. Some of the participants were in intimate relationships, some had never met in physical space, but all would gather together in a server location that crossed state lines and time zones, allowing the group to collaborate in organized Minecraft play. One participant told us: Well, that usually happens after a really long time of no one playing the game at all. Then one of us will have an itch and will contact the others and then we’ll all start playing the game really intensely for a while then have a break when we get over it. But yeah, somewhere in there we will all decide on what we should do and how we should do it and break it up into tasks.

In our fieldwork across multiple contexts such as homes and museums, we often found that Minecraft allowed children with social difficulties an opportunity to come to the foreground of social interactions through play. As we will discuss in detail in Chap. 7, we attended a meet-up for Minecraft educators from the Asia-Pacific region as part of the 2018 Games in Education Summit at ACMI. These educators spoke extensively about how they integrate Minecraft’s Education Edition into their classrooms. Caesar—a primary school math and science teacher—explained that Minecraft allowed the “quieter” children in his classrooms, an opportunity to shine. As he noted: “it gives the kids who normally don’t say anything a chance to speak up. They might not be the first kids picked in HPE (health and physical education), but if we are doing a build challenge in class, they are hot property!”

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Another educator, Amy—a librarian who ran an after-school Minecraft club—explained that the game gave children “who would normally go home and be alone” a place to socialize after school. This socialization continued outside the club, with children working on their projects over the weekend. Our discussions with other librarians drew similar responses— that children who would otherwise play alone at home, would more happily play together in public locations such as libraries where they were likely to meet and interact with other Minecraft players in virtual and actual spaces. Likewise, facilitators at ACMI’s summer Minecraft workshops noted how some children’s Minecraft knowledge far outstripped their own. In turn, this extensive knowledge allowed them to engage with other children, building connections through their ability to help and encourage other workshop participants. In these ways Minecraft facilitates socialization between children from across the social spectrum. As Ringland says, this socialization exists as the default state of Minecraft—it is a technology that supports all forms of children’s play and sociality, including those outside of “typically” developing children (2018). Furthermore, the gameworlds of Minecraft and children’s knowledge of them allows for socialization between groups of children who may struggle in other face-­ to-­face scenarios. In sum, these initiatives highlight how Minecraft can be deployed as an adaptable place for play, and how in that space play can be used as a flexible tool for learning, literacy and sociality across diverse groups. These informal, social play and creative literacies will be addressed in more detail in the coming chapters.

Conclusion In this chapter we have explored Minecraft’s various contexts of play across digital, social and material worlds. We began with a short discussion of Minecraft modes of play and definitions around open-world and sandbox games, and how they came to popularity in part due to the meteoric growth of Minecraft. While these two terms are often used interchangeably, the two main modes of Minecraft indicate that they represent significant differences in styles of play. Also important to this facilitation of play are the various platforms and devices upon which Minecraft can be played. The complexity of play situations was encapsulated in our opening quote— that Minecraft can be played “anywhere”. In some cases, these are physical

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locations such as the home, but the “anywhere” can also refer to the mode of play, or the material interface such as the iPad or tablet. We also discussed how Minecraft plays out in practice much of what has been theorized in domains such as media studies, game studies and education research in recent decades, deliberations that will be further taken up in the chapters that follow, and detailed how Minecraft’s haptic and creative play lends itself to multisensory forms of play. In particular, we highlighted how Minecraft’s movement beyond a passing phenomenon into mundane everyday life has enabled new forms of play and furthermore, made it ideal for the study of multisensory and informal play literacies. Finally, we explored how Minecraft’s diverse styles of play have allowed different types of players to be included—in particular, research is emerging about neurodiverse Minecraft play by scholars such as Ringland and Dezuanni. In the next chapter, we further explore play and creative literacies and methods, review key theories and ontological approaches we took into the field, and the various techniques we applied. Through exploring the various intergenerational, creative and educative domains that are increasingly occupied by Minecraft, the following chapter provides further foundations for our deeper exploration of the contexts and modalities of Minecraft in Part II.

References Balmford, William, and Hugh Davies. 2019. Mobile Minecraft: Negotiated Space and Perceptions of Play in Australian Families. Mobile Media and Communication 1: 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050157918819614n. Böhme, Gernot. 2017. The Aesthetics of Atmospheres. Edited by Jean-Paul Thibaud. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. de Souza e Silva, Adriana. and Hjorth, Larissa. 2009. Playful urban spaces: a historical approach to mobile games. Simulation & Gaming, 40 (5): 602–625. Deterding, Sebastian, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled, and Lennart Nacke. 2011. From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining Gamification. Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments 11: 9–15. https://doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040. Dezuanni, Michael. 2018. Minecraft and Children’s Digital Making: Implications for Media Literacy Education. Learning, Media and Technology 43 (3): 236–249. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2018.1472607. Dezuanni, Michael, Joanne O’Mara, and Catherine Beavis. 2015. ‘Redstone is Like Electricity’: Children’s Performative Representations in and Around Minecraft. E-Learning and Digital Media 12 (2): 147–163.

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Flanagan, Mary. 2009. Critical play: Radical game design. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Frissen, Valerie, Sybille Lammes, Michiel de Lange, Jos de Mul, and Joost Raessens. 2015. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gauntlett, David. 2011. Making is Connecting. London: John Wiley & Sons. Gaver, William, Anthony Dunne, and Elena Pacenti. 1999. Design: Cultural Probes. Interactions 6: 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1145/291224.291235. Gee, James Paul. 2007. Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning and Literacy. New York: Peter Lang. Giddings, Seth. 2014. Gameworlds: Virtual Media and Children’s Everyday Play. New York: Bloomsbury. Hjorth, Larissa, and Ingrid Richardson. 2015. Mobile Games and Ambient Play. In Social, Casual and Mobile Games: The changing gaming landscape. Tama Leaver and Michele Willson. eds. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 105–116. Bloomsbury Collections. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501310591.ch-008. ———. 2020. Ambient play. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Howes, David. 2005. The Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg. McCullough, Malcolm. 2013. Ambient Commons: Attention in the Age of Embodied Interaction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They can Change the World. New York: Penguin Press. Mills, Kathy A. 2016. Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Myers, David. 2010. Play redux: The form of computer games. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Parisi, David, Paterson Mark, and Edward Archer. 2017. Haptic Media Studies. New Media & Society 19 (10): 1513–1522. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1461444817717518. Pellicone, Anthony, and June Ahn. 2015. Building Worlds: A Connective Ethnography of Play in Minecraft. Games and Culture 13: 1–19. https://doi. org/10.1177/1555412015622345. Richardson, Ingrid, and Larissa Hjorth. 2017. Mobile Media, Domestic Play and Haptic Ethnography. New Media & Society 19 (10): 1653–1667. https://doi. org/10.1177/1461444817717516. Ringland, Kathryn E. 2018. Playful Places in Online Playgrounds: An Ethnography of a Minecraft Virtual World for Children with Autism. Thesis/dissertation. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19x7m1wm.

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———. 2019. Autsome: Fostering an Autistic Identity in an Online Minecraft Community for Youth with Autism. In N. Taylor, C. Christian-Lamb, M. Martin, B. Nardi. eds. Information in Contemporary Society. iConference 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 11420. Springer. Ringland, Kathryn and Boyd, Louanne & Faucett, Heather and Cullen, Amanda and Hayes, Gillian. 2017. Making in Minecraft: A Means of Self-Expression for Youth with Autism. 340–345. https://doi.org/10.1145/3078072.3079749. Roquet, Paul. 2016. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of the Self. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota University Press. Sicart, Miguel. 2014. Play Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sutton-Smith, Brian. 1997. The Ambiguity of Play. London: Routledge. Van Vleet, Meredith, and Brooke Feeney. 2015. Play Behavior and Playfulness in Adulthood. Social and Personality Psychology Compass. 9: 630–643. https:// doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12205. Walsh, Glenda, Carol McGuinness, Liz Sproule, and Karen Trew. 2010. Implementing a Play-based and Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum in Northern Ireland Primary Schools: What Lessons Have We Learned? Early Years 30 (1): 53–66. Wirman, Hanna. 2012. Nonhuman Animal Players: Overcoming Speciesism in Cultural Studies of Digital Game Play. Paper presented at the conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies, Sorbonne Nouvelle University and UNESCO, July 2–6.

CHAPTER 3

Understanding Play

Play can be understood in multiple ways—as a form of literacy, a mode of critical inquiry, or a set of methods. Numerous disciplines from sociology to childhood education conceptualize play differently. It is as contested as it is complex. Through a detailed investigation of playful, creative, informal and incidental literacies, this chapter identifies the interdisciplinary and innovative methodologies used to analyse and interpret playful literacy practices. With attention to its many manifestations, we suggest that Minecraft has become a locus for new interdisciplinary approaches—both methodological and conceptual—as well as a unique platform for the development of ethnographic innovation and qualitative research. Beginning with a literature review on the significance of play, this chapter unpacks previous research at the play-literacy nexus. We then introduce our own work exploring ethnographies of play and informal literacies as a type of situated practice. Applying the understandings that arise in interpreting Minecraft play, we then consider the game in terms of how it coalesces sensorial creativity, play and informal learning. These concerns play out in numerous examples from our ethnographic fieldwork with regard to how players haptically interact with and understand screens and devices, how their experiences of an array of platforms inform their experience of play, and how their lasting experience of Minecraft has shaped not just their literacy with broader technologies and creativity, but their own memories and nostalgia towards the game. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9_3

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At stake in this chapter are how Minecraft comes to constitute a creative and informal literacy for players and how the game has become embedded in their everyday worlds. To begin, we ask—how is Minecraft understood by its players? How do its designers and developers intend for it to be interpreted? In the video advertisement for Minecraft Earth we are presented with a teenager whose family has just moved home. Her father unloads a removal truck while the teen, equipped with skateboard back-pack and chewing gum, explores the new neighbourhood. She produces a phone and effortlessly replaces an actual tree with a virtual Minecraft tree via Augmented Reality (AR) and continues to personalize the territory with Minecraft’s trade-mark blocky aesthetic. As she continues on her journey, the actual streetscape dissolves into a virtual one, with Minecraft objects appearing within mobile phone shaped frames, suggesting accessibility via mobile handset-enabled AR (see Fig.  3.1). The virtual world becomes populated with impressive castles, strange animals and exciting situations. At the end of her mini-tour, she returns to her new home, where her father enquires: “So what do you think?”

Although doubtlessly asking about the neighbourhood, we are complicit in the girl’s hybrid digital-material experience that coalesces actual and virtual space.

Fig. 3.1  Image from the video advertisement for Minecraft Earth

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“Mmmm—not bad”. She replies.

The teenager’s nonchalance highlights the sense of banal acceptance of material-digital hybridity among the Minecraft generation—one that is encouraged by Minecraft itself. There is a taken-for-grantedness in blending the actual and the virtual via hand-held technology that remains an incomprehensible magic to the generation of this supposed archetypal teenagers’ parents. Her casual response belies a presumption of pervasive technology in every neighbourhood, indeed every corner of the Earth. For contemporary teenagers, Minecraft, and the technology that enables it, have become acutely ordinary, forming the mundane backdrop of everyday play. Yet although it is now a mundane gameworld, and so for many players familiar and banal, its use is nevertheless complex, precisely because much of players’ experience is tacit and taken for granted. How can this well-trodden socio-technological embedded play be critically studied and interpreted? Play is a perpetually evolving phenomenon. Videogames constitute the dominant medium around which contemporary notions of play are formulated, and Minecraft represents one of the most popular and recognizable products in the videogame vernacular. As such, Minecraft offers a compelling lens through which we can envisage new understandings of play in its contemporary contexts and manifestations. In this chapter, we explore the ways in which variations of Minecraft play are enacted and understood by players. Using a range of ethnographic techniques, we examine how informal literacies arise from and through Minecraft play and posit the game as a pièce de résistance of mundane media. Minecraft, we suggest, provides key insights into quotidian practices of contemporary play. We argue that Minecraft shapes, and can reshape, our thinking on digital play. We begin with a discussion of children, play and the digital. We then turn to understandings of play through the rise of ludified digital culture, followed by a discussion of ethnographic techniques (expanding from Chap. 1’s introduction) to unpack tactile and haptic gestures around the screen, and reveal the capacity of ethnographic methods to capture the complexities of social play and creative literacy in action.

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Children, Play and the Role of the Digital Play has long been recognized as a central aspect of education. However, with the conflation of the digital with play, the remit of its educational role comes into question. Scholarship in the Digital Media & Learning (DML) space by Mizuko Ito and Sonia Livingstone has provided greater understanding into this important relationship between the digital and play. Previous research has explored how play contributes to a child’s development in terms of cognitive understanding and social skills (Vygotsky 1978), language and literacy (Roskos and Christie 2000; Wohlwend 2013), emotional development (Erikson 1963), peer group relationships (Giffin 1984), and development of imagination and perception of reality (Edwards 2011). Hutt’s (1966) important work on children’s play with novel objects delineates two types of play activity—epistemic and ludic. “Epistemic” is where children engage in exploratory activity in order to understand an object and its function, while “ludic” is where children use the object as a prop in imaginative and fantasy-type play. This dichotomy represents a crucial aspect of early childhood education—the capacity to separate an object from meaning is associated with the emergence of the symbolism necessary for literacy skills to take hold. As digital technologies become increasingly acknowledged as important aspects of early childhood education, significant problems arise in understanding the pedagogical use of technologies in a sector that values play-based learning (Marsh et al. 2004; Vandewater et al. 2007; Common Sense Media 2013). The “appropriateness debate” centres on the proper use of play-based learning in early childhood education, with technologies considered by some researchers as threatening the imaginative capacity of young children’s play (Singer and Singer 2005). This view is being increasingly challenged by expert groups that now consider digital technologies a necessary aspect of early childhood education (National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Fred Rogers Centre for Early Learning and Children’s Media 2012; Yelland 2011; Plowman et  al. 2012). However, interpreting the specific ways in which children learn to use technologies through play is still an emerging research area (Aubrey and Dahl 2014; Roberts-Holmes 2014). The use of digital games to teach children quantitative and linguistic skills is increasingly prevalent across a range of age groups and cultural contexts—examples include work by Gee (2003), Gershenfeld (2014), Prensky (2001) and Shaffer et  al. (2005). Dias et  al. (2005) describe

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computer-based tutor software for improving reading in Ghana. Kam et al. (2008) designed several digital games for children in rural India to improve their English as Second Language (ESL) skills. Other scholars indicate that technological play reduces the level of complexity evident in children’s pretend and imaginative play (Smirnova 2011). Conversely, children’s play with technologies has been associated with “play effects” that align with commonly valued aspects of play in early childhood pedagogy, such as intrinsic motivation, exploration, cause and effect, problematizing and social interaction (Verenikina and Kervin 2011). However, in this book we are more interested in the informal literacies emerging in and around Minecraft—especially in terms of digital creativity, social play and quotidian platformativities. Scholars such as aforementioned Livingstone (2009, 2014) have explored in detail the ways in which children’s understanding of digital media and the internet diverges from adult perceptions and practices. They recognize the need to define play as an interdisciplinary and contested concept (Drotner and Livingstone 2008; Livingstone 2009; Livingstone and Haddon 2009). So too, Lelia Green and Donell Holloway have highlighted the contradictions between policy and practice as it pertains to parental perspectives and children’s experiences of digital play (2019). Indeed, children’s digital play is a complex, interdisciplinary and contested terrain. As Susana Tosca and Isabel Froes (2017) observe in their fieldwork with small children (four-to-eight-year-olds) using tablets in educational settings, children “resist” the expected use of the various applications—to instead circumnavigate convention and invent their own forms of interaction. They argue that these technology appropriations and tinkering practices can be understood as “playful subversions”. They identify four aspects of playful subversion in relation to tablets—invention, definition, assignation and performance. These aspects inform non-­ normative interpretations of children’s interactions with technology. As empirical studies like Tosca and Froes (2017) and Giddings (2014) highlight, through practice we can recognize the complexity of play—and especially social play. Through critical reflection on practices in and around digital and social play, we can identify the relationship between literacy, digital media and learning more generally, especially given the important role digital media plays in the development and enhancement of informal literacy. As highlighted by the work of DML scholars—such as Ito, Salen Tekinbaş and Jenkins—as the digital increasingly becomes integral to

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twenty-first century everyday life, its dual role in informal and formal literacy blurs. For Sefton-Green and Erstad (2017), grounding learning through lived experience is crucial to identifying the complex issues at the intersection between learning, media and technology. Sefton-Green and Erstad forward a “learning lives perspective” to grapple with the complex ways learning manifests in everyday life. How do researchers conceptualize learning when it is outside institutions or fixed contexts? And how do quotidian digital media and technologies complicate these boundaries between inside and outside the institution? For Sefton-Green and Erstad, “learning lives approaches need to address the pedagogicization of everyday life and the schooled society” (p. 246). As Eric Meyers et al. argue, contemporary contexts are requiring us to re-evaluate digital literacy as a core part of everyday life which is not just about learning or education but citizenship more generally (2013). That is, digital literacy not only impacts upon learning but agency more broadly—as a student, employee or citizen. It requires us to understand play as part of quotidian literacies in ludified digital cultures.

Understanding Play: Quotidian Literacies in Ludified Digital Cultures Why is play important for literacy in an age of digital culture? Play and playfulness, as we argue, can operate as a critical tool to understand cultural practice (Sutton-Smith 2003; Burghardt 2005; Pellis and Pellis 2009). Scholars such as Sutton-Smith have explored how children play to expand their creativity, sociality and problem solving (1997). Play presents opportunities to move beyond existing ways of being, to transform and transgress, allowing children to develop a repertoire of flexible responses to situations they create and encounter, responses that might also be applicable in the real world (Spinka et al. 2001; Pellis and Pellis 2009). It is by no accident that play as a form of innovation has become a crucial literacy for workforces as we move towards more agile and uncertain futures. As outlined in Chap. 1, play has become pivotal in contemporary digital culture debates (Sicart 2014; Frissen et al. 2015). Theorists have argued that digital cultures are increasingly informed by the playful, ludified and gamified. As play scholar Miguel Sicart (2014) has observed, the playful has become a pivotal attitude within contemporary culture, not only a

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praxis but a way of thinking about the world and our place in it. For game theorists Frans Måyrå (2017) and Joost Raessens (2014), contemporary culture is undergoing a process of ludification. Raessens (2014) refers to this playful turn as the ludification of culture. For Raessens ludification can be understood in terms of the emerging histories of game studies and media studies. In the first stage of this history, in the early 2000s, game studies emerged as an independent field of study in its own right, distinct from media studies. In the second stage around the mid-to-late 2000s, game studies and media studies researchers collaborated, and finally, in stage three play has been appropriated by media studies more broadly “as a tool for the analysis of media experience”—a new interpretive framework for contemporary culture. For Raessens, “digital information and communication technologies have precisely enabled new forms of play” (2014, p. 103). It is this definition of play as a critical tool for media experience which is most applicable to the Minecraft context. Minecraft often involves multiple forms of game and non-game activities, slipping across formalized parts of play (the game) and as a digital space and place, affording playful communication, experimentation, platformativity and social improvising. Alternatively, scholars such as Rifkin are concerned about the commodification of play. For Rifkin “play is becoming as important in the cultural economy as work was in the industrial economy” (2000, p. 263). Reflecting upon the rise of gamification in everyday life and media, Deterding, Sebastian and Steffen P. Walz provocatively enquire, “what if every part of our everyday life was turned into a game?” (2015). While gamification can motivate and engage people in different ways, it can also be deployed with datafication to coerce users. In The Gameful World, Walz and Deterding consider the implications of gamification’s pervasiveness and the ramifications of ludified culture. There is a deep tension between the rise of gamification and ludification—as Mäyrä highlights: “whereas gamification is focused on the application of game-like elements into non-entertainment applications, the focus of ludification is on the spread of play as a practice, playfulness as an attitude and the supposedly growing role of playful designs in our everyday reality” (2017, n.p). Indeed these debates around gamification and ludification in digital cultures often see play conflated with games. And yet the possibility of play as a form of creative literacy—especially in terms of Minecraft—is recognized by scholars such as Dezuanni, Ito and Salen. In the field of children studies and education, work around understanding play as part of digital

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inclusion and media participation has started to emerge (Giddings 2014; Marsh et al. 2018; Apperley 2010). However, tensions around disciplinary understandings of social play, digital media and creative literacy persist. These tensions underscore the sometimes disparate definitions of digital culture, social play and literacy. Understanding the complexity of social play within contemporary quotidian digital environments requires developing a new language that acknowledges play as a critical tool and variety of practices—literacy, creativity and engagement. As we suggested in the Introduction, understanding games requires that we acknowledge the complex ways play moves in and out of everyday life and across digital and material contexts—what Hjorth and Richardson call “ambient play” (2020). This understanding of play informs our ethnographic approach. In the following section we discuss the capacity of ethnography to tap into and capture play as an informal and creative literacy.

Ethnographies of Play and Informal Literacies: Situated Practice The arrival of new modes of play via experiences such as Minecraft calls for new approaches to their study. As Lury and Wakeford (2013) note, we need to be inventive with methods in order to find alternative ways for understanding the relationship between digital, material and social worlds. The modes, settings and platforms of play require techniques that are specific to—and attentive of—the nuances of gameworlds and how they are socially, sensorially and haptically experienced. Through the development and deployment of a range of innovative methodologies and ethnographic techniques, we can observe how Minecraft showcases the pervasiveness and meaningful triviality of everyday play. Our research was undertaken from 2014 to 2018—with further follow ups in 2019-2020—across Australian cities as part of a broader Australian Research Council Discovery Project on mobile games in the home, entitled Games of Being Mobile (GoBM). We visited ten families in each capital city each year over three years, and several families multiple times a year, documenting the shift in their play habits, platforms and preferences. In the initial meetings we built an informal connection with our participants, then play sessions were conducted during the second and third follow-up

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meetings, once a developed knowledge of participants’ personal videogaming interests and practices was established. These sessions primarily involved playing videogames. Participants chose the games to be played during these sessions. Almost all the play sessions discussed in this book involve playing Minecraft on various devices. Many were conducted as part of the GoBM study, while others were conducted as stand-alone ancillary sessions focusing on Minecraft. Other games played during GoBM play sessions included Crossy Road (Hipster Whale 2014), Fortnite (Epic Games 2017), Mad City (Roblox Corporation 2005) and Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (Frontier Entertainment 2015). Through these play sessions, we came to understand the informal and multisensorial literacies that Minecraft enabled. Play sessions took several forms, including observation, where we would watch participants play (as though we weren’t there); co-play, where we would play and talk about the game with participants as we played together; and directed play, which involved setting participants a particular challenge (such as the two-day survival challenge in Minecraft). During these sessions we observed distinct configurations of gaming, situations of play and the position and movement of the player body. Such bodily arrangements included children curled up in bed with their mobile phone, iPad and tablet, reclining on couches playing solo, accompanied by pets, or gathered in circles with friends in socially connected play. Each constellation revealed different play phenomena and highlighted idiosyncrasies in how Minecraft weaves informal learning and creative practice into multisensorial playful contexts. By engaging with participants both in-game and in-home, these play sessions revealed curious configurations in terms of how Minecraft has manifested within educational and domestic spaces to intersect and influence each other. An important insight gained through these play sessions concerned the capacity of players to address the “in between” spaces betwixt the physical location of play, the virtual Minecraft gameworld and the interface. An examination of this intersection is particularly useful when attempting to grasp the haptic and sensorial aspects of the play experience. Specifically, the act of play through a digital device and accompanying software, and in a specific location—such as the household living room—is a multifaceted and multifunctional experience (see Fig. 3.2). This complex and nuanced activity cannot easily be rendered into video footage or screenshots. These recording methods do not effectively capture the dynamic significance of the interplay between player, game and physical

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Fig. 3.2  The loungeroom, the interface and the space of the game

location. Furthermore, such recordings failed to account for the surrounding configurations of the household, such as the child watching television in the living room or the homework being neglected on the kitchen table. To supplement these ethnographic methods, our analysis includes detailed descriptions of “scenarios of use” as a form of situated practice.

Tactile and Haptic Practices Along with more conventional ethnographic techniques including interviews and participant/interviewer co-play, our research sought to deploy innovative methods in order to engage with complex tactile and haptic practices. As noted in Chap. 1, we used techniques defined as “haptic ethnography” to unpack and articulate the ways in which haptic screens heighten social proprioception and the knowing body, along with studying the story of the hands as participants re-enacted their routines of play. This included filming the gestures and postures of participants at play and showing the footage back to them, asking them to recall and describe what their hands were doing. This was often a challenging task, and revealed how embodied play is often intuitive and escapes or exceeds explicit awareness.

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One of our participants discussed the “touchiness” of haptic screens and how that significantly influenced their Minecraft play. Discussing her transition of play from the PC to the iPod touch, Genevieve, a university student in her early twenties from Melbourne recalls: It wasn’t the first time I’d played Minecraft, but the first time with a touch-­ screen interface. It was an iPod touch—don’t remember whose it actually was—it was one of those devices that sorta just floats around a family. I remember being really aware of how the screen was somehow surprisingly soft when I touched it. I didn’t know if the softness was my finger or the screen. I used my index fingers too. Nowadays, I steer with my thumbs like everyone else, but I wasn’t sure how to use it back then and put it on a table and navigated around using my fingers, which just seems weird now.

Genevieve’s early interactions with the iPod touch provoked a self-­ conscious moment in the development of a new tactile literacy that she now recognizes as wholly taken-for-granted and thoroughly habitual. I don’t know—maybe because the device was called a “touch”—I think they’re completely obsolete now—but to me “touch” is something I’d do with my finger, not my thumb. I guess “iPod thumb” doesn’t sound as cool though.

Several participants recalled these early touchscreen interfaces through which Minecraft was played and reflected on the affordances of this new mode of interaction, but also its limitations. For example, nineteen-year-­ old Nathan from Victoria was still using an old iPhone when we spoke with him, and mentioned issues of touchscreen Minecraft controls. Yeah, and they’re not terribly good. The phone’s a bit old so it’s always a bit hard to control. The on-screen buttons are annoying as hell because you got your hands where you actually want to see.

To gain insight into the haptic and sensory aspects of Minecraft play, we invited participants to consider differences between using a touchscreen device such as an iPad, as compared to computer and mouse accessories, and controllers specific to Xbox and PS consoles. The different platforms for Minecraft—tablet, PC, iPad—have different affordances, and each platform shapes and is shaped by the performing body of the player. These

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platformativities (Lamarre 2017) become apparent in Minecraft informal play but are especially highlighted in LPs. In a discussion with twenty-one-year-old Olivia from Sydney, she talked about the joy of using physical controls such as keyboard and mouse or joystick over touchscreen devices. Olivia found that while small screen devices were convenient for mobile play, the scale of larger gaming arrangements such as consoles and computers allowed for a more expansive enactment of play, and a greater sense of physical skill and achievement. When I’m manipulating a hand-held console, I get this sensation that it makes you more precise. Like it sharpens your reflexes and senses. I remember I used to argue in favor of games for this reason. In the same way that practicing yoga can make you more flexible or make you move through the world with a sense of grace, more conscious of your bodily movements, I get that feeling with all games, but the larger the control system, the more I feel I’m kind of training myself.

In our interviews we also asked participants to contextualize Minecraft in relation to playing games more generally. Often participants imparted that other interface skills and literacies assisted them in many aspects of digital interaction. For example, how playing games had impacted their use of devices and accessories in school, work or other entertainment contexts— which was especially amplified in schooling from home situations during COVID-19, as we discuss further in Chap. 7. The complexities of playing games on family-owned screen devices also emerged as a recurring theme in our research, as parents and children had preferences for certain devices and an awareness of their particular affordances. For example, inner city Melbourne brothers fifteen-year-old Raymond and thirteen-year-old Cameron had previously competed for game time on their father’s iPad. However, the pair now shared a Nintendo Switch which has become their principal mode of play. The removable controllers allow either single play or cooperative play, with the small screen splitting to host multiple players. “You can actually play split screen up to eight people on the Switch”, Raymond told us, “but those screens are pretty small”. Raymond held both hands up to form a small square with index finger and thumb and peers through the window he has created. “I’ve only played four players at once. And that was only one time.” Minecraft is played on a broad variety of devices with screen sizes ranging from a few centimetres to two metres across. Scale became a recurring

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theme with several players enjoying the immersion and physicality that larger screens, controls and devices afforded. Although Minecraft delivers an impressive uniformity across all devices, player interaction and engagement differed depending on the interface. Players discussed variations in “game feel”, drawing attention to the nuanced sensorial aspects of platforms, controllers and handsets. For example, in a discussion about playing on the Nintendo Switch versus playing on a big screen, Brisbane-based twenty-year-old Charlie expressed how the change between platforms allowed for different domestic and personal configurations of play. Charlie tells us: The small screen has definitely opened new opportunities for me to play more. So it’s a fantastic tool I guess, but you always want an option for a cinematic experience. Like when its dark and its only you home, you want to be able to plug-in to a big TV with really good speakers and get lost or really excited in your own game world. But you get that maybe once a month when you’re living with other people or a family, or however your schedule is. So, having the option to take that, put it in portable hands, plug headphones in, separate it, compartmentalize it into your busy home schedule if you’ve got a partner or a busy schedule or what not. So now, Heather [Charlie’s partner] will want to watch The Bachelor. And I give zero shits about The Bachelor, but I’ll want to sit next to Heather and enjoy her presence.

In an effort to explore how Minecraft relates to an embodied experience of the real-world, we asked participants to discuss the “material” properties of objects and other features in Minecraft. Specifically, we wanted to know from players of their creations: “how do they work? what do they allow a player to do?” In some cases, we recorded players describing and presenting their own in-game creations. Participants were invited to explain and reflect on gestures and motions particularly around the manipulation of objects on screen. Connecting these material relationships to the real-world, we asked participants about their favourite physical toys and games. These discursive sessions often led to insightful show-and-tell scenarios that revealed much about the play-haptic relation and brought to light how physical toys and games compared and contrasted to artefacts in virtual worlds such as Minecraft. These participant observations revealed the imbrication between the sensorial interactions of touchscreen haptics and tangible interactions with tactile objects.

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Transmedia Play Understanding Minecraft requires acknowledging that videogames are part of broader digital cultures that are embedded in the everyday. In each of the homes we visited, we encountered various and competing screens and controllers across a complex network of transmedia platforms involving voice applications such as Skype, Discord, Twitch streaming and telephone communication, as well as text messaging, in-game chat and also less immediate information sources such as online forums, YouTube videos and LP. This media ecology of transmedia play is eloquently outlined by Pellicone and Ahn (2018) who show how digital gameplay is enacted across many social platforms simultaneously and how it is “stitched together” across affinity spaces through play. In our interviews and in play hang-out sessions, we asked participants to identify the different modes of communication they employed with friends and family, to consider how each afford different sensory experiences, and if they prefer some modes to others and why (and if/how do they communicate through Minecraft). We asked players to reflect on the Minecraft discourse in offline worlds, specifically investigating how the game was discussed among friends both when playing and when not. What is it, we sought to discover, that people talk about when they talk about Minecraft? Could the game be improved? What aspirations does the experience not satisfy? Our ambitions with each of these lines of inquiry was to document and interpret both clear and direct answers but also larger conversations in which participants might incidentally reveal something about the affordances or limitations of the game, about players’ conscious or unconscious habits and rituals of play, or about the affordances of digital/online environments more generally. As play activities are often not distinct or discrete, but enfolded in other material and digital contexts, their study is complex and convoluted. Many of these techniques were employed simultaneously in order to grasp the complexity of activities that make up Minecraft play. These complex media literacies were shared by several participants and maintained through their diversified game consumption. Returning to Raymond and Cameron, the pair have played a lot of Minecraft in the past. While the younger brother Cameron seems happy to discuss the in-­ game world of Minecraft, Raymond’s understanding of gameplay is deep and nuanced. He brings critical reflection to the game experiences in

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which he participates. “Roblox demonstrated the problem of having user-­ generated content”, Raymond tell us. “All the games are user-generated, and a lot of things lag and just don’t work. I think Roblox should introduce a filter and a content stamp defining between legitimate mods or op-mods. Like Terraria which has really good g-mods and play lasts ages. Terraria survival is a lot longer than Minecraft.” More than being highly articulate in relation to game experiences, Raymond also demonstrated a keen eye for the corporate economies behind videogames, and is conversant with which company develops, owns and distributes each of the games he is interested in. This metagame literacy is in part due to the screen-time structure imposed by their parents. The boys are allowed one hour of game screen-time per-day but can earn more by using the iPad devices for educational activities instead of gameplay (see Fig. 3.3). This non-game screen-time involves a list of pre-­ approved activities and websites such as reading The Guardian or Forbes online, spending time in online language classes, and so on. In negotiating these rules, Raymond will often earn additional screen-time by researching

Fig. 3.3  Participants negotiate screen-time on iPads by interspersing education with play

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the economies behind the games he plays, exploring how they are produced and distributed globally. “Tencent own Fortnite in China” Raymond tells us “and Epic are hoping that it will become even bigger than Minecraft!” Through his media consumption, Raymond’s cognizance of the global flows of videogames and their competition with each other evidences yet another level of the transmedia networks of digital culture in which Minecraft is located. Connected to the earlier discussion of the ludification of culture in this chapter, Raymond identifies Minecraft, not simply as a device-based product, but as part of a global network of companies, economies, content, players and worlds, many of which are not formally articulated but informally connected and accessed. While many children confessed to playing Minecraft on devices at school, many participants also mentioned the prevalence of kids enacting physical versions of Minecraft in the playground during recess, lunchtime and after school. This interweaving of digital and material play recognizes both the playground and Minecraft as adaptable and connectable sandbox environments. Kervin et al. (2015) have explored how make-believe play provides avenues for enhancing literacy practices as children make meaning of their surrounding contexts. They note that screen-based or “digital” play combined with tactile play often complements each other in providing a rich texture for making meaning. This onscreen and offscreen play in which space, mediation, materiality and embodiment become layered is a constellation that we also encountered in our interviews. Participants reported that playing Minecraft in the playground drew on shared understandings of Minecraft rules and worlds as they implemented them into the physical environment through play, or as Raymond described it: “kind of a mix of Minecraft rules and playground play”. The resulting activities appropriated and translated the basic mechanics of Minecraft into collectively imagined worlds in the schoolyard. As Raymond explains: “Like you can’t just magically have a pretend weapon or amour and stuff— you have to mine it first then craft it.” This physical mode of play that borrows conventions from the digital evidenced the various ways that Minecraft had bled out of the screen and into everyday physical space. Some parents raised concerns about these activities, sharing with us that even when away from the screen, their children would play in ways that mirrored their online activities. Reflecting on Raymond’s co-opting of Minecraft in the playground, his mother Sandra

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announces, “I feel like we never did that when I was a kid. I don’t know, maybe we did”. Media studies scholars frequently draw attention to the interaction between online and offline practices. Kennedy (2003) argues for an approach to research concerning digital experiences that recognizes this relationship. Her research considers both contexts, and the link between the various aspects of the self that make up the individual through a method she defines as “technobiography” (2003). For Kennedy, a technobiographical approach is most useful for information and computer technology (ICT) studies (2003). A technobiography is conducted through an analysis of autobiographical histories of a person’s relationship to technology and the way the autobiographical self is revealed through this relationship. Indeed, much of our Minecraft fieldwork replicated technobiographies. Discussions often involved participants talking about the historical evolution of their Minecraft play, that involved leaving Minecraft to play other games and then coming back to Minecraft sometimes a year or two later to play in a different way, platform or mode. Through their movements in and out of Minecraft and across different platforms, consoles and media histories, participants mapped a type of social play and creative literacy biography. In the perceptions of children themselves, Minecraft, it seems, has remained a stable constant in a rapidly evolving flux of videogame content. Many discussed the background ambience of Minecraft, others referred to the game in nostalgic terms. Indeed, nostalgia appears to be coded into Minecraft, a game style that is instantly recognizable for its distinctly retro aesthetic. Apperley (2015) notes that “in a world where digital games are often characterized and judged by incremental increases in verisimilitude” Minecraft’s pixelated 8-bit graphics seem out of place. But the blocky aesthetic, Apperley suggests, is clearly a reference to the past—a veneer of nostalgia constructed into the sensibility of the game. While Minecraft’s largest demographic of players are far too young to recall the early 1980s’ game aesthetic it evokes, they learn through playing Minecraft and through exposure to its online communities, of the previous digital games and 8-bit styles upon which Minecraft has drawn. This awareness and sense of history returns to infect Minecraft itself. We found that despite the young age of many players, they expressed surprising levels of wistful reminiscence in discussing their own history of Minecraft play and worlds.

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Fifteen-year-old David from Adelaide gave a compelling technobiography through his discussion of Minecraft. David spoke extensively about the history of Minecraft, outlining to us when it was released, who was playing and when, describing various editions and platforms and the nuances that each brought, and in doing so revealed a deep personal archive of memories associated with the game. After early years of growing popularity from its soft launch, he told us, players lost interest following its sale to Mojang, and the requirement of players to purchase the game. Then no one played it in a really long time. Then around year seven in primary school at recess or lunch if it was raining—everyone would gather around and play Minecraft together.

For David, as with other participants, they would play on older versions of the game, often on older devices, rather than playing the purchasable version. On these devices he was able to access digital locations from his childhood. David tells us: It’s just nice to come back to. To revisit places and stuff. I mean—Minecraft’s completely over—but it will always kind of be there. It’s something I constantly go back to.

Similarly, for David’s younger sister twelve-year-old Mary, Minecraft represents an indelible past of her entire generation, yet it wasn’t a large part of her current gaming diet. When we asked her about her current Minecraft play—she replied: [I don’t really play] that much, but nobody does any more that much. But everyone used to at some time. I think if you did a survey, I think about 98% would know how to use Minecraft. Everyone knows it and maybe plays every now and then—but everyone plays other stuff now.

These sentiments reinforced to us the ubiquity and everyday ordinariness of Minecraft in the lives of contemporary tweens and teenagers. Although the game was seldom played, it maintained an esteemed position in their history of games and entertainment experiences. This background position was interrupted however during the ten-year anniversary of Minecraft at which time the game received a rise in interest and playership, including among our participants. Even Raymond—who six months earlier had

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suggested we forget Minecraft and write about Fornite instead—had revised his position; “Minecraft is really big again now. It was over for quite a while but now it’s back.” We discussed Minecraft’s renewed popularity with Raymond at length, and he offered theories about its return: I think it’s gotten to the point that it’s become a bit retro and stuff and suddenly its cool again. It’s also the ten-year anniversary, and I think they have released a whole lot of new things.

Melbourne-based thirteen-year-old Austin reflected similar notions of the fundamental place of Minecraft in his own life and past. “I probably play Minecraft a bit too much” Austin admitted, “But I think it’s a great game and it’s kinda important. It’s history.” We asked what he means by this, to which he replied: “It’s just kind of always been there for me and for lots of people my age. It’s something everyone knows about and kind of always has.” Such praise and recognition of Minecraft’s perma-presence again recalls the extent to which Minecraft is embedded into the everyday, a cultural touchstone for an increasing number of people. Fifteen-year-old Elliot from Adelaide expanded on this omnipresence in a telling explanation: There’s something about games like Zelda and Minecraft that are kind of similar that I really like. Maybe it’s the music or something. It’s like kind of timeless or from the past or something.

Throughout our fieldwork we were struck by how these young people casually imparted sophisticated historical narratives of their relationship with Minecraft and how it invoked a sense of nostalgia, comfort and times past. As David wistfully reflected: Yeah, it’s got this weird sort of pastness to it—I dunno. But it’s kind of always there too. Like no one really talks about it but it’s always there. Like I don’t even play it much anymore but I see little kids sitting in circles playing it on iPads and I think “that’s cool”. I remember when I used to do that.

Pheobe, an eighteen-year-old university student from Melbourne shared similar sentiments of Minecraft being a constant in her life and as providing a sense of the past.

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I don’t play it all the time—just whenever I feel like playing—cos it’s like a mood you get in—the kind of nostalgia you get from playing it. It’s really a mood thing.

Such evocations of “mood” reflect a common disposition towards Minecraft; it is as much a shared historical experience as a game. This notion of mood, of individual and subjective and formative experiences with the game, was often counter to our expectations. Throughout our fieldwork, we often heard participants give voice to unexpected and nuanced emotions around Minecraft, expressing not just nostalgia but also a sense of sadness. At times, far from being a purely celebratory experience, participants also voiced sentiments of melancholy and loneliness in relation to Minecraft play. A conversation between eighteen-year-old Ethan and nineteen-year-old Nathan from Victoria reflects some of these emotions. The two are housemates who often play Minecraft together with a wider social circle through an online multiplayer server. Ethan, who had recently finished a short play session where he showed us the group’s work, was commenting on his typical play experience: “I mostly play it with friends. I’ve not played much Minecraft alone. It feels pretty lonely when I’m on my own in a world digging into the earth”. Nathan corroborated his sentiment, explaining that he found playing alone almost eerie. Expanding on this, he remarked that the game’s graphical limitations furthered this feeling: Weirdly enough, there’s a really short draw distance and I don’t know why but that adds to it. It’s just… You look out and its white. Bleak. I think the most alone I’ve ever felt in my life was in a forest in Finland. I was looking at a lake that was frozen, it was so cold that there was frost everywhere, the air was frost and everything, I was just looking at white. It was the most isolated I’ve ever felt in my life… and that’s Minecraft when you’re alone!

Such a summation of Minecraft solo play stresses the key role of socialization for many Minecraft players. Although some did play solo as their predominant mode of play, many others experienced feelings similar to Nathan and Ethan, with solo play often described as “lonely”, “empty” or even “pointless”. For some, playing Minecraft seemed useless without others; no-one to explore with, compete with or show off too. These polarizing perspectives, of the emotive capacity of Minecraft and the deep loneliness it can instil, are two disparate experiences of the game. The fact

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that both can exist simultaneously—often within the same player—is a testament to the extent that Minecraft has become embedded into everyday life. Just as cooking can be a beautiful nostalgic experience or a lonely exercise making “soup for one”, Minecraft taps into a broad cultural history of experiences, emotions and understandings relating to playing alone and together. Minecraft has become a conduit for such affects and experiences, moving well beyond the confines of its software into technobiographies that tell stories about creative literacy, social play and digital culture.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have investigated the ways in which variations of Minecraft play and playing contexts are enacted and understood by players. Using a range of ethnographic techniques, we examined Minecraft play as a way to understand informal literacy, digital media and social play. We firstly outlined some of the debates around children, play and the digital, and then considered definitions of play as a critical tool for interpreting contemporary ludified digital culture. We then discussed our ethnographic techniques (expanding from Chap. 1’s introduction) to unpack some of the tacit practices informing Minecraft play. With discussion of fieldwork methods and examples of techniques and approaches, this chapter has explored how Minecraft play is enacted as a means of developing creative and informal literacies. We also reflected upon the ways in which Minecraft takes place often in the home across different platforms and devices as part of broader media ecologies. Examining Minecraft as content, experience and literacy, we have explored how the game is interwoven in the broader networks of digital culture. Minecraft play—as we suggested—is carried out across a complex network of transmedia platforms including Skype, Discord, Twitch streaming and telephone communication, as well as text messaging, in-game chat, YouTube and LP. Furthermore, we have shown how Minecraft play has exceeded the digital domain and manifested in physical spaces such as schoolyards, playgrounds and backyards. For the Minecraft generation, the game is at once retro and mundane, an ambient backdrop to everyday life and play.

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Giffin, Holly. 1984. The Coordination of Meaning in the Creation of Shared Make-Believe Reality. In Symbolic Play: The Development of Social Understanding, ed. I. Bretherton, 73–100. Orlando, FL: Academic. Green, Lelia, and Donell Holloway. 2019. Introduction: Problematising the Treatment of Children’s Data. Media International Australia 170 (1): 22–26. Hjorth, Larissa and Richardson, Ingrid. 2020. Ambient play. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hutt, Corinne. 1966. Exploration and Play in Children. Paper presented at the Symposia of the Zoological Society of London, London, UK. Kam, Matthew, Aishvarya Agarwal, Anuj Kumar Siddhartha Lal, Akhil Mathur, Anuj Tewari, and John Canny. 2008. Designing E-learning Games for Rural Children in India: A Format for Balancing Learning with Fun. Proceedings from DIS ’08: ACM International Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. Cape Town: ACM. Kennedy, Helen. 2003. Technobiography: Researching Lives, Online and Off. Biography 26 (1): 120–139. Kervin, Lisa, Irina Verenikina, and Maria Clara Rivera. 2015. Collaborative Onscreen and Offscreen Play: Examining Meaning-Making Complexities. Digital Culture & Education 7 (2): 228–239. http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/kervin.pdf. Lamarre, Thomas. 2017. Platformativity: Media Studies, Area Studies. Asiascape: Digital Asia 4 (3): 1–31. Livingstone, Sonia. 2009. Children and the Internet. Cambridge: Polity Press. ———. 2014. EU Kids Online: Findings, methods, recommendations. London: EU Kids Online, LSE. http://lsedesignunit.com/EUKidsOnline/ Livingstone, Sonia. and Haddon, Leslie. Eds. 2009. Kids Online: Opportunities and risks for children. Bristol: Policy Press. Lury, Celia, and Nina Wakeford. 2013. Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social. Routledge. Marsh, Jackie, Greg Brooks, Jane Hughes, Louise Ritchie, Samuel Roberts, and Katy Wright. 2004. Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood. London: Routledge. Marsh, Jackie, Hans C.  Arnseth, and Kristiina Kumpulainen. 2018. Maker Literacies and Maker Citizenship in the MakEY (Makerspaces in the Early Years) Project. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 2 (3): 50. https://doi. org/10.3390/mti2030050. Mäyrä, Frans. 2017. Pokémon GO: Entering the Ludic Society. Mobile Media & Communication 5 (1): 47–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050157916678270. Meyers, Eric M., Ingrid Erickson, and Ruth V. Small. 2013. Digital Literacy and Informal Learning Environments: An Introduction. Learning, Media and Technology 38 (4): 355–367. https://doi.org/10.1080/1743988 4.2013.783597.

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PART II

Spaces of Play

CHAPTER 4

Play Practices and Modalities

In the past, I pretty much always played Creative mode. I used to be a bit of a wimp when I was younger… But these days I play Survival! —Ally, nineteen-year-old university student

Minecraft is host to a variety of play modes, affording its players a range of different ways to play. Each of these ways offers new contexts and scenarios of use, hinting at broad-reaching implications for creativity and literacy. This chapter explores these play practices and the modalities offered to Minecraft players—not only across its two major modes of survival and creative but also through a consideration of wayfaring across online and offline play. Here, wayfaring is understood as the player’s movement across digital, material and social worlds. Throughout this chapter we explore the expressive power of Minecraft across a multitude of play practices and modalities. As we argued in Chap. 1, Minecraft provides unique insights into creative literacy, social play and quotidian platformativities. We draw from Dezuanni’s discussion of Minecraft as not only offering sociocultural dimensions but also new materialistic and performative literacy elements for understanding digital media literacy (2018). Dezuanni argues for a focus on the digital-making process which Minecraft celebrates—an interweaving of social, digital and material making. This discussion also builds on the research around the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9_4

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interconnected rise of do-it-yourself (DIY) maker practices as part of digital media cultures (Gauntlett 2011). We argue that the variety of play (digital, social and material) informs Minecraft as a cultural phenomenon. The game makes an original contribution to informal literacy and creative play. Our argument in this chapter is divided into several key sections—design, affordances and contexts. The design section discusses the key modes of Minecraft and how the game’s design encourages or restricts play, while affordances uses several key ethnographic examples to detail the variety of play practices present in Minecraft. We finish the chapter focusing on contexts and the ramifications of Minecraft’s design philosophy for other games and wider creative disciplines.

Design: Core Gameplay and Major Modes Minecraft’s core gameplay consists of two main modes: survival and creative. However, there is also Adventure and—on its Java Edition— Spectator and Hardcore. In this chapter, we will focus on the two dominant modes—survival and creative. The original mode, survival, starts players off with only their hands as tools. They are vulnerable to hostile creatures, to other players and must gather food and other resources to endure the harsh virtual landscape. Materials are also required to build sturdy tools and other equipment that allow players to gather additional resources more efficiently and effectively which, in turn, lead to improved equipment and quality of virtual life. In this way, the game trains the player in the task of technological advancement. Beginning by punching trees and other objects to extract block resources, players eventually learn to craft tools out of wood and other materials. These implements can then be used to mine more effectively. To survive and ultimately thrive in survival mode, the game induces the player to delve beneath the earth’s crust in search of rare and durable metals to build ever-improved tools and technologies. Within Minecraft’s survival mode, success appears as the development of in-game technological mastery of resource extraction and transformation. Survival mode is characterized by several distinct game mechanics and design choices. These include the requirement to gather resources, the need to eat to replenish hunger and sustain the health of player characters. Resources, as described above, often require specialized tools to gather; for example, players cannot collect gold without an iron pickaxe and

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cannot shear sheep to retrieve wool without shears (though the sheep can still be killed to harvest a small amount of wool). These material understandings are not explicitly communicated through the game but are learned through trial and error (or by players searching for hints from the expansive Minecraft community online). Through this staggered learning process, Minecraft’s survival mode steadily trains players to operate within established expectations of resource acquisition in the real world, while preparing them to build beyond these conventions. Once an understanding of the catalogue of materials and their affordances are learned, player inventiveness can take over. As Christiansen notes, “whereas there is only one way to craft an iron pickaxe, there are limitless ways that a player could construct her home” (2014, p.  33). Survival mode is not without its creativity. However, Minecraft’s other major mode is more explicitly designed with creative expression in mind. Appropriately named “creative mode” it was a later addition to Minecraft (although very early developments of the game were done in a form of “creative mode”, it wasn’t labelled as such or widely available). Officially added to the game as part of the 2011 “Adventure Update”, the inclusion of creative mode saw the removal of restrictions on building materials, hunger and health that remained in the game’s default survival mode, thereby allowing players more freedom and agency over how and what they build. Participants in our ethnographic work frequently took advantage of this freedom, pursing extravagant, abstract and fantastic projects within creative mode. In Minecraft’s developmental history, creative mode presented a fundamentally different form of play to standard survival worlds. While in survival mode, players must work to stay alive; in creative mode, players are largely indestructible. Player characters are invincible to regular forms of damage and can work unhindered by monster attacks at night, can swim through lava, suffer no falling damage, are immune to weapons such as swords and cannot drown. They also do not need to eat—there is no in-­ game health or hunger bar. Without fear or concern for their own mortality, players also enjoy unlimited supplies of every type of block allowing them to freely create and explore in the sandbox world. Like other sandbox environments, creative mode complicates traditional definitions of games and play. Gameplay, according to the often-­ cited Salen and Zimmerman, clearly excludes creative modality: “a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome” (2003, p. 81). Indeed, Minecraft’s

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creative mode is more about creativity and play than it is about gaming. Creative mode features neither artificial conflict nor any zero-sum outcome, and is more comparable to settings of childhood play such as playgrounds than any rule-based game. The move between modes from survival to sandbox has allowed for a more expansive enactment of digital creativity in terms of how players use Minecraft. For games scholar Remi Cayatte, this “inner duality between creative and survival mode positions” (2014, p. 213) challenges the foundational understanding of what videogames are, and what they can be. Cayatte suggests: In being a game of both interpretation and configuration, Minecraft is closer to traditional paper-based role-playing games—during which players both strive to overcome difficulties using definite sets of rules and collectively create their own imaginary diegesis—than most role-playing video games. While the latter usually merely borrow settings and rules from paper-­ based role-playing games, Minecraft’s duality captures the very essence of what Dungeons and Dragons started decades ago. And, like Dungeons and Dragons, because of the possibilities that the game’s hybrid nature offers to its users both in terms of actual gameplay and of entertainment at large, Minecraft is indeed every nerd’s dream—an endless video game. (2014, p. 213)

Cayatte’s discussion of Minecraft as akin to role-playing creativity points to the expressive power Minecraft offers through its multiple modes. Rather than being constricted to hard-set goals, narratives or resources, creative mode captures the ability of games to take players from the mundane to the sublime. Likewise, the multimodal design of Minecraft encourages expressive communication and socialization, similar to Gauntlett’s recognition of making as connecting (2011). Gauntlett contends that designing and creating, across both online and offline contexts, is a key way that humans build connections to each other (2011). In the context of “making” in digital spaces, Gauntlett writes: “you can certainly leave your metaphorical fingerprints all over the thing you’re making; indeed, it’s hard not to. The personality of the maker always comes across in the finished thing” (2013, p. 72). In addition, for Gauntlett the networked nature of digital media contextualizes digital making as reproducing authentic social capital (2011).

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While writing largely about YouTube, Gauntlett’s arguments can be seen in Minecraft’s player practices, particularly in creative mode. Gauntlett’s description calls to mind a symbolic link between making and feedback, a response to an environment being acted upon. Certainly, such a phenomenon occurs in Minecraft’s creative mode, where player’s individual design characteristics and mannerisms—their “metaphorical fingerprints” come to the fore, freed from the constraints of survival mode (Gauntlett 2011, p. 81). These occurrences are also central to how and why players engage in Minecraft’s diverse forms of play, with each either encouraging or excluding players. Gauntlett’s “personal touches” become key in online play, where personal identification can become a potential risk. Gauntlett’s discussion echoes the sentiments shared by Dezuanni in the context of Minecraft play (2018). Minecraft’s game design and software also contain a number of more abstract player engagements in the form of console commands. Commonly known as “cheats” within game community discourse, “console commands” allow for manipulation of the game’s rules, such as permanent daytime, invisible barriers or teleportation. Using these functions players can summon non-player characters (NPCs), both hostile and non-hostile, through the use of “spawn eggs”, and trigger entire structures to auto-­ build or access blocks otherwise unavailable in-game. These “cheats” are entered in basic command language. An example of the console command interface is seen below in Fig. 4.1. In Fig. 4.1 the player is using the console command “cheats” in order to change the time from night to day. This command allows players to skip the dark nights, preventing mobs from spawning and eliminating the need to sleep in a bed to pass the night. Other, more advanced commands allow players to teleport other players to coordinates (done through the command “/tp [yRot] [xRot]”) or to stop time entirely and make it permanently daytime (/gamerule doDaylightCycle false). These commands place players in a transient position between player and developer, capable of bending (if not breaking) the game’s rules. Command blocks offer an entirely different type of creative literacy by allowing players to directly engage with and build through code. Complicated commands allow entire strings of code to be executed. Examples of such functionality include building a clock and command block in order to repeatedly teleport players to a specific location (effectively putting them in “jail”), using a command block in conjunction with TNT to make a proximity mine explode when a player strays too close, or

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Fig. 4.1  The Minecraft “Cheats” interface

even having a command block execute an entire string of code to automatically construct an entire castle before a player’s eyes. Participants who use these “cheats” (also sometimes referred to as “hacks”) to break the game enact the subversive potential of play. These undertakings are not always a smooth process as Niam—a nine-year-old Minecraft player—came to experience. During one of our play sessions, he was “mucking around” trying to make a “contraption” out of a rail, Redstone and command block minecart. With striking ambition, Niam wanted his contraption to loop continually through the day and night, so that sunrise and sunset happened every few seconds—a kind of perpetual motion machine that accelerated the progression of time. To achieve this goal, Niam had to learn how Redstone worked when triggered by a mine-­ cart, and also acquire the necessary “hack” (as he called it) to change night-to-day and vice versa. This involved several hours of trial and error. An early iteration of Niam’s contraption can be seen in Fig. 4.2; while this version did not work as intended, it was a partial success in that it caused the time to set to sunrise when the machine was operated. Niam’s contraption exemplifies how Minecraft’s command codes can be combined with building. Al-Washmi et  al. (2014) and Cosh (2015) have examined how Minecraft can be used in specific formal learning areas. While the use of virtual blocks within Minecraft is a great way for

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Fig. 4.2  An early iteration of Niam’s “Contraption” to cycle day and night

students to develop spatial skills (Garskof 2014), Minecraft has also been shown to extend other literacies: promoting interest in and improving perceptions of computer programming (Zorn et al. 2013); encouraging the application of mathematical concepts (Bos et  al. 2014); illustrating scientific concepts within biology, ecology, physics, chemistry, geology and geography (List and Bryant 2014; Short 2012); and to teach computational thinking through modelling and programming in 3D (Repenning et al. 2014). In our play session with Niam, it was clear that literacy in some skills were also being learned informally through a playful process of trial-and-­ error in Minecraft. Through iterative and creative “mucking about” with Redstone, Niam explored some of the more complex areas of Minecraft’s design and mechanics. The ability of creative mode to encourage players to creatively pursue informal learning is one of the key phenomena noticed during our ethnographic research, and reveals how Minecraft’s design acts as a playful conduit to informal processes of learning.

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Stress-Free Play The significant advantage of creative mode is the removal of the dangers that mark survival mode, permitting players the freedom to build structures without the fear of character death or building destruction. This risk elimination allows for more experimental play practices. For example, rather than build a spider-proof overhang to a castle, a player is instead free to build sloping walls however they choose, as the arachnids will not seek them out at night. In a similar manner, destructive forces such as fire can be controlled in creative mode, meaning they will not spread and burn down a player’s wooden cottage. With players liberated from constraints in creative mode, they are left to design and build monumental structures and intricate Redstone circuitry. The lack of limits in creative mode also allows for more performative or subversive creativity, as demonstrated in the example below. Penny (four) and Amanda (eight) showed us through their creative mode farm, built on their family iPad. Their farm did not exist to produce anything, but rather consisted of an immense pen filled with sheep of all colours. As they took us on a tour around the farm, Penny—equipped with a “flint and stone” item—began clicking the sheep, tapping the iPad screen to set them on fire. Amanda explained that this was her sister’s favourite way to play the game. Penny enthusiastically responded: “Yep, I like killing the sheep!”. In survival mode, such an exercise would have been a colossal waste of resources, and a potential risk to the safety of the player character. However, in creative mode, it was an easily replicable performance, and somewhat paradoxically reveals the creative and playful experimentation that resides in virtual acts of banal destruction. But what does it mean to create and to destroy without risk? Is something lost when you can build, design and act without risk-imposed restrictions? In terms of the symbolic value of constructions, several players we spoke to perceived the builds in creative mode as less impressive. These structures, built without menace of death or destruction, are less worthy of recognition than those that were forged against the odds. To a certain extent, this is even acknowledged by the game mechanics, as within creative mode players cannot earn “achievements” such as in-game recognition of feats such as mining a diamond block or reaching particular hard to reach locations. In online forums, players frequently discuss how creative mode “ruined” Minecraft as it removed the need to “work for your creations”, arguing that the mode essentially takes the “mine” out of

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Minecraft. Thus for some players, by removing the time-intensive and risky process of playbour, the legitimacy of hard-fought ownership from one’s own Minecraft creations is lost.

Affordances: Different Ways to Play Single Player Flying around and getting lost in this sort of endless procedurally generated universe is kind of fun too. —Oscar, twenty-year-old university student

Oscar, a university student from Melbourne, mostly plays creative mode on his aging laptop. His computer whirs and hums, straining to keep the software running as he flies across blocky plains, mountains and oceans. He loops down through crevasses before punching skyward through stone, enjoying the range of movement the mode offers his player character. To override the noise of his device, Oscar often plays with music on in the background. Quiet classical piano is his preferred choice. He doesn’t build much. Instead he prefers to see what the game itself generates as he zooms across the landscape. He dives under the ocean, exploring a sunken ruin for 20 minutes, free from concerns of running out of air. Sometimes he will set himself a goal, such as finding a “mushroom island”—one of the rarest geographical formations in the game. He will then “photograph” these regions through the use of screenshotting—a curated interaction between the software of Minecraft and his computer. By playing in creative mode, Oscar is able to quickly and playfully navigate across the game’s world finding regions that interest him. For Oscar, this is one of the unique play practices Minecraft’s creative mode affords him. Rather than enabling creative expression through building, here Minecraft affords creative exploration and a sense of discovery. Building on Axel Bruns’ discussion of “decentralized creativity” in Linden Lab’s Second Life (2008, p. 1), Alexandra Jean Tremblay, Jeremy Colangelo and Joseph Alexander Brown (2014) similarly explore the joy of experiencing exploration in Minecraft’s procedural worlds (2014). Tremblay and her co-authors discuss how Minecraft uses “Procedural Content Generation” (PCG) in its deterministic world-building algorithm (2014, p. 80), which refers to the automatic and random generation of large amounts of game content. Oscar’s engagement with PCG turns into

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a playful negotiation with the algorithm, seeing what it churns up as he whips across his gameworlds. Likewise, Bruns’ recognition of “creative ad hoc engagement” turns content creation into a form of “produsage” (2008, p.  1), a term that describes the conflation of the media practices of the producer and user in contemporary participatory culture; that is, we both consume media content and create it through appropriating and remixing. Again, this phenomenon can be seen in Oscar’s engagement with Minecraft’s PCG. As Oscar moves through Minecraft’s worlds, new landscapes are constantly produced and navigated. A playful and creative aspect is then brought in by his self-set goals, ad hoc movement through the landscape and the curated “photography” of his adventures. Moreover, Minecraft further embellishes what Burgess called “vernacular creativity” (2009)—everyday creative practices that are often overlooked as a form of creative expression. In the case of creatively traversing and recording Minecraft through flight and exploration, creativity is decentralized from the game’s more normative creativity of building structures. In a discussion with media scholar Henry Jenkins, Burgess identifies “scrapbooking” as a key example of vernacular creativity (2007). Oscar’s screenshotting of his discoveries is a similar practice, though digitized. As Oscar records his experiences, he compiles a playful visual diary of his time in Minecraft. Although he doesn’t share his photos with anyone, his screenshots are an example of Burgess’ amateur content creation (Jenkins and Proctor 2007). Such a practice highlights how Minecraft’s design can influence creative play beyond the more standard practices of resource-gathering and building. Oscar also engages creatively with another part of the game: the “seed”. Within Minecraft, “seed” refers to the unique number used by Minecraft’s world-generating algorithm to form worlds. These seeds can be entered by a player or even generated randomly and are how the game populates the world with mountains, trees, animals, lakes, villages and myriad other forms. Seeds can also be entered as words, converted by the game in the world generation process. These worlds include everything from lush jungles and desert landscapes to thrilling castles and dungeons filled with loot and adventure. The number of worlds is unlimited and the seeds to generate them can be easily shared—no new plug-ins or add-ons are required. The same seed, used with the same version of Minecraft, will always produce the same world, but can differ greatly dependent on what version of Minecraft you are

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running. For example, a diverse and popular seed in version 1.6 could become surprisingly bland in version 1.7. You can also just type in a bunch of random numbers (or words that Minecraft will transform into numbers for you) to see what strange new worlds the arbitrary seed code generates. Figure 4.3 shows the seed “This is a seed” being entered and the subsequent spawn point in-game. During creation, these worlds can also be further customized by players. Players can choose to make their world “superflat” where no hills or valleys spawn, or they can elect to have a starting chest that contains several useful items. Players can also toggle other options, such as the spread of fire, or the regeneration of trees during world creation. Manipulating these seeds is another way that Oscar creatively plays with Minecraft. He will enter a seed, generate the world in creative mode and explore. He decentralizes his creativity from the blocks and game mechanics of Minecraft and instead delves into its background, exploring the algorithmic generation noted by Tremblay and her co-authors (2014). He also expressed a certain creativity in how he chooses his seeds; he will select a seed by taking a line from a poem, his favorite book or even some lucky numbers. He pursues his creativity by taking a tangential part of his everyday life and incorporating it into Minecraft, not by replicating it in a building, but by embedding it into the game’s PCG as a seed. Nina, another university student, also recounted her enjoyment of exploring seeds: It [Creative Mode] gives a unique experience. Like you are just dropped into some completely random terrain and you just explore. I love just

Fig. 4.3  Minecraft’s seed entering option (left) and subsequent world generation (right)

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r­ unning in any direction in Minecraft and seeing what kind of biomes you run into. For a long time, I really wanted to find a jungle biome but couldn’t. I just kept running for ages and ages but couldn’t find one. I think I just had a really bad seed.

Like Oscar, Nina prefers to play with Minecraft through exploration. Oscar and Nina’s ad hoc engagement arises out of the creative navigation of the worlds they create through seeds and the adaptive and playful ways in which they explore them. Nina elaborated on this experience as one of her favourite ways to play, explaining it as “an itch to explore Minecraft”. She characterized her exploration as her preferred way to play: “some people like to build or destroy stuff—for me it’s all about the exploration”. In their description and experience of wayfaring, Nina and Oscar contrast somewhat. While Oscar’s main Minecraft scenario of play has always been in single-player creative, it wasn’t always done through seed generation and world exploration. He explained that one of his first projects was to build a tower: I love towers; architecturally they have always been something that has intrigued me. So I built my ideal tower in the middle of the jungle. I made complex patterns of brickwork; it felt very creative and artistic in that sense. I had a piece of grid paper at the call center I was working at. I would plan patterns and structures out on grid paper and then replicate them in the game. I liked that I could take something that was physical on a piece of paper and then translate it onto a digital space. The grid-based/block-based aspect of Minecraft was interesting because you could sort of plan things out spatially.

With the extensive and growing use of Minecraft and other 3D world-­ building tools and games, speculations abound on how these digital applications might influence the future of architecture and urban planning. Will the future of city construction come to resemble the blocky worlds of Minecraft? In this instance, Oscar’s use of peripheral and analogue tools to inform his designs speaks to the mundane creativity of Minecraft and the extent to which it relies on, rather than replacing, traditional tools of construction design and planning. Tremblay and others discuss a similar phenomenon in Minecraft with regard to user-driven design and Minecraft

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mods (2014). However, in the case of Oscar, his use of Minecraft serves as a digital revisioning of his pen and paper illustrations, an extension of a creative literacy acquired from drawing during slow shifts at his part-­ time job. Like Oscar, twenty-four-year-old Cal mainly uses creative mode as a companion tool to his physical making. As he explained during a follow­up play session in 2017: “I don’t get much out of having achieved the building or whatever, or doing something like that and it’s just in a save file”. Rather than designing on paper and taking his creations into Minecraft, he plans out battlefields for his Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) campaigns in creative mode, using the game to spatially play out a D&D scenario. His worlds look abstract, full of signs and notes to himself, rather than the detailed creative project Oscar described. In these terms, Minecraft can enable innovative creative engagement through and beyond its game mechanics, as Cal’s use of the game to plan other play practices intersects digital creativity with his everyday material play experiences. The examples cited in this chapter have thus far concerned single-player play practices and the unique affordances Minecraft’s design facilitates. However, interesting examples of multiplayer practices also emerged from our ethnographic fieldwork, as our participants, both children and adults, also used Minecraft to socialize, experiencing each other’s worlds and exploring the unknown together. In particular, we discovered that online multiplayer modalities were often interpreted and played with in quite a distinct manner. While single-player modes were most often discussed by our participants as either an extension of physical making, or ad hoc and unorthodox engagements with world exploration, multiplayer modes were more commonly linked to discussions of online interaction and safety. In this discussion, participants also mentioned how online play could potentially preclude or exclude players, and how this related to the risks and benefits of online play. The following section discusses examples of such phenomena, highlighting how online multiplayer gaming can offer important links between creativity and social play. Multiplayer When you’re working together it’s like you’re both creating this thing together. So whatever they’ve made is always something for you to explore.

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The monument you’re building is always wrapped up with some unknown. (Ewen, twenty-one-year-old)

In the above quote, Ewen highlights a key observation made during our ethnographic fieldwork—players’ sense of creativity as a social experience. In our ethnographic play sessions, in contrast to solo play, multiplayer modes of Minecraft were more commonly linked to immense structural undertakings either as a group or on online servers, displayed for others to see and explore. For Ewen, multiplayer mode, which he played with his housemates around the kitchen table, is a way to avoid the sense of “uselessness” Cal described in the previous section. Instead, joint creative expression afforded the value and reward of sociality. Ewen described a similar feeling to Cal’s frustration with single-player creative mode: “It feels like, why build something that no-one else can appreciate except for me”. Such an experience might be viewed as “rewarding” in single-player survival mode, but in creative mode, where resources are available instantly and infinitely, the sense of achievement does not come from the collection of resources but from the act of co-creation and exploration. The creations of Ewen and his fellow players served as a way to be together—a social co-presence that was at the same time rewarding as it was orientated towards collectively realized creative artefacts. The experience of presence and “co-presence”—in which a sense of proximity and intimacy can be created through digital media networks (Licoppe 2004)—is clearly seen in Ewen’s creative mode play. Co-presence is understood as a form of hybrid “there-ness”—an imbrication of physical and digital places (Licoppe 2004). Balmford and Davies (2019) have argued that co-presence in family homes extends the space of the domestic environment into the digital space of the game. Maintaining family rules and restrictions, co-present domestic play allows for mundane everyday home life to be re-orientated through a creative lens. In Ewen’s case, this reorientation was experienced through the joy of co-creation, participation and contribution. In the rapid building environment of creative mode, complex structures can be constructed quickly, allowing for the added excitement of forays into the unknown. Alongside co-present creative mode multiplay, Minecraft’s creative mode servers were another frequent play site for our participants. Within these servers like-minded individuals assemble and collaborate on accomplishing tasks or sharing experiences. Indeed, the fact that Minecraft’s creative mode has no predictive narrative or objective is a large part of its

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appeal. With many videogames containing complete worlds with highly complex details and graphics leaving little to the imagination, the narrative minimalism of Minecraft offers an open world of possibilities and interpretations. Such a design choice is key to the way Minecraft is able to accommodate such diverse play practices. In their book, Minecraft, Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson discuss how some of the first players felt that “they hadn’t found a game; they found a playground for all they could imagine” (2013, p. 114). Goldberg and Larsson hypothesize that perhaps Minecraft isn’t a game at all—rather, it is a social network. Or, at the very least, an indication of what social networks might ultimately become. Although our participants always understood Minecraft as a game, some did hint at how the game was also a unique and meaningful social experience. Through such nuanced functionality, players are able to engage not only creative literacies, but also social literacies. As one participant explained during a play session, where they showed us through a world constructed in collaboration with interstate friends: “the social aspect of playing it in a group was perhaps one of the most enjoyable things to me”. For them, the social engagement Minecraft facilitated was more important than making virtual artefacts and world-­ building, as they elaborated: “There were so many mishaps along the way, and we didn’t really know much about the game… But it’s fun to learn that stuff in a group”. In the following section we reflect upon our participants’ multiplayer play practices over local area networks (LANs).

LAN Parties and Minecraft LAN parties have a strong history in computer-based videogaming (Ackermann 2012). In the late 80s and 90s, these events were the main access to multiplayer gaming for many players (Jansz and Martens 2005). Without sufficient internet connections, or even no internet connection, LAN parties provided one of the only opportunities to play at home with others. The other alternative—playing over a single console—often restricted players to very small portions of an already small screen or necessitated turn-taking, as well as limiting the selection of videogames that could be played. In more recent times widespread internet access has seen a decline of LAN parties as a means of multiplayer videogaming (Kuchera 2015). However, games such as Minecraft, combined with ubiquitous mobile

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media, have seen a return to this older style of multiplayer engagement. As well as the instrumental or utilitarian aspect, the events can be immensely fun, potentially offering experiences unavailable via online multiplayer gaming through more “full-bodied” communicative practices. Furthermore, LAN parties can offer a safer alternative to remote online play, as the players are usually known personally by some or all of the group. In her work, Judith Ackermann describes these events as “LAN Happenings” (2012), and suggests that the significant logistical work required for these LAN parties is of particular importance. LAN parties often involve moving several desktop computers to different houses, reconfiguring network settings, port forwarding, alongside other technical and physical maneuvers. In contrast, the more recent Minecraft LAN parties of our participants were often conducted through more easily accessible conduits such as mobile phones, portable consoles (such as the Nintendo Switch) or tablets. LAN party occasions can be broadly broken down into three main categories; the LAN party, the private LAN and the LAN event (Vogelgesang 2003). According to such categorizations, the private LAN is a smaller, often in-home event, the LAN party is a medium-scale event up to one  hundred or so players, and the LAN event is a formally organized occasion, often with sponsors, prize money and publicity (Vogelgesang 2003; Jansz and Martens 2005; Ackermann 2012). Taylor and Witkowski expand this definition through their recognition of the variety of activities that can fall under the banner of LAN parties; “from file sharing and demos to game playing and other activities” (2010, p. 195). For our Minecraft participants, LAN parties most commonly fell into the private LAN category. In these cases LAN parties consisted of the act of playing co-presently within the same place; at home, in a café or an afterschool club. These LAN interactions often use standard internet connections and frequently employ a variety of devices such as console, computer and mobile. The example below details how co-present LAN play can create playful sociality between Minecraft players. Maisie, Emily and Naomi are three nineteen-year-old university students who have recently “gotten back” into Minecraft. The three met in first-year university and began playing together in between lectures, seeking out desk space in the library to boot up Minecraft on their laptops. Naomi, the most experienced Minecraft player among the group, explained that she had a server set up through Realms—a service Microsoft operates. For a small fee per month, Realms gives Minecraft players access to

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persistent multiplayer servers without the need for players to establish their own storage, network settings or other logistics. Naomi had set up her Realm to play with her friends who live interstate. Before long, she invited Maisie and Emily onto her Realm so that the three could collaboratively work on their Minecraft projects, both on campus and from home. This allowed the three to LAN play, then return home and play remotely, continuing to work on the same buildings. As Emily explained “it means we can have more extravagant building projects, rather than just starting something and trying to get it all done over lunch. Plus it is so much easier than mucking about with internet settings”. Emily’s comments indicate how modern digital media practices are affording increased accessibility both spatially and temporally. The streamlining of online gaming setups is seen across a  variety of platforms and genres. It is in the matchmaking of Fortnite, allowing players to quickly get back into the game. It is in the growth of online gaming services such as PlayStation Plus or Xbox Live, and the easy access to online play they afford. It is also seen in the growth of meet-up groups, eSports clubs and facilitated gaming workshops. All of these play practices allow for a wider spectrum of game players to engage with the medium, across geographical places and time zones. Where the social occasion of the LAN party was one of the original forms of co-present domestic play, there are now many other options. Despite this proliferation of alternatives, LAN play is also being remediated into the modern digital landscape. The growth of features such as Realms in Minecraft is also indicative of a wider shift towards media accessibility. This accessibility is seen elsewhere in the rise of digital distribution platforms such as Steam, and streaming services such as Netflix. The remediation of multiplayer play towards a hybrid form workable both over LAN and internet connections is exemplary of how media practices and both networked and collocated social activity are now thoroughly intertwined. Of course, multiplayer play, be it over LAN or otherwise, is not always perceived so positively. Jansz and Martens’ (2005) analysis of the social contexts of videogames reveals the negative portrayal of LAN parties and their participants in popular media and wider social discourse. Such a portrayal revolves around the perceived “anti-social” nature of videogame players who are depicted as typifying today’s youth and their inability to engage in appropriate face-­ to-­face contact (Swalwell 2003). Yet LAN parties also challenge these assumptions (Swalwell 2003). The co-present nature of the LAN party serves as an excellent counterargument to this portrayal as it is a form of

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play that necessitates face-to-face interaction between videogame players (Swalwell 2003; Jansz and Martens 2005). The growth of the “persistent LAN party”, where play is continuous across play modalities—co-present, remote, then co-present again—offers an interesting scenario that informs wider debates around the perception and growth of LAN parties, highlighting the value of exploring them in an “increasingly networked age” (Taylor and Witkowski 2010, p. 195). Returning to Naomi, Maisie and Emily, the three still styled their Minecraft play as a LAN game even when playing online at their respective homes. They explained that such nomenclature was used because “it feels like a LAN, we play like a LAN, talking on Discord, laughing together or whatever”. This sensorial intimacy enacted online reflects the emotive importance of socialization in Minecraft play, and locates Minecraft as representative of modern digital media practices, reflecting and facilitating a participatory media environment that is reciprocally shaped by its users. Examining such participatory media within the broader media ecology, and the agency and malleability of services such as Realms, helps us to better understand how contemporary digital play practices manifest.

Conclusion The design of Minecraft affords a range of different ways to play. Both platforms and game design shape performativity and player practices, yet in turn they also evolve and are modified by gamers’ ways of playing. This chapter has explored how Minecraft was accessed by our participants, and how such engagement reflects Minecraft as a mundane but significant site of creativity, informal learning and social play. Through an engagement with data from our ethnographic play sessions, we have detailed play practices across both single-player and multiplayer modes. From Oscar’s use of custom “seeds” and deployment of creative mode’s flight capabilities to explore new worlds, or Penny’s creative exploitation of endless sheep, to Niam’s “mucking about” with building complex structures and contraptions, Minecraft is home to diverse forms of innovative play. Niam’s mucking about resonates with Ito et  al.’s notions of “hanging out, messing around and geeking out” whereby techniques of digital play are open-ended, ambient and mundane (2009). In sum, this is the creative logic of informal literacies. In addition, this chapter reviewed two key factors that inform how and why players use the game. These factors—risk-free building and a wider

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application of creativity as produsage—further show how Minecraft can be used by players to take the mundane to unorthodox scenarios of use. When discussing how Minecraft engages creative practice in informal learning scenarios, these two factors are crucial. The display of designs and sense of exploration that emerged in our research evidences how players socially interact, turning Minecraft into a place where sociality and creativity coalesce. The creative playbour within Minecraft can also extend to other forms of social play beyond the game (such as Cal’s Dungeons & Dragons planning) or can serve to remediate previous pen-and-paper design ideas (such as Oscar’s tower sketches). The ad hoc and risk-free environment of creative mode serves as a fertile space to explore and learn through repeated iteration. However, this process of creative informal learning is by no means unique to creative mode. The following chapter will turn to examine metagaming and paratextual scenarios of play that also reveal the way Minecraft players engage in game-­ related activities that exceed the confines of the game.

References Ackermann, Judith. 2012. Playing Computer Games as Social Interaction: An Analysis of LAN Parties. In Computer Games and New Media Cultures, ed. Johannes Fromme and Alexander Unger, 465–476. Cham, The Netherland: Springer. Al-Washmi, Reem, Janos Bana, Ian Knight, E. Benson, O. Afolabi A. Kerr, Peter Blanchfield, and Gail Hopkins. 2014. Design of a Math Learning Game Using a Minecraft Mod. In European Conference on Games Based Learning, vol. 1. Academic Conferences International Limited. Balmford, William, and Hugh Davies. 2019. Mobile Minecraft: Negotiated Space and Perceptions of Play in Australian Families. Mobile Media and Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050157918819614n. Bos, Beth, Lucy Wilder, Marcelina Cook, and Ryan O’Donnell. 2014. Learning Mathematics Through Minecraft. Teaching Children Mathematics 21 (1): 56–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5951/teacchilmath.21.1.0056. Bruns, Axel. 2008. Blogs, Wikipedia, Second Life, and Beyond: From Production to Produsage. New York: Peter Lang. Burgess, Jean. 2007. Vernacular Creativity and New Media. Doctoral dissertation. Queensland University of Technology. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16378/. ———. 2009. Remediating Vernacular Creativity: Photography and Cultural Citizenship in the Flickr Photosharing Network. In Spaces of Vernacular

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Creativity: Rethinking the Cultural Economy, ed. Tim Edensor, Deborah Leslie, Steve Millington, and Norma Rantisi, 116–126. London: Routledge. Cayatte, Rémi. 2014. Minecraft: Where Game, Play and Art Collide. In Understanding Minecraft: Essays on Play, Community and Possibilities, ed. Nate Garrelts, 203–214. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Christiansen, Peter. 2014. Players, Modders and Hackers. In Understanding Minecraft: Essays on Play, Community and Possibilities, ed. Nate Garrelts, 23–37. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Cosh, Jackie. 2015. Minecraft’s Massive Landscape for Learning. Primary Teacher Update: 20–22. Dezuanni, Michael. 2018. Minecraft and Children’s Digital Making: Implications for Media Literacy Education. Learning Media and Technology 43 (3): 236–249. Garskof, Josh. 2014. The Ready-for-Anything Mind. Scholastic: Parent & Child 21 (5): 62–66. Gauntlett, David. 2011. Making is Connecting. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Goldberg, Daniel, and Linus Larsson. 2013. Minecraft: The Unlikely Tale of Markus ‘Notch’ Persson and the Game that Changed Everything. New  York: Seven Stories Press. Ito, Mizuko, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti, danah boyd, Rachel Cody, and Becky Herr Stephenson. 2009. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Jansz, Jeron, and Lonneke Martens. 2005. Gaming at a LAN Event: The Social Context of Playing Video Games. New Media & Society 7 (3): 333–355. Jenkins, Henry, and William Proctor. 2007. “Vernacular Creativity”: An Interview with Jean Burgess (Part Two). Confessions of an ACA-Fan. http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/10/vernacular_creativity_an_inter_1.html. Kuchera, Ben. 2015. Gaming has Left the LAN Party Behind. Polygon, January 29. https://www.polygon.com/2015/1/29/7944755/lan-­party-­gaming-­ call-­of-­duty. Licoppe, Christian. 2004. ‘Connected’ Presence: The Emergence of a New Repertoire for Managing Social Relationships in a Changing Communication Technoscape. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22: 135–156. List, Jonathan, and Brent Bryant. 2014. Using Minecraft to Encourage Critical Engagement of Geography Concepts. In Proceedings of SITE 2014—Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, ed. M. Searson and M. Ochoa, 2384–2388. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE). https://www.learntechlib.org/ primary/p/131137/. Repenning, Alexander, David Webb, Catharine Brand, Fred Gluck, Ryan Grover, Susan Miller, and Muyang Song. 2014. Beyond Minecraft: Facilitating

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Computational Thinking Through Modeling and Programming in 3D. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 34: 68–71. Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Short, Daniel. 2012. Teaching Scientific Concepts Using a Virtual World— Minecraft. Teaching Science 58 (3): 55–58. Swalwell, Melanie. 2003. Multi-player Computer Gaming: Better than Playing (PC Games) with Yourself. Reconstruction, An Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies Community. https://dspace2.flinders.edu.au/xmlui/bitstream/handle/2328/14292/2006010642.pdf?sequence=1 Taylor, T.L., and Emma Witkowski. 2010. This is How We Play It: What a Mega-­ LAN can Teach Us about Games. In FDG 2010—Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. https://doi. org/10.1145/1822348.1822374. Tremblay, Alexandra, Jeremy Colangelo, and Joseph Alexander Brown. 2014. The Craft of Data Mining. In Understanding Minecraft: Essays on Play, Community and Possibilities, ed. Nate Garrelts, 76–87. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Vogelgesang, Waldemar. 2003. LAN-partys. Jugendkulturelle erlebnisräume zwischen off- und online. medien + erziehung 47 (5): 65–75. Zorn, Christopher, Chadwick Wingrave, Emiko Charbonneau, and Joseph J. LaViola Jr. 2013. Exploring Minecraft as a Conduit for Increasing Interest in Programming. In Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG 2013), 352–359. New York: ACM.

CHAPTER 5

Metagaming and Paratextual Play

I think (I got good at Minecraft by) watching YouTube clips (LP). Mostly Hermitcraft. The only thing I watch on YouTube is animal docos, cooking shows and Hermitcraft. Hermitcraft is pretty great. There’s a whole lot of streamers just talking about Minecraft, but you don’t see their faces, you just hear their voices. Preston, Jelly, Slogaman, Mumbo Jumbo. It’s not all just guys too, like there is Zombie Cleo and False. —Cameron, thirteen-year-old, Melbourne

The Minecraft phenomenon transcends the confines of its software. A multitude of play practices drive player creativity in, and around, the game. Such experiences surround the core gameplay and result in expansive game communities, engaging players across different devices, screens, practices and cultures. Understanding Minecraft—and indeed many videogames—requires recognizing the complex paratextual contexts that constellate around them. In the opening quote we meet thirteen-year-old Cameron who attributes his skilfulness in Minecraft to watching Let’s Play (LP) on YouTube. In this quote he refers to Hermitcraft, a Minecraft server, which includes some of the best (and kid-friendly) examples of LP. While the LP field has historically been dominated by men, women LPers like Zombie Cleo and False are starting to leave their mark. The phenomenal success of LP is in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9_5

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part due to the significant ways paratexts engage fans and communities across different levels of informal literacy. In particular, LP amplifies the aesthetics and logic of YouTube and its “vernacular creativity” (Burgess 2007), and has emerged, along with livestreaming, as one of the most prolific forms of player-created paratext. As a particular mix of literacy and creativity, LP is demonstrative of what we have defined previously as “platformativity” (Lamarre 2017). As discussed in Chap. 1, Lamarre’s notion of platformativity refers to the discursive work that platforms do to enhance specific forms of performativity. Performativity has been theorized extensively by Butler in her book Gender Trouble (1991) in which she argued that gender was not innate or biological but rather naturalized through a series of actions and regulations. When applied to the politics of platforms—that is, the discursive work platforms do to massage particular ideologies and values (Gillespie 2010), performativity becomes platformativity. Indeed, the LP paratexts of Minecraft do afford particular forms of narrative and gameplay that have become embedded into the process of becoming a good player. As we have illustrated in previous chapters, the role of paratexts and metagame elements such as Let’s Play on YouTube generate complex understandings in terms of the narrativization and performativity of Minecraft play. These paratexts impart not only skills and techniques but also linguistic and performative gestures that connect a community through vernacular, socially informed creativity. Their transgression across different devices and platforms means that games and game-related activities often occupy the space of ambient play—that is, they move in and out of the rhythms of everyday life (Hjorth and Richardson 2020). Minecraft both forms and introduces the integral informal literacies that emerge in contemporary ludic media cultures. From papercraft and cosplay (costume play) to meetups and build challenges, Minecraft players create and construct paratexts through and beyond the code of Minecraft and the devices they play on. Likewise, the consumption of Minecraft content online, such as LPs, tutorials or livestreams illustrate how crucial the surrounding user-generated content is to Minecraft and the communities of play that circulate around and through the game. That is, metagame and paratext contexts and skills circle back into the game and then back out to the paratextual sites across platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, blogs and wikis. Beavis and O’Mara explore Minecraft paratextuality and metagaming through Redstone. As they argue, Minecraft “gameplay and the production and use of paratexts, including talk around games,

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are entwined aspects of the pleasures of playing games and the ongoing formation of learner identities” (Beavis and O’Mara 2010, p. 149). This chapter aims to critically explore such paratextual engagement through a consideration of Minecraft’s various paratextual metagame practices—activities that are informally produced and consumed by players outside the game space, and the “meta” knowledge that is needed to play the game well (Boluk and LeMieux 2017). We begin by contextualizing Minecraft’s metagame and paratextual surrounds, and outline how Minecraft metagaming is established through paratextual conduits such as YouTube and wikis. The second section explores how mods for Minecraft represent another productive and perhaps deeper level of player creativity. We then turn to physical Minecraft-related practices and artefacts, and discuss the community aspects of in-game multiplayer play, further detailing the informal literacies that proliferate through Minecraft game communities.

Contextualizing Minecraft Metagame and Paratextual Surrounds The original Minecraft version for PC, Mac and Linux had a notoriously steep learning curve. Early Minecraft offered no in-game tutorials or pop­up cues on what to do—the game simply dropped you in the world and let you fend for yourself, learning its rules as you go. Most players’ first experience of Minecraft would involve wandering around interacting randomly with game objects or “punching stuff” without any specific goal. Then as night falls, monsters appear, attacking without mercy. You die and immediately respawn at the same starting point but having lost any resources you accumulated. This cycle of life and death repeats until the sun finally rises and the monsters, helpless against daylight, burn up. This seemingly brutal introduction to Minecraft has been softened in more recent versions, but the initial confronting player experience is the hallmark of Minecraft’s survival mode. This challenge and lack of tutorials has also resulted in many players generating their own hints, tips, walkthroughs and playthroughs instructing players how best to start a game of Minecraft. This section engages with examples of how our participants made use of such community resources, both online and face-to-face. It considers how a “correct” way to play a sandbox game such as Minecraft emerges from community involvement and discussion. In this way, the

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very act of playing Minecraft has become an embedded social practice, a negotiation of community and game. Through cross-platform and paratextual creativity in games such as Minecraft, play has become increasingly embedded and entangled with everyday life. The section also explores alternative readings of Minecraft from an academic perspective, offering them as further evidence of the cross-cultural phenomenon Minecraft has become. Minecraft’s success is due in part to its complex assemblage comprising metagame and paratextual dimensions. So much exists beyond the actual playing of the game. And so much of these extra-game features or paratexts feed back into the game. These paratextual and metagame aspects contribute to meanings and understandings of Minecraft as a cultural phenomenon. Successful LPers such as PewDiePie play a key role not only in terms of how Minecraft is played but also in terms of its popularity. As seventeen-year-old David notes: I watched a bit of PewDiePie recently. He has kind of come back in a way. I think he is responsible for bringing Minecraft back too because it wasn’t that big and neither was he and he was doing different stuff and then he started playing Minecraft again and then they both came back at the same time.

As David’s comment illustrates, there is an interrelated role between the game, its paratexts and the metagame. Successful LPs can enhance the perceived enjoyment of a certain game, as their narrations become part of the metagame pleasures and platformativity. A metagame, as Nigel Howard explains it, is “[t]he game that would exist if one of the players chooses their strategy after the other, in knowledge of their choices” (1971, p. 1) (pronouns have been changed). For Richard Garfield, creator of Magic: The Gathering and primary play tester of Dungeons & Dragons, the metagame is “the use of out-of-character knowledge to make in-character decisions” (in Boluk and LeMieux 2017, p. 14). This is expanded by Boluk and LeMieux who argue that metagaming is “a messy circle that both constrains games and makes them possible to play in the first place” (2017, p. 15). Previous scholarship has explored the relationship between videogames and their paratextual, user-generated accompaniments. Beavis and O’Mara have detailed how co-creation of content around games can serve as an important site of literacy learning (2010). Throughout our fieldwork we

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noted a similar phenomenon; players often derived enjoyment from consuming, learning and discussing Minecraft beyond the confines of the game. Scholars such as Apperley and Walsh (2012) have argued that this engagement is powerful enough to be a worthy starting point for incorporating gaming literacies into the literacy curriculum. This move to incorporate games into literacy, and indeed everyday life, has become increasingly common. As we have discussed in previous chapters, contemporary digital culture is defined by its “playful” attitude (Sicart 2014) and the “ludified” cultural turn (Frissen et al. 2015) in which game and non-game worlds have merged (Walsh et al. 2010). The ludification of everyday social practices as witnessed through games in work, society and culture all point to the significance of play and games in an age saturated with digital technology (Castells 2010). Numerous companies have attempted to gamify their workplaces to increase the engagement of both workers and customers, while at an individual level, people track and trace their personal fitness and health data, attempting to improve their health through score-and-reward based activities in competition and cooperation with others. Social media from YouTube to Instagram are scored by “thumbs up”, votes and likes, while on Twitch viewers watch games and participate as fans through live chat. These engagements bring a gamified and interactive aspect to watching, further establishing videogames as an integral part of “participatory culture” (Jenkins 2006). In this environment, Minecraft exists within a “ludified perfect storm” by exploiting the recent rise of tablets and smartphones as a mundane part of everyday life. As we argue, it is its ability to tap into the zeitgeist of quotidian haptic play that has made Minecraft so successful across generations, devices, and formal and informal contexts. Consuming player-­ produced content is often how savvy players upskill. According to Google, in 2015 Minecraft was the second-most searched-for topic on YouTube, which at that time hosted over 70 million videos of the game. Caylee, a fourteen-year-old participant living in Sydney, confesses responsibility for many of those searches. She often trawls through YouTube, using its “thumbs up” system to find Minecraft building guides to follow. She explained to us that she liked learning how to build with more advanced Minecraft systems—such as Redstone. Redstone is Minecraft’s analogue of electricity and is similarly powerful and complex. In order to learn how to build with it, Caylee watched videos by famous Minecraft players such as Mumbo Jumbo, a popular Minecraft YouTuber who has over 400 videos containing tips and tutorials for building with

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Redstone (see Fig. 5.1). Caylee studies these videos to learn how to build various contraptions, from Redstone-operated hidden doors to intricate household lighting systems. She has a Minecraft world littered with such contraptions, a testing ground for Redstone apparatus. After much trial and error, she now considers herself a “Redstone expert”, thanks in part to the skills gleaned through third-party tutorial videos. The vast amount of Redstone tutorials available on YouTube—and the wider internet—highlight the extensive participatory culture of Minecraft. In lieu of in-game tutorials, user-generated guides have proliferated to fill the void left by the developers. Although several versions of Minecraft now do have tutorials, player-made guides and walkthroughs have remained exceedingly popular, to the extent that they were how the vast majority of our participants learned and furthered their Minecraft skills. Exploration is perhaps the central skill in Minecraft. It is needed in order to uncover new resources, allowing for the creation of new objects. In addition, users are limited to storing a finite number of blocks and items that they find. This requires them to explore their surroundings and to harvest resources or to find a way to produce such resources, cultivating plants or breeding animals. The risks and rewards of exploration in

Fig. 5.1 The avatar of Oliver Brotherhood aka Minecraft YouTuber Mumbo Jumbo

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Minecraft have led to it becoming a popular destination for “adventures”, LP and other role-playing activities. While relying heavily on open world play, there is an end goal to exploration in Minecraft—a loose series of narrative steps players must make in order to reach “The End”. This story involves moving from the world players spawn in (known as the “Overworld”), and into a hell-like realm referred to as “The Nether”. Once in The Nether, players must collect specific material ingredients, then return to the Overworld to locate a stronghold where they can activate a portal to The End. The End is not simply the game’s final destination, but an in-game location; a dark, void-­ like realm controlled by a large Ender Dragon. Players can defeat the Ender Dragon to activate an Exit Portal followed by the game’s credits and cinematic finale, a scrolling text poem about two unknown speakers esoterically discussing the player’s journey. Subsequently the player respawns in the Overworld and is free to continue playing. While this narrative arc is not mandatory (many people play Minecraft without ever defeating the Ender Dragon), it does nudge players through a scavenger hunt style of play in a quest to upgrade tools, search out new areas and build more elaborate structures. Minecraft’s loose narrative telos and gameplay motivates players to further their exploration and building skills, and are key to Minecraft’s enduring popularity. Dooghan notes that Minecraft’s labour is framed not as drudgery, but fun (2019). Sean C.  Duncan (2011) has suggested that, following Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, “The individual elements of survival and construction need one another to drive players deeper into the game and to achieve a joyous, ‘flow’-like state of play” (13). Minecraft’s remarkable success more broadly suggests that players find the challenge compelling and effectively realize this ideal experience of flow. Nguyen argues that the inventive thinking and demands of construction using surrounding or “found” environmental elements in Minecraft is rooted in historical “Island Narratives” of Western fiction—such as Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1624) and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719)—all narratives that dramatize conflicts between individual invention and natural environment. Minecraft’s survival mode in particular replicates these narratives of discovery against the brute forces of nature, stories that are embedded in many (particular Western) contemporary cultures.

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Dooghan (2019) draws on scholarship in ludology, postcolonial studies and phenomenology, to discuss how Minecraft and similar sandbox games contribute to a larger media ecology that flatters a neoliberal worldview. While myths of empire and capital are clearly encoded in the game mechanic, if Minecraft is a game of neoliberal expansion, who, he enquires, are the dispossessed? Perhaps, it is the ghouls, creepers and other creatures, as the game provides no background narrative to account for their hostility. Minecraft’s signature enemy, the creeper, is resistance embodied… upon sighting a player, [the creeper] will approach and explode, damaging the player and any nearby player structures: a suicide bomber. (Dooghan 2019, n.p.)

Dooghan’s quote highlights how Minecraft encodes particular perspectives into its gameplay, contributing to an implicit discourse of neoliberal expansion and colonization. Nguyen notes that Minecraft’s Steve, like Dafoe’s Crusoe, must loot his landscape and potentially the world, and in doing so, views his environment as ready material at his disposal. In this way, Nguyen argues, Minecraft translates the world into what Heidegger has called “standing-reserve”—where everything, including humans, become resources for perpetual economic and geographical expansion. Similarly, mastery of Minecraft requires an instrumental knowledge of how to effectively and continuously convert raw materials into resources. This knowledge is gleaned from a variety of sources, both in-game and paratextually. Many participants, feeling they had mastered this expansionist narrative in Minecraft, sought further challenges and possibilities by installing modifications to the game. The following section unpacks such scenarios of use, detailing the ramifications of mods for player creativity and surrounding game communities.

Customizing and Modding Minecraft Although Minecraft has never officially supported modding tools, it has, from the outset, encouraged community participation and involvement. Well before its official release, players had begun patching and hacking the game, creating modifications and making them available for download. For many years, creating, installing and making mods work was a complex

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and difficult process, but the invention of a tool named Forge changed everything. Forge is a website run from https://files.minecraftforge.net, allowing players to easily download compatible mods and load them into the game. Thanks to tools such as Forge, modding Minecraft on PC, Mac, Linux and Android operating systems is fairly achievable as all allow free access to the file system. The situation is very different for iOS, Xbox, PlayStation and the Oculus Rift. The owner companies of these products have created walled gardens whereby only approved and in-house modifications are permitted. For example, an iOS device such as an iPad or iPhone will need to be “jailbroken” to allow for modding, and console owners risk being banned from the online services offered by Microsoft and Sony if any tampering to mod Minecraft—or indeed any of their games or services—is detected. However, even on these more restricted platforms, players frequently seek to customize their games in other ways. One of the more common ways this is achieved is through the use of texture packs. For example, Fiona, a twenty-one-year-old university student in Melbourne who had recently “rediscovered” Minecraft, explained texture packs as “a coat of paint that you add to the game”. Figure 5.2 shows Fiona’s worlds before and after this “coat of paint”. In the example below Fiona had “reskinned” her world to look more urban in order to complement a skyscraper she was building. Texture packs—also now known as “resource packs”—such as those seen in the figure above, are a quick way for players to superficially modify their Minecraft worlds. There are both community-made texture packs, akin to simple mods, and formally developed texture packs, such as the Mario-themed texture pack made for the Nintendo Switch version of Minecraft. In this way, players are able to reshape and reimagine their

Fig. 5.2  Fiona’s skyscraper before (left) and after (right) the application of a texture pack

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worlds around particular aesthetics. Fiona explained that without a texture pack her tower didn’t “look modern enough, it looked more like a castle”. This dissonance between imagination and output is solved through the integration of texture packs that can drastically shift the “feel” of the game. While Fiona applied her texture pack to resurface an already constructed building, another participant, fourteen-year-old Peter from Adelaide, did the opposite. He uses the texture pack as his default option when playing on his Nintendo Switch. While playing around in creative mode he told us that the texture pack “makes me more creative. The standard one is boring”. He demonstrated this by chopping down a tree and showing how the wooden texture could be used to make elaborate parquet-esque flooring for a home. “With the normal textures, this wouldn’t look nearly this good!” he announced when he had finished. For Peter, his engagement with the game is significantly enhanced through the use of texture packs, and determines how and why he uses certain in-game materials. Such practices are not uncommon in Minecraft communities, with many online servers requiring the use of specific texture packs for the world to appear cohesive. Peter’s comment and wider community sentiment shows how players use simple mods such as texture packs to creatively expand and aesthetically renegotiate their game experiences. Through the deployment of texture packs players are able to customize their perception and experience of Minecraft’s core gameplay. Another way our participants shifted their play experiences was through the use of custom levels, used for challenges, role playing or otherwise impossible scenarios. This is illustrated by two sibling participants from Adelaide—Alex (fourteen) and Milo (twelve)—playing a SkyBlock custom world. SkyBlock worlds place players high up in the sky on a tiny floating island, with only the bare minimum of resources. Players must creatively combine these resources in order to produce new ones, all the while avoiding plummeting into the void. Alex and Milo have been playing games together for several years. It’s Boxing Day and they are playing Minecraft together on separate iPads. Alex does not play Minecraft much anymore, preferring Battlefield 4 instead, but because Milo has just inherited his Dad’s old iPad—and Alex already has one—they have downloaded a custom level to play together. Previously, they played lots of Minecraft together on the Xbox, but are keen to try on their iPads because, as Alex explains, “you don’t have to do split screens, you can get skins, and you can download worlds”. Alex prefers to play creative mode, but Milo prefers survival mode. They play the

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latter, and their world is a thin sliver of dirt floating in an endless void of sky (see Fig. 5.3). If they fall-off, they die. They fall off often. “I fell off again!” Alex says with considerable frustration. “I’m stacking diamonds”, Milo replies, “I could play this forever.” Alex disagrees. He is indulging Milo in his brother’s preferred world and mode of play. “It’s a bit tricky”. Alex tells me. “You just have a small floating world and you have to plant a tree to gather wood. You get a bucket of water and a bucket of lava—and you use that to generate a cobblestone generator. Only then you can begin to build.” The world they are playing in is indeed demanding and complex. To survive, they have to rely on each other, but even then, it’s a losing battle. As Milo remarks: “I don’t always play like this but sometimes it’s good to have a challenge that’s like really hard.” These risk-and-reward play practices are often performed through specialized worlds such as the SkyBlock scenario Milo and Alex play. As Dezuanni et al. (2015) note, such mods, remixes and acts of co-creation and remediation are a key part of Minecraft’s popularity. Players watch prominent YouTube personalities play through particular scenarios and then download the scenario themselves to replicate and remix their own play experiences. For example, Milo and Alex downloaded the SkyBlock world mod after watching CaptainSparklez (the famous Minecraft LPer Jordan Maron) play through such a scenario on his YouTube channel. This phenomenon

Fig. 5.3  A tiny floating island in a SkyBlock custom world

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of watching play and seeking to replicate it is not unique to Minecraft. Rather, Minecraft players’ engagement with co-creation and imitating play offers key insights into the exponential rise of watching gameplay in contemporary media practices, and the quotidian platformativity in which particular gestures and performances become part of the Minecraft experience. However, these play practices are not for the uninitiated. As Alex and Milo explained and experienced, player-created adventures can come with a significant challenge. Even in the base game there is no small amount of virtual risk in Minecraft. With its notoriously steep learning curve and associated monsters and ghouls, learning to manipulate the world of Minecraft can be a daunting task. As a result, many players opt for the less ominous creative mode—at least to begin with. Yet most of the players we spoke to who admitted to being initially afraid of survival mode had later engaged with it. It is noteworthy that Nina found playing with “strangers” online less intimidating than playing survival mode. Likewise, eleven-year-­old Clara from Adelaide reported that: “I used to be scared of Survival but that was a long time ago.” Over time players can experience and, crucially, acquire the necessary literacy in the sometimes-obtuse game mechanics of Minecraft. What is significant in this shift is that such literacy is not solely gained through actually playing the game. It is also gained through a variety of other avenues including watching and talking about Minecraft. Through such socialization and sharing, the risks to player characters within Minecraft are significantly reduced. Not only can multiple players work collaboratively to find resources, build shelters and resist attacks, but their collected items can be recovered by other players if their avatar is killed; discoveries can be shared, and new methods of play can be learned. As Nina tells us: [T]hese days I play Survival. When we play on the server, we all play Survival together—I think it’s also because I’m playing with others so if you die and lose everything, at least someone can go and collect it all. I’ve also learned how to branch mine, which is really useful.

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Nina’s use of the term “branch mine” hints at the “meta” level of Minecraft. The metagaming of Minecraft is often concerned with efficiency: the speed at which a player can move through the game, how much of a particular resource can be collected per hour, or advanced techniques for maximizing crop yields. Branch mining refers to a particular way of mining through blocks to allow for the greatest number of blocks to be checked for rare resources (such as gold or diamonds) with the least amount of blocks removed, while also mitigating risks from hazards such as lava. An example of a branch mine is seen below in Fig. 5.4. Techniques such as branch mining are often pioneered by particular players, proliferating throughout the wider community and having a significant impact upon how Minecraft is played. As another example, the popularity of “pokehole mining” (a variant of branch mining) is often credited to a video published by “xisumavoid”. The evolution of meta strategies such as pokehole mining can be seen in a variety of videogames, where popular game players can impact upon the play practices of the game’s broader player base by sharing their expertise. This section has explored how paratextual artefacts such as mods, texture packs, LPs and YouTube videos can contribute to the broader ecology and metagame strategies of Minecraft players. The following section

Fig. 5.4  A branch mine in Minecraft

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unpacks Minecraft’s paratextual phenomena further through an analysis of physical merchandise and fan-made artefacts.

Physical Artefacts and Group Facilitation One of the ways Minecraft is productively used is in tandem with the physical block-based play sets of LEGO (see Fig. 5.5). Kervin et al. (2015) provide a detailed description of a block-based playdate in which two seven-years-olds—Natalie and Zack—create a city using both Minecraft and LEGO. Left to their own devices, it initially appeared that the children were playing completely separately—“Zack playing with the LEGO and Natalie playing with the Minecraft app on the iPad” (Kervin et al. 2015). However the children themselves explained that they were “building their city with LEGO and in Minecraft at the same time” in order to arrive at the “best way” to create an effective urban environment, in turn blurring boundaries between onscreen and offscreen reality (Kress 2010).

Fig. 5.5  A Minecraft themed LEGO set

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Focusing deeply on this playdate and its implications, Kervin et al. compare and unpick not just the mediums but also the spaces of play that each afford, comparing and contrasting Minecraft and LEGO and interrogating the relationships between the material and immaterial. More than what was created in the onscreen or offscreen context, the researchers explored how the children negotiated their activities in a “shared imaginary space” as they moved between the physical and virtual worlds through interaction with each other. The resulting physical and digital assemblages demonstrate that the children were able to cooperatively combine the separate tools and technologies to create model cities, and to deploy the social and affective aspects of their imaginative play as valuable opportunities for meaning-making. In this instance, it became clear that the developmental benefits were transferred between the onscreen and offscreen play contexts. The complementary pairing of Minecraft and LEGO has become popular. Not surprisingly, with its blocky graphics and construction-based gameplay, comparisons of Minecraft to LEGO abound. Like Minecraft today, LEGO has long been celebrated for cultivating open-ended and exploratory creativity in children. However, more recent critics of LEGO have voiced concerns over a perceived loss of creativity, particularly given the prescriptive nature of more contemporary kits. This is especially so with LEGO’s increasing transmediatic tie-ins to television shows, films, videogames and other commercial media franchises. Yul, a twenty-four-year-old university student currently studying to be a teacher in Melbourne, remembers playing Minecraft when he was younger and being obsessed with collecting “all things Minecraft”. As he recounted to us, he had “Minecraft themed tracksuits, tops, socks, bedsheets, all sorts of paraphernalia!” For Yul, Minecraft was much more than the digital piece of software; it was a cultural touchstone—a key part of his pre-teen identity. As Yul explained to us, he “grew up and got better fashion sense!”, but still remembers his enjoyment of Minecraft fondly, now seeing the same enthusiasm in his younger cousins. All tools, media and materials have inflections that favour particular possibilities. Flanagan and Nissenbaum (2014) articulate that social and material technologies, tools and toys are inherently encumbered with values—attitudes, ideals, traits and conditions—and that through uncritical engagement with those artefacts, those values are imparted on the user. Previous scholarship has mapped the powerful influence of social factors on game and game-related consumption, especially among adolescents. Features such as age (Greenberg et  al. 2010), gender (Chou and Tsai

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2007; Hartmann and Klimmt 2006) and social milieu (Amialchuk and Kotalik 2016), each play a strong role in determining the types of games young people favour and play. The spread of Minecraft across other domains such as LEGO, clothing and home wares are critical components of how the “stuff” of digital media enters into the everyday lives of players, which then directly impacts how players navigate their social worlds. In particular, the Minecraft-LEGO relation reveals how big media brands can shift from core “texts” to become paratexts for other media such as games, and vice versa. Liam, a Grade 4 primary school student in Adelaide, lives with his mum Sally in small house near his primary school. Unlike many of the other kids in his grade, Liam explained that he has little interest in Minecraft or videogames. Instead he prefers LEGO (see Fig.  5.6). Sally explained to us that when Liam was younger, she made an active decision to keep Liam away from screens to encourage creativity. However, now that Minecraft and other digital games have become such an ingrained part of social life at Liam’s school, she is beginning to shift her perception and encourage Liam to take part. As she explained to us:

Fig. 5.6  Participants often compared LEGO and Minecraft

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When he was a very young child, it was certainly a conscious decision to not have lots of screens around, but now I’m really open to that, but it hasn’t been something that he’s been interested in, he’s only aware of it around, and like for example he knows kids that are really into Minecraft. He knows kids that are interested in Minecraft and that’s being framed to him as being LEGO on a screen but he’s like “I’d rather play with the LEGO”. So yeah, I’ve kind of offered that to him, if he wants to find out more about that we can, and at this stage he hasn’t wanted to.

When we asked Liam, he commented “You often hear kids at my school, like saying, ‘meet you in Minecraft tonight’”, further highlighting its importance as a tool for social engagement. In an effort to encourage greater interest in Minecraft and digital technology, Stacy bought Liam a Minecraft LEGO set and took him along to a LEGO Mindstorms workshop, where small LEGO robots are programmed using code on an iPad or other device. Liam’s case, and particularly his mother’s shift in encouraging Minecraft engagement highlights its growing importance as a social tool among players, particularly children. Other scholars have focused on the role of Minecraft in terms of its interpersonal capacities, including identity development (Dezuanni et al. 2015), finding that it can play a crucial role in children’s conversation and group coherence. Paulina Haduong (2016) has also explored Minecraft’s ability to direct social learning through her engagement with workshops that encourage players to operate as “courteous digital citizens”. Recognizing the prevalence of bullying in online environments and acknowledging that zero tolerance policies rarely allow for instructive dialogue, Haduong believes that for young people to learn, they need space to fail and room for feedback, thereby increasing their resilience and helping them develop critical higher order thinking skills. Haduong recommends the online community model of “Connected Camps” that offers a more positive experience for young people and takes into account users’ youth and desire to learn. Such initiatives work as dynamic paratextual environments that shift the focus to enhancing social skills and wellbeing through the medium of games. In this model, camp counsellors (high school students) act as mentors to middle school players, providing role models of good citizenship and positive online participation by participating in the community and giving constructive feedback to younger players. In Minecraft, young people new to the community often “grief” (or harass) by accident (a phenomenon

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that is not unique to Minecraft). In some online communities, these users might immediately be removed from the community and excluded from play, but Connected Camps’ counsellors work with users to help them understand boundaries, respect and productive dialogue. By receiving feedback on their behaviour, young users can develop resilience and learn social norms that will carry them through their future interactions online as they expand their online participation. Another issue often at the fore in Minecraft relates to negotiations around perceptions of gender and gender identity. There are serious concerns about the gendering of game spaces, and Minecraft, despite its popularity across demographics, is unequal in its representations. Mavoa et al. (2018) found that girls are much less likely to play Minecraft until age nine, at which point the difference disappears, with a full reversal of the difference at age eleven (possibly due to boys moving on to other videogame titles). Their study showed boys are more likely to start playing Minecraft at a younger age and are more likely to play in the more competitive and challenging survival mode. Similarly, Beavis et al. (2015) have noted that boys are more likely than girls to rate “competing” as a “very important” aspect of gameplay (p. 29). Despite claims by developer Notch that “gender doesn’t exist” in Minecraft (Persson 2012), it is clear that boys and girls experience the game differently in ways that are complexly intervolved with age, and cultural perceptions of attitudes and behaviour specific to gender. There is also evidence to suggest that parents regard videogames differently in relation to boys and girls. For example, Smette et al. (2016) found that parents of boys were particularly concerned with the risks they attributed to digital games. Nikken and Jansz (2006) in contrast also found that parents were more likely to mediate the digital gameplay of girls and to use more restrictive strategies than for boys. Such strategies may impact the opportunities and experiences of girls’ digital play and in turn, their engagement with surrounding media. Charlene is a Sydney mother of two boys, Greg (ten) and Declan (six), and an older daughter Flick (seventeen). During an interview Charlene explained that she often tried to encourage open media engagement among her children in an attempt to move their consumption away from gender-based paradigms. She described her attempts in the specific context of Minecraft: I don’t ascribe it to gender. My boys have played stuff that typically would not be marketed towards boys, and that’s really important for us to support

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them in whatever they’re gaming. We don’t say (about Minecraft) “yeah this is a boy’s game, yeah this is a girl’s game”. We don’t look at it like that at all. He’s a staunch little feminist, my ten-year-old! Having said that there are definitely different patterns in the gaming between my daughter and the boys. I think some of that is the age as well because she’s seventeen. They’ve grown up with it a bit differently.

Charlene encourages the breaking of these paradigms in-game too; both of her sons’ in-game avatars are non-male characters, with Greg “wearing” a dinosaur skin and Declan a skin depicting Princess Peach from the Mario franchise. Likewise, Charlene, who sometimes plays with her boys on the family’s Nintendo Switch, wears a Mario skin. Declan has also recently been enjoying drawing the family’s in-game avatars, furthering the intersection of Minecraft with paratextual activities that occupy their everyday lives. Although Charlene saw these as “small steps”, they highlight how the malleability of Minecraft and its associated paratextual phenomena can be dynamically accommodated into gender identity as it evolves in the quotidian space of the home. Minecraft has become increasingly embraced beyond the scope of the software the game is played on. This is particularly seen among some of our parent participants, who expressed a sense of ease at the prospect of their children engaging within the game’s relatively “healthy” play space. While many parents continue to discuss videogames in terms of their problematic qualities such as addiction and violence, many also speak positively of the way their children connect with peers in videogames spaces, especially with regard to Minecraft. This aspect has become particularly valued as children and young people today frequently experience reduced freedom in response to perceived and actual risk, both online and in the real world, preventing children from independently socializing with friends as previous generations might have done. Sharing safe digital experiences with friends is highly valued, by children and parents alike.

Conclusion Throughout this chapter we have explored the creative metagaming and paratextual play practices that surround Minecraft. This exploration served to highlight not only the spectrum of everyday situations in which Minecraft has now become relevant, but also the changing role of digital media in our everyday lives.

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In seeking to capture the myriad ways in which Minecraft encourages and enables sociality and informal literacies beyond the core gameplay, this chapter has brought to light the complex social systems of Minecraft, from its growing presence in the schoolyard to the emergence of LP, metagames and mods. These ancillary phenomena challenge the limits of the game environment through a proliferation of user-generated content, game and fan blogs, cosplay events, and via various modes of watching and sharing gameplay and game-related content. As we described, LPers narrate and perform the game through the YouTube platform, and these performances then become adapted into the play practices of their fans who enact a mode of quotidian platformativity. These activities are thus forms of vernacular or everyday creativity, and integral to the formation of game communities and emergent informal literacies. They evidence the scale of Minecraft that moves through and beyond the bounds of the game’s software, deployed in different ways depending on the daily lives and proclivities of the players. We provided several examples of this deployment, from Alex and Milo’s engagement with specific SkyBlock play scenarios, to Nina’s learned application of branch mining. These ethnographic examples show the numerous face-to-­ face and networked activities that take place outside the core gameplay. The other key finding discussed in this chapter is the evolution of Minecraft into physical artefacts such as LEGO sets, artwork and clothing. Linking these artefacts to Dezuanni, Beavis and O’Mara’s argument that Minecraft can serve as a beacon for identity creation and negotiation (2015), our ethnographic data again stresses the increasing imbrication of digital play into non-digital areas. Such cases are further evidence that Minecraft should be taken seriously as a cultural interface. Minecraft and the paratexts it generates are indicative of the powerful integration of digital media creativity into everyday life. The following chapter begins the third part of the book which focuses on the “place” of play, further detailing the “everyday” aspect of this integration through an extensive look at the roles, configurations and manifestations of Minecraft within the home.

References Amialchuk, Aliaksandr, and Ales Kotalik. 2016. Do Your School Mates Influence How Long You Game? Evidence from the U.S. PLoS ONE 11 (8): e0160664. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0160664.

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Apperley, Tom, and Christopher Walsh. 2012. What Digital Games and Literacy have in Common: A Heuristic for Understanding Pupils’ Gaming Literacy. Literacy 46 (3): 115–122. Beavis, Catherine, and Joanne O’Mara. 2010. Computer Games—Pushing at the Boundaries of Literacy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy 33 (1): 65–76. Beavis, Catherine, Sandy Muspratt, and Roberta Thompson. 2015. ‘Computer Games can Get Your Brain Working’: Student Experience and Perceptions of Digital Games in the Classroom. Learning, Media and Technology 40 (1): 21–42. Boluk, Stephanie, and Patrick LeMieux. 2017. Metagaming: Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Burgess, Jean. 2007. Vernacular Creativity and New Media. Unpublished PhD dissertation. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia (Consulted April 2009). http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00010076/01/ Burgess_PhD_FINAL.pdf. Butler, Judith. 1991. Gender Trouble. London: Routledge. Castells, Manuel. 2010. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture. The Rise of the Network Society Vol 1. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Chou, Chien, and Meng-Jung Tsai. 2007. Gender Differences in Taiwan High School Students’ Computer Game Playing. Computers in Human Behavior 23: 812–824. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2004.11.011. Dezuanni, Michael, Joanne O’Mara, and Catherine Beavis. 2015. Redstone is Like Electricity’: Children’s Performative Representations in and Around Minecraft. E-Learning and Digital Media 12 (2): 147–163. Dooghan, Daniel. 2019. Digital Conquerors: Minecraft and the Apologetics of Neoliberalism. Games and Culture 14 (1): 67–86. https://doi. org/10.1177/1555412016655678. Duncan, Sean. 2011. Minecraft, Beyond Construction and Survival. Well Played: A Journal on Video Games, Value and Meaning 1: 1–22. Flanagan, Mary, and Helen Fay Nissenbaum. 2014. Values at Play in Digital Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Frissen, Valerie, Sybille Lammes, Michiel de Lange, Jos de Mul, and Joost Raessens. 2015. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Gillespie, Tarleton. 2010. The Politics of Platforms. New Media & Society 12 (3): 347–364. Greenberg, Bradley, John Sherry, Kenneth Lachlan, Kristen Lucas, and Amanda Holmstrom. 2010. Orientations to Video Games Among Gender and Age Groups. Simulation & Gaming. 41: 238–259. https://doi. org/10.1177/1046878108319930. Haduong, Paulina. 2016. Learning Resilience Online Through Minecraft. LSE blog, October 12. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2016/ 10/12/learning-resilience-online-through-minecraft/.

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Hartmann, Tilo, and Christoph Klimmt. 2006. Gender and Computer Games: Exploring Females’ Dislikes. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11: 910–931. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2006.00301.x. Hjorth, Larissa, and Ingrid Richardson. 2020. Ambient Play. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Howard, Nigel. 1971. Paradoxes of Rationality: Theory of Metagames and Political Behaviour. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers. Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press. Kervin, Lisa, Irina Verenikina, and Maria Clara Rivera. 2015. Collaborative Onscreen and Offscreen Play: Examining Meaning-Making Complexities. Digital Culture & Education 7 (2): 228–239. http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/kervin.pdf. Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. LaMarre, Thomas. 2017. Platformativity. Digital Asia Scape 4 (3): 285–305. Mavoa, Jane, Marcus Carter, and Martin Gibbs. 2018. Children and Minecraft: A Survey of Children’s Digital Play. New Media & Society 20 (9): 3283–3303. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817745320. Nguyen, Josef. 2016. Minecraft and the Building Blocks of Creative Individuality. Configurations 24 (4): 471–500. https://doi.org/10.1353/con.2016.0030. Nikken, Peter, and Jeroen Jansz. 2006. Parental Mediation of Children’s Videogame Playing: A Comparison of the Reports by Parents and Children. Learning, Media and Technology 31 (2): 181–202. Persson, Marcus. 2012. Gender in Minecraft. [Blog post from Jul 28 2012]. Retrieved from http://notch.tumblr.com/post/28188312756/gender-inminecraft Sicart, Miguel. 2014. Play Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smette, Ingrid, Kari Stefansen, and Øystein Gilje. 2016. Parents’ Regulation of Teenagers’ Screen Time in Norway. In Parenting for a Digital Future. LSE blog. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/parenting4digitalfuture/2016/03/30/parentsregulation-of-teenagers-screen-time-in-norway/ Walsh, Glenda, Carol McGuinness, Liz Sproule, and Karen Trew. 2010. Implementing a Play-based and Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum in Northern Ireland Primary Schools: What Lessons Have We Learned? Early Years 30: 53–66.

PART III

Places of Play

CHAPTER 6

Playing at Home

No matter what games I end up getting into, I will always love playing Minecraft. It’s like coming home. —David, fifteen-year-old, Adelaide

One of the most urgent and crucial builds in Minecraft survival mode is a home. Players shape and customize their Minecraft homes—often building elaborate castles, skyscrapers or dungeons in which to live out their virtual existence. Homes can be fantastical or realistic, dream-like or aspirational. Even in creative mode where shelter is not required, most players soon use the games’ building capacity to create livable, desirable and inspiring architectures. This is not surprising given both the significance of domestic space in everyday life and the fact that much of Minecraft play takes place in the home. The home both shapes, and is shaped by, Minecraft gameplay. This chapter explores Minecraft play with particular attunement to the domestic environment. As aforementioned, much of our ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in the home. The home is a complex and contested space in which intergenerational and gendered distinctions and differences around media literacy and accessibility play out. The home is often a key site of much game culture. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9_6

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In this chapter, we firstly contextualize the discussion of the home in terms of what has been called the domestication theory approach. This approach sought to understand technologies in the home as being shaped by and through existing practices and routines. We then discuss the role of touchscreens in the home as part of an understanding of screen literacy and intimacy. As we have mentioned previously in the book, haptic screens on tablets and smartphones play a particular role in the Minecraft literacy journey. Many players first begin on these types of screens and then graduate to PCs when they want more strategic and networked play. This section is followed by a discussion of intergenerational play. As we found in our ethnographies in the home, Minecraft was one of the few games children and parents played together. The “educational” dimension of Minecraft meant that many parents felt okay about their children’s usage—as opposed to other games that were less legitimated. This tension plays out especially in the final section where we reflect on the role of screen time and negotiation of playful identity in the home. As we argue, Minecraft extends existing spaces and contexts for collaborative creativity and social interaction in the home context. In this chapter we explore how Minecraft—as an indicator of mobile gameplay more broadly—is spatially negotiated and situated within the domestic space of the family home, and through the mobile device on which it is played.

Understanding Domestic Media During COVID-19 social isolation many saw their worlds converge— work, school and life. Some households where parents had banned children from screens or had strict screen-time rules had to rapidly rethink their philosophies. As the weeks turned into months and they had to juggle work, schooling and life—often within confined parameters—digital media rules and boundaries were transformed. Indeed, for many school children, games were the only way they could keep social, connected and sane. During this period, Minecraft witnessed a reawakening. For one of our twelve-year-old participants, Jason, he and his friends “rediscovered” Minecraft. They would sit on the PC, chatting on Discord, while playing the game. Minecraft was both familiar and nostalgic—bringing a sense of comfort in a time of uncertainty. For the Todd family with six-year-old Edward, home life and digital media etiquette was completely rewritten. Edward hadn’t been allowed screen time before COVID-19. During the

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pandemic, his mother and father allowed him to play Minecraft as a way to keep creative and social as they juggled working and schooling from home. Edward moved across media and platforms and modalities all linked by one common theme—Minecraft. From the iPad to LPs on the computer to role playing Minecraft on walks with his parents, to drawing, Edward found solace in Minecraft play. COVID-19 amplified digital practices that were already happening— especially in terms of the deep connection between social play, creative literacy and quotidian performativity as discussed in the previous chapters. As we found in our three-year study of games in Australian homes, games play a key role in the social life of the household. They are vehicles for connecting play and sociality across members of the household as well as others co-presently online. In particular, Minecraft can provide much insight into how we understand and perceive home and place. Players can spend days building fantasy or realistic buildings which they then inhabit with their friends. And yet little of the research into Minecraft has identified its key role in not only illustrating perceptions and practices of home life but also how that might be expanded upon through digital and social play. How does building a shelter in Minecraft reflect the player’s perception of what constitutes home? And how are ideas of what is a home and “being at home” shaped through the making process of Minecraft? Understanding some of these questions requires providing some context—especially around its implementation in the home as part of broader domestication approaches to technology. As media scholar Leslie Haddon observes, part of the early success of games in the home from 1970s–1990s was their attunement to the rhythms of the home as part of domestic processes (1998). Locating games within Information and Communication Technology (ICT) frameworks, Haddon argued for a conceptualization of games through a domestication theory approach. This approach, as developed by Roger Silverstone (1994), coalesced science and technology studies (STS), and cultural and media studies methods to understand the complex ways in which technologies are socially shaped by their uses and contexts (Pinch and Bijker 1987; Silverstone et al. 1992). The domestication approach defines everyday users as “innovators” who adapt and appropriate technology from the expert context of engineers into the messiness of the social world. The approach has applied qualitative and user experience (UX) models such as

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ethnography to understand the dynamic way technologies operate within the home. For cultural studies scholars such as David Morley (2003), the home is a complex and contested space in which technologies reflect gendered, social and cultural practices. Drawing on a cultural studies concept outlined by one of the pioneers Raymond Williams (1974)—mobile privatization—Morley argued that technologies in the domestic sphere are deeply paradoxical. For Williams (1974), looking at the then new technology of the TV in the 1970s, technologies performed a role which allowed users to be mobile (by travelling the world electronically) while being at home. This process is what Williams called mobile privatization. Since the 1970s onwards, the concept has been redeployed to think about the role of personal computers and mobile phones in the home (Ling and Haddon 2003; Hjorth 2009). In At Home with Computers, Elaine Lally (2002) analyses the domestication of computers in Australia from their introduction in the early 1990s when computers became a common household item. She notes that during this period, the Australian populace largely rejected home computers as leisure objects—instead seeing them as a technology used “only for work” (Lally 2002, p. 61). This observation is echoed by Goggin (2004) and Green et al. (2004) who corroborate the early resistance to new media technologies as a form of leisure within the Australian home in the form of perceived “risks, dangers, controls… and disadvantages” (Green et al. 2004, p. 2). Likewise, new media literature around the early 2000s frequently highlighted users’ concerns around how new media technologies might disrupt or change their life—costing them their leisure time (Goggin 2004; Luke 1999). The perception of risks—especially manifest in media effects models which see users having little agency or power over the deleterious effect of media (e.g. addiction)—remains a dominant discourse in media studies scholarship today (Rikkers et al. 2016; Kim and Kim 2015; Ross et  al. 2013; Brand et  al. 2009; King and Delfabbro 2009; Kwak 2004; Song and Sim 2003). Within the Australian context, the media studies research explored the ways in which new media technologies in homes can reshape behaviours, spaces and locations (Lally 2002; Hollows 2008). This field of media studies—informed by the domestication theory approach—builds on scholarship examining the entry of previous media technologies such as radio and television into the home (Flynn 2003; Hirsch and Silverstone 2003). It argues that the domestication and physical placement of new media devices

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within the home impacts on how that space is organized, navigated and understood and how users then deploy the media (Hollows 2008; Green 2010; Horst 2012). Practical examples are seen in the evolution of dedicated media spaces such as computer desks, console hubs and wireless routers. These technologies and the spaces they inhabit are shifting the organization and cadence of everyday family life (Green 2010; Horst 2012). As Canadian scholar Maria Bakardjieva (2005) notes in her study of the internet in everyday life, users both “domesticate” (Silverstone 1994; Silverstone et  al. 1992) and creatively re-appropriate (Feenberg 1991) technologies in ways that make sense of everyday practices and rhythms (2005). By the mid-2010s, new media technology and videogames had largely been absorbed into the household (Berker et  al. 2005). Accordingly, media studies’ literature shifted to focus on the spatially and socially transformative capacity of new media. Empirically based studies of domestic environments provide examples of similar findings in other areas of media studies, particularly those examining household computers and videogame access within domestic environs. Such examinations are found in work that unites domestication approaches with ethnographic methods. A useful example of this can be found in the ethnographic work of Heather Horst which explores the everyday uses of computer technologies in Silicon Valley homes in San Francisco (2012). In her study of domestic life in this technologically literate community, Horst unpacks the complex manner in which digital technologies influence the spatial and temporal rules and rhythms of life in the home. More recently, and to address concerns about children’s use of technologies in the home, media scholar Sonia Livingstone (2019) has investigated how parents are moving away from thinking about managing their children’s device use to collaborating on their “digital futures”. In this shift from dichotomies of “good or bad technology”, Livingstone reveals the strategies and tactics of parents who were confident about their children’s technology use as part of acquiring necessary digital literacies. Within homes across the world, domestic technologies are key in reflecting the social shaping of the household—echoing the gendered, generational and socio-economic differences. These often-contesting contextures come to the forefront when it comes to games—and, in particular, when they are played on the ubiquitous mobile device. While Minecraft is a game that can be played across various platforms— PC, console, tablet and smartphone—it was usually the latter two that our

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participants preferred. While the portability of mobile devices allows Minecraft to be played in a variety of public spaces—their mobility in the home was usually between the bedroom and lounge room. As Dean Chan showed in his study of Japanese mobile gaming, mobile device-based videogames are frequently played in the home, just like their non-mobile counterparts (2008, p. 23). In our fieldwork, scuffles between siblings and parents often occurred around a mobile device—reflecting broader hierarchies of age and gender within the family dynamic (Morley 2003; Silverstone et al. 1992). However, more gentle and co-operative dynamics between siblings engaged in mobile Minecraft play were equally found. In the next section, we discuss the role of touch in home-based Minecraft play on tablets and smartphones, and then turn to the role of Minecraft for intergenerational play and screen-time tensions.

The Minecraft Touch I find I enjoy games on touchscreens so much more because I find the whole idea of moving forward with W, going to the side with A and D, and backwards with S just not very normal for me to kind of hold. It’s just so nice to be able to like move your finger along the screen and jump (twelve-year-­ old Eileen).

For twelve-year-old Eileen, the touchscreen interface of her iPad allows a tactile engagement with Minecraft that is “deeper” than keyboard control arrangements. Eileen’s identification with the touchscreen is precisely due to its haptic tangibility. While fixed screens tend only to be looked at, portable screens are highly interactive, inviting swiping, flipping, pinching and other gestural flourishes. Eileen’s sentiment was echoed by many of our participants. Eileen talks about enjoying “feeling” the game—something that touching the screen allows her. As she notes in the above quote, using commands on the PC doesn’t have the same game feel and for her playing Minecraft is about touching the screen. As Schneier and Taylor note, the mobile version of Minecraft allows a “particular entanglement of young players, Minecraft PE, and touchscreen interfaces that were characterized by much more haptic and spontaneous gamic performances” (2018, p. 17). That is, the presence of haptic play is a feature more fully realized in the mobile version of Minecraft. In our own ethnographic research, we observed how players on mobile devices touch and flick their way through Minecraft’s world, their fingers

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frequently obscuring portions of the screen. The mobile interface affords what Schneier and Taylor refer to as the “pleasure of gameplay… unique to the touchscreen interface since players gesticulate directly on a screen… affording a different bodily orientation” (2018, p. 2). For Adelaidean Eileen and her sister Chloe, weekends are a time to wake up before the parents and play Minecraft together on their iPads while sitting on the lounge. Minecraft play extends the siblings tight connection. They share and discuss techniques and strategies, often leaning over each other’s iPads to help with a task. Sitting on the couch as the morning sun creeps into the family room, the pair swipe their hands across their screens, running, jumping, mining and building in the virtual world. Their shared engagement with the open world environment has generated a repertoire of in-jokes and memorable experiences between the sisters, a space in which intimate and private understandings have formed. The sisters have created their own in-game rituals within Minecraft such as virtual “shaking hands” before starting a Minecraft session. This secret handshake is achieved by repeatedly tapping their device screen to make their characters move their arms. For the sisters, the tap-handshake is a practiced and pre-agreed gestural performance facilitated through the touchscreen device, one that “felt” more like a handshake owing to the physical movement of their hands on their iPads. The crucial role of “touch” in mobile communication has been explored by Richardson’s (2010) investigation of haptic screens as a now habituated aspect of users’ embodiment. Likewise, Pink et al. (2016) explore the ways in which contemporary mobile apps are touched, opened and habitually operated, bringing further understandings of how everyday intimacy, privacy and connection are experienced through embodied interaction with mobile media. Through grounded ethnographic investigation, Hjorth and Richardson (2014, 2017) and Pink et  al. (2016) approach mobile media as tactile and bodily phenomena that users manage through gesture, touch and manipulation, actions that leave a material trace on the screen’s surface (see Fig. 6.1). Also in Adelaide, eleven-year-old Clara discussed her own enjoyment of using the iPad to play Minecraft. As Clara notes, “Sometimes my hands get in the way of the screen but I kind of like it too. I feel like I am actually touching the game”. For Clara, the touchscreen creates a sensation of immediacy and expressive intimacy with the gameworld—almost as though she is reaching through the screen.

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Fig. 6.1  Traces of touch on the mobile screen device

Several of our participants made similar observations of mobile devices, while the devices’ screens themselves left intimate human traces of the children’s play. And yet the experience of touching the screen can also be a generational one. While children easily took to touching tablet and smartphone screens and effectively manipulated on-screen objects, some of the older participants did not find the interface as comfortable and familiar after a lifetime of computer use. In the next section we reflect further upon Minecraft’s embeddedness in the intergenerational aspects of play.

Intergenerational and Sibling Play All the Hardy family members—parents Charlie and Heather and sisters Amanda (ten) and Penny (six)—enjoy playing Minecraft. The family shares access to the game on Charlie’s iPhone (see Fig.  6.2). Although Heather and Charlie welcome the shared family interest in Minecraft, the use of Charlie’s mobile device in accessing the game often becomes

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Fig. 6.2  The competing uses of a family smartphone device for gaming and work

contested. Most notably, Penny’s increasing desire to play Minecraft has become a point of conflict. As Charlie reports: We wake up in the morning and she asks if it is time to play Minecraft. We had a rule where she couldn’t play until the afternoon and she is literally watching the clock. I do try to restrict her since that is my device for using Twitter or the internet or whatever.

Situations often arise where Charlie can’t even find his phone—one of the girls (usually Penny) has been playing Minecraft and can’t remember where she left it. This, of course, has raised some issues about the intergenerational sharing of the game, especially when it can result in the loss of a borrowed device. To resolve the situation, Charlie and Heather have established parameters for Penny’s Minecraft play, which includes specific times and locations within the home where she can play (this includes no play in the private space of the bedroom) as well as leaving the phone in the communal space of the loungeroom to charge when she is not playing. An unintended side effect of the imposition of these rules is that Penny has begun to admonish her parents for their own mobile use, such as using the phone too often or in the bedroom which she perceives as off limits. This workaround has caused Charlie and Heather to examine and justify

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their own device use in the home to their children. Here we see that the differing generational expectations around device use and literacy is heightened; just as children might call their parents hypocrites for their constant smartphone use for “work”, so too, as devices become a core part of education for children, the boundaries between work and play blur. We also encountered reversed scenarios with parents competing for their children’s game devices. For example, during the COVID-19 crisis, Cameron (thirteen) increasingly found his Nintendo Switch being used by his parents as part of a fitness routine. While it impacted his gameplay, Cameron was more bemused than irritated by this. “It’s funny because they (my parents) think games are a bit of waste of time—but now they’re playing games and they don’t even know it.” Cameron has long been defending videogame play to his parents as both a highly creative and social activity. While Cameron’s parents are more circumspect about the value of videogames than he, their use of his device provides him with more ammunition to champion his own videogame play. Through play activities on shared devices like the mobile phone, the iPad and Switch, these devices become increasingly embedded as part of the home. The negotiation of device use in families often saw the development of strategies and tactics to accommodate the vicissitudes of how, when, and for how long devices and games could be engaged with. These negotiations often impacted how the space of the home was shared and understood. Homes can become sites for intergenerational tensions around ambient play. With the proliferation of devices in the home, we also see clashes between different atmospheres. Often sound can be a key point of tension. Noise from devices, for example, was a problem for Milo. He plays Minecraft on his iPad on the living room couch (see Fig.  6.3) but is repeatedly told to turn the volume down. Meanwhile he tells us the television is always on—often with no one watching. “I don’t mind the television being on when I play,” Milo tells us, “but it’s annoying when I get told to be quiet when the TV is so much louder than me!” However, Milo’s mother Pam likes to hear the television when she is in the kitchen making dinner. Even if she can’t see it, she likes to listen to the news in the background. In his discussion of television in the home, Silverstone (1994) notes that the presence of continuities of sound and image, of voices and music, can be easily appropriated as a comfort and a security. Pam admits that she too is relaxed by television voices and sound,

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Fig. 6.3  Interview participant playing Minecraft in the living room

but this appreciation is not extended to game sounds. “Too much shooting” Pam tells us. “Mum there’s no shooting in Minecraft” Milo sighs. In Adelaide, we are sitting in the kitchen of Sarah who, with her oldest fifteen-year-old son David, is telling me about a Minecraft world she set up some years earlier for David and his younger thirteen-year-old sister Mary to hang out in. David shows us the virtual space on his inherited iPad. “We actually hardly ever use it” David tells me. “Yes but you used to.” His mother replies. “We all play games” Sarah says, “and so I wanted to make a space where we could play together more.” For Sarah, Minecraft has itself become an extension of their small suburban home, a place where she and her family can interact with each other virtually, even if it has not been as deeply embraced as she anticipated. During the conversation, David’s younger sister Mary joins us in the kitchen and wants to show a statue she has created in the shared world. She grabs the iPad from David but instead begins altering David’s avatar to jokingly annoy her older brother. “That’s ok” he says leaving the kitchen and walking down the hall to Mary’s room, “I’ll just change your avatar too”. “You don’t know my password”, Mary yells out to him.

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“Ruffus13” David yells back. It’s the name of the family’s pet cat and the year he was born. Mary rushes to her room but it’s too late. David has accessed Mary’s iPad and entered the shared Minecraft server. He leans his body against Mary’s bedroom door preventing her from entering her own room. From the other side of the door, Mary begins attacking him in Minecraft instead. “Mum, she’s punching me”, yells David from behind the door, beckoning his mother Sarah to discipline Mary’s avatar. “Well, tell him to give my iPad back!” Mary laughingly retorts. “Stop punching yourself” David taunts Mary, as she is actually punching her own avatar while playing through David’s iPad. It’s a robust physical and virtual play that both are enjoying. Nonetheless, Sarah eventually confiscates both iPads and returns them to their rightful users. Mary and David settle themselves at the kitchen, but their engagement in the family Minecraft space continues. Play between the teenager pair moves between collaboration and competition, often involving a spirited rough-and-tumble that occurs in both the space of the game and the space of the home. In this scenario, sibling play occurs seamlessly across the shared space of the family home and the gameworld of Minecraft. Tensions around power and control are played out through Minecraft. Through David’s alteration of Mary’s avatar, we see the relationship between the siblings play out. The game becomes the locus for their struggle. The actual and virtual domains become interwoven and layered giving rise to the condition of “co-presence” (Hjorth 2007, p. 370). This co-presence brings into being hybrid locations that are “neither here nor there”—imbrications of physical and digital places (Hjorth 2007, p. 370). These co-present settings in which players can be physically within the home and yet digitally transported to other locations, have been explored in relation to transcending national and cultural borders (Lin and Sun 2011), and in terms of improving long distance communications and feelings of togetherness in situations where friends and/or family are separated by geographical distance (Choo et  al. 2013). In our fieldwork, co-presence emerged as a way in which family relationships were manifested and negotiated within and across the online space of the game and the home environment. Echoing Sarah’s ambitions for the family Minecraft world, Balmford and Davies (2019) argue that Minecraft co-present play in family homes may be understood as extending the space of the family home into the virtual space of the game. In this way interactive devices such as iPads and

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game consoles offer a kind of actual-to-virtual architecture affording windows and doorways into digital extensions of the home. Minecraft is not just played in the home but becomes an integral part of the home as do the devices through which it is accessed. And while Minecraft is often a place for intergenerational bonding in the home due to its “educational” dimension, issues around screen-time highlight the ongoing tension around uneven expectations of use. In the final section we further explore the negotiation of screen-time across both spatial and temporal boundaries.

Screen-Time and the Negotiation of Playful Identity While COVID-19 has seen many parents have to adapt their rules around screen-time, it is an issue that continues to divide ideologies and philosophies around what is deemed “appropriate”. Key scholars such as Livingstone have identified the importance of monitoring over restriction—that is, using screens as points of discussion and dialogue rather than intergenerational conflict. Without clear industry, governmental or social guidelines on what constitutes appropriate screen-time, we found a variety of parental perceptions and strategies. In Adelaide, a conversation between Peter (aged fourteen) and his mother Beth evidences the gradual de-escalation of rules surrounding game use in relation to Minecraft. As Peter lay on the living room floor playing Minecraft on his iPad, Beth turned to him and asked: “What was the rule Dad used to have? You can download any game as long as there’s no….”—Peter interjected mid-sentence recalling their father’s rule— “weapons, zombies, or… no guns or zombies”. After a quick pause, Peter laughed and added “but I downloaded one with weapons AND zombies”. Contesting boundaries around screen-time often involves a patchwork of shared devices. Fifteen-year-old Raymond and thirteen-year-old Cameron are brothers who share a Nintendo switch. They also share an iPad between them, although the device is primarily used by their father Michael. Negotiating the two devices between the three of them sometimes brings challenges but also serves as a way for Michael to keep an eye on their device use. The boys are allowed one hour of gaming per-day but can earn extra screen-time by using the iPad for family-approved educational activities instead of gameplay. In instituting this plan, Michael recognizes that screens are an important aspect of contemporary life but wants to diversify his children’s use and understanding of their media devices. Michael also appreciates that while he is currently able to monitor

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and regulate his children’s screen-time, as of next year, Raymond will have his own iPad for school, making his screen-time almost impossible for Michael to monitor. His son will have to regulate his own digital activities. For Michael, the key point is to nurture an understanding and literacy within his children of diverse and appropriate technology engagement that they can carry through their lives. Kyunghee Kim and Kisook Kim (2015) provide examples of parental management of child gaming habits in the Korean context arguing that parental influence can have a significant effect upon the gaming practices of children. Other scholarship has identified correlations between parental involvement and videogame over-usage (Kwak 2004; Song and Sim 2003). In Australia, there has been both medical (King and Delfabbro 2009; Rikkers et al. 2016) and social (Brand et al. 2009; Ross et al. 2013) research into this field. In much of this academic work, the focus concerns the perceived “health” impacts of excessive play in relation to videogames (King and Delfabbro 2009). However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, much of this “media effects” debate was challenged by the recognition— even by the World Health Organization (WHO)—that games play an important role in fostering and supporting social inclusion. The role of digital parenting—that is, how the digital is deployed in, and around, parenting—becomes key to understanding these debates around screen-time. For Lyn Schofield Clark, who draws on in-depth interviews with US families, socio-economic issues often inform the ways digital media is viewed as positive and “empowering” by parents and children (2013). Deploying the concept of the “Parent App”, Clark highlights the ways in which upper income families use digital media as part of helicopter parenting and expressive “empowerment” narratives, while lower-income families use digital technology to strengthen interfamilial ties and neighbourhood bonds (2013). For Sun Sun Lim, the concept of “Transcendent Parenting” best encapsulates the ways in which parents can overcome various forms of separation—such as the distance between parents and their children’s offline and online socialities (2019). As Lim notes, “For the transcendent parent, these digital ties enable and shape how they communicate with their children, and how they guide their children’s media use” (2019, p. 1). Lim’s work focuses on screen-time within Asian cultural contexts to consider how we might develop nuanced regulations for the future that acknowledge both parents’ and children’s understandings and experiences of screen-time as part of contemporary sociality and literacy. As we found in

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our ethnographic research, “screen time” often came up as way for parents to reinstate boundaries in the increasingly digitally ubiquitous home. It was a concept that was contested, debated and tested. In an attempt to regulate household screen-time, Alex and Milo’s parents Pamela and Marcus have introduced a list of rules for the kids to follow (see Fig.  6.4). However, their strategy has been met with limited success. In a conversation, they try to convey the challenges they face in reducing the device use of their children. Marcus: We are trying to limit games and internet, but it’s actually much easier to ban them completely than to monitor, because it’s absolutely constant you know. At any minute of the day those two try to find a way to get online. Pam: Yeah, they come up with all these clever reasons and excuses. Marcus: Yeah but you can’t ban them either because they use them in school—or at least they say they do. Pam: No, they do—they actually have to use iPads. Since year 8 the school says they have to. But then when they’re supposed to be

Fig. 6.4  Screen-time rules in a participant family home

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doing their homework and they’re playing games or watching YouTube and you tell them off and they say—“but I have to for school”. Marcus: Yeah, all the lines are blurred a bit with education and entertainment at the moment. Parents Marcus and Pam felt caught in a double bind between the care for their children and the pressures of an increasingly digital world. While their eldest child Alex professed to be “growing out” of games, the younger child Milo felt that videogames should have a place in the home alongside the television. Marcus and Pam’s concerns are not uncommon; they reflect broader media debates. Livingstone (2019) calls for an end to the “scaremongering” in relation to digital culture, suggesting that digital media can be effectively used to bring families together. In her research, Livingstone finds that parents who are calm and confident about their children’s digital lives share decision-making within the family, listen to their children’s views and enjoy digital pleasures together. The monitoring of digital play in the home is not just temporal but also spatial—for example, many of our children participants were prohibited from playing in their bedrooms. This allowed parents to enact an informal surveillance of their children’s playing. Much of the psychology scholarship has focused on the negative impact of videogames in children’s bedroom in term of sleep/wake patterns (Oka et al. 2008), school performance (Hale and Guan 2015) and physical activity (Baranowski et al. 2012). The no-play-in-the-bedroom rule serves a dual purpose of improving sleep patterns as well as enacting surveillance as a form of care in relation to children’s screen activities, but is not always welcomed by children themselves. Let us return to the Hardy family in Brisbane. When we asked Amanda (ten) and Penny (six) if they were allowed to play games in their bedrooms, they both responded in chorus with a begrudging “No!”. According to their parents, Charlie and Heather, bedrooms were spaces for rest, and videogames were accordingly restricted to the family room. Yet there are some exceptions to these rules. For example, parents tend to be more accepting of children playing videogames together in a bedroom than of children playing alone, especially when an older sibling is present and able to act as a guiding mentor in online game spaces. Although playing Minecraft and other videogames in children’s bedrooms was commonly prohibited, we noticed myriad other ways in which

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Minecraft manifested in these spaces. Minecraft posters, books, branded toys, LEGO, clothing, curtains and bedding were commonly encountered in the bedrooms of our participants, particularly for the eight- to fourteen-­ year-­olds. Despite the prohibitions on screen engagement there remained numerous other ways in which participants could engage with Minecraft in these intimate settings. Playing games in different spaces of the house often came with different expectations. Playing a game in the privacy of a bedroom might sometimes ignite parents’ curiosity, while playing in the lounge often involved more intergenerational and parallel play between different devices. The significance of Minecraft was not just in the playing of the game, as we have noted in other chapters. Indeed, often the passion of playing Minecraft took other material and performative turns—from Minecraft LEGO and paraphernalia to Minecraft guidebooks and cosplay objects. As we can see in Fig. 6.5, playing with Minecraft can take multiple material, digital and social forms. Bedrooms have a long history of being key sites in the home in which young people can express themselves. Silverstone (1994) has previously

Fig. 6.5  Participant bedroom with Minecraft collectibles

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noted that teens will adorn their bedrooms with photographs of soap-­ opera or rock-music stars as part of identity formation. Horst (2012) notes that bedrooms are spaces where children experience a greater sense of safety, customization and control. Through the decoration and organization of bedroom spaces, children are able to express their identity. Many of our younger participants were similarly entangled in the mechanisms of identity display with artefacts from the Minecraft transmedia universe. Indeed, the game of Minecraft has also increasingly solidified as a customizable “place” in and through which children playfully test and express their identity through the decoration and adaptation of environments (both virtual and material), avatars and their own bodies through costume play (cosplay). For example, eleven-year-old Clara from Adelaide boasts an elaborate array of avatar skins from Star Wars and manga (Japanese comics) characters to a Banana “skin” she is wearing as we interview her. Discussing her extensive virtual wardrobe, Clara tells us “It’s fun. It’s like I have different clothing or costumes you can wear. I don’t really know what my favorite is, I put on different skins all the time.” Likewise Raymond, whose actual bedroom is quite minimal in terms of identity expression and customization, lovingly discussed his Minecraft creations, telling us: I made a house. It wasn’t just a house like a shelter from monsters and stuff, but like a full home. I designed the kitchen and put up paintings and made all the interiors and everything. It was a long time ago… but I remember it was really cozy and nice. I made a really nice home.

In our fieldwork, there emerged something of a paradox in the prohibitions we encountered against the use of Minecraft in the bedroom—a place that, as Horst reminds, is historically a site of containment, a place where parents could keep their children protected from the outside world, but also a space where a child’s identity could be freely explored and expressed with elevated agency. While Minecraft emerged as a space where children nurtured creativity and found identity expression, parents sought a balance in educating their children about healthy screen use and digital habits while also comprehending that domestic media technologies play an increasingly important role in structuring and sustaining social, educational and professional worlds outside the home.

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Conclusion This chapter has detailed Minecraft’s role within the home. As we have explored, Minecraft can provide insight into intergenerational play, contested notions of screen-time and the negotiation of playful identity in the home. Although we discuss scenarios from our own fieldwork into Australian homes, such scenarios of use are likely playing out across the globe. The mundane intimacy of Minecraft in the home allows us to gain a more nuanced understanding into familial relationships—between siblings, the generations, differences in screen cultures and perceptions around screen-time. The spaces in which play takes place is negotiated within family groups through discursive and sophisticated rules that emerge around games, interfaces and the spatial organization of the home environment. The space of the home is complex and contested and imbricated in technology and media practices, evidenced by the way Minecraft use within everyday settings is often deployed to reinforce specific temporal, social and spatial boundaries. Through Minecraft play, parents and their children navigate intergenerational ways of understanding media, literacy, sociality and play in the home. In the next chapter we move away from the home and into institutional settings (such as museums and schools) to see how Minecraft’s particular forms of creative literacy, social play and quotidian platformativity manifest in public and educational contexts.

References Bakardjieva, Maria. 2005. Internet Society. London: SAGE. Balmford, William and Hugh Davies. 2019. Mobile Minecraft: Negotiated space and perceptions of play in Australian families, Mobile Media and Communication. Baranowski, Tom, Dina Abdelsamad, Janice Baranowski, Teresia O’Connor, Debbe Thompson, Anthony Barnett, Ester Cerin, and Tzu-An Chen. 2012. Impact of an Active Video Game on Healthy Children’s Physical Activity. Pediatrics 129: e636–e642. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-2050. Berker, Thomas, Maren Hartmann, Yves Punie, and Katie J.  Ward, eds. 2005. Domestication of Media and Technology. New York, NY: Open University Press. Brand, Jeffrey E., Jill Borchard, and Lyn Holmes. 2009. Australia’s Computer Games Audience and Restrictive Ratings System. Communications & Strategies 73 (1): 67–79.

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Chan, Dean. 2008. Convergence, Connectivity, and the Case of Japanese Mobile Gaming. Games and Culture 3 (1): 13–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1555412007309524. Choo, Amber and Karamnejad, Mehdi and May, Aaron. 2013. Maintaining long distance togetherness Synchronous communication with Minecraft and Skype. In the proceeding of IEEE Consumer Electronics Society’s International Games Innovations Conference, IGIC. 27–35. Clark, Lyn Schofield. 2013. The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Feenberg, Andrew. 1991. The Critical Theory of Technology. New  York: Oxford University Press. Flynn, Bernadette. 2003. Geography of the Digital Hearth. Information Communication Society 6 (4): 551–576. Goggin, Gerard. 2004. Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press. Green, Lelia. 2010. The Internet: An Introduction to New Media. Oxford, UK: Berg. Green, Lelia, Donell Holloway, and Robyn Quin. 2004. @Home: Australian Family Life and the Internet. In Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia, ed. Gerard Goggin, 88–100. Sydney: UNSW Press. Haddon, Leslie. 1998. Electronic and Computer Games: The History of an Interactive Medium. Screen 29 (2): 52–73. https://doi.org/10.1093/ screen/29.2.52. Hale, Lauren, and Stanford Guan. 2015. Screen Time and Sleep Among School-­ Aged Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Literature Review. Sleep Medicine Reviews 21: 50–58. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2014.07.007. Hirsch, Eric, and Roger Silverstone. 2003. Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces. London: Routledge. Hjorth, Larissa. 2007. The Game of Being Mobile: One Media History of Gaming and Mobile Technologies in Asia-Pacific. Convergence 13 (4): 369–381. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856507081955. ———. 2009. Mobile Media in the Asia-Pacific. London: Routledge. Hjorth, Larissa, and Ingrid Richardson. 2014. Gaming in Social, Locative and Mobile Media. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hollows, Joanne. 2008. Domestic Cultures. Berkshire, UK: McGraw-Hill Education. Horst, Heather. 2012. New Media Technologies in Everyday Life. In Digital Anthropology, ed. Heather Horst and Daniel Miller, 66–82. Oxford: Berg. Kim, Kyunghee, and Kisook Kim. 2015. Internet Game Addiction, Parental Attachment, and Parenting of Adolescents in South Korea. Journal of Child Adolescent Substance Abuse 24 (6): 366–371. King, Daniel, and Paul Delfabbro. 2009. The General Health Status of Heavy Video Game Players: Comparisons with Australian Normative Data. Journal of Cybertherapy and Rehabilitation 2 (1): 17–27.

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Kwak, K.J. 2004. A Review of Researches of the Impact of Computer Game and Children’s and Adolescent’s Development. Korean Journal of Psychology and Social Issues 10: 147–175. Lally, Elaine. 2002. At Home with Computers. Oxford, UK: Berg. Lim, Sun Sun. 2019. Transcendent Parenting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lin, Holin, and Chuen-Tsai Sun. 2011. A Chinese Cyber Diaspora: Contact and Identity Negotiation on Taiwanese WoW Servers. DiGRA Conference 2011. Ling, Rich, and Leslie Haddon. 2003. Mobile Telephony, Mobility, and the Coordination of Everyday Life. In Machines that Become Us: The Social Context of Personal Communication Technology, ed. James E.  Katz, 245–265. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Livingstone, Sonia. 2019. Parenting in the Digital Age. TED Talk. https://www. ted.com/talks/sonia_livingstone_parenting_in_the_digital_age. Luke, Carmen. 1999. What Next? Toddler Netizens, Playstation Thumb, Techno-­ Literacies. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 1. https://doi.org/10.2304/ ciec.2000.1.1.10. Morley, David. 2003. What’s Home Got To Do With It? Contradictory Dynamics in the Domestication of Technology and the Dislocation of Domesticity. European Journal of Cultural Studies 6 (4): 435–458. https://doi. org/10.1177/13675494030064001. Oka, Yasunori, Shuhei Suzuki, and Yuich Inoue. 2008. Bedtime Activities, Sleep Environments, and Sleep/Wake Patterns of Japanese Elementary School Children. Behaviour Sleep Medicine 6: 220–233. Pinch, Trevor, and Wiebe E. Bijker. 1987. The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts. In The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker, Trevor P. Hughes, and Terence J. Pinch, 17–50. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Pink, Sarah, Jolynna Sinanan, Larissa Hjorth, and Heather Horst. 2016. Tactile Digital Ethnography: Researching Mobile Media Through the Hand. Mobile Media & Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050157915619958. Richardson, Ingrid. 2010. Faces, interfaces, screens: relational ontologies of attention and distraction. Transformations (18). Rikkers, Wavne, David Lawrence, Jennifer Hafekost, and Stephen Zubrick. 2016. Internet Use and Electronic Gaming by Children and Adolescents with Emotional and Behavioural Problems in Australia–Results from the Second Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health & Wellbeing. BMC Public Health 16 (1): 399. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-016-3058-1. Ross, Julie, Charlynn Miller, and Peter Vamplew. 2013. Video Games Classified M and MA15+ in Australia Compared with their International Counterparts: Does Games Classification Protect Australian Children? Journal of Research and Practice in Information Technology 45 (1): 37–59.

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CHAPTER 7

Games in Institutional Spaces

As an “educational” game, Minecraft has been able to traverse spaces not normally inhabited by games. Since its purchase by Microsoft Corporation in 2014, Minecraft can be increasingly found in various institutional spaces—schools, museums, educational programmes. Indeed, Minecraft has become a key vehicle for contemporary media literacy workshops (Ito et al. 2015; Hooper and de Byl 2014; Hill 2015). From Minecraft bootcamps for STEAM secondary education organized by the likes of Mizuko Ito and Katie Salen Tekinbaş (Connected Camps) to local serious play workshops at screen museums such as the Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI), the power of Minecraft to explore various creative and social literacies is numerous. Minecraft offers a way for understanding creativity and social play across different institutional and public settings— the gallery, urban space, the classroom. As an educational game, Minecraft not only expands upon the remit of education in terms of informal, digital media but also the possibility of games for formal literacy. This chapter considers the ways in which Minecraft has expanded into museum, school and library contexts to support the educational, recreational and engagement goals of these institutions (von Salisch et al. 2006; Sanford 2008). Popular virtual meetups such as “Minecraft-after-school-­ library-clubs” call attention to the power of games to attract young people. Indeed, perceptions of Minecraft differ radically to the perceptions of other videogames. In popular public health discourse, while some © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9_7

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videogames have been depicted in a negative light through associations with violence, addiction, antisocial behaviour, passivity and poor physical health (Ferguson 2010; Mustola et  al. 2018; Shin and Huh 2011), Minecraft is often represented differently. In these debates, Minecraft has enjoyed multiple perceived virtues among child caregivers and guardians. These include claims of helping children to develop cognitive and social skills (Haxton 2015; Ito 2015) and contributing to “tech-savviness” and broader digital literacy (Mustola et al. 2018; Narine and Grimes 2009), while the game’s open sandbox mechanics and “LEGO-like activities” make it attractive and feasible for educational use. In 2016, Microsoft commercialized the informal education dimensions by releasing Minecraft: Education Edition (see Fig. 7.1). This version of the game is marketed as a “collaborative and versatile platform that educators can use across subjects to encourage 21st-century skills” (education. minecraft.net. 2016). Developed by Mojang AB in collaboration with Microsoft Studios in November 2016, Minecraft: Education Edition has been specifically created for use in educational environments and other institutional spaces that are the focus of this chapter. Yet the prospect of videogames in education settings challenges long-­ held perceptions of games as primarily activities of entertainment and distraction. Reviewing the formative work by James Paul Gee to rethink

Fig. 7.1  Minecraft: Education Edition

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games as conduits for literacy, we reflect on how Minecraft’s use as an education tool makes boundaries between notions of work and play more difficult for parents and children to distinguish (as discussed in Chap. 6). This chapter then reflects upon perceptions and practices across different institutional spaces such as libraries, museums and classrooms. We then discuss a participatory art installation and series of workshops that sought to use Minecraft as a starting point for exploratory and codesign methods around understanding social play and creative literacy across digital and non-digital spaces. As we argue, the possibilities of Minecraft across formal and informal sites allows for new insights into creative and social play—along with quotidian performativity—across digital, media and social worlds.

Understanding Minecraft as Good Learning In understanding Minecraft as educational we must also ask, what is “good learning”? Many scholars such as Mizuko Ito and Cathy Davidson and aforementioned initiatives such as the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media & Learning (DML) initiative have sought to value the role of more contemporary informal literacies within new understandings of education in a digital world. In the space of games and education, scholars such as Salen and Gee have been crucial. In this section, we explore Gee’s discussion in Good Video Games and Good Learning in which he argues for videogames as educational tools. For Gee, “good videogames” are those that incorporate good learning principles supported by current research in cognitive science (Gee 2003, 2004). Gee identifies the “commitment of self” in the game through the avatar as a critical step in allowing deep learning to take place. Because games react and respond, Gee continues, they help players to develop problem-solving skills in complex and dynamic environments. Games allow players to test ideas and possibilities, to expressively customize and replay scenarios in the safe space of a virtual world. Through their actions and decisions in such environments, players become more than consumers of the game but codesigners of their own trial-and-error experiences. Gee goes further in applying the work of several education experts in relation to videogames. He notes that games already educate players through sequentially ordered tasks that are difficult but achievable—processes that ensure the player remains challenged, motivated and engaged (Elman 1991). Moreover, videogames repeat challenges until players have

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mastered them, a concept known in education studies as the “Cycle of Expertise” (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1993). While schools require competence prior to performance (Cazden 1981), videogames facilitate competence through performance. Videogames—especially sandbox games like Minecraft—encourage players to explore before moving on, allowing not just linear but lateral thinking, and reflection and reconceptualization of goals (Gee et al. 1996). In this way, games encourage players to think beyond isolated events, facts and skills to consider the complex relationships between things—exploring how actions might impact future scenarios. Gee recommends that by balancing the above principles, videogames can maintain the challenge by hovering just outside the players’ abilities or “regime of competence” (diSessa 2000). In sum, Gee identifies sixteen compelling learning principles that “good games” incorporate (Gee 2003, 2004, 2005). These principles include: identity, interaction, production, risk taking, customization, agency, well-­ ordered problems, challenge and consolidation, “just in time” and “on demand” capability, situated meanings, pleasant frustration, system thinking, exploration, lateral thinking, opportunity to rethink goals, smart tool use and distributed knowledge, cross-functional teamwork and performance before competence. These sixteen principles provide insight into why games—and especially games like Minecraft—are being adopted into institutional spaces to allow for different ways of knowing and learning. While games can blur informal and formal spaces across work and leisure contexts, this context bleed (Gregg 2011) is not always appreciated. In fieldwork we encountered new problems and tensions around the dissolution of distinct borders between work, education and leisure in physical and digital spaces. This blurring of formal and informal spaces was amplified during the COVID-19 physical isolation conditions which we discuss in the concluding chapter. These tensions highlight the uneven ways in which digital media literacy is perceived—intergenerationally, socio-­culturally, formally and informally. As we explored in the previous chapter, tensions about screen-time and usage for schoolwork or play were frequently difficult to establish; utilizing games like Minecraft as part of formal education further confuses those boundaries.

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Take, for example, parents Marcus and Pam in Adelaide. Marcus and Pam lament the collapsing of education and play into the same physical and digital spaces as it made their son’s activity much more difficult to regulate. This blurring of education and entertainment is of course a central strategy behind bringing games into learning environments. But to be effective, not only do the right sort of games need to be negotiated and introduced, but literacies around the changing dynamics of education needs to be negotiated by both parents and children. For example, Marcus and Pam’s son Milo echoed similar concerns from a different generation and perspective, as he discussed how he didn’t like the iPad: “I mean its ok but it’s not like the controller which is made for gaming. The screen is for everything.” “Everything?” we asked. “Like school and stuff. I usually use my laptop now—just changed over from iPad to laptops.”

For Milo, the videogame controller has the distinct advantage as a strictly entertainment product whereas the iPad is equally a work and play device, causing a problematic slippage between the two. Sometimes, I’ll be playing a Minecraft or something but thinking ‘I should really be doing homework’ and then sometimes I’ll be doing homework and before I know it, I’m playing some game! (See Fig. 7.2)

University student Ashtyn also confessed similar difficulties of self-­ policing when her work, study and gameplay all occurred within the one device, admitting: I’ve been finding it a little bit of an issue, I guess. Like, I’ll be working on school stuff and then I’ll be like: “Oh let me check on the server and see if anyone has built anything new?” and if I see people online or on Discord, I’ll probably join in too.

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Fig. 7.2  Participant doing homework on iPad

The collapsing contexts of work, education and play recalls the “ludification of culture” discussed in Chap. 3, but also evokes the notion of playbour—videogame activity operating as labour for owner companies. Critical assessment of games in these contexts must be nuanced. The economy of distraction relies on the ubiquity of devices such as laptops and mobile phones as much as games—it is not simply an issue of sticky games but sticky platforms. Of equal importance, a videogame is not necessarily entertainment just as a book is not—by default—educational. More broadly, the debate highlights that we need new literacies about new literacies. Having outlined some of the educational opportunities of and for games, this chapter will next explore how Minecraft is being activated and embraced in varying degrees in the specific institutional contexts of libraries, museums and schools.

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Games in the Library Public libraries have long operated as centres of community learning by providing the space and tools for citizens to self-educate. Housing an increasingly diverse variety of media products from toys to DVDs and videogames, libraries remain largely associated with literacy through the platforms of books and the process of reading, and continue to operate as centres of public learning. But with literacy taking on radical new forms as part of digital media practices, libraries find themselves at the forefront of championing digital literacy—the ability to find and evaluate information and create digital content through a variety of mediums across multiple platforms. In recent decades, teaching digital literacy has involved developing text, audio, and image-based literacy and interactive engagement skills. The advantage of teaching with videogames is that they are audiovisual products that incorporate audio, moving images, graphic design, narrative and genres, as well as various user interfaces. As Gee (2005) highlights, videogames provide meaningful contexts for different types of learnings—visual, spatial and kinesthetic. They provide context for and animate information as distinct from the often-abstracted information of textbooks. Moreover, videogames tend to provide information to players at the right time—or when a player wants it, is ready for it and can make good use of it. Although videogames offer a range of digital literacies and constitute an important asset in the library collection, the inclusion of games in libraries is often met with resistance. Many see videogames to be a distracting and even corrupting influence on the young and perceive their appearance in the library as an erosion of societal and educational standards and traditions. In The Case for Video Games in Libraries, Suellen Adams (2009) reviews the perceived opportunities and threats of videogames in library contexts by returning to the crucial question: what is the purpose of a library anyway? Adams arrives at three overlapping and co-existent purposes of libraries: educational, social and democratizing. Beyond formal educational structures, libraries not only store knowledge, but also support curricula and provide information resources to foster critical thinking. Libraries afford communities the opportunity to educate themselves, providing tools and skills for life-long learning and self-improvement. Libraries are also important social locations constituting what urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg has called a “third place” (1989). This means

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they offer a location for social exchange, information and learning outside of the home, school and workplace. More than storing books and other media, libraries operate as community centres, hosting social and recreational activities and providing programmes for their patrons such as craft activities, book clubs, study and meeting spaces, public lectures and contexts for social, cultural and political discourse. Finally, libraries are a democratizing influence in society. As the health of a democracy relies on well-informed citizens, libraries provide open access to information for all who seek it by making available reputable information from multiple points of view. In this way, the library aids in the creation of an informed electorate. Adams finds that a well-planned and robust videogame programme can support all three purposes. By carefully selecting, framing and contextualizing videogames, librarians can use videogames to support education, community interaction and democratization across generations, genders, cultural, social and economic backgrounds. In her book, From Video Games to Real Life (2016), Mary L. Glendening makes a compelling case for games in the library by drawing specific attention to Minecraft. Deploying Gee’s concepts of “production through action” and “performance before competence” (2005), Glendening posits that, as libraries are unbound by curriculum or strict outcome expectations, they are an ideal place for the kind of productivity and creativity that Minecraft facilitates. Framing Minecraft as a tool within the maker movement and mindset, Glendening details how Minecraft can be used as a tool to teach spatial understanding, collaboration and creativity and effectively augment class curricula with instruction on how to connect to 3D printing, Stop Motion animation and Movie Creator. The types of library settings that Glendening describes are clearly well-­ equipped in terms of staff and technology, but to get a more local perspective on how these clubs are being run in Australia, we spoke with Filipe who delivers Minecraft clubs in libraries across Melbourne. Filipe tells us that the clubs are typically one-hour sessions in custom-created Minecraft worlds that involve different quests, maze obstacle courses, and challenges to survive with finite resources. While open to whoever is interested, Filipe tells us that in his experience, they tend to attract mostly boys, and many clubs have a regular group of about six mainstays: Sometimes, we have a child who has never used a computer before or played Minecraft—they are the people that it’s really for. The regulars are super

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helpful and supportive in showing them how to play. We cap the age at eight to twelve-year-old’s as its really about teaching literacy to this group.

Filipe is well versed in the literature on games in education and informs us that although the clubs are typically designed with Gee’s educative principles in mind, such as developing collaborative skills and teambuilding, he also identifies significant value in play for the sake of play. For Filipe, the games provide an important activity that can help build a sense of community, while more broadly, he tells us, the library plays an important role in sharing access across that community: “We have lots of PS games for loan, but we also have Xboxes and iPads set up for people to play. Not everyone can afford a console, so the library provides that access.” We also found that some of our interview participants had previously attended a library Minecraft club. As fifteen-year-old David from Adelaide reported: “It’s really just a server space where we can play and hang out.” We asked how play in the library compared to play at school or at home and he commented: A lot of it depends on who’s there. Like once I went with some friends and we made a huge fortress—like three of us and this other kid who was there. That was actually really fun. But sometimes they are doing pretty basic stuff and I feel like I can have more fun playing mods or at home, and you can’t play mods there. Just in their library server world.

Libraries have also deployed games as a medium of literacy for the broader community and as an expressive space of cultural diversity. For example, at Melbourne’s Library at the Dock, the Longitude exhibition presented digital games developed across the Asia Pacific to foster cultural literacy and understanding in the region. The library exhibition served to “highlight games as activities beyond escapist entertainment but as nuanced, challenging and inspiring forms of cultural expression” (Longitude 2018). The presence of videogames in libraries reinforces the notion to both children and adults that games and gameplay are important literacies. Videogames can communicate complex philosophical and cultural ideas in ways similar to but different from literature. Moreover, and as Gee has outlined, videogames present situated meanings and information that are cognitively embedded in the player through the actions, images, dialogues and contexts they relate to (2005). Becoming fluent—or, at least, acquainted—with videogames is emerging as an important community

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value. Just as libraries provide a level of curation in the books they have on offer, seeking to educate, inform and empower their communities, likewise their videogame collections reflect these principles. That Minecraft appears in most libraries attests to its status as an important cultural text.

Games in the Museum The function of museums has radically transformed. They have moved from being spaces filled with artefacts to becoming activators for cultural and knowledge exchange. While early museums were about certain types of history-making, contemporary museums have become sites for mixed media storytelling, featuring innovative ways for audience engagement through ideas, processes and play. Contemporary museums actively reach out and seek connection with all groups and individuals in a society while striving to be valuable institutions within the communities they serve. Broadly speaking, museums seek to contextualize events and themes in terms of temporal, spatial and conceptual frameworks. Contemporary museums have played with and expanded the format to include such unconventional themes as the Museum of Broken Relationships (LA, USA) and Mr. Lovelorn (a Chinese chain of museums focused on breakups). Contemporary museums have become powerful spaces for social exchange and innovation through informal education. With the integration of the digital as an archive and mode for audience engagement, museums and their outreach can be more effectively cross- and intergenerational (Russo et al. 2009; Russo et al. 2006) Games—and increasingly videogames—are important and growing artefacts in museum collections. Videogames are not only significant aspects of popular culture; they are also a recent (but important) chapter in the long history of games and play. The diverse complexity of activities that fall under the title of “play” extend through history crossing social spheres and geographical boundaries, cultural and even species divides. Play is among the few cognitive activities shared by humans and animals. As such, play holds a key place in our cultural and evolutionary heritage. This heritage is already celebrated by museums, yet the presentation of videogames in museums is a much more contemporary and complex process. In recent decades, there have been numerous attempts to integrate game-based activities and interactive practices into the museum institution. For example, videogames have manifested as musicological

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engagement methodologies, offering what Gee outlines as dynamically reactive and responsive content to participant interest as opposed to relying on more passive observation of collections (2005). These efforts are commonly made in an attempt to increase “visitor motivation”’, aiming to “offer something to people that makes them want to leave their home, come to the museum, and experience something and it also gives them an opportunity to not only appreciate, but actually connect with the objects themselves” (Joseph in Guttenbrunner et al. 2010). The interactivity of videogames offers points of connection and malleability not often available in other museum displays. An example of this is seen at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), where Minecraft has become a central part of its games programme. ACMI is Australia’s national museum of film, TV, videogames, digital culture and art—at the heart of Melbourne in Federation Square. The Centre has a remit to foster and enrich the creative industries by bringing to light age-­ defining moving image technologies and content. To achieve this philosophy, they connect makers, thinkers, viewers and players in physical and digital spaces, fostering participation and collaboration for the creative industries and the public, working to empower the community to become creative and critical consumers and producers of the moving image. Minecraft often features in school holiday workshops and is installed in the Centre’s Screenworlds exhibit where visitors can play Minecraft surrounded by a large Minecraft-style block mountain. The installation is a major success and during the summer holidays it is common to see children playing while others watch on, learning, debating building decisions and laughing together. ACMI’s popular Minecraft workshops also run during school holiday periods, with the aim of educating children on Minecraft, and encouraging social interaction through group building and design challenges. The workshops often serve as a site where Minecraft beginners can sharpen their skills by delving into areas of the game they are unfamiliar with, explorations that are facilitated by adult workshop coordinators. In such scenarios of use, Minecraft within the museum space is a tool to encourage connections and collaborations with others through group learning and playful encounters. As Gee reminds us, playful collaboration encourages the recognition of different knowledges, expertise and specializations of other players, in turn building good teamwork and empathy skills (2005). Similar phenomena can be seen in the ways Minecraft and other games are employed in libraries.

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Like libraries, museums also operate as spaces where trainers can gain understanding and insight into how games can function in collaborative and education contexts. We attended a train-the-trainer workshop at the 2018 Games in Education conference at ACMI. In a session on Minecraft in the classroom, Digital Learning Coach Steven Elford guided a group of teacher participants through a classroom exercise in the block-based world. The task was to collaboratively construct a house, or at least some kind of structure. Participants began planning, digging, building and exploring. For some, it was their first foray into the world of Minecraft. Within about 20 minutes, many had abandoned the class structure and freestyle play had taken over. After 40 minutes, the facilitator asked all to stop playing and turn their attention to the front—but without success. All were immersed in the Minecraft dimension. The facilitator eventually utilized a practiced classroom technique of getting everyone to hold their hand in the air, thus abandoning their keyboard. The exercise serves as a useful reminder that it is not just primary school students and teenagers who succumb to the inherent stickiness of digital play. Elford then invited the room of teachers to consider: “what lessons have come up that can be mapped back to curriculum outcomes”. Collaborating in the game had brought a productive hush over the room, but what had been learnt? While many of the literacies and skills outlined by Gee were certainly present in the exercise, Elford compelled the group to consider, how many of these skills were recognized as digital literacies— and not skills that would be gained through other classroom exercises. Elford’s point was not to diminish the use of Minecraft in the classroom but to emphasize that for effective learning and development, classes needed to be robustly planned and implemented, lest the physical classroom turns into a digital playground.

Games in the School The educational dimensions of Minecraft are well understood by many teachers and parents. However, some parents and teachers expressed reservations about the ability of games to operate as educational tools. To deploy games like Minecraft in formal curriculum requires teachers to be highly literate in terms of digital media—a skill that was clearly evidenced as uneven in home schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. In our fieldwork with teachers, some expressed uncertainty around installing games in the curriculum—especially as it would often mean the student

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would become the teacher. One of our teacher participants, when asked if he used Minecraft in the classroom, replied with a resounding “no, and nor would I!” In contrast, schoolteacher Kieren Bailey discussed the joy of learning to build in Minecraft, and observed the numerous social benefits of integrating Minecraft into a child’s school life in terms of student growth, collaboration, conflict resolution, community engagement and overcoming social isolation. Through both classroom and extra-curricular activities involving Minecraft, Bailey allows students the ability to lead others and demonstrate responsibility through decision-making. She sees older students taking on more responsibility and helping to guide younger students within the game. Minecraft, she notes, also provides students the opportunity for collaboration and in-turn socializing around a shared interest, allowing strong friendship groups to form both within and away from Minecraft. Undoubtedly, the undeniable explosion of popularity in educational videogames in recent decades has been uneven in impact, with some schools and individuals embracing the medium where others have not. For the supporters of Minecraft.edu (see Fig. 7.3), the key advantage for educators in using Minecraft is its simplicity. Not only is it easy to

Fig. 7.3 Social Education Edition

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access the programme and begin playing, but the game is self-directed, meaning that the users can easily explore at their own pace without having to overcome in-game challenges or defeat foes in order to proceed. In addition, Minecraft’s lack of traditional videogame objectives and competitive trappings (e.g. accumulating points and level completion) affords the player a profound level of agency. Players are able to create and customize their own personal experience, identity and goals, delivering the challenge, consolidation and “Cycle of Expertise” that Gee (2005) and Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) recommend. In this way, Minecraft is radically accessible; anybody is capable of using it after a brief orientation. The game incrementally teaches the player how to navigate its world, thus in many ways replicating an ideal instruction template. Minecraft is also highly adaptable in terms of aligning itself to the different skill levels of the player. Lesson planners may construct challenging problems for the advanced learner or remedial activities for beginners. Overby and Jones (2015) remark that not only can Minecraft be used to teach basic programming skills for creating interactive digital art, but that learning how to programme in Minecraft can tempt students to grapple with more complicated coding activities. Through the activities of modding and creating skins and objects for their Minecraft world, students might develop skills in Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Maya, or a range of image and 3D modelling programmes (Overby and Jones 2015). Brand and Kinash (2013) recall an instance in which students were asked to build the entirety of their university campus in Minecraft. Once complete, lectures were held in the virtual campus, teaching “the concepts of virtuality and disruptive innovation in one fell swoop”. Instances of teaching through Minecraft are often discussed in education conference settings, and through the course of our fieldwork, many children had themselves noticed the increasing appearance of Minecraft in education contexts. As Year 10 student David said: Sometimes I would play Minecraft in school… in fact it’s gotten a lot more popular recently. Don’t know why (I play it) at school… (I guess) mostly because it’s a multiplayer game that you can connect to other people. It’s a good game to play if you wanna hang out with people in class.

The collaborative and social aspect that David identifies has seen it increasingly introduced into lesson plans, and used as both an edutainment and entertainment product by students, both outside and inside of its

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sanctioned use in the school classroom. As David went on to confess, it was very easy to play Minecraft during class time given that both the game platform and the game itself had become standard school equipment— albeit technologies that teachers were often less literate in than the students they taught. For Grade 9 student Raymond, “(t)eachers don’t really know what we are doing sometimes. iPads are mandatory so it’s quite easy and convenient to access, and once we are in there, we usually just mess around.” Raymond also remarked that the Minecraft Education edition was available for free on the school website. “It seems like a good idea” he said, “but kids just download Minecraft and play with each other.” We asked Raymond if he too had downloaded the Minecraft Education edition, but he had not. Instead, Raymond noted “I already have Minecraft on my Switch—and apparently it’s a bit different, like it’s got black boards and chemistry sets and other school stuff on it.” Both the literacies and the use of Minecraft appeared uneven in classroom contexts. For example, several teachers that we spoke to had used Minecraft as a collaborative building and learning tool in Geography, History, Math and Art classes. Yet many of our student participants including David admitted that he had never officially used Minecraft in lessons, although he was aware that it was being used extensively in other classrooms, and that, especially among the younger students, Minecraft was being progressively taken up as a classroom tool. David reflected: I’ve noticed that lots of the kids below me do. Like I’ll be online and I’ll see HASS project 3 (History and Social Studies) and I get so annoyed. I wish I got to use Minecraft in School. I would do so well in those subjects.

As David highlights, the use of Minecraft in the classroom has the potential to afford children an empowering sense of identity and agency leading to an extended “commitment of self”, as explored by Gee (2005) in relation to educative games. In relation to his own Minecraft skills, David already identifies an informal literacy and expertise that he wishes to share and have recognized in formal school contexts. Beyond David’s desire to use Minecraft in school, his awareness of Minecraft use on the school server also evidences an informal literacy acquired through his own personal play. When we enquired about the HASS project classes, he reported:

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When you go online you can see ‘your worlds’—‘land-worlds’ and ‘servers’. This is the places for people who are connected to the same WiFi as you. You can kind of jump around from one world to another seeing what people are using it for. Some of it’s really interesting, a lot of it’s is also pretty boring.

Confirming David’s observations, his younger sister Mary (year eight) outlined how she had more exposure to Minecraft play in school classes than her older brother—yet not as extensively as students younger than her and in other school environments. Mary reported: We had this school project once where we had to make a camp—and make activities and present it to the class. Once we found out we could use Minecraft it was cool. Some people drew maps—some people made slide shows and some used Minecraft. We built our whole project then made a video in Minecraft. I’m pretty sure at other schools they use educational Minecraft.

While Mary embraced the opportunity to use Minecraft, we asked her how it compared to traditional mediums of expression that were also available at the school. For Mary, drawing and painting as well as other digital tools were all valid forms and Minecraft was simply one of the creative tools at her disposal. “Sometimes when I have a good idea, I’ll go into Minecraft to build it.” She told us. “Sometimes I’ll just draw it instead”. For thirteen-year-old Cameron, Minecraft was a tool that he welcomed into the classroom—at least in art classes. “I think teachers should do that in art class because games are like art. It’s a form of art.” In Cameron’s eyes, the expressive potential of Minecraft was unquestionably equal to established art-making tools and media. While institutions and the people that operated within them voiced both positive and negative views in relation to their use, children too did not always see Minecraft in positive terms. For example, Angela, a nine-year-old from regional Victoria has played Minecraft with friends from school, but generally isn’t interested in the game. Angela told us: “It’s ok I guess, but I don’t get why people play so much”. In our discussions with her, we mentioned our research into how Minecraft is used in different contexts and as an education tool, and that we were writing a book about it. She was both puzzled by and despondent about our efforts. “What can you learn from playing Minecraft?” she asked. We described some positive aspects about the use of videogames in

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educational environments, as explored by Gee and others, such as collaboration, community, as well as their use in more direct and applicable lessons such as geography and math. Angela replied: “yeah I guess so, but you don’t need Minecraft to learn those things.” In her reply, Angela highlights how the use of Minecraft—and videogames in general—as pedagogic tools does not immediately render them educational. This critical approach to embracing technologies in educational settings echoes Digital Learning Coach Steven Elford’s earlier comments. As with all media types, be it books, videos or drawing implements, the use of digital games in the classroom needs to be well-planned and consider how the specificity of the medium can add value to learning contexts.

The Art of Minecraft as Transitional Media Across Institutional Spaces Minecraft is a great example of how games can transition across different institutional spaces in ways that other media cannot. As we have explored, there are deep paradoxes surrounding the way Minecraft works to blur boundaries between work and leisure contexts; its application across formal and informal education can be both enabling and constraining. In particular, the popularity and accessibility of Minecraft as a game that can be played by non-gamers and gamers across intergenerational differences allows for some powerful literacies and practices to be harnessed. For example, in the project The Art of Play, a gallery space at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP) was transformed into a Minecraft-­ meets-­LEGO participatory installation. The exhibition invited audiences to become players and then artists—audiences could play and intervene with the installation, document it on social media and have their printed image displayed on the wall as an artwork. Over the duration of the exhibition the wall filled with the audience’s playful interventions. Along with the participatory installation we invited school groups—both primary and secondary—to engage in Social Play workshops. These workshops sought to codesign activities with students at the intersection of digital and non-­ digital play. A series of sessions were conducted in the art gallery (2015), urban temporary pavilion (M Pavilion 2016) and classroom contexts. After codesigning a Social Play toolkit to explore the findings with other

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communities and stakeholders, we then developed further toolkits from workshops conducted in Japan in 2018 to explore codesign in a different cultural context. In a series of playful experiments in the form of workshops with school children, we sought to consider how different modes of play are enacted in formal and informal, public and private spaces. What became apparent is that in gallery spaces like CCP, the workshops often tested the etiquette of the space through “noisy” behaviour. In public spaces like MPavillion, blurring between the students and passing pedestrians happened often which transformed the ways in which the play was enacted. In classrooms, there was a constant negotiation between the formal and informal literacies associated with play. Moreover, students often felt self-conscious performing play in unfamiliar places—but this was counteracted once the play became a group activity. In these two spaces, students liked to experiment with the non-digital dimensions of play that couldn’t be translated or adapted into a digital game, like physical tagging. In the school settings, children were more likely to view social play in a different light, as more often than not informal play is something that happens in the school yard, while “educational” play takes place in the classroom (see Fig.  7.4). Here the differences between inside and outside

Fig. 7.4  Classroom setting for codesign

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forms of play became central. What was social play in the classroom? And how could social play be used to coalesce digital and non-digital spaces? In the workshops, many of Gee’s key principles about good games were apparent. Many of the participants explored identity and interaction— reflecting upon the multiple worlds and worlding at play, how games can make participants react in different ways, and encourage them to problem solve and take risks. They also developed an understanding of production and game-making as they moved from the role of a player to game designer. Participants also considered customization and agency between the player, game character, game space and gameplay. The processes involved situated meanings and systems thinking—the latter now a key method in contemporary critical thinking—that is, not just focusing on things and actions but on what happens between things. In addition, they reflected on the role of performativity in a game—pleasures and frustrations, goals, experience and play. As this example of a Minecraft participatory art exhibition and series of workshops illustrates, there is scope for Minecraft to offer possibilities for creative and social literacies in both informal and formal curriculum. Minecraft not only encourages social play and digital creative literacy, but in the workshops we also witnessed it as a space for quotidian performativity. Students were able to clearly translate their experiences and practices from the digital to the non-digital space, illustrating their awareness of the different literacies involved. They “performed” different types of playing—echoing the forms of narration they had seen in LPs and other game paratexts. This translation and adaption across digital, material and social spaces highlighted agile literacies that will, no doubt, be important skills in future workforce settings. Returning to Gee’s sixteen principles for good learning, we can see how Minecraft allows for many of these principles to flourish. In addition, it provides an instrumental space for the expansion of literacies across different modalities and multi-sensorial ways of being in the world. There is significant potential for learning from and within Minecraft when it is situated in institutional settings such as museums, classrooms and art exhibitions. More work is needed to connect what happens across informal and formal contexts as we develop more complex and robust ways of mapping contemporary digital media literacies.

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Conclusion With the introduction of the National Australian Curriculum in 2014, students are required to demonstrate competencies in key capabilities— including critical and creative thinking. Minecraft is a digital space that fosters these types of capabilities, as illustrated by practitioners such as Steven Elford (ACARA 2015). However, as with any online space, Minecraft players also experience problems with bullying, trolling and other forms of online harassment. For this reason, many institutions are moving to establish their own servers with in-house security and established codes of conduct. Such educative play is sometimes characterized as “serious” or “hard” play. However, such forms of play don’t necessarily translate into measurable outcomes that are recognized within the curriculum structure. As summarized by Rogers and Sharapan, “play is a very serious matter […] it is an expression of our creativity; and creativity is at the very root of our ability to learn, to cope, and to become whatever we may be” (1994, p. 13). Perhaps more so than any other game, or indeed media platform more broadly, Minecraft activates this reciprocal relation between learning, pedagogy, creative expression and resilience. Spreadable through a variety of institutions, Minecraft’s malleability and accessibility has been central to the uptake of Minecraft Education. The game’s capacity to act as a creative conduit and outlet is crucial in its success story as a tool for both formal and informal literacies and learning.

References ACARA. 2015. General Capabilities. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. https://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum/foundationyear-10/general-capabilities. ACMA. 2010. Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians. 2008. Curriculum. http://www.curriculum.edu.au/verve/_resources/national_ declaration_on_the_educational_goals_for_young_australians.pdf. Adams, Suellen. 2009. The Case for Video Games in Libraries. Library Review 58: 196–202. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530910942045. Bereiter, Carl, and Marlene Scardamalia. 1993. Surpassing Ourselves an Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise. Chicago, IL: Open Court. Brand, Jeffrey E., and Shelley Kinash. 2013. Crafting Minds in Minecraft. Educational Technology Solutions 55: 56–58.

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Cazden, Courtney B. 1981. Performance Before Competence: Assistance to Child Discourse in the Zone of Proximal Development. Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition 3 (1): 5–8. DiSessa, Andrea A. 2000. Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Education.minecraft.net. 2016. What-is-Minecraft? education.minecraft.net/ how-it-works/what-is-minecraft/. Elman, Jeffrey. 1991. Incremental Learning, or the Importance of Starting Small. Technical Report 9101, Center for Research in Language, University of California at San Diego. San Diego: CA. Ferguson, Christopher J. 2010. Introduction to the Special Issue on Video Games. Review of General Psychology 14 (2): 66–67. Gee, James Paul. 2003. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. Computers in Entertainment (CIE) 1 (1): 20–20. ———. 2004. Language in the Science Classroom: Academic Social Languages as the Heart of School-based Literacy. In Establishing Scientific Classroom Discourse Communities, ed. Randy K. Yerrick and Wolff-Michael Roth, 28–52. London: Routledge. ———. 2005. Good Video Games and Good Learning. Phi Kappa Phi Forum 85 (2): 33–37. Gee, James. P., Glynda Hull, and Colic Lankshear. 1996. The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism. Boulder, Co: Westview. Glendening, Mary L. 2016. From Video Games to Real Life: Tapping Into Minecraft to Inspire Creativity and Learning in the Library. Santa Barbara California. Libraries Unlimited. Gregg, Melissa. 2011. Work’s Intimacy. Cambridge and Malden, MA: Polity Press. Guttenbrunner, Mark, Christoph Becker, and Andreas Rauber. 2010. Keeping the Game Alive: Evaluating Strategies for the Preservation of Console Video Games. The International Journal of Digital Curation 5: 65–90. https://doi. org/10.2218/ijdc.v5i1.144. Haxton, Nance. 2015. Teachers should Embrace Minecraft as Classroom Tool: Research. ABC News, 7 July. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015–07–07/ minecraft-successful-class-room-tool-research-shows/6602078. Hill, Valerie. 2015. Digital Citizenship Through Game Design in Minecraft. New Library World 116 (7–8): 369–382. https://doi.org/10.1108/ NLW-09-2014-0112. Hooper, Jan, and Paul de Byl. 2014. Towards a Unified Theory of Play: A Case Study of Minecraft. DIGRA, 1–3. http://digraa.org/wp-content/ uploads/2014/06/29_hooper.pdf. Ito, Mizuko. 2015. Why Minecraft Rewrites the Playbook for Learning. Boing Boing. http://boingboing.net/2015/06/06/why-minecraft-rewrites-thepla.html.

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Ito, Mizuko, Henry Jenkins, and danah boyd. 2015. Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: A conversation of Youth, Learning, Commerce and Politics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Longitude. 2018. Exhibition website https://longitude-exhibition.net Minecraft education edition. https://education.minecraft.net. Mustola, Marleena, Merja Koivula, Leena Turja, and Marja-Leena Laaks. 2018. Reconsidering Passivity and Activity in Children’s Digital Play. New Media & Society 20 (1): 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816661550. Narine, Neil, and Sara M.  Grimes. 2009. The Turbulent Rise of the “Child Gamer”: Public Fears and Corporate Promises in Cinematic and Promotional Depictions of Children’s Digital Play. Communication Culture & Critique 2 (3): 319–338. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1753-9137.2009.01040.x. Oldenburg, Ray. 1989. The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Community Centers, Beauty Parlors, General Stores, Bars, Hangouts, and How They Get You Through the Day. New York: Paragon House. Overby, Alexandra, and Brian L.  Jones. 2015. Virtual LEGOs: Incorporating Minecraft into the Art Education Curriculum. Art Education 68 (1): 21–27. Rogers, Fred, and Hedda Sharapan. 1994. How Children Use Play. Education Digest 59 (8): 13–16. Russo, Angelina, Jerry Watkins, Lynda Kelly, and Sebastian Chan. 2006. How will Social Media Affect Museum Communication. Nordisk Museologi 1: 19–29. Russo, Angelina, Jerry Watkins, and Susan Groundwater-Smith. 2009. The Impact of Social Media on Informal Learning in Museums. Educational Media International 46 (2): 153–166. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523980 902933532. von Salisch, Maria, Caroline Oppl, and Astrid Kristen. 2006. What Attracts Children? In Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences, ed. Peter Vorderer and Jennings Bryant, 147–163. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sanford, Kathy. 2008. Video Games in the Library? What is the World Coming To? School Libraries Worldwide 14 (2): 83–88. Shin, Wonsun, and Jisu Huh. 2011. Parental Mediation of Teenagers’ Video Game Playing: Antecedents and Consequences. New Media & Society 13 (6): 945–962. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444810388025.

CHAPTER 8

Playing During COVID-19

In 2020 our relationship to the digital—especially games—changed dramatically. As the uneven impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was felt around the world, many countries went into some form of lockdown. Established routines and practices were disrupted as every element of life—work, education and socializing—shifted to the home and went digital. During this time, digital and online engagement has surged—in America for example, overall videogame internet traffic increased 75 percent after COVID-19 restrictions were imposed (M.B. 2020). According to polls from Nielsen, videogame play time rose by 45 percent in the first two weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown, while worldwide game and console sales increased by 44 percent (Shanley 2020). Game devices such as the Nintendo Switch became difficult to buy with stock sold out and supply chains slowed (Kain 2020). For many us, working and studying from home dramatically altered the daily rhythms of life. The role of digital media and technologies—especially issues relating to accessibility and literacy—came to the forefront. Even the World Health Organization (WHO), which last year officially registered game addiction as a mental health disorder, has now recognized the communicative power and global reach of games (Snider 2020). WHO’s global strategy ambassador Ray Chambers tweeted his support of #PlayApartTogether, an initiative of game industry leaders including Twitch, Riot Games and Amazon Appstore (see Fig. 8.1). Members of the programme are disseminating key messages throughout “their vast © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9_8

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Fig. 8.1  Ray Chambers retweet #playaparttogether

network of users”, encouraging everyone to follow the WHO coronavirus guidelines (Businesswire 2020). Gamers pass these messages on, reminding each other to wash their hands and stay safe, and offering support to physically isolated players in quarantine. In the midst of these social, cultural, economic and political transformations, Minecraft featured as a game that not only nurtured creative and social play but also became a space for discussion and reflection around COVID-19. During this period, the enduring social and creative affordances of Minecraft which has made it such a compelling medium across education and entertainment, were heightened. Minecraft’s owner company, Mojang, began devoting attention across all its social channels to

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Fig. 8.2  Minecraft stay safe, stay apart campaign

promoting health advice from the World Health Organization (Fig. 8.2). This included a transformation of the notorious creepers who—rather than explode—began asking players to wash their hands. COVID-19 awareness splash messages such as “Save the world—Stay inside”, “Shop for your elders” and “Don’t touch your face” appeared on the Minecraft site (Minecraft 2020). As schools closed to ensure social distancing, Minecraft moved to aid educators worldwide by opening up free lessons from its Education Edition (Shanley 2020). The virtual worlds and lessons on offer ranged from creative writing, puzzles, and build challenges to expansive tours of the International Space Station and journeys into the human eye. The educational activities were designed for students to engage with parents, teachers or friends, or by themselves (BBC 2020). Introducing the virtual classroom activities, Minecraft announced in a blog post: Educators around the world are doing everything they can to provide digital lessons for the half a billion students who are out of school due to the

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COVID-19 pandemic. This is not an easy task and we want to do our part to help keep young minds sharp and stimulated. (2020, n.p.)

It was, of course, an unexpected and unparalleled opportunity for Mojang and Microsoft to showcase the educational capabilities they had spent years developing for the game platform (Fig. 8.3). Among the activities was the Lumen City Challenge, which saw Minecraft team up with European energy body EIT InnoEnergy to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. The project delivered two educational gaming programmes about renewable energy for housebound students. Students could explore different energy sources, solve a town’s power problems and manage a sustainable city all within the Minecraft environment, tackling important questions about energy production, use and sustainability (Mavrokefalidis 2020). The activity afforded stuck-at-­ home students around the world the opportunity to reimagine sustainable futures within a virtual playground. With parents, teachers and politicians

Fig. 8.3  Minecraft Education: a fun option for teaching kids at home

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seeking ways to occupy children within the safety of the home, the Minecraft platform was co-opted in a variety of ways internationally. In Japan, the lockdown began just as many students were finishing their school year. With graduation ceremonies being a major rite of passage in Japan, one group of Japanese elementary school students held their own graduation ceremony in Minecraft (Conaghan 2020). News of the event went viral after screenshots were shared showing how much detail the students had put into the ceremony, with each student “walking” up a long red carpet to accept their award. More than delivering education, Minecraft had been adapted to help students celebrate and mark their transition from junior to senior levels. As Poland closed museums, theatres and cinemas and limited numbers for public gatherings, the Polish government’s Ministry of Digitization set up its own Minecraft server to keep young people occupied at home. The server was organized by the Neverlight Association, a Polish organization involved with esports, game tournaments and board game publishing (Williams 2020). Created as part of an educational website populated with various online activities, the Minecraft server was free to elementary, high school and college students, with each player allotted a 60  ×  60 plot (Binder 2020). The server also hosted a competition to see who could build the best replicas of known architecture (Fig. 8.4). In China, Minecraft players used online blueprints to digitally construct two medical centres rapidly erected near the epicentre of the Wuhan outbreak (Ye 2020). The temporary medical centres had attracted global attention for the speed at which they were constructed. While the construction of the virtual Wuhan’s medical centres was initiated by Minecraft players themselves as a “tribute to the builders and hospital workers on the front line” (M.B 2020, n.p), Minecraft’s official development team in China also introduced replicas of two of China’s leading respiratory medical centres. Here players could visit the centres to learn about infectious viruses, COVID-19 prevention and epidemiology. In the US, a well-known Brooklyn music venue hosted a Minecraft concert featuring much loved bands (Hope 2020). The sprawling nightclub was painstakingly recreated and featured performances from the popular emo act American Football, “Nintendocore” videogame musicians Anamanaguchi and electronic artist Baths (Mercante 2020). Attending the event was free; however, paid VIP passes gave special access to in-game areas, exclusive game merchandise and VIP access in Discord where players could talk directly to the performing artists. All proceeds from the VIP

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Fig. 8.4  Minecraft reinforcing social distancing messaging

pass sales went to COVID-19 relief efforts. In direct correlation with, and in response to the coronavirus, Minecraft has become a key space for hosting fund-raising events such as virtual concerts (Fig. 8.5). The North America Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF) hosted a Minecraft COVID-19 challenge—a nation-wide competition for third– twelfth grade students. The challenge stated: “we’re looking for students who want to learn about and respond to issues related to the current global COVID-19 by creating solutions in Minecraft”. The six challenges—to be captured as 3-minute videos and shared on Twitter— included imagining and building a “dream home”, coding a 3D model of the COVID-19 virus, constructing a medical facility equipped to manage COVID-19 patients, designing a museum or library with a factual timeline to combat misinformation, creating an escape room challenge to find the bathroom and wash your hands, and making a Rube Goldberg machine to solve a COVID-19-related problem. Under the #MinecraftCOVID19 handle a variety of the best entries can be viewed—including some of the most compelling architectural and biophilic interventions—demonstrating the power of Minecraft players to enact individual and collaborative creative intervention (Fig. 8.6).

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Fig. 8.5  Minecraft as a space to host virtual concerts

Indeed globally, it seems the digital tactility of Minecraft has played a key role in fostering affinity spaces for socially distanced people to hang out and be creative, in ways that channel much of the frustration, boredom and challenges experienced as an effect of isolation. Prominent Minecraft YouTuber PippenFTS announced a 1:1 scale model of Earth (Garreffa 2020), constructed with a number of mods that drew geographical data from archives like Google Maps and translated them into a world-­ sized Minecraft map. While prominent Earth landmarks including the Grand Canyon and Mount Everest can be explored, only the natural landscape was recreated. PippenFTS has invited the global community of Minecraft players to fill the 1:1 replica of Earth with human-made structures, and an edge for the borders. These examples of Minecraft’s deployment throughout the pandemic highlight its important role in curating play and creativity, and facilitating sociality, in both formal and informal contexts. In this book we have

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Fig. 8.6  A Minecraft COVID-19 challenge

sought to take Minecraft seriously as a situated creative and cultural practice. Throughout the book we have focused on the role of Minecraft as a choreography coalescing social play, participatory digital media and creative literacies. Through a predominantly ethnographic approach which focused on documenting and interpreting user practices and motivations, we have sought to understand Minecraft not just as a game but as a cultural phenomenon. We have aimed to address the complex ways in which Minecraft occupies the everyday lives of players across cultural and generational contexts, fostering a spectrum of multimodal, socio-material and sensory literacies (Mills 2016). In the next sections we reflect upon these learnings from the book and consider where we are now.

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Minecraft Now The productivity and produsage that has circulated around and through Minecraft during the pandemic highlights its relevance as an informal and formal mode of socializing, creativity and learning. As we have demonstrated, Minecraft is a powerful and enduring vehicle for harnessing play and creativity in the everyday. Throughout the book we have brought these practices to  the forefront by exploring ethnographically how the game is embedded within our daily rhythms in complex and dynamic ways. We have investigated the various contexts and places in which Minecraft is played—from homes to schools, libraries, museums and art installations. As we have argued, Minecraft can be understood as a cultural interface through which players forge sociality, share creativity and apply a diverse spectrum of quotidian literacies. The contexts in which Minecraft is played requires us to acknowledge the complex and interrelated role of the digital in our material and social lives. Through our ethnographic method we have described the myriad ways people engage in the practice of doing Minecraft, and revealed how our participants’ creative and informal literacies emerge in the process. In the first part of the book we considered the role of contexts in situating Minecraft as a cultural phenomenon. In the second part of the book we investigated play spaces, practices and modalities—both within the game and in relation to attendant paratextual practices. In the final part we explored places of play, both domestic and institutional. In a post COVID-19 context, the experience and demarcation of place looks very different. Social, school and work activities became compressed into the home, and place became more complex and striated—especially in terms of the relationship between the physical and the digital. In this concluding chapter and in light of COVID-19 we reflect upon the three key tropes that emerged from our journey through Minecraft across domestic, educational and institutional spaces. As we argue, Minecraft and its attendant paratexts highlight key literacies in and around digital media that connect the digital with the social and material. It is a space where players enact—both individually and collectively—quotidian platformativity, social play and creative literacy.

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Quotidian Platformativities The rise of the digital has seen the emergence of new informal and quotidian modes of literacy. Much of the work done a decade ago by Ito, Salen Tekinbaş and Jenkins in the Digital Media & Learning (DML) hub articulated the importance of these digital practices as part of future literacies and skillsets in education and workforces. And yet Minecraft represents a particular enclave of quotidian literacy that harnesses children’s digital making. Returning to Dezuanni’s important work in the field which we have engaged with throughout the chapters, Minecraft plays a crucial role in understanding media literacy education (2016). According to Dezuanni, much of the literature on media literacy focuses on socio-cultural and humanist accounts of media participation, without consideration of the importance of digital making practices. Across physical and virtual spaces and diverse modalities of play, Minecraft is indicative of new forms of digital play and contemporary literacy (ACMA 2010; Holloway et al. 2013; Marsh and Richards 2013). Understanding Minecraft as a phenomenon allows us to consider the intermixed material, social, cultural and performative dimensions of the medium. As we describe in more detail below, during COVID-19 the role of Minecraft as a platform for the shared performance of play became even more significant.

Social Play It is not surprising that Minecraft has featured in the rise of Let’s Play (LP). LP and livestreaming games have become one of the most transformative modes of participatory media production and consumption today, where gameplay as something to be watched has evolved into a predominant form of entertainment in its own right. For gamers and non-gamers alike, it is a familiar and popular way of connecting with friends and game communities. Minecraft content proliferates in this space. Over the decade Minecraft has existed, it has at times waned in popularity yet perpetually returned; many teenagers have already experienced multiple phases of Minecraft activity and inactivity. The game has endured because it is an adaptable platform for collaboration and social play. Minecraft’s power lies in its capacity to allow players the opportunity for reflexive narrativization, construction and making, and co-curation

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and performance of their own stories (Beavis and Joanne O’Mara 2010; Beavis et al. 2014; Rebekah Willett et al. 2013; Marsh 2010). The banter of our participants often involved elements of co-design and elaborate descriptions of collectively imagined narrative structures as a form of social play. This talking-­while-­making was a common practice with our participants, revealing the way that digital play is both social and performative. Minecraft’s particular blend of social play is that it affords a mode of digital wayfaring—movement across actual and virtual spaces and contexts—that opens up multiple possibilities for combining creativity and literacy. It harnesses the creativity of older material games like LEGO in combination with the specific digital affordances of networked platformativity.

Choregraphing Creative Literacy Over a decade ago, Burgess defined the concept of vernacular creativity to depict the rise of internet creativity, participatory media, user-generated content and digital storytelling (2009). The web has enabled people to collaborate and share their creative outputs with their ever-expanding communities of interest, and the consequent upsurge in do-it-yourself (DIY) activities and forms of craft has evolved into a prolific maker movement (Gauntlett 2011). As we have highlighted in the book, Minecraft as a game and cultural interface interweaves digital, material and social worlds and affords a kind of digital-material-social making that is closely connected to the rise of maker cultures. Susan Luckman (2018) has argued that craft economies have rewritten the creative industry sector. As we have argued through ethnographies of practice, Minecraft cultivates its own version of creativity—what we call creative literacy. As we have argued from the outset, Minecraft is a cultural phenomenon which demands and facilitates new forms of learning, creativity and literacy. It choregraphs the movement and overlays of social play, platformativity and creative literacy. Minecraft isn’t just about vernacular creativity—it fosters its own forms of colloquial, in-game and paratextual creativities that embrace the digital, social and material. The fact that Minecraft is played predominantly in the home highlights the significance of the domestic as a space for particular forms of digital connection through social play. This situation was amplified during COVID-19 during which our social and public lives were conflated into the confines of our home, further blurring the boundaries between the

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places and times for play, learning and work. For many children around the world Minecraft offered social connection and continuity during COVID-19 when many other things were rapidly changing. When they couldn’t connect physically with friends due to social distancing (or what is more aptly called physical distancing), Minecraft remained an habitual space for social play where they could continue to explore their creative literacies, and a familiar platform for “performing” and sharing their play with friends and the Minecraft community.

Minecraft Post COVID-19 It seems fitting that we conclude the book with some reflections from our participants about their play practices during COVID-19. In this book we have argued for the importance of understanding Minecraft culture through ethnographic practice. Through ethnography we have sought to explore the mundane and intimate moments of Minecraft play within the rhythms of everyday life. These rhythms shifted somewhat during the final stages of our research. Let us return to thirteen-year-old Cameron who observed not only a shift in how games were being perceived during COVID-19 but also how the functionality (such as internet speeds) had improved. As he noted: I feel like videogames are better, like they are faster, because more people are playing them…It’s not just Minecraft, it’s all virtual spaces. Minecraft is great because things load quicker because there are lots of people in the server… I play in Creative mode a lot by myself and spend time in servers with friends. I’d never played Minecraft with friends before the lockdown. We connect in Minecraft and talk over the phone or Facetime… I feel more connected.

For Cameron, Minecraft was also a place to be productive and develop skills during lockdown. His coordination of multiple devices and platforms while playing was a common feature with many participants. Across the multiple digital media platforms and devices, material and social elements were also explored. This process often involved creative workarounds when the internet or servers went down. Ambient play techniques operated across multiple screens and mobile devices often became temporary conduits to the network.

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Eleven-year-old Clara had recently migrated from the iPad to the desktop and was playing Minecraft on the PC. Unlike some of our participants who dipped in and out of Minecraft, Clara claimed it would always be her favourite. While being at home she has immersed herself in the familiar space of the game, and particularly enjoyed the paratextual play of Minecraft on YouTube. As she tells us about her favourite server Hermitcraft, Clara evoked nostalgic memories of her Minecraft play when she was younger. She noted: Hermitcraft is pretty good. It’s just Minecraft players—like streamer players building their own things. I really like Grein and Mumbo Jumbo. I like Mumbo Jumbo the most… I like his game play—what he makes and how he makes it. I’ve been watching streamers playing other games too—but mostly Minecraft. Minecraft will always be my favorite game. I’ve been playing since I was 8. I love the music—it reminds me of when I was little. My favorite activity is mining. I can strip mine for hours. I find it really relaxing… I do socialize a lot in Minecraft. I have lots of friends here. I’m playing with friends in Minecraft right now.

Many of our participants noted the rise in Minecraft paratextual creativity, especially on YouTube and Twitch. Many of the discussions in Minecraft between friends reflected on the performances of livestreamers and Let’s Players. This narrativization of play—what we have been calling quotidian platformativity—featured often in our discussion with participants during COVID-19. A few participants told us their schools had incorporated Minecraft into some of their online activities, and that it increased their levels of enjoyment and engagement, providing a respite from more formal tasks, worksheets and video-based instruction. As we move unevenly into a post-pandemic era, our dependence on digital media for social inclusion becomes increasingly apparent. With touch and intimacy being recalibrated in a time of physical distancing, forcing homes, institutions and organizations to redefine their worlds, digital media literacies are undergoing significant transformation—and becoming ever more vital for connection, communication, learning, productivity and creativity. Studying Minecraft can provide us with some insight into these literacies and how they intermesh with sociality, play and performativity.

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Through the stories and practices of Minecraft players, we might make better sense of life at the social-material-digital nexus—ways of learning, making and being together needed now and into the future.

References ACMA. 2010. Australian Communications and Media Authority. Report: Trends in media use by children and young people: Insights from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s Generation M2 2009 (USA), and results from the ACMA’s ‘Media and communications in Australian families 2007. http://www.acma.gov.au/ webwr/_assets/main/lib310665/trends_in_media_use_by_children_and_ young_people.pdf BBC. 2020. Coronavirus: Minecraft Offers Free Lessons to Children. BBC, March 24. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-­52017873. Beavis, Catherine, and Joanne O’Mara. 2010. Computer Games – Pushing at the Boundaries of Literacy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 33(1): 65–76. Beavis, Catherine, Leonie Rowan, Michael Dezuanni, Christie McGillivray, Joanne O’Mara, Sarah Prestridge, Colleen Stieler-Hunt, Roberta Thompson and Jason Zagami. 2014. Teachers’ Beliefs about Learning and Digital Games. E-learning and Digital Media, 11(6): 568–580. Binder, Matt. 2020. Government Launches Minecraft Server So Young People can Stay Inside and Game During Coronavirus. Mashable, March 27. https:// mashable.com/article/poland-­coronavirus-­minecraft-­gaming/. Burgess, Jean. 2009. Remediating vernacular creativity: photography and cultural citizenship in the Flickr photosharing network. In T.  Edensor, D.  Leslie, S. Millington, and N Rantisi. eds. Spaces of Vernacular Creativity: Rethinking the Cultural Economy. Routledge, London; New York, pp. 116–126. Business Wire Editorial. 2020. Games Industry Unites to Promote World Health Organization Messages Against COVID-19; Launch #PlayApartTogether Campaign. Business Wire, March 28. https://www.businesswire.com/news/ home/20200328005018/en/Games-­I ndustry-­U nites-­P romote-­World-­ Health-­Organization. Conaghan, Racheal. 2020. Quarantined Students in Japan Held Their Own Graduations on Minecraft after Schools Closed. Junkee, March 19. https:// junkee.com/japan-­students-­minecraft-­graduation/247581. Dezuanni, Michael. 2016. Material and discursive learning with Minecraft. In Learning with New Media Seminar Series, 15 September 2016, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC. (Unpublished) https://eprints.qut.edu. au/99959/

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Dezuanni, Michael, Joanne O’Mara and Catherine Beavis. 2015. Redstone is like electricity’: Children’s performative representations in and around Minecraft. E-Learning and Digital Media, 12(2): 147–163. Gauntlett, David. 2011. Making is Connecting. John Wiley & Sons. Garreffa, Anthony. 2020. This 1:1 Scale Earth Built in Minecraft is Safe from Coronavirus. Tweaktown, March 28. https://www.tweaktown.com/ news/71500/this-­1-­scale-­earth-­built-­in-­minecraft-­is-­safe-­from-­coronavirus/ index.html Hjorth, Larissa, and Ingrid Richardson. 2020. Playing Through a Pandemic. RMIT News, April 16. https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-­news/2020/ april/playing-­through-­a-­pandemic. Holloway, Donell, Lelia Green and Sonia Livingstone. 2013. Zero to Eight. Young Children and their internet use. London: LSE, EU Kids Online Hope, Oliver. 2020. Minecraft to Host Virtual Coronavirus Relief Festival. Gamebyte, April 7. https://www.gamebyte.com/minecraft-­to-­host-­virtual-­ coronavirus-­relief-­festival/. Ito, Mizuko, and Katie Salen. 2018. Connected Camps. https://connectedcamps. com/about. Kain, Erik. 2020. This Is Why It’s Almost Impossible To Buy a Nintendo Switch Right Now. Forbes, April 21. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2020/04/21/why-­i ts-­e ven-­h arder-­t o-­f ind-­a -­n intendo-­s witch-­ than-­toilet-­paper-­right-­now/#46f55bf74473. Luckman, Susan. 2018. Craft entrepreneurialism and sustainable scale: resistance to and disavowal of the creative industries as champions of capitalist growth. Cultural Trends. 27:5, 313–326, http://doi.org.10.1080/09548963.2018. 1534574 M.B. 2020. The Rise and Rise of Video Games. The Economist, March 19. https://www.economist.com/prospero/2020/03/19/the-­r ise-­a nd-­ rise-­of-­video-­games. Marsh, Jackie. 2010. Young children’s play in online virtual worlds. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 8(1): 23–39. Marsh, Jackie and Chris Richards. 2013. Play, media and children’s playground cultures. In: Children, Media and Playground Cultures: Ethnographic Studies of School Playtimes, edited by Rebeka Willett, Chris Richards, Jackie Marsh, Andrew Burn and Julia Bishop, 1–20. London: Palgrave. Mavrokefalidis, Dimitris. 2020. Minecraft Teaches Renewable Energy to Housebound Students. Energy Live: News, April 7. https://www.energylivenews.com/2020/04/07/minecraft-­t eaches-­r enewable-­e nergy-­t o­housebound-­students/. Mercante, Alyssa. 2020. Popular NYC Music Venue Elsewhere is Hosting a Minecraft Festival for Coronavirus Relief. Games Radar, April 7. https:// www.gamesradar.com/au/popular-­nyc-­music-­venue-­elsewhere-­is-­hosting-­a­minecraft-­festival-­for-­coronavirus-­relief/.

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Mills, Kathy. A. 2016. Literacy theories for the digital age: Social, critical, multimodal, spatial, material and sensory lenses. Bristol, U.K.: Multilingual Matters. Minecraft. 2020. HELP #BLOCKCOVID19: Why Creepers are Suddenly Giving Health Advice. Minecraft. https://www.minecraft.net/en-­us/article/ blockcovid19. NASEF Minecraft COVID-19 Design Challenges (2020). https://www.nasef. org/learning/Minecraft-­covid-­19-­design-­challenges/. Rebekah Willett, Chris Richard, Jackie Marsh, Burn, Andrew, and Julia Bishop. 2013. Children, Media and Playground Cultures: Ethnographic Studies of School Playtimes. London: Palgrave. Shanley, Patrick. 2020. Nielsen Reports 45 Percent Spike in U.S.  Video Game Usage. Hollywood Reporter, April 6. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ news/us-video-game-usage-up-45-percent-nielsen-reports-1288738. Snider, Mike. 2020. Video Games can be a Healthy Social Pastime During Coronavirus Pandemic. USA Today, 29 March. https://www.usatoday.com/ stor y/tech/gaming/2020/03/28/video-games-whos-­p rescriptionsolace-during-coronavirus-pandemic/2932976001/. Williams, Hayley. 2020. Country-Wide Minecraft Server Being Used by Polish Government to Help With Social Distancing. Gamespot, March 26. https:// www.gamespot.com/ar ticles/countr y-­w ide-­m inecraft-­s er ver-­b eing­used-­by-­polish/1100-­6475061/. Ye, Josh. 2020. Combating Coronavirus in Minecraft. Abacus News, February 20. https://www.abacusnews.com/games/minecraft-­p layers-­a re-­r ecreating-­ chinas-­rapidly-­built-­wuhan-­hospitals/article/3051359.

Index

A Ambient play, 14, 27–30, 37, 56, 100, 178 Apperley, Tom, 6, 56, 65, 103 Art class, 159, 160 exhibition, 163 gallery, 161 installation, 147, 175 making, 41, 160 pixel, 34, 41 style, 34 Artefacts creative, 90 fan-made, 112 paratextual, 111, 112 physical, 61, 101, 112–118 Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), 41–44, 145, 155, 156 Autcraft, 40, 41 Avatar, 32, 104, 110, 117, 133, 134, 140, 147 See also Skin

B Beavis, Catherine, 2, 43, 100–102, 116, 118, 177 literacy, 102 Bedroom, 37, 128, 131, 134, 138–140 Biome, 88 Block-based, 4, 6, 9, 88, 112, 156 See also LEGO Body human, 7 and media relations, 13 memories and routines, 13 and the senses, 4, 39 and technology relations, 11 Bruns, Axel, 85, 86 creative ad hoc engagement, 86 decentralized creativity, 85 Burgess, Jean, 3, 86, 100, 177 amateur content creation, 86 scrapbooking, 3, 86 vernacular creativity, 3, 86, 100, 177

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. Hjorth et al., Exploring Minecraft, Palgrave Games in Context, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59908-9

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INDEX

C CaptainSparklez, 3, 109 See also Let’s Play (LP) Cheats, 81, 82 See also Hacks Codesign methods, 147 workshops, 161, 162 Collaborative creativity, 124 play, 3, 7 skills, 153 and social, 3, 158 Command block, 81, 82 Communities of learning, 8, 16, 27, 151 libraries as community centers, 152 of players, 6, 31, 32, 40, 65, 99, 108, 111, 115, 155, 173 of practice, 7, 10, 16, 27, 39, 101, 102 Competition, 64, 103, 134, 171, 172 Connected Camps, 8, 115, 116, 145 Co-present, 41, 90, 92–94, 134 LAN, 92–94 COVID-19, 19, 60, 124, 125, 132, 135, 136, 148, 156, 167–180 Creative literacy, 4–7, 14, 16, 19, 44, 45, 51, 55, 56, 65, 69, 77, 81, 89, 91, 125, 141, 147, 163, 174, 175, 177–178 Creative mode, 34, 36, 37, 79–81, 83–85, 87, 89, 90, 94, 95, 108, 110, 123, 178 See also Survival mode Creepers, 6, 106, 169 Cultural phenomenon, 2, 5, 9, 14, 16, 19, 78, 102, 174, 175, 177 Minecraft as, 2, 5, 9, 14, 16, 19, 78, 102, 174, 175, 177 Cultural probe, 15, 38 Customize, 107, 108, 123, 147, 158

D Datafication, 55 Deterding, Sebastian, 38, 55 on game design, 38 on gamification, 55 Devices console, 60, 92, 107, 135 screen, 12, 49, 60, 61, 130, 178 touchscreen, 59, 60, 129 Dezuanni, Michael, 6, 7, 42, 43, 45, 55, 77, 81, 109, 115, 118, 176 Digital literacy, 16, 39, 40, 42, 54, 127, 146, 151, 156 Digital Media & Learning (DML), 52, 53, 147, 176 Digital media literacy, 4, 6, 7, 77, 148, 163, 179 See also Media literacy Discord, 3, 62, 69, 94, 124, 149, 171 See also Skype; Twitch Do it yourself (DIY), 29, 78, 177 Domestication theory approach, 124–126 Domestic media, 124–128, 140 See also Home E Education Edition, 10, 43, 159 Empower, 154, 155 Endermen, 6 Erstad, Ola, 4, 54 learning lives perspective, 54 Ethnographic methods, 4, 10, 13, 51, 58, 127, 175 Everyday, 2–5, 11–14, 16, 18, 28–30, 35–38, 45, 50, 51, 54–56, 62, 64, 66, 67, 69, 86, 87, 89, 90, 100, 102, 103, 114, 117, 118, 123, 125, 127, 129, 141, 174, 175, 178 See also Quotidian Experiments, 162 Expressive power, 77, 80

 INDEX 

F Face-to-face, 6, 18, 29, 40, 44, 93, 94, 101, 118 False (Falsesymmetry), 99 See also Let’s Play (LP) G Game mechanic, 35, 41, 78, 84, 87, 89, 110 Gamification, 55 See also Ludification Gauntlett, David, 8, 29, 35, 78, 80, 81, 177 maker practices, 78 personal touches, 81 Gee, James Paul, 43, 52, 146–148, 151–153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 161, 163 affinity spaces, 43 cycle of expertise, 148, 158 good videogames, 147 Gender based paradigms, 116 of game spaces, 116 and identity, 116, 117 within family dynamic, 128 Ghasts, 6 Giddings, Seth, 35, 53, 56 H Hacks, 82 Haptic play, 4, 13, 36–39, 103, 128 Hermitcraft, 99, 179 server, 179 See also Let’s Play (LP) Home, 1–3, 5, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18, 30, 32, 37, 39, 40, 43–45, 50, 56, 60–62, 69, 79, 90–94, 108, 114, 117, 118, 123–141, 152, 153, 155, 156, 167, 170, 171, 175, 177, 179

185

Horst, Heather, 127, 140 bedroom, 140 everyday, 127 home, 127 I Identity expression, 140 playful, 124, 135–141 Independent (Indie), 3, 9, 10, 31, 55 Informal literacies, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16–18, 27, 49–51, 53, 56–58, 69, 78, 94, 100, 101, 118, 147, 159, 162, 164, 175 Interdisciplinarity, 15 Interdisciplinary, 4, 5, 14–17, 28, 49, 53 See also Interdisciplinarity Intergenerational, 2, 4, 5, 16, 18, 27, 37, 45, 123, 124, 128, 130–135, 139, 141, 154, 161 iPad, 1, 2, 11–13, 18, 31, 38–40, 45, 57, 59, 60, 63, 67, 84, 107, 108, 112, 115, 125, 128, 129, 132–136, 149, 150, 153, 159, 179 iPhone, 59, 107, 130 iPod touch, 59 Ito, Mizuko, 7, 52, 53, 55, 94, 145–147, 176 J Jansz, Jeroen, 91–94, 116 LAN, 91–93 Jelly See also Let’s Play (LP) Jenkins, Henry, 53, 86, 103, 176 participatory culture, 103 Jones, Brian L., 6, 158 programming, 158 virtual LEGO, 6

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INDEX

K Kennedy, Helen, 65 technobiography, 65 Kervin, Lisa, 53, 64, 112, 113 block-based play, 112 Kitchen, 37, 58, 90, 132–134, 140 L LEGO, 5, 6, 10, 112–115, 118, 139, 146, 161, 177 Let’s Play (LP), 3, 16, 18, 27, 32, 33, 60, 62, 69, 99, 100, 102, 105, 111, 118, 125, 163, 176, 179 Libraries, 10, 18, 44, 92, 145, 147, 150–156, 172, 175 Linux, 101, 107 Literacies agile, 163 digital, 4, 6–8, 10, 16, 39, 40, 42, 53–56, 60, 69, 77, 127, 145–148, 151, 156, 163, 167, 174–176, 179 formal, 54, 145, 151, 162–164 informal, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10–14, 16–19, 27, 44, 45, 49–51, 53, 54, 56–58, 69, 78, 94, 100, 101, 118, 147, 159, 162, 164, 175, 176 sensory, 4, 39–44, 174 social, 91, 145, 163 Livingstone, Sonia, 52, 53, 127, 135, 138 digital futures, 127 Local Area Networks (LANs), 6, 17, 91–94 Ludification, 55, 64, 103 Lury, Celia, 14, 15, 56 innovative methods, 14, 56 interdisciplinarity, 15 sensorial engagement, 15

M Mac, 101, 107 Markus Persson (Notch), 9, 116 Material affects, 7 elements, 7, 178 paratextual, 177 worlds, 2, 7, 8, 10, 13, 16, 28, 29, 35, 38, 44, 61, 77, 106, 177 Media literacy, 8, 62, 123, 141, 145, 176 Microsoft, 9, 10, 92, 107, 145, 146, 170 Mills, Kathy, 4, 39, 174 multimodal, 4, 174 sensorial literacy, 4, 174 socio-material, 4, 174 Mining branch, 111, 118 pokehole, 111 strip, 179 Mobile devices, 4, 5, 12, 37, 60, 124, 127, 128, 130, 132, 150, 178 games, 5, 14, 28–30, 56, 150 gaming, 30, 128 handset, 50 media, 5, 12–14, 28, 29, 37, 92, 129 phones, 57, 92, 126, 132, 150 play, 4, 28, 29, 60 privatization, 126 touchscreens, 12, 13 Mod, 33, 63, 89, 101, 106–109, 111, 118, 153, 173 Modding, 6, 106–112, 158 Mojang, 9, 66, 146, 168, 170 Multimodal, 4, 80, 174 Multisensorial approaches, 14

 INDEX 

engagements, 2 literacies, 4, 39, 57 modes of learning, 4 See also Sensorial Mumbo Jumbo, 3, 103, 104, 179 See also Let’s Play(LP) Museums, 10, 16, 18, 43, 141, 145, 147, 150, 154–156, 163, 171, 172, 175 See also Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) N Narrativization and co-curating, 2, 176 and constructing, 2 and performing, 2 and platformativity, 100, 179 Nether, The, 105 Neurodiverse, 40, 45 New media, 5, 126, 127 Nintendo, 31, 167 Switch, 60, 61, 92, 107, 108, 117, 132, 135 O Oculus Rift, 107 Old media, 5 O’Mara, Joanne, 2, 6, 43, 100–102, 118, 177 literacy, 102 Open world, 129 environment, 129 games, 35–37, 44 play, 105 See also Sandbox Overby, Alexandra, 6, 158 programming, 158 virtual LEGO, 6

187

P Paratexts, 3, 16, 100, 102, 114, 118, 163, 175 and metagame, 100–106 Parisi, David, 11, 39 haptic, 11, 39 touch theory, 11 Personal Computer (PC), 59, 101, 107, 124, 126–128, 179 PewDiePie, 102 See also Let’s Play (LP) Pigmen, 6 Pixel art, 34, 41 Platformativity and creative literacy, 19, 175 and performativity, 100 quotidian, 4–9, 19, 53, 77, 110, 118, 141, 175, 176, 179 and social play, 4, 5, 16, 19, 53, 77, 141, 175, 177 Platforms devices and, 6, 16, 27, 29, 31, 39, 44, 49, 69, 100, 178 digital media, 6 technologies and, 3, 39 Play ambient, 14, 27–30, 37, 56, 100, 178 collaborative, 3, 7 haptic, 4, 8, 13, 28, 36–39, 45, 61, 128 intergenerational, 4, 124, 128, 130–135, 141 modalities of, 14, 16, 17, 27, 34–36, 176 sibling, 129–135 social, 2, 4–6, 13, 14, 16, 19, 35, 44, 51, 53, 56, 65, 69, 77, 89, 94, 95, 125, 141, 145, 147, 161–163, 168, 174–178 transmedia, 62–69 virtual, 134

188 

INDEX

Playbour, 6, 85, 95, 150 PlayStation Plus, 93 virtual reality (VR), 31 PrestonPlayz, 3 See also Let’s Play Programming, 83, 158 Q Quotidian, 2, 5–9, 12, 13, 19, 28, 36, 51, 53–56, 77, 103, 110, 117, 118, 125, 141, 147, 163, 175, 176, 179 See also Quotidian platformativity R Raessens, Joost, 55 ludification, 55 Redstone, 33, 82–84, 100, 103, 104 Remediation, 93, 109 Remix, 109 Ringland, Kathryn, 8, 12, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45 autcraft, 41 diverse learning styles, 12, 38, 40 neurodiversity, 40 Role-play activities, 105 creativity, 80 games, 80 S Salen Tekinbaş, Katie, 8, 53, 145, 176 Connected Camps, 8, 145 Sandbox, 9, 16, 27, 31, 34–37, 44, 64, 79, 80, 101, 106, 146, 148 See also Open world Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM), 8 Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Maths (STEAM), 145

Sefton-Green, Julian, 4, 54 learning lives perspective, 54 Sensorial ethnography, 4, 10–14, 18 experiences, 11, 13, 39, 62 and informal, 10–14 intimacy, 18, 94 knowledges, 12 literacies, 4, 39–44 play, 8 ways of knowing, 4, 10–14 See also Multisensorial Server Minecraft, 40, 41, 43, 90, 92, 99, 108, 134, 159, 171, 179 multiplayer, 6, 68, 93 online, 6, 68 Sibling play, 134 Silverstone, Roger, 125–128, 132, 139 domestication, 125, 126 home, 126, 132 Skin, 108, 117, 140, 158 See also Avatar Skyblock, 108, 109, 118 Skype, 62, 69 See also Discord; Twitch Slogaman, 99 Socialization, 41, 44, 68, 80, 94, 110 Social literacies, 91, 145, 163 Social play, 2, 4–6, 13, 14, 16, 19, 35, 44, 51, 53, 56, 65, 69, 77, 89, 94, 95, 125, 141, 145, 147, 161–163, 168, 174–178 Software, 53, 57, 69, 81, 85, 99, 113, 117, 118 Steam, 93 Survival mode, 36–38, 78–81, 84, 90, 101, 105, 108, 110, 116, 123 See also Creative mode Sutton-Smith, Brian, 15, 29, 54 play as cultural practice, 29, 54 Swalwell, Melanie, 93, 94 local-area network (LAN), 93

 INDEX 

189

T Tactile engagement, 128 ethnography, 12 and haptic, 51 literacies, 39, 59 objects, 61 play, 64 Taylor, T. L., 92, 94, 128, 129 local-area network (LAN), 92, 94 Technobiography, 65, 66 Texture pack, 107, 108, 111 Touch, 12, 39, 40, 59, 128–130, 169, 179 theory, 11 Touchscreens, 2, 4, 11–14, 36, 59–61, 124, 128, 129 Transmedia networks, 64 platforms, 62, 69 play, 62–69 universe, 140 Tremblay, Alexandra, 85, 87, 88 on algorithmic generation, 87 Twitch, 3, 16, 18, 27, 32, 33, 62, 69, 100, 103, 167 See also Discord; Skype

space, 44, 50, 113, 133, 134, 172, 173, 177, 178 world, 6, 12, 16, 32, 35, 41, 50, 61, 129, 147, 169 Virtual reality (VR), 31

U UnspeakableGaming, 3

Y YouTube and Let’s Play, 3, 18, 33, 69, 99, 100 and Twitch, 3, 18, 32, 33, 62, 69, 100, 103, 179 watching, 17, 99, 103, 110

V Vernacular creativity, 3, 86, 100, 177 Virtual architecture, 123, 135 campus, 158 existence, 123 meetups, 145 play, 134

W Walsh, Christopher, 6, 38, 103 Williams, Raymond, 126, 171 mobile privatization, 126 Workshop ACMI, 41, 44, 145, 155 extra-curricular, 18 LEGO mindstorm, 115 media literacy, 145 Minecraft, 18, 41, 42, 44, 115, 145, 147, 155, 156, 163 school holiday, 155 serious play, 145 social play, 145, 161, 162 train-the-trainer, 156 X Xbox, 59, 107, 108 Xbox Live, 93

Z Zombie, 6, 33, 135 Zombie Cleo, 99 See also Let’s Play