Childhood’s End (or, We Have Never Been Modern, Except in Minecraft)

Abstract

This article considers Minecraft, one of the most widely played and popular video games of all time, with over 100 million copies sold. Minecraft is an open-ended strategy game about material logistics, governance, and world building. It is also about a nostalgic modernity that players desire and produce but that is everywhere complicated by the very conditions of its production. Drawing on the work of Bernhard Siegert, Svetlana Boym, Raymond Williams, James C. Scott, and Chandra Mukerji, we consider the block-, grid-, and code-level cultural techniques associated with playing the game as allegories for our increasingly complex relationship to digital culture. Minecraft is not the apotheosis of cultural domination by code as much as it is a playable parable about its complications.

Teaching with Sandbox Games: Minecraft, Game-Based Learning, and 21st Century Competencies

“…Unlike drill-and-practice games, Minecraft is explicitly marketed as a tool for cultivating 21 st century skill development with Microsoft claiming that the game "helps prepare students for the future workplace, building skills like collaboration, critical thinking and systems thinking," particularly as students navigate the "open learning environment," which "gives [them] the freedom to experiment, encouraging self-expression and problem-solving" (Microsoft, 2020c). 2 In many ways, the structure of Minecraft might lend itself to 21 st century competency building; it is seemingly devoid of an objective and does not come with an accompanying instructional manual (Apperley, 2015;Simon & Wershler, 2018); its open-endedness, and users' subsequent reliance on the player community, calls for both collaboration and communication as players devise and share tips and tutorials and creativity, as players produce modifications that ultimately "transform[] the game environment" (Cipollone et al, 2014, p. 4).…”

“…As Minecraft has been touted "one of the most widely played and popular video games of all time" (Simon & Wershler, 2018), it is not surprising that the scholarly community has taken interest in the game. Looking specifically at 21 st century competency development through the use of Minecraft, Morgan (2015) examined how the game fostered the cultivation of 21 st century skills in youth who regularly played at home.…”