Ethnographic Blog Entry One

I’ve decided to hop on the bandwagon and try out Minecraft, a sandbox building game where players can build anything out of textured cubes from a first person perspective. Currently, the multiplayer aspect of the classic version offers creative and survival modes. I’ve no idea what survival mode is at the moment, but my initial impression of the creative mode feels very much like a collaborative LEGO building session.

There were a list of servers to choose from but ultimately I entered one called “Team9000 Public (team9000.net)” as it was highly populated with 105 people at that moment and can host a maximum capacity of 120 people, thus somewhat simulating a Massively Multiplayer Online environment that would be more appropriate for this ethnographic study. Upon entering the server, I was greeted with a huge signboard that signals the commands I could input in my chat box.

I typed “/rules” and to my utter dismay I had to be above “guest” rank in order to start building in the world.

Behind me was the spawning area, presumably a bunch of commoners like me with the default looking Minecraft Guy avatars.

There was a player who stood out  with a white shirt and a tie outfit. He could jump furiously up and down in the air, a feat which I sadly couldn’t attempt. I wanted to ask if he was someone of a higher rank, but he eventually disappeared before I could keep track of his user ID.

Then I transited to the sprite world via the input “/j museum”, and beautiful collages of  famous characters from games and anime unfolded before me as I traversed the bridge. Building 2D sprites was definitely an alternative option to building a 3D structure for example.

Yet again, another character in a Tron outfit stood out from the rest. Clearly, avatars are customisable but when and how is the question.

Typing “/j guest”  brought me to guest world where I could finally start building something awesome and impress the moderators or destroy others’ work and face a ban.

So I decided to play nice and explored around the haphazard world to find an undesignated spot where I can eventually start building.

That took me around 5 minutes before I found a small patch of grass that I believed I could work on even though it may be someone’s else property like a garden for example. It intrigued me to how the community actually come to a consensual agreement on which terriority to build on.

Anyhow, I demarcated and reserved my area using red bricks as the outline and filled the inner portion with leaves. What will others think of it? An abstract art or an illogical nuisance? Hopefully it’s still there in my next visit.

Play to me has always been about defining winning goals for the player(s) right at the start. But I realised this isn’t so as Caillois’s six characteristics of play may include goals as part of rules. Just like what Will Wright says, even though “sandbox” games isn’t imposing the goal structures on me, I was gradually imposing my own goal structures onto the game, like demarcating and reserving an area. Also, Minecraft like most MMORPGs  seem to contradict Callois’s statement about games “having to start and end at a given signal”. The game still persist on indefinitely despite players leaving for whatever reasons.

By right, Minecraft should be a paidia game but I realised there’s a possibility that overpopulation on this particular server has slightly shifted it to ludus in order to manage the chaos brought about by more people. Through that mutation, agon and alea had been introduced due to greater land competition and waiting for a chance for promotion respectively. What other factors will turn paidia to ludus and vice versa?