Ethnographic Blog Entry Two

I returned to my previous server called “Team9000 Public (team9000.net)” to check out if the area I had demarcated was still intact.

However, most servers including mine appeared to be offline. I headed over to my server’s Wikipage but I couldn’t figure out the problem. In line with this week’s reading, I conjured up an alternative plan to learn about customization of my own avatar skin, given how envious I was at those players in their own spiffy outfits.

It turned out that anyone could have their skins changed regardless of rank or position, simply by clicking on “Profile” and then uploading the desired skin on the website.

I began searching for skins at minecraftskins.com which was at the point of time hosting an impressive database of 33196 skins created entirely by the community. I was in awe that the community never failed to upload at least one fresh skin every hour. I downloaded the Hello Kitty‘s and Team Fortress 2 Engineer’s skins to play with later.

Alas, the most simple and direct method of uploading a new skin via the Minecraft website continually gave me an error.

Luckily, I found another way that was pretty much like cracking/hacking the game as demonstrated by the video below.

All I had to do was to replace the default “char.png” with my new “char.png” inside the bin folder and then start the game.

Here was how the original “char.png” file looked. This would later be mapped to the 3D player avatar.

I did a bit of tinkering by using Paint program to colour his eyes and shirt to evoke a fiery, demonic aura. But I didn’t export this skin in the end as the background was black and non-transparent. Apparently, my artistic skill wasn’t good enough to render the background transparent 😦

A better aid in customising skins would be to use a third-party editor called SkinEdit. It neatly dissects the painting area into corresponding body parts and modifications are immediately reflected on the 3D avatar.

Anyway, above were the results of changing to the Hello Kitty (middle) and Engineer (right).

Playing as Hello Kitty was a refreshing yet awkward moment for me. Don’t worry, I certainly won’t be using this skin for long.

Also, there were many other programs and editors including speed hack, map editor and texture packs left to be explored. Surprisingly, all these “ludic mutation” tools were unplanned by the designers, despite Minecraft being a sandbox game supposedly “designed to be reconfigurable from the start”. Utilising these tools provides the player more options to develop – whether intentionally or not – lucid elements from paidia. Somewhat following the playground example from “The Anarchy of Paidia” article, a player can compare the number of downloads of his skin creation with others (agon), randomly generate levels (alea), be anyone with the appropriate skin (mimicry) and fly around the world with speed hack (ilinx).

Interestingly, despite many years of opportunities for Minecraft as a host to commodify its play material, opts for a free-flowing, open-ended ludic mutation of its play material. One reason could be that commodification is a huge and tedious process that Mojang AB, being a small of team of seven, would likely want to avoid. Another reason could be that ludic mutation in Minecraft mostly occurs with outward appearance rather than the interaction of play material, eliminating any complexities that might arise from game balancing issues. Hence, I’m wondering under what circumstances would it be beneficial for companies to commodify on their play material while facilitating optimal level of ludic mutation — that is arguably one of the main driving forces in forging game communities that can stand the test of time.