In present day we have experienced many media cultural phenomenon’s that take the world by storm from video games to dances. Many of these trends often see their popularity decline as fast as they appear and watch as another short-lived trend takes its place. However, on occasion we see a text thrive in popularity for years, if not decades with no sign of slowing down. The video game Minecraft was first released in 2009 to a rocky reception only to have now gained over 100 million purchased copies; this makes it the second most popular video game ever after Tetris.
Minecraft is a sandbox video game, meaning that you are not restricted by a narrative and have full control of the environment around you. The game encourages you to explore, build and craft by giving you total freedom of your actions, allowing you to learn and grow. The game was created by the Swedish game programmer Markus Persson only to be sold to Microsoft in November 2015 for a staggering 2.5 Billion dollars. Over the 10 years of the game being released Minecraft is still as popular as ever which raises a burning question, how? The aim of this essay is to discuss how Minecraft has developed one of the biggest, most participating and diverse audiences ever seen 10 years after the original text, even though it has been the same game since 2009. I will be analysing the audience, how they participate so intensely, how the creators have managed to keep it’s audience engaged with it’s text for an entire decade through spreading it across platforms and mediums.
The concept of Transmedia is when story telling is “dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience” (Jenkins, H. 2007). However, we’ve seen this tool more recently used to further immerse a media consumer not just in the story but an entirely new world and community. This idea of immersion is supported by the founder of the concept, Henry Jenkins (2007) when he says “Transmedia stories are based not on individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds”. The birth of transmedia has allowed a single story or experience to blossom into something much greater, allowing the audience to actively participate in new and more intimate ways. By spreading the content of a fictional world across the ever-growing different mediums it allows the audience to become more easily immersed than ever in that world; if the consumer wishes they can follow the story whenever, wherever and on whatever device they please. Transmedia is by nature very interactive because it encourages the consumer to find more content on their own besides the original text meaning they can engage more in the world, creating an active audience. One large concept within transmedia is that each piece of media can stand alone and make sense. When creating new content across platforms “the embodiment of the story in each media needs to be satisfying in its own right” (Pratten, R. 2015) and make sense on it’s own. It is believed that transmedia has been done successfully when each piece of media can be self-contained and do not rely on other mediums other than the original text. This is beneficial to the consumer as it allows them to engage with whatever content they please without having to consume every piece of text written in chronological order.
The concept above is very relevant to the next concept that will be discussed: Participatory Theory. This media theory supports the idea that the audience of a text is always contributing back, collecting data, engaging in the fandom and shaping the ideas of the original creator and their text. Participatory theory isn’t always viewed from the side of the audience and it is now proclaimed that creators “now think about storytelling in terms of creating openings for consumer participation” (Jenkins, H. 2008). In recent years we have seen that content creators have set extremely low barriers for expression and ease of involvement with their text. Through discussions on social media and forums a creator can make their audiences feedback, opinions and contributions to their text feel valued and important. In modern day, it is easier than ever for the content creator to interact with their audience and create a social connection where the audience and the way they participate with the text feels appreciated. However, contrary to Jenkin’s beliefs, participation with the text isn’t always wanted or encouraged; this comes from the idea of Minimalist Media Participation and Maximalist Media Participation. Minimalist Participation means that the creator “retains strong control over process and outcome, restricting participation to access and interaction” (Carpentier, N. 2012, p. 69.) and Maximalist means the opposite. Even though both these relationship dynamics between the creator and audience oppose, the similarity is that they are both active decisions that the creator has made. The way that an audience can participate can rely on the ways that the creator of the text allows them to and what platforms they provide. This being said, Maximalist Participation is by far the more popular route for content creators to take. By giving their audience a platform and the ability to contribute they can effectively create a community or even a culture, something more powerful than an audience.
The video game Minecraft is by nature extremely interactive. With the game being a sandbox world where you can achieve, build and do anything the audience are immediately forced to be creative and contribute content to the text. Loading into a new Minecraft world and being presented with limitless choices can be extremely overwhelming for a first time player, especially as the game has no tutorial, obvious object or story line. Most of the new audience will collectively do the exact same thing: search for a tutorial on the internet; This leads to the first sub community in the many that Minecraft has to offer.
Minecraft Youtube videos are some of the biggest that fall under the ‘Lets Play’ genre to grace the internet to this day. The absolute unknown and uncertainty of beginning this game almost forces the audience to interact with the text on other platforms meaning that Minecraft has no passive audience. People who are already familiar with the game actively participate by creating their own tutorial content to help others who are new and giving back to the Minecraft community. By doing this it adds more substance to the text by adding their own commentary and humour, essentially “entertaining a mass audience through their stories about the game or around the game.” (Jacobs, H. 2015). This suggests that the reason Minecraft videos on the platfom ‘Youtube’ are so popular is because the game is a platform for people to tell and add their own story. In a game without a clear objective or story people can create and contribute their own lore to the text for the rest of the community to enjoy, dissimilar to most other texts that have a set narrative.
Minecraft’s popularity grew exponentially in 2014, in that year the only keyword searched more on Youtube was ‘music’. The success of the Youtube videos definitely correlates with the success of the game itself; people making videos on Minecraft is essentially free advertising for the game. With the amount of people making videos on this single game resulted in one of the first of many sub-communities that arose within the colossal culture of Minecraft; ‘Minecraft Youtube Let’s Players’.
Because of the Sandbox nature of Minecraft you can achieve anything. There are infinite ways to interact with the text, becoming near impossible to unify all these people under one umbrella term, resulting in the creation of sub-communities. Within the game there are collections of people who enjoy different aspects of the game and push the boundaries of that specific mechanic. A few examples of sub communities within Minecraft are: survival lets plays, house tutorials, redstone, building, 3D animation and adventure maps. Each one of these smaller communities all have a different interest within the text, however, even though there are a vast number of sub communities within Minecraft they are not divided.
Due to the amount of possibilities given within the original text “any individual is often a part of many different communities, moreover, communities can overlap and are often nested.” (Wu, M. 2010). People that join these many different sub-communities are not restricted to one and often join many. Even though these sub-communities all have different interests, they are all attracted to the same text, unifying them under one large community. Keeping in mind the extreme number of sub-communities that all co-exist under the main text it is easy to see why the audience of Minecraft is one of the biggest and most diverse seen in history.
The theory of Participatory Culture promotes that “not every member must contribute, but all must believe they are free to contribute” (Jenkins et al., 2006). Many theorist, like Jenkins, express that one of the key notions of Participating is sharing creations. The idea that the audience can contribute is heavily encouraged within Minecraft. Many players after building a house in the game will upload their creation to a forum like ‘planetminecraft.com’. Not only can a member of the audience share their creation with other members of the community, but those viewing the creation then have the opportunity to download that save file. Audience created forums for Minecraft allow the audience to shape their own platform, share their work and view and download other user’s work with ease.
In the past the audience of Minecraft have not only created their own fan-lore and canon but influenced the actual canon of the text. A fan created their own lore of Minecraft stating that the developer, Markus Persson, had a dead brother and that his ghost haunted the game; this ghost is known as Herobrine. This theory took such popularity that people started to believe it. This took Persson (2012) by surprise stating “the Herobrine stuff is awesome and kind of scary at the same time. It really shows how little control a content producer has over the content.” However, to interact with his fans and show them that their participation is welcome Persson began treating this rumour as fact and therefore introducing this theory to the canon of the text. Since then, in the patch notes of every update the game has includes the line ‘- Removed Herobrine’.
The fact that the developer recognised this fan-theory and took it on board accounts to the popularity of the story. Without the support and playfulness between the creator and the audience it would have never become such a infamous story within the community. It shows that interacting with the contributions of participating fans helps retain their engagement and contributes to how Minecraft still has an active audience after a decade.
The platforms and mediums in which Minecraft inhabits are just as diverse and creative as the text’s audience. With a massive audience of 150 million it is unsurprising that Minecraft is represented on a vast number of platforms, much of this is the responsibility of the creators but the fans also have an input in it as well. With the insane success of the game on PC it quickly moved to other platforms for the user to interact on with Persson (2015) claiming that the “decision to port the game to consoles came from a combination of player requests.” Again, this suggests the creator of the text is very aware of his audience’s opinion and he is willing to adhere to their needs in order to keep their engagement. By making the text available on more platforms it managed to sell infinitely better with over 120 million of it’s 150 million sales on all platforms excluding PC (Valentine, R. 2019).
The text also exists outside of the game with official clothing and toys, including it’s own lego set. Even without interacting with the game you can still be a part of the audience through the utilisation of Transmedia. The target audience for Minecraft is those of a younger age, predominately children to young teenagers, so the company takes full advantage of this creating copious amounts of toys which revolve around the blocks, animals and characters within the game. It is important to note that all the transmedia content that is produced by the creators is a type of transmedia called Multiplicity, meaning the “incoherence across platforms” (Roland, C. 2018). Due to the lack of narrative in the original text there is no story to follow through on different platforms. In result each platform the audience visits and interacts with, from the toys to the forums, has it’s own unique context, meaning and story.
More recently Minecraft has been used in a way making it more than just a game, many see it as a tool. In the past few years Minecraft has become an education tool with it being used in schools across the globe, especially the UK and Ireland to educate children on subjects from computer science to history.
However, Minecraft as a transmedia educational tool is very limiting because it is relies solely on technology and there is still a digital divide in some parts of the UK and certainly the world as a whole. This being said, Henry Jenkins (2015) himself exclaims that “Minecraft is our first look at the future of transmedia learning.” A platform not often considered when discussing where transmedia can transport a text is education because It is rarely done. However, Jenkins suggests that a new medium that texts can be utilised in is education and that Minecraft is pioneering that concept. It is easy to see why Minecraft has started being used in classrooms across the world, “it requires collaboration and a bunch of different skills, including maths, art and design.” (Stuart, K. 2016). Children are playing Minecraft at home daily and to bring that excitement into the platform of education is an extremely intelligent way to teach students in a highly engaging way.
One of the most ambitions transmedia elements of Minecraft is bringing it to real life, the act of bringing text into the real world through transmedia is referred to as ‘extractability’, where Microsoft hold a yearly convention exclusively for Minecraft called ‘Minecon.’
At this colossal convention the audience can interact with their Minecraft experience outside of the original text in the real world and it is even livestreamed on twitch.tv, a broadcasting service, for those who can’t make it. Again, this element of transmedia allows the audience to meet like minded people and allows them to participate even further. From analysing this case study I can see that lots of Minecraft’s business decisions are to make the text more accessible and spreading it across every platform possible so the audience always has a platform to contribute and participate.
Due to the community outgrowing the number of platforms that the developers provide the audience they have expanded past these boundaries, creating new platforms to collaborate and contribute on. When the audience need more platforms to experience and more text to indulge in they “take the next step and become prosumers” (Fiorelli, G. 2013). The idea of ‘prosumer’ comes from the audience being a producer and consumer, members of the audience who create content unpaid. The prosumer culture is massively evident in the case study, one element I will focusing on is music. Due to one of the sub communities being interested in 3D animation the audience of Minecraft transported the text to a new platform, music. Minecraft music parodies are extremely popular and due to the success of their appearance on Youtube you can now find them available on apple music and spotify, most of which come with an animation music video. A content creator known as “CaptainSparklez” was the pioneer of this new platform for Minecraft to belong on, starting a new trend and a new sub-community. This is an example of a principle within the concept of transmedia called ‘Performance’ in which the content spread across platforms is user generated content who add their own narrative.
I believe one of the biggest reasons for Minecraft’s close-knitted yet vast community was the relationship between the creator, Markus Persson, and the audience before he sold the company in 2015. Markus took a very Maximalist Participatory approach to the way that he interacted with the audience of his game. In an interview Persson (2010) exclaims that he will “add modding support… help people upload and share mods (modifying the code of the game)” when asked about what he intends to do with the community. It appears as if the creator has an extremely close connection with his audience and provides strong support for them to create and share. From an audience perspective I believe this contact and relationship with the creator of the text can make one feel included and value, giving the audience the feeling of belonging and that they are part of a bigger movement.
Reflecting on what I have discovered from analysing this case study I have found that the concept of Minecraft becoming more of a tool, regarding using it to educate, than a video game is extremely intriguing. The text was originally intended to be a video game but by audience and public participation and view it has almost shaped the meaning of the original text into something different. It has presented the question to me that if the audience views a text as more or completely different to what the creator intended it to be then does that mean the meaning of the text has changed? Can a participatory audience define a text that doesn’t belong to them?
When beginning this essay I was aware of Minecraft’s popularity, however I didn’t realise the extent of the audience participation. From researching the ways in which the audience interact, contribute and participate with the text, I have discovered that the audience are the ones contentiously shaping the future of the text and guiding it in the direction that pleases them. It is evident that the text belongs the audience which may indicate to one of the main reasons why the community is so strong and unbreakable.
In conclusion, I partly believe that the success of Minecraft is down to the text being more than a video game, it is essentially virtual lego and lego is timeless. However, it is definitely evident that a lot of the success of the game is how heavily it encourages participatory culture. The text allows you to create your own structures and stories and then encourages you to share them, that is what the game is about. Markus Persson has ingeniously created a game for people to express themselves freely and then given them a platform to contribute to. As well as this, with the vast amount of user generated content through audience participation and the platforms available, from forums to songs, it is evident that the community of Minecraft is thriving, self-sustaining and still engaged by the original text. The combination of the developers allowing and encouraging the spread Minecraft across every platform and interacting so closely with their players reveals they have successfully crafted something much more than audience, but a culture, and it’s one of the biggest cultural phenomenons the world will likely ever see.
So now I, too, will join the quiet chorus saying Minecraft is not just a game.
Henry Jenkins (2015)
References
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Jacobs, H. (2015). Here’s why PewDiePie and other ‘Let’s Play’ YouTube stars are so popular. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-lets-play-videos-are-so-popular-2015-5?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 20 May 2019].
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Valentine, R. (2019). Minecraft on PC surpasses 30m sales. [online] GamesIndustry.biz. Available at: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-03-minecraft-on-pc-surpasses-30m-sales [Accessed 20 May 2019].
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Images
Figure 1. (2019). [image] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRgFrDK8nX8&t=683s [Accessed 20 May 2019].
Figure 2. (2016). [image] Available at: http://minecraft-forum.net/minecraft-mods-downloads/1-7-10-kuda-shaders-mod-download-2/ [Accessed 20 May 2019].
Figure 3. (2010). [image] Available at: https://community.khoros.com/t5/Science-of-Social-Blog/Community-vs-Social-Network/ba-p/5283 [Accessed 20 May 2019].
Figure 4. (n.d.). [image] Available at: http://www.planetminecraft.com [Accessed 20 May 2019].
Figure 5. (2017). [image] Available at: https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/52lr3d/new_patch_notes/ [Accessed 20 May 2019].
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Videos
How To Play Minecraft For Newbies. (2013). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRgFrDK8nX8&t=683s [Accessed 20 May 2019].
The Story of Herobrine (SCARY MINECRAFT STORY). (2017). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64tbGS346Ek [Accessed 20 May 2019].
Minecraft: Crafting a Cult - An essay on Transmedia & Participation 