BY KEYAN WOZNIAK
Does media we consume as kids affect how we perceive and interact with nature as we grow up? Mojang, the game development company that makes Minecraft, an open-world sandbox game with survival that simulates our world, seems to think so. Minecraft is a game where the player is allowed to freely roam, explore, and survive in a world composed of 3D blocks that can be destroyed, created and placed as the player chooses. Despite the different look, the game is meant to simulate our reality on some level and the world in which the player starts is filled with grass, dirt, stone and trees much like our own. The main element of the game is its survival aspect. When the game begins, players start out in the open world that is created on the spot with nothing but their fists. They have to progress by using wood, stone, then iron tools all the while discovering new
natural biomes which have a variety of different ecosystems and materials. Slowly but surely, the player must form a relationship with the unfamiliar world around them. And much like in the real world, that relationship is formed through various interactions with nature. To avoid starving, players have to eat and sustain their health and one can do that in a number of ways. There are animals, cows, sheep, and pigs that players can kill for food as well as wheat, carrots and other crops that can be farmed and are-self-replenishing. To avoid hostile creatures, the player must chop down a tree and build a shelter and a bed. And as the player gains experience, they begin to exert more influence on the world which in turn becomes even more open, a balance forms. The destructible nature of the world encourages players to take the existing nature and transform it to their benefit, or destroy it and rebuild everything as they please. They are able to decide what they want to create and how, yet still rely on the mechanics of the world to stay alive. This balance of survival and freedom has made Minecraft one of the bestselling and most popular games of all time, being owned by millions of people worldwide.
Every year or so, Mojang adds a new animal to the game with the most recent being frogs. However, in 2018 when Mojang was preparing to add another animal, a popular option that the community wanted in the game were sharks. Interestingly enough, in the live-streamed reveal, one of the developers mentioned the logic behind not adding a shark into the oceans of the game. According to her, the internal team had suggested that having sharks in the game as an aggressive creature might spill over into the real world, where sharks are endangered, demonized and generally not aggressive toward humans. This idea is backed up by several studies done on the perception of wild animals and it’s impacts. Movies like Jaws were documented to cause hysteria over sharks and the release of these movies are often followed by an increase in the rates of shark deaths. The developer mentioned that the team did not want to further this stereotype of sharks by adding them into the game, because they don’t want to normalize the idea of an aggressive animal that should be killed. Another case where the developers had similar motivations is when parrots were implemented. Something I didn’t mention above is that most animals in Minecraft can be tamed, however every animal requires a unique item to tame them. When parrots were first introduced, they could be tamed with cookies which despite having the generic name, heavily resembled chocolate chip. In real life though, even a small bit of chocolate is lethal to parrots, and in turn the community were outraged because this is one of the first thing parrot owners learn. Within a few days the developers released a patch that changed the item required to seeds. They also released a statement in the patch notes saying they never meant to possibly cause harm and that the team does keep the real-life implications of their choices in mind when developing. However, they didn’t remove the ability to feed a cookie to a parrot, instead what happens if you feed a parrot a cookie now is it begins to give of sickly green particles before instantly dying. Although this seems cruel, I actually think it is better to implement a mechanic like this rather than removing it completely, but I will cover this later. Since then, the team has added more tame-able animals and none that can be killed and eaten. Dogs have been in the game for a while, but cats have been added as well as dolphins, ocelots, bees and polar bears (Another idea that was extremely popular among the community was the suggested ability to ride dolphins, but the developers shot that down for similar reasons).
So, how much does the game actually influence or inform the decisions of people in the real world? Minecraft also has many fantasy elements, like zombies and giant spiders which attack the player once night falls, that don’t exist in the real world, but do the inclusion of these elements change the ones that resemble real life? I would argue that the game doesn’t really change people’s actions, but rather it influences their perception of nature in a positive way. The balance between survival and control that I mentioned earlier is the biggest reason for this in my opinion. A survival minecraft player has almost complete control of landscape and look of their world, yet they have no control over it’s ecosystem. The player still needs food, and that inherent need mediates the relationship one has with the nature around them. Despite violence being a featured part of the game, it is also a featured part of real life and it is not treated any different in game. Just like a player has to kill sheep and cows to get food from them, they also have to feed and breed them in order to avoid killing all of them. Additionally, almost every animal has a unique secondary use other than food. Bees can be used to harvest honey which can then be used in a number of different ways. Sheep drop wool when sheared, cats discourage certain hostile creatures from coming near you, and dogs will loyally attack anything that harms you. The game forcibly encourages a symbiotic relationship with the animals in the world rather than one of total domination, but does so through the game’s but in mechanics. Circling back to the example of parrots we see this philosophy in play. A player can feed a parrot cookies if they want, but the game will punish them for it. Similarly, the inherent need for shelter will mediate the relationship the player has with their environment. A player can make the choice to dominate the world if they want and flatten everything around them, but this makes surviving extremely inconvenient and tedious. Again, the core mechanics of the game are designed around survival alongside the world rather than against. Finally, I think the game encourages a true reciprocal relationship with nature because the player is never given any direction, advice, or a name. When a player enters a new world, they are effectively starting the relation to nature from scratch and are able to experience it in a different way than before. Instead of knowing everything and applying that outside knowledge onto the world, a new player is required to learn from the nature around them. This fosters a fuller and richer relationship with nature than if the game immediately told you how everything works because it precludes any bias the developers might have and allows the player to create their own methods and their own definitions which are every bit as valid as another. Ultimately, I believe Minecraft is a game which positively effects the perception of nature for those who play by encouraging a truly reciprocal relationship with the world they inhabit.
Works Cited:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/05/no-more-cookies-for-minecrafts-parrots-following-complaints/
Robin Wall Kimmerer. Braiding Sweetgrass : Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Vol First edition. Milkweed Editions; 2013. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspxdirect=true&db=nlebk&AN=683745&site=ehost-live&scope=site