Abstract
Minecraft (Mojang 2011) is a mysterious game; it seems odd; its pixelated aesthetic seems out of place in a world where digital games are often characterized and judged by incremental increases in verisimilitude. It is not just that it looks odd, weird and blocky; the question is how do you play it? It is not immediately clear. What is clear is that the game is a hit, a hit big enough to be the theme of the South Park episode ‘Informative Murder Porn’.1 Naturally, the episode is about how unfamiliar Minecraft is for the adults of South Park. Corey Lanskin is hired to teach the adults how to play, he describes it as a game without an objective or goal, that is just about building. From the outside, his description is about right, although the experience of playing Minecraft is far from dull. It is a game that keeps on attracting players; by June 2014, nearly 54 million copies had been sold across all platforms. On the PC it has outstripped the sales of The Sims (EA Games 1999) franchise to become the biggest-selling PC game of all time (Campbell 2014). Its success brought it and the small Swedish independent company that made it — Stockholm-based Mojang — to the attention of Microsoft, which purchased Mojang and its intellectual property for $2.5 billion on 15 September 2014 (Peckham 2014). In the postdigital age, blocks and pixels are worth serious money.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Alexenberg, M. (2011) The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press.
Banks, J. (2002) Gamers as Co-Creators: Enlisting the Virtual Audience — A Report from the Net Face, in Balnaves, M., O’Regan, T. and Sternberg, J. (eds.) Mobilising the Audience. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press. 188–212.
Banks, J. (2013) Co-Creating Videogames. Houndmills: Bloomsbury.
Baumgartel, T. (8 March 2005) Essay on Game Art and medienkunstnetz, nettime. http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-1-0503/msg00026.html, accessed 9 March 2015.
Berry, D. M. (2014) Critical Theory and the Digital. New York: Bloomsbury.
Berry, D. M., van Dartel, M., Dieter, M., Kasprzak, M., Muller, N., O’Reilly, R. and de Vicente, J. L. (2012) New Aesthetics, New Anxieties. Amsterdam: V2.
Bittanti, M. (2006) Game Art: (This Is Not) a Manifesto (This Is) a Disclaimer, in Bittanti, M. and Quaranta D. (eds.) Gamescenes: Art in the Age of Videogames. Milan: Johan and Levi. 7–14.
Bolter, J. D. and Grusin, R. (1999) Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Briz, N. (2011) Glitch Art Historie[s]/Contextualizing Glitch Art — A Perpetual Beta, in Briz, N., Meaney, E., Menkman, R., Robertson, W., Satrom, J. and Westbrook, J. (eds.) Gli.t/ch 20111: Reader [ROR]. Amsterdam/Chicago: Unsorted Books. 53–57.
Campbell, E. (29 April 2014) Minecraft Sales Surpass 15 Million Copies on PC. IGN Australia. http://au.ign.com/articles/2014/04/29/minecraft-sales-surpass-15-million-copies-on-pc, date accessed 20 October 2014.
Cascone, K. (2000) The Aesthetics of Failure: ‘Post-Digital’ Tendencies in Contemporary Computer Music, Computer Music Journal 24(1): 12–18.
Chun, W. K. C. (2015) Networks NOW: Belated Too Early, in Berry, D. M. and Dieter, M. (eds.) Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 290–316.
Cloninger, C. (2011) GltchLnguistx: The Machine in the Ghost/Static Trapped in Mouths, in Briz, N, Meaney, E., Menkman, R., Robertson, W., Satrom, J. and Westbrook, J. (eds.) Gli.t/ch 20111: Reader [ROR]. Amsterdam/Chicago: Unsorted Books. 23–41.
Consalvo, M. (2007) Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Boston: MIT Press.
Cramer, F. (2015) What Is Post Digital?, in Berry, D. M. and Dieter, M. (eds.) Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 12–28.
Galloway, A. R. (2006) Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Gesualdi, V. (15 November 2011) Notch Calls Minecraft’s Creepers ‘a Mistake’, Gamezone. http://www.gamezone.com/news/notch-calls-minecraft-s-creepers-a-mistake, date accessed 16 October 2014.
Goriunova, O. and Shulgin, A. (2008) Glitch, in Fuller, Matthew (ed.) Software Studies: A Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 110–118.
Groys, B. (2010) Going Public. Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Heidegger, M. (2001) The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Keogh, B. (2013) When Game Over Means Game Over: Using Permanent Death to Craft Living Stories in Minecraft. In Refereed Proceedings of Interactive Entertainment. http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2520000/2513572/a20-keogh.pdf?ip=129.94.8.134&id=2513572&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&key=65D80644F295BC0D%2EB811333C2AA88C82%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35&CFID=485871237&CFTOKEN=75130257&_acm_=1425894588_feed59e0fcl793e5dda51f3918cdl2d9, accessed 9 March 2015.
Kline, S., Dyer-Witheford, N. and de Peuter, G. (2003) Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Krapp, P. (2011) Noise Channels: Glitch and Error in Digital Culture. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.
Kücklich, J. (2005) Precarious Playbour: Modders and the Digital Games Industry, The Fibreculture Journal 5. http://five.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-025-precarious-playbour-modders-and-the-digital-games-industry/, date accessed 9 March 2015.
Lomas, N. (27 November 2012) Minecraft Raspberry Pi Edition to Help Kids Learn to Code While They Build, TechCrunch. http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/27/minecraft-raspberry-pi-edition-to-help-kids-learn-to-code-while-they-build/, date accessed 17 October 2014.
Manovich, L. and Tifentale, A. (2015) Selfiecity: Exploring Photography and Self-Fashioning in Social Media, in Berry, D. M. and Dieter, M. (eds.) Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 109–122.
McCormack, T. (2011) Code Eroded: At GLI.TC/H 2010, RHIZOME, October 2010, in Briz, N., Meaney, E., Menkman, R., Robertson, W., Satrom, J. and Westbrook, J. (eds.) Gli.t/ch 20111: Reader [R0R]. Amsterdam/Chicago: Unsorted Books. 15–19.
Menkman, R. (2011) The Glitch Moment(um). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.
Mojang (2011) Minecraft. Mojang.
Paul, C. and Levy, M. (2015) Genealogies of the New Aesthetic, in Berry, D. M. and Dieter, M. (eds.) Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 27–43.
Peckham, M. (15 September 2014) Minecraft Is Now Part of Microsoft, and It Only Cost $2.5 Billion, Time. http://time.com/3377886/microsoft-buys-mojang/, date accessed 20 October 2014
Potter, J. (2012) Digital Media and Learner Identity: The New Curatorship. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Reilly, L. (25 February 2014) Original Minecraft Reaches 100 Million Registered Users, IGN Australia. http://au.ign.com/articles/2014/02/26/original-minecraft-reaches-100-million-registered-users, date accessed 19 October 2014.
Silverman, M. (1 October 2010) Minecraft: How Social Media Spawned a Gaming Sensation, Maskable. http://mashable.com/2010/10/01/minecraft-social-media/, date accessed 19 October 2014.
Stearns, P. (2011) Error, Noise, Glitch: The Art of the Algorithmic Unconscious, in B. Gaulon (ed.) DeFunct/ReFunct. Dublin: Rua Red. http://ruared.ie/Documents/defunct_refunct_catalogue_web.pdf, date accessed 9 March 2015.
Stockburger, A. (2007) From Appropriation to Approximation, in Clarke, A. and Mitchell, G. (eds.) Videogames and Art. Bristol: Intellect. 94–106.
Suits, B. (1978) The Grasshopper: Games, Life, Utopia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Swink, S. (2009) Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Wark, M. (2006) Gamer Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Thomas Apperley
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Apperley, T. (2015). Glitch Sorting: Minecraft, Curation and the Postdigital. In: Berry, D.M., Dieter, M. (eds) Postdigital Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137437204_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137437204_18
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49378-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-43720-4
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)