“Josef Nguyen took a look at similarities between the computer world-building game Minecraft and pieces of fiction like Robinson Crusoe, which rely heavily on the creation of a new world”
“An assistant professor of game studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, Nguyen engages science and technology studies and media studies in his research, focusing on the politics of play, toys, and games.”
“Minecraft is not only related to Robinson Crusoe but a whole network of other world-building tools, including other island narratives like Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), educational toys and construction blocks, and psychological and social theories of creativity.”
“society is a precondition for recognizing someone or something as creative, even if creativity is often couched as a conflict between an individual and society.”
“People worry about digital games leading to idleness, antisocial behavior, and violence, and those concerns have lurked for several decades, Minecraft is treated as an exception, particularly as it is increasingly framed as an educational game or a platform for educational play at home and in schools.”
“Minecraft foregrounds that creativity is not and should not be understood as creating something completely new. Creativity always reconfigures existing materials, but in previously unaccounted for ways; it is incremental.”
“What counts as unaccounted for or novel is contextually and situationally specific rather than universally new. This is how recognizing the necessity of society is crucial for defining creativity, since creativity is commonly framed as the excess of social convention and tradition.”
“As such, different social and historical contexts provide different conditions for recognizing something as creative; recognizing something as creative is largely a social process itself.”