Good evening, my name is Marie-Christine Lavoie, aka Ariel_Angel on Minecraft, and I am an undergraduate student in her last stretch and due to graduate Winter 2015.  I have been interested in Game studies since I first took William Robinson’s Engl398D Videogame course in fall 2013.  I am very interested in continuing to study videogames and am very excited to be a part of Darren Wershler’s research team.

In my previous project in Darren Wershler’s ENGL398E Videogames course, I studied Minecraft as a platform that continuously creates nostalgia. However, unlike the server we are using now, my previous project was held on a free to access, clean version of Minecraft with no additional content. Thus, this will be the second time I study this game as a cultural phenomenon that threads the digital and material worlds together.  To get started on our project, Darren suggested that we read a few articles on the Tragedy of the Commons.

In his article entitled “The Tragedy of the Commons”, Hardin suggests that

“freedom in a commons brings ruin to all”,

but is this necessarily true of Minecraft?  A commons refers to shared lands and resources which belong to whole communities – and which the community can affect.  I am sure I do not have to explain the cow-herding farmer analogy, which demonstrates how The Tragedy of the Commons functions, but gamers who play together must also share, or compete, for land.  However, sharing land, either digital or not, can bring consequences and hardships.

This week, while playing on alone on the server, I wanted to build parking lines for our project, a fried chicken franchised called BFC (Big Fried Chicken).  However, I did not build anything structurally, or aesthetically important towards the project because I felt like it needed to be a team choice.  I was afraid that my teammates would reject my personal choices, or that someone might have already come up with a system.  Thus, I contributed no substantial work that day (although I did finish the Union House – which begs to question what we are truly emulating).

Therefore, although I wanted to continue our work, I was unable because I felt I needed someone to approve my ideas (I was later very happy I did not create the yellow wool parking lines since Nic Watson create a red wire half fence that was highly appealing).  Does my experience suggest that I feel like there are rules on this server that I must follow?  Although no one specifically told us not to destroy or break anything, we still do not – and I even went so far so to remain stagnant and not build anything in fear that I would break some unspoken rule.

Without imposing rules or limitations on players, Minecraft can become a free for all, resulting in a tragedy of the commons.  Players become locked in a battle of the fittest in which everyone is out only for their own enjoyment.

For example, WordWorksExperiments had gamers play with limited resources and communication, and had no administrated rules. In the end, only one group possessed resources and prospered suspended in the sky, while the others scrounged on bedrock. This experiment has since been declared a possible hoax, but, consider any online Minecraft server with limited to no rules and you will observe the same fate; without social investment, players will take and do what they want and leave whole areas deserted and void of any resources.

Our project, on the other hand, demands co-operation and teamwork in both the gathering of resources and creation of buildings.  Our overall enjoyment of the game is thus linked with that of the other players that form not only our team, but the server in its entirety. Minecraft on its own is like an open-source program; with the purchase of the game, the player can add almost infinite amounts of additional material – and that for little to nothing. But, what causes players to relinquish certain privileges in an online server when they can just take what they want? Rules are not inherent in any one playable server; it is the player’s choice if, and what, rules they want and how to administrate them.

So, My intentions with this project is to Illustrate and understand the effects of limiting the amount of players, and which players, can access the server and under what conditions these players observe rules and thus possibly lessen their enjoyment of the game.

Further reading

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/21/minecraft-experiment-devolves-into-devastating-resource-war/#null

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full.pdf&embedded=true