timed essay question 1

 

Explain how ongoing audience interaction influences the production of video games. Refer to Minecraft to support your answer.

 

Minecraft is a virtual world of Lego with simple instructions and a vast amount of room to allow creativity and exploration. Due to its simplicity, it is fun for all ages and has easy entry for new and prospective players, with no punishment for those who are just starting out. With its humble beginnings in 2009 as a tool for programmers, it grew over time and worked its way into many facets of the internet and pop culture. Ongoing audience interactions are vital for video game production, and Minecraft makes a clear example of how it works.

Minecraft started as a niche product for people like developers and programmers; it was not a commercially viable product. Since then, it has become a franchise worth billions and is very accessible due to how it converges across many platforms and editions. The success comes from the simplicity of the sandbox format, managing to appeal to anyone through its limitless features of combat, building, and exploration. These facets of the game can be combined and overlapped, or players could choose to focus on just one aspect alone – allowing players to decide what they want their gameplay style to be. Some may spend their time fighting monsters with powerful weapons, some may spend their time creating visually appealing structures and vast cities, and some may just spend their time walking around the unique environments. These elements of gameplay appeal to the primary reason people play the game, which is for entertainment, enjoyment, and escapism. The game is extremely vast and open, with no set plot the player must abide to, allowing for near infinite gameplay. Sandbox games are often completely open to allow for players to learn at their own pace, or for experiences players to go straight into designing and creating something exciting. The sandbox elements of the game are what makes it possible to be used in schools, with the addition of Minecraft: Education Edition allowing for students to play around with more complicated science and for teachers to create their own resources that engage pupils. The game has also been used to spread information, with players having made worlds that contain a wealth of banned books from different countries. These types of worlds demonstrate the absence of a limit that players give themselves, and that they are able to create practically anything they can imagine.

The audience of the game greatly interacts with the development team, through servers for people to play on, to communities and forums to discuss and suggest improvements, and even to mass conventions that allow fans from across the globe to meet up and talk with each other about the game they all love. Community in Minecraft is undeniably strong. The popularity of Minecraft stems from a community-based platform, namely the creation of YouTube Let’s Plays, where anyone could film themselves playing the game and post it for anyone to watch and take inspiration from. These youtubers act as prosumers for the game, producing content while also consuming the game. Earlier Minecraft youtubers like Stampy and DanTDM garnered mass popularity from making stories and worlds, allowing for fans of the game to become fans of their channel, and creating possibilities for more social interaction between each other. While also growing the popularity of the channels, Minecraft youtubers actively grow the popularity of the game, as people who do not own Minecraft may be inspired to purchase it after becoming a fan of a content creator. These fans could have these Minecraft youtubers become part of their personal identity; their love for these channels are what makes them themselves. In the modern day, there has not been a fall of popularity in Minecraft YouTube content, with new content creators coming around and appealing to a younger audience, repeating the cycle of online fandom and keeping the game in the public eye, allowing for it to keep growing. There is also a modding community within the game who like to create their own features and add them in, and also work to suggest creative improvements to the developers. Modders also act as prosumers, producing playable functions that fans of the game can add to their own gameplay experience and consuming the game as a way to make it possible.

Minecraft has had countless intertextual interactions with pop culture, and many spin-off games that branch from the original source material to create a fleshed-out brand. Some of these games include Minecraft Story Mode, Minecraft Dungeons, and Minecraft Earth, all playable on a range of platforms that create more widespread audiences. These games have plot to them, building on the basis of the Minecraft world to create experiences that have intention to the audiences. As for intertextual referencing, Minecraft has been spotted in episodes of The Simpsons and South Park, referenced in Lady Gaga music videos, and in Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Recently, Steve (the avatar character of Minecraft) was added to the fighting game as a possible player. Nintendo has been releasing a couple of new characters yearly since Smash Ultimate’s release, and when faced with the reveal of Steve as a new addition, the reaction of the fans was so overwhelming and epic that Twitter experienced massive issues. This breakdown was to the same degree that occurred for Google after the death of Michael Jackson, which was immense. It is evident that Steve means a lot to fans. As an empty avatar character, fans can project whatever they want onto the player, giving him any personality they wish and seeing him as a figure to respect. This intertextuality allows for Minecraft developers to hear the outcry of active fans who constantly want more, letting them understand that they need to keep updating the game with new features.

In conclusion, The success of the game through interaction and media has allowed the makers of Minecraft to garner immense publicity from pop culture and money from sales of core games and spinoffs, with which they used to add new and exciting features to the game that fans request and that draws in new fans. Over time, the audience is improved and grows, with content creators allowing for the insertion of new and younger fans, creating a cycle in which Minecraft’s popularity remains.