Minecraft’s Affective World Building

Abstract

The internet and gaming offer considerable potential for kids’ affective expression, a realm that has been largely ignored in the valorization of digital literacy and its focus on technological skills. In this chapter, I argue that the popular game Minecraft exhibits a Deleuzian kind of becoming, in which subjects are constantly maneuvering and experimenting as they construct their own worlds as well as collaborative spaces. Because the game has sprawled across technologies and led to the creation of so many spin-off products, it provides a unique space for seeing how children construct themselves through their relationship to this broadly defined “text.” In addition to the games and their products, I rely on commentary by children: my son Ezra, his friends, and YouTube users, all of whom contribute to the construction of an “archive of feelings” that is largely unregulated by adult efforts to name and govern. This archive is also part of the construction of a community of kids who, although often not physically in the same space, form social relationships.