Ecocomposition: writing ecologies in digital games

Abstract

This paper contributes to digital writing studies and the emergent field of game composition by exploring how writing in the PC and console editions of Mojang Studio’s Minecraft reconciles putative antagonisms between nature and technology. I suggest that writing in Minecraft models Sidney I. Dobrin and Christian Weisser’s concept of ‘ecocomposition’, which theorises that nature and discourse are co-constituents. Players’ discourse consists of the rocks, trees, dirt, water and biological matter, and this discursive matter provides a set of symbols with which they can write shelter, tools and media. Additionally, I suggest that Minecraft’s writing technology entangles writing surface and practice with nature by extending the surface of the ‘crafting grid’ across its environment. I conclude that while Minecraft’s model of ecocomposition encourages writing studies of digital games that show the connections between writing, nature and materiality, much of this early eco-game media is entrenched in Cartesian notions of plant, animal and mineral agency that reduces ecological complexity.

Keywords:

• ecocomposition
• writing studies
• holography
• digital games
• new materialisms

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kyle Matthew Bohunicky

Kyle Bohunicky is a third-year PhD student studying digital media, rhetoric and writing technologies in the University of Florida’s English Department. His teaching and research at UF merge interests in digital games and writing by designing games and guiding students through critical methods for writing and reading digital spaces. He has studied player-produced glitches as a mode of rhetorical action, as well as writing interfaces digital games like Dark Souls, The Elder Scrolls, and Okami.