Decentralization of the player: Minecraft and the sensory dimension of the player-game communication

Abstract

For the video game industry to function and expand, it needs to create productive and creative methods that aim to predict and prescribe the actions and behaviors of its players. In this sense, it develops ways to centralize the player as the key criterion that guides all decisions that lead the construction of a gameworld. In 2009, however, Minecraft appears as a radical break in the history of the industry, reversing in all aspects the notion that the player is the center of the gameworld. The aim of this paper is to understand this inversion, which we will call decentralization of the player. We defend that its emergence exposes the need to epistemologically rethink the connection between game and player. We take this task as the objective of this work, approaching it in three stages: first, defining the phenomenon of decentralization as a kind of weaving that connects player and game. Secondly, deepening the material dimension of the experience of acting in a game world. Finally, radicalizing the notion of decentralization, identifying it as a potential force in any game.

Keywords: Video games. Minecraft. Gameworld. Sensoriality.