post #32: Minecraft ecologies (don't exist)
wowowowowowowowwww. i have just seen one of best video essay i ever seen
Klei_Wright's "Why Mojang struggles to design Ecologies" makes a number of crucial gestures and interventions when it comes to the Minecraft criticism and ecological design spaces.
-
ecology as a fiction. this is an important baseline to draw. ecology does not really work in the ways our models say it does-- there is not really sustainability or these closed circuits, but the fantasy still does something and points to something and an awareness of ecology can lead to positive outcomes.
-
Minecraft cannot be ecological because it has genocidal settler-colonial logic at its core (this is said in all but the words themselves; i am extending the gestures made into the video into saying this statement because i believe it is true; note though that the video doesn't go all the way with its indictment of Minecraft and its systems).
-
Minecraft cannot be ecological because (Minecraft is a multinational capitalist entity that ultimately is concerned about profit incentive first and foremost). again, this is my gesture of extending what was set in motion by the video. the video notes that Minecraft's design principles seem to be fundamentally at odds with truly ecological perspectives. but the video is saying that maybe this is an accident or maybe it can be changed or maybe it is a product of current leadership. i am saying, no. it is a product of the ideologies that Minecraft has been built around since the beginning. there cannot be a Minecraft existing at mass scale that is truly ecological; the white supremacist roots will constantly reemerge because that is the basis of capitalism that facilitates the very existence and proliferation of the game itself.
-
players say they want motion; but Minecraft cannot give them what they want; players are gesturing at the wrong thing; but they cannot gesture at the right thing; buildstone and firefly bushes and copper golems and... are all just a temporary fix -- an effort to patch over the rotting base reality of just what the fictions of Minecraft's core system's truly entail. you can want all these things but the game is this solipsistic fantasy; this is what its systems work towards and what it is. this can cultivate positive things, to be sure -- Minecraft as a space for catharsis of different types -- but it will always fall short if the want is for Minecraft to be active or to fill these gaps that it cannot truly meet.
-
the one main mistake i think this video makes is its belief in conservation -- that this is an end to things; and its belief that Minecraft's raising awareness and donating to pandas' and bees' preservation is somehow an end. conservation is a broken philosophy (and i think the video knows this in some way; this is why it frames ecology as first and foremost a fiction) and it is a discretely Western philosophy. of course, it is important to engage in practices as what conservation claims it wants to do-- to foster vitality and life in things. but simply to protect things from human intervention, this is broken and is too a violent act premised on suppressing certain ways of living and being. but again, the video knows this. i think its reference to conservation is in some ways incidental. the video is definitely talking about conservation ideologies, but it also sort of isn't. at base, what it means by conservationism is that resource extractivism must be warded against and disincentivized by the base systems etc. of the game.
-
ecology as a gesture toward beauty. this is the point of it all, i think. this is what it's about. this is why it matters. this is what we do it for. this is what beauty is and this is what ecology is and this is what life is. this is why Team Flare have a broken ideology in X & Y -- they cannot think ecologically.
a final question i'm left with is, why does Minecraft do what it does? and why does it not do what it doesn't? it includes pandas and bees to raise awareness and support conservation efforts. and this matters, even though i think not as much as they want to say it matters. but also, the belief that these are important signs is not an original one. there is research to back these claims (for bees especially), but i cant help but wonder about all the species and animals and other things which do not get attention yet which are playing an even more crucial role in their respective ecological spaces. this is not about Minecraft at this point, i suppose. but i think Minecraft is an example where we can think about it. it matters that Minecraft includes certain things and doesn't others. these signs mean things. what parties have these vested interests?, can, i think, be an important question to ask. there are politics and power exchanges and economies and ... involved in these actions. it can be worth paying mind to or otherwise being aware of that fact. why are these examples used? are there better ones out there? i don't have answers necessarily. and i realizie it can sometimes just be a matter of expediency of things (which i suppose is an answer), but i feel like it's worth being mindful and of maybe someday searching for some (answers). cuz minecraft is, like i said, a multinational capitalist entity. it's a bit naive to think its all the time just acting out of global mindfulness.
player criticism can point to some of the right things, even as it draws marks in the wrong places in the process. i think people are able to tell when things aren't working correctly. probably it's hard to figure out how to get them to work right or to identify exactly correctly just where it is that they r going wrong. but people are receptive to things and especially when those things are going even just the littlist bit wrong. and there's a lagging to it. between when the problems emerge and when people are being vocal about them or developing the language to try to speak about them. and so that makes it hard too.
get what you can from where you're at . know that your world is against you and the rest of it . but know too that ur world is not the only one -- not the only way to be . we can do better, sometimes even just for ourselves is all we need to be