From Indy to ubiquity: Minecraft as platform and infrastructure

Abstract

This article is about digital games, their evolving connections with platforms and infrastructures, and the influence that a decade of Minecraft’s development is having on this process. It begins with a discussion of previously disparate but increasingly convergent methodologies and literatures, including platform studies, media archeology, game studies, and cultural anthropological approaches to the study of infrastructure. Then, it applies points of convergence within these literatures to a political economic analysis of Minecraft that attributes its decade of growth to the systemic and metaphoric merging of platforms and infrastructures. Finally, it provides an ethnographic analysis of computers, made in Minecraft, which show how the game is not only taking on characteristics of platforms and infrastructures, but also affording a means of programming, visualizing, and experiencing platforms as infrastructure.