Abstract
Abstract This paper outlines a cultural science approach to videogames. Using the example of the independently developed Minecraft, we examine the dimensions of social learning involved in playing videogames that are characterised by relatively unscripted gaming environments. We argue that a cultural science approach offers an analytic framework grounded in evolutionary externalism, social learning and emergent institutions. We develop this framework by proposing a multiple games model of social learning.
Highlights
Videogames are a burgeoning domain of new media study (Banks, forthcoming) and economic analysis (Castronova 2005)
It explores the specific mechanisms and processes of these interactions by offering an analytic framework grounded in evolutionary externalism, social learning and emergent institutions
We have argued in this paper that videogames provide a good opportunity to study the sorts of social learning driven economic and cultural co-evolution that a cultural science can aim to elucidate
Summary
Videogames are a burgeoning domain of new media study (Banks, forthcoming) and economic analysis (Castronova 2005). It shows how gamers are playing such games in highly social spaces through new digital technological affordances This is distributed intelligence or cognition at work – enabled through a range of devices and ‘technology actors’ (as conceptualised in economic sociology) that, in the process, thoroughly mediate learning and do not just transport, convey, or deliver the content through some kind of neutral network connectivity. This ‘externalism’ (where knowledge, choice, reason and meaning are the result of relational ‘connected brains’ rather than the origin of individual action) is the basic starting point for a cultural science contribution to describing, studying, researching, modelling, and analysing videogame culture. It provides a new context for the study of innovation
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