Thread by @enibolas

Day 10/10 of the anti-racist #gamestudies thread series

Thus ends my journey with a hot take on coloniality in game-based learning.

"I don’t think you’re going to have any aborigines in your world" by Ligia López López, @LarsdeWildt and @nikkimoodie_

tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108…

How is Minecraft used in Australian schools to reproduce colonial myths and erase Indigenous presence?

Using Indigenous observation methods, the authors “enter the classroom with suspicion” and in solidarity with youth potentially resisting against top-down curricular goals.

Geography matters when putting findings in the context of colonisation:

The observed classroom is located on Wurundjeri land/east Melbourne, invaded in 1856 by the British. Now the school teaches ‘21st century skills’, using innovative tools like Minecraft.

What’s the role of Minecraf in teaching ’21st century skills’? 1) it’s one of the best-selling games ever (bought by Microsoft for $2.5bio dollars in 2014) so it’s a key element of global youth culture 2) its versatile sandbox form allows the teaching of arts, history, geography.

A major selling point is that Minecraft seems devoid of a pre-set narrative and specific goals. This has been marketed in terms of player ‘freedom’.

The Minecraft promo pages promises nothing less than an “immersive environment where the only limit is your imagination”.

The authors observe how this promise echoes the much criticised charity speak we know from projects like the Gates Foundation.

It’s billionaires telling us that we have an equal shot at greatness if we just keep working and expand our ‘imagination’ (and their bank accounts).

How does this 'freedom' of imagination look in Minecraft?

In survival mode we get rewards for invasive activities - the world is free to grab. No enemies, animals or villagers speak or progress. They “primarily exist to be exploited, domesticated, ignored, or destroyed”.

2 techniques allow players to defend colonies against Minecraft enemies: fortification and illumination. The rational ‘progress’ of our land mirrors what we know from the stranded Robinson Crusoe: Become a successful property owner through hard work.

Minecraft's entrepreneurial success legend of a hard-working dude is as fictional as the origin story. While ‘Notch’ is credited as Minecraft’s sole creator, the “production process drew heavily on free, anonymous labour from online communities” in the form of user-made mods.

This production context is a significant parallel to what the young students are encouraged to learn from the game during Australian history lessons:

They become tech-empowered conquerors that “rehearse mythical processes of imperial colonisation” while erasing others.

This takes us to the ‘terra nullius’ (empty land) doctrine, a legal order which allowed the British to claim uninhabited land. The doctrine legally ended in 1992, but its effects are wide-ranging, and repeated in the playful curriculum.

terra nulius uses a model of human development to justify the erasure and dispossession of ‘Aboriginal’ territories. Native people are ‘nomadic’ and therefore declared nonexistent. This logic is repeated in how Minecraft is implemented in schools. First real law, now curricu-law.

How is this practically done? First, by dividing ‘colonisation’ and ‘aborigines’ into 2 curricular topics. That way, colonisation is sanitised and rationalised. Indigenous presence is discussed as separate topic and framed as unrelated to the ‘rational’ principles of settlement.

Secondly, of these 2 subjects, less space is made for ‘indigenous’ matters, including the Minecraft lesson: “‘Aboriginal’ people and their homes had no right to be part of the colonizable and Minecraftable landscape, no right to be a part of the success criteria for this lesson.

The authors observe how teachers frame this in terms of time. ‘Aboriginal’ topics are "past" topics & contribute 0 to the ‘21st century’ Minecraft lesson.

"Now" we learn about colonisation, a seemingly rational, straightforward thing. Own land, build a structure. No questions.

Third, the terra nullius myth is reinforced through the curricular focus on ‘building’ and ‘creating’ worlds. Rather than stumbling over something that exists, the creator (like Captain Cook, the Minecraft player, or another settler) is the first who creates and possesses it.

For critical students, it’s difficult it is to challenge this discourse in the classroom.

Garry, who ignores the teacher instruction and brings up the issue of Indigenousness is stopped by a classmate:

“We are not learning that, we are learning what the colonies looked like.”

Overall, it's a culturally specific study which inspired me to think about the subtle impact of Minecraft in other different contexts:

What does Minecraft do to confirm my European colonial bias? And what does the promise of ‘free’ play actually do to repeat structural racism?

We have reached the end of this series.
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thank you so much for reading and supporting this project.

I am overwhelmed with your interest and hope you have enjoyed the ride as much as I have.

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