Sense+making

= How is the player supposed to make sense of Minecraft? How do you make sense of Minecraft? =

In any video game, one should make sense of the situations he or she goes through. The players of Minecraft should find ways to relate to the game, in other words, emerge into the #|virtual world of games. I liked playing Minecraft because I was able to make sense of it. The Creative part of the game interested me most because I virtually could build a beautiful house of my dreams. By acquiring a //virtual// identity to #|play the game, I was able to perform different tasks to build my house. First, I cleared up the ground, opened up an underground, so my house would be compact but at the same time quite large. The house became quite a sight!



//As a player you try to relate the game to real life situations. James Paul Gee author of "What #|Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy" sites that we bring our own experiences into the game our cognitive, social and cultural knowledge into situations. This knowledge is synthesised and construct patterns. This information is our #|foundation of understanding. This also applies to playing games. "Concepts are never set and finished", like life until it ends or the game is over.//

My first foray into Minecraft was like trying to read and write in an English dialect I was not very familiar with. There were clear relations between the world of Minecraft and my own world, but I still needed to learn what these relations were. I bumbled around, explored the uses of the different buttons and got a little better at using the controls, but it was not until I turned to user-created tutorials and guides (particularly [|www.minecraftwiki.net/]) that I was really able to muddle my way through Minecraft. These guides functioned as dictionaries. When I come across a word I do not know, I can find its definition in the #|dictionary and understand it at that time. However, if in the future I came across that word or tried to use it myself, I might not remember exactly what it means. I would need to read and/or write that word multiple times before it really stuck with me. Similarly, looking something up in a guide helped me better understand it but did not guarantee that I could use it in context. For example, I read in a guide how to craft a wooden sword. I knew that I needed to use a stick and two planks. However, the first few times I attempted to make a sword, I frequently forgot and tried to use all wooden planks or all sticks. It was only with practice that I was able to use what I learned in these guides.

There were times that I came across something I was not familiar with and was able to figure it out without the help of [|outside sources]. This became more frequent as I became more conversant in the dialect of Minecraft. This is parallel to what would happen when learning to read and write a new dialect; as you become more and more conversant in that dialect, you are able to make intuitive leaps, just like native speakers. For example, if standard English was the new dialect, the learner might subconsciously realize that since //dogs// means more than one dog and //cats// means more than one cat, //birds// probably means more than one bird//.// The combination of guide and practice is what allows one to make sense of a new dialect and allowed me to make sense of Minecraft.

Minecraft follows the development of civilization. First, one seeks to gather materials to build simple tools for #|shelter. Naturally, the first shelter is temporary and isn't good for long-term survival; there's no food, not enough lighting, and definitely not enough space. After moving from shelter to shelter (nomads), one finds a place that has plenty of resources. This eventually leads to stable homes and a place for storage. Farming now becomes possible and there's a system of food and safety. The expansion, exploration, and adventuring begins.