Minecraft and Super Mario as enacted in a preschool setting: Children's engagements with digital popular culture beyond player–interface–screen ecologies

Abstract

The present paper explores how the video games of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted through children's play, material settings and toys in a Swedish preschool. Ethnographic methods, including participant observations and informal conversations, have been used and the empirical materials produced have been analyzed with methodological resources from Actor-Network Theory. The analysis focuses on how Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted through relations between children's bodies, physical movements as well as material interiors and exteriors of the preschool. Moreover, the analysis shows how multiple versions of the games of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted in the preschool setting depending on what elements become active in a particular situation. On the whole, the findings of the paper question grand narratives on “active” and “passive” gameplaying children, featuring children and local settings as producers of digital popular culture.

Introduction

Children's digital popular cultural gameplay exists within a highly polarized discourse (Mavoa et al., 2017; Narine and Grimes, 2009). Mustola et al. (2018) refer to ideas of the “passive” and the “active” child, where the first refers to mechanical consumption of digital game content while the second points to social and creative children interacting with digital games. The active and creative child which becomes postulated within this discourse is assumed to develop cognitive skills related to strategic thinking. At the same time, the gameplaying child is described as risking physical passivity and bad health, such as obesity, from spending too many hours at the screen each day (Robinson et al., 2017). In times of Covid-19, with quarantines, curfews and restrictions on children's mobility, these debates have become intensified (WHO, 2020). Research on hybrid gameworlds in early childhood education and gaming studies has come a long way in describing the blurred boundaries between children's digital worlds and their physical worlds (Arnott et al., 2018; Edwards et al., 2020; Marsh et al., 2019). For example, concepts like co-presence, digital play, collaboration, collusion and entanglement have been used to describe digital and physical worlds as co-constituted in children’s gameplay (Fleer, 2017; Giddings, 2017; Richardson and Hjort, 2017; Schneier and Taylor, 2018). The present study adds to this research through focusing on children's off-screen interactions (Aarsand and Melander Bowden, 2019) with the games of Minecraft and Super Mario through physical play in a preschool. The present study argues that these interactions create spaces where the games of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted in new ways. Using ethnographic methods of participant observations and informal conversations, the present study will focus on the spaces created through children's interactions with the games of Minecraft and Super Mario in a Swedish preschool, where neither Minecraft nor Super Mario are formally allowed as video games or as toys brought from home. The following research questions will be addressed: Through what relations between human and nonhuman elements are the games of Minecraft and Super Mario enacted in a preschool setting? In what ways do these relations enact the games of Minecraft and Super Mario in multiple versions in a preschool setting?

In this endeavor, Actor-Network Theory (ANT) will be used to explore what elements, such as children's bodies, physical movements, as well as material interiors and exteriors, become active in producing the games of Minecraft and Super Mario in the preschool setting (Latour, 2005). Moreover, ANT adds through claiming reality as always produced in multiple versions depending on the human and nonhuman elements involved in a particular situation (Mol, 2002). Adapted to the present study, the concept of versions will be used to show how the preschool setting, including children and materialities, come to produce the games of Minecraft and Super Mario in new ways. This way of studying children's use of digital popular cultural games questions grand narratives on “passive” and “active” children prevalent in the debate on children's gameplay and early childhood education (Gallagher and Knox, 2019). Ultimately, this features children and local settings as producers rather than merely consumers of digital popular cultural media (Melander Bowden, 2019; Willett, 2018).

The paper consists of the following sections; first a section will introduce the games of Minecraft and Super Mario. Next, a section on previous research within gaming studies and digital play in early childhood education will be presented. Following is a section on the methods and theoretical framework of the study. Thereafter the results of the study will be presented followed by a discussion and conclusion regarding the findings of the study.

The games of Minecraft and Super Mario

Minecraft is described as a “sandbox game,” which means that it is a game where the player has the ability to create, modify or destroy their environment. This implies that Minecraft is a game that includes a game-creation system (Marsh, 2019; Mojang, 2020). The term “sandbox” here alludes to a child's sandbox where the child can create and destroy with no given objective. Minecraft can also be described as a kind of digital Lego and is graphically designed from square and rectangular shaped blocks. The blocks are made out of for example tree, stone, sand, iron, and water. By moving around in the game-world the player can add new blocks to the worlds or destroy old blocks. In this way, the player creates their own world terrain. The characters in Minecraft range from heroic explorers and builders to annoying zombies, evil creepers, and mysterious Endermen with the ability to teleport themselves to other worlds. The main characters among the explorers and creative builders are named Steve and Alex.

Super Mario, on the other hand, is a Japanese platform game series featuring the character Mario (Nintendo, 2020). The Super Mario games follow Mario's adventures, typically in the fictional Mushroom Kingdom with Mario as the player character. He is often joined by his brother, Luigi, and occasionally by other members of the Mario cast. As in platform video games, the player runs and jumps across platforms and stops enemies in themed levels. The games have simple plots, typically with Mario rescuing the kidnapped Princess Peach from the primary antagonist, Bowser. The gameplay concepts and elements prevalent in nearly every Super Mario game include a multitude of power-ups and items that give Mario special powers such as fireball-throwing and size-changing into both giant and miniature sizes.

In the present study, the children bring together features and characters across these two games that they have played separately. It is, however, vital to acknowledge that the story worlds of Minecraft and Super Mario are often blended and presented to children in cross-franchise forms. In the next section of the paper, the body of research produced within the area of game studies and education with relevance for the current study will be presented.

Previous research: Gameplace-events, co-presences, gameworlds, and digital play

The present study adds to and engages in conversations with previous research on children's gameplay that in different ways attends to gameplay in terms of places and events that connect social, material, and digital worlds. Specifically, research focusing on local settings, such as preschools, schools, home environments, and hospitals, taking part in producing digital popular culture will be featured. Thus, the studies that I’ve chosen to include are made both inside and outside of educational settings. As no studies on Super Mario as produced in local settings have been found, this section is focused on Minecraft gameplay in local settings. The connections between material and digital worlds are conceptualized differently depending on the local setting which is explored and the theoretical frameworks used in the studies that are to be described. Specifically, the concepts of “co-presense” (Hjorth, 2007) and “gameworlds” (Giddings, 2017) will be featured as they provide key insights into the hybrid natures of the spaces created from children's interactions with the games of Super Mario and Minecraft in a preschool setting.

Co-presence and gameworlds

In line with this, Balmford and Davies (2020) explore the Minecraft game in terms of its capacities of allowing for co-presences in virtual and actual worlds. Balmford and Davies (2020) show how family members with children aged 6 to 14 come to interact in both actual and virtual worlds at the same time. Similar to Dezuanni et al. (2015), the focus in Balmford and Davies (2020) study is on Minecraft as an extended space for children's interactions with friends and family. Moreover, like Schneier and Taylor (2018), Balmford and Davies (2020) direct specific attention to Minecraft gameplay at mobile devices, claiming that the mobile devices add particular spatial dimensions to the gameplay. The condition of “co-presence” is also explored by Hjorth (2007: 370), referring to the participation in virtual and actual worlds simultaneously, which she refers to as “imbrications” of physical and digital places (Hjorth, 2007: 370). This co-presence, she argues, brings hybrid locations into being. The concept of co-presence in both Balmford and Davies’s (2020) and Hjorth's (2007) study points to the multilayered human presence made possibly by virtual worlds. In the case of Balmford and Davies (2020) this might be understood as extending the family home into the virtual space of the game.

Adding to the above-mentioned terms of “gaming events” and “place-events,” Giddings (2014) uses the concept of “gameworlds.” The concept of gameworld, as used by Giddings (2014), draws on phenomenology and indicates both the virtual world designed into the video game and the physical environments in which children's play is manifested. In Giddings study, this includes the social relationships between players between 4 to 7 years old; between hardware and software as well as between the virtual worlds of the game and the media universes they activate (e.g., Pokémon, Harry Potter, Lego, Star Wars). Moreover, the concept includes the gameworlds produced by children's imaginations and creativity, through talk and role-play, drawings and outdoor play. The concept of “gameworld,” Giddings (2017) argues, raises questions about who, and what is in play as gameworlds evolve.

In addition to this, Hollett and Ehret (2015) explore Minecraft gameplay in a hospital environment focusing one 12-year-old boy's play of the video game while hospitalized. The connections between material and digital worlds are conceptualized in terms of multiple human and nonhuman bodies creating affective atmospheres and shared embodied experiences. Using the new materialist theorist Karen Barad, they wish to challenge anthropocentric game-play research through attending to Minecraft gameplay in a hospital environment as an embodied and affective space, ultimately decentering the individual, human player in player–interface–screen ecologies. In Hollett and Ehret's (2015: 1853) study the gameplace-events, constituted through intra-actions between players-things-game—“beanbags, zombie moans, nurses, intravenous (IV) poles”—become the analytical focus, which conceptualizes the connections between social, material, and digital worlds. In similar ways, Schneier and Taylor (2018) uses Barad's notion of apparatuses to conceptualize gaming interfaces as sites of intra-activity. Their study focuses on young Minecraft PE players between 8 and 14 years old engaged in collaborative play sessions, with a specific focus on the mobile version of Minecraft created through mobile touchscreen devices. The analytical focus lies on the exploration of how players’ bodies and gaming apparatuses collaboratively materialize gaming events. Thus, here the connections between social, material, and digital worlds are conceptualized in terms of gaming events constituted through intra-activity between players’ bodies and gaming apparatuses. The gaming events, in their turn, are described as activating space-time biases of different modes of Minecraft play.

Another study, Dezuanni et al. (2015), sheds light on how digital popular culture takes part in creating and extending contact areas for children, in this case in terms of how Minecraft works across a school setting and a home setting. Particularly, they focus on the ways in which girls aged 8 and 9 performatively “bring themselves into being” through talk and digital production in the social spaces of the classroom and within the game's multiplayer online world (Dezuanni et al., 2015: 596). Moreover, Dezuanni (2019) provides important insights into the sociomaterial enactments of Minecraft gameplay in a family life setting. Important to mention are also the contributions made by Hjorth and Richardsson (2020) and Hjorth et al. (2020) to the research field of Minecraft gameplay. In two books Hjorth and Richardsson (2020) and Hjorth et al. (2020) examine how Minecraft players engage in a form of gameplay that is both intergenerational, creative, and moves in multiple ways across school spaces and home spaces in children's everyday lives.

Within an early childhood education research field, which the present study also engages in conversations with, studies on children's interactions with digital popular cultural games in early childhood settings are harder to find. This signals the need for further studies exploring children's interactions with games such as Super Mario and Minecraft and the way these create spaces where digital literacies become produced. Potentially, this lack of research studies is related to discourses on what kind of games are “suitable” for preschool children as well as the actual age limits prescribed for these games. Potentially this also relates to the “learnification” of the early childhood education field, where digital devices most often are explored in terms of their learning effects or pedagogical implications (Biesta, 2019). Even so, the concept of digital play has been productively used to address the mixture of digital and material input in children's play (Arnott et al., 2018; Edwards et al., 2020; Stephen and Edwards, 2018). For example, Marsh et al. (2016) explores the phenomenon of children watching unboxing videos on YouTube through focusing on a 4-year old boy and his viewings of these videos at home. Marsh et al. (2016) analyze the phenomenon in terms of relationships between online practices and material culture, also covering literacy practices that works across home and school spaces. Moreover, Marsh et al. (2019) addresses the input of digital and material worlds in children's play and learning in terms of makerspaces, specifically focusing children aged under 8. They point to the phenomenon of post-digital play promoting literacy and digital skills. However, the input of video games such as Minecraft and Super Mario in children's play remains largely unexplored. In particular, the way video games such as Minecraft and Super Mario become produced and transformed through children's play in material settings is hereby identified as an issue in need of further study, which is addressed in the present paper.

Similar to Ehret and Hollet and many of the studies using posthumanist methodology addressed above, my study wishes to expand from accounts of human-centered player–interface–screen ecologies. However, I would argue that the decentering of the player–interface–screen events is taken even further in the present study through the ANT methodology and the principle of general symmetry. Through the previous studies referred to above, the player–interface–screen ecologies become expanded to include more elements and actors, specifically affects, bodies, and material setting. The present study, however, also decenters the virtual game environment and software, and contends that video games also become enacted beyond the player–interface–screen events. The present paper thus focuses on the connections and overlaps between children, material objects, and settings in the preschool environment enacting specific versions of Minecraft and Super Mario. In the next section of the paper, the methods used to generate empirical materials to study these connections and overlaps is presented and elaborated upon.

Methods: Locating Minecraft and Super Mario

ANT has to some extent been used in education research as well as early childhood education research (Moberg, 2017, 2018). However, ANT has been scarcely used in studies focusing on children's relations with digital media and digital popular culture (Lafton, 2015, 2019). The method postulated by ANT necessarily involves locating a phenomenon to a certain situation, tracing the relations between elements which enact that phenomenon in specific ways (Mol, 2010). In the case of the present study, the relations between human bodies, materialities, and interiors are analyzed in terms of enacting the games of Minecraft and Super Mario. The methods used in the study can be placed within an ethnographic tradition (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007), encompassing participant observations and informal conversations with both teachers and children at a Stockholm preschool. The preschool is situated in a Stockholm suburb and consists of three non–age-specific divisions with a total of 49 children. During a period of 10 months I spent on average two full days a week as a researcher with a group of 16 children aged four to five and their three preschool teachers. The preschool was not chosen from any specific criteria and the preschool teachers and the group of children were included as they were the most enthusiastic about my study at the preschool. During the time of participant observations, I switched between the roles of taking part in activities with children and between the roles of sitting at a table close to the children writing in my notebook. As part of the method I have been engaged in all kinds of activities, such as circle time, reading sessions, meal times, visits to theatres, parks, and museums. I have also been taking part in teacher's reflection meetings and evaluation meetings in the end of each term. After the activities I had been part of as a researcher, I sat down in a secluded space at the preschool and completed my field notes of what had been going on in the activities and what the children had said to one another.

In the beginning of my fieldwork at the preschool, popular cultural games such as Minecraft and Super Mario were very much absent from the preschool milieu. At the division of the preschool where I performed my study there was one tablet available for all 16 children to share. Children were only allowed to play educational apps at the tablet. However, as time passed and as I got to know the children and the preschool everyday activities better, Minecraft and Super Mario became much more present in the live jottings I made in my notebook. At times, the games of Minecraft and Super Mario even appeared to work as key actors. These kinds of situations, what I refer to as empirical vignettes, where Minecraft and Super Mario in different ways appear as actors, have been selected and used as data for the present study. Thus, the empirical vignettes included in the present paper were selected because they, in different ways, brought relations between elements enacting Minecraft and Super Mario in the preschool setting to the fore.

Some of these situations involve children who brought Minecraft and Super Mario instruction manuals and Minecraft Lego figures to the preschool and kept these in their personal boxes. These boxes are made for children to keep drawings, art work, and such. They are labelled with each child's name and often children get to write their own names on the boxes. The situation with the child asking me to keep a secret relates to these boxes and placed me in an ethical dilemma as a researcher. As there were many other moments in which teachers were given the chance to recognize the child's interest in Minecraft and the Lego figures, I decided to go along with the child's request to keep the secret.

During my fieldwork children often asked me to read out loud from the Minecraft manuals in the soft couch in one of the rooms. In addition, I constantly observed children play with their Minecraft figures while jumping, crawling, spinning, running, and shouting. Such situations have also been included as data for the purposes of the present study. These situations, where Minecraft and Super Mario appeared as actors, were written down in the notebook where I made my field notes. Within an ANT methodology, methods are always assembling, in the sense of creating, realities (Latour, 2005). In line with this, research and researchers within an ANT methodology are seen as assembling, in the sense of creating, realities as both methods and researchers are part of the practices and issues they study. One way of displaying this in the present paper is through the overt presence of myself as a researcher in the field notes describing events in the everyday preschool situations where Minecraft and Super Mario are made into actors. For example, in the situation played out in the room with the sofa and the two children showing me the Super Mario instruction manual and how the control is working, the description of the situation involves myself (Emilie) as a researcher partaking in the situation.

Theoretical framework: General symmetry, actor-networks, and multiple versions of games

Using ANT as a resource when analyzing empirical materials could, but does not necessarily, involve using theoretical concepts (Latour, 2005; Moberg, 2017). In the present study, ANT is applied in terms of methodological principles that focus on general symmetry, actor-networks as well as the concept of versions (Mol, 2002). To begin with, the principle of general symmetry urges the analyst to include human and nonhuman elements in the analyses on equal terms. This means analytically viewing all elements in the preschool setting as potentially equally influential in a certain situation. In this scenario, a Minecraft Lego figure is potentially equally influential as a child or a teacher in a particular situation. Next, the methodological principle of viewing actors as actor-networks implies analytically foregrounding the relations between elements as creating actor-networks and thus creating actors. When analyzing the empirical materials, I will trace and follow, “going with” (Bodén, 2017: 406) the relations between human and nonhuman elements, such as children's bodies, manuals, carpets, or Lego figures, that enact Minecraft and Super Mario and make them into actors (Mol, 2010). So, what kind of work, what I refer to as relational efforts (Moberg, 2018), is needed for the Minecraft and Super Mario games to become relevant and influential in the preschool setting? Here, the principle of actors as actor-networks helps in creating a wide span of elements assumed to be able to activate video games such as Minecraft and Super Mario in children's play activities. The principle of actors as actor-networks insists that elements such as children's bodies, their role-play, and their talk come to enact the games of Minecraft and Super Mario. Moreover, the floors, carpets, sofas, and toys, that is, Lego, in the preschool rooms take part in enacting the games of Minecraft and Super Mario.

Finally, the concept of versions has become crucial to include in the present study in order to attend to the production of multiple versions of Minecraft and Super Mario in the preschool setting. In later adoptions of ANT, sometimes referred to as post-ANT, the concept of versions has been highlighted (Mol, 2002). The concept of versions is about acknowledging that these actors always come in different versions, depending on the elements involved in the particular empirical example analyzed. For example, the relations between children, Minecraft Lego figures, carpets, and floors in the preschool enact a specific version of Minecraft, while the Super Mario manual, the sofa, and the jumping-spinning children’s bodies enact another version of Super Mario.

Results: Minecraft and Super Mario enacted in a preschool setting

In the present section of the paper the ways in which the games of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted in the preschool setting will be outlined. When presenting the empirical vignettes, I have chosen to refer to children in neutral gender terms, either as s/he or his/her. This approach is inspired by Mol's writings on feminism in ANT and could be viewed as an attempt to refrain from supporting the “categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’” and instead strive to “shift and change them” (Mol, 2010: 256).

Empirical vignette I

One of the teachers told me of an event a few weeks earlier. A child, Kim, that never normally brought things or toys to the preschool came to one of the teachers and wanted to bring a Minecraft figure named Steve. The local policy of this specific preschool was that children were not allowed to bring toys from home. Even so, the teacher wanted to acknowledge Kim's wish and interests, and consequently allowed Kim to bring the Minecraft figure. A few days later another child, Robin, asked to bring Minecraft toys from home to the preschool. The teacher allowed this, with the motivation that this way the two children would have something in common. The result of this was that Robin and Kim brought what the teacher jokingly refers to as a “lunch-box” filled with Minecraft Lego as well as a Minecraft book made out as an instruction manual. A few weeks later, Kim started talking to me about the small Lego figures.

“I have Lego in my box, but don’t tell anyone,” Kim said. “What kind of Lego is it?,” I asked. “Knights Lego and Minecraft Lego,” Kim answered, “but don’t say anything.” “No, I will not tell anybody,” I said. “Can I look in your box,” I asked. “Yes, but not now, not when P [one of the teachers] is here,” Kim answered. “We do it later,” Kim said. Later Kim showed me two parts of a Lego figure to me. They took it out of their pockets and spoke with a low voice, almost whispered, “Look here, look what they look like, look on the back. What is it?” “A scelleton,” I answered. “But don’t tell anybody,” Kim said, whispering. “No, I promise,” I said. “I’m a bit of an expert,” Kim said. “Emilie, look at this,” Kim said. Kim jumped from the round green carpet to the blue rectangular carpet. They did this several times, took charge, jumped and landed right in the outskirts of the other carpet. “And I don’t fall in the lava. The floor is lava.” Kim jumped back and forth several times.

The next day, the Minecraft figures were taken out of the personal boxes again. “Is it a game?,” I asked when I saw the figures. “Yes, for real,” Robin answered. “What world are you in,” Robin asked Kim. “Aren’t we in the same world?,” Kim answered. “No, we aren’t in the same world,” Robin said. “Yes, we are in the same world. I think we should go to Mario world,” Kim answered. “I think we should go to Dragon world,” Kim said. “I am going to Mario world!,” Robin answered. Robin jumped onto the green carpet in the middle of the room. “We are going under the tunnel,” Robin said. The children crawled under the table placed next to the carpet. “We swim. Now we are Super Mario 64,” Robin said. Each child held a Minecraft figure in their hand and ran around the room, across the carpet and back to the table where I was sitting writing. “Now I died,” Kim said. “I didn’t die,” Robin replied. “Now I make fireworks. Now we are in Guido land. I am Luigi,” Kim said and threw their body on the carpet.

Analytical interpretation I

When analyzing these situations with a focus on Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted through relations between human and nonhuman elements (Latour, 2005), the Lego figures must be considered as crucial elements. Children's play with the Lego figures, jumping, running, and crawling around in the room, could be interpreted as Minecraft and Super Mario, or maybe a hybrid Minecraft/Super Mario game, being played out or enacted in the preschool setting. The Lego figures, in this case the Minecraft characters Scelleton and Steve, could be interpreted as taking part in enacting the Minecraft and Super Mario games in the preschool setting. Held by the children, the Lego figures act as Steve and the Scelleton, jumping, running and crawling in the different worlds. Likewise, connected to the Lego figures in their hands, children's jumping and running bodies act as gaming characters, materializing Luigi, Steve, or the Scelleton. In this sense, children's bodies materialize the gaming characters. Moreover, the carpet, the floor, and the table materialize and enact the gaming worlds where the characters live and move; Guido land, Dragon world, and Mario world. The carpet and the floor materialize a world with pits of lava that you have to take care not to fall into and the spots of land where you are safe. The table, on the other hand, materializes a world with a tunnel where the gaming characters can crawl under and then swim in order to become Super Mario 64.

Empirical vignette III

A group of children were playing outside in the preschool yard. “I am Alex,” Noa said. “I am also Alex,” Michele said. “Is there more than one Alex,” I asked. “We are playing Minecraft,” Noa answered. “Ah, so there is a character in Minecraft called Alex,” I asked. “Yes, it is a girl,” Noa answered. “We are crossing the Mario river now,” Noa said and swayed with their arms, running around a tree in the preschool yard. “Yes, we are crossing the Mario river,” Michele said. Michele made a sound with their mouth and swayed their arms: “swosh, swosh, swosh.” Amal stood behind Michele and put their hands onto Michele's shoulders. Amal was holding a hat in the other hand and Michele said, “If you take your hat on it will be easier to hold your hands on my shoulders.” I asked what they were playing and what it meant when Amal put their hands onto Michele's shoulders. “I was riding at Joshi, it is a horse that can fly in Minecraft,” Amal said. “When Luigi is tired, then Mario takes over and when Mario is tired, Luigi takes over,” Amal added.

Analytical interpretation III

When analyzing this situation with a focus on how Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted through relations between human and nonhuman elements (Latour, 1999, 2005) in the preschool outside setting, the phrase “We are playing Minecraft” and the use of the verb play provide a fruitful entry. While the noun “game” is often used to describe what Minecraft is, the verb “play” could be used both to describe the gaming experience on a tablet or a computer and the experience of playing, in terms of performing or illustrating, the game of Minecraft in the preschool yard. This suggests that “playing Minecraft” could include both of these activities blending into one another. Let us look closer at the situation with the flying horse Joshi crossing the Mario river.

In this situation, children's gestures and ways of connecting their bodies to each other become crucial to how the hybrid Minecraft/Super Mario game becomes enacted in the preschool yard. The Minecraft character Alex becomes enacted by two children, Noa and Michele, who both claim to be Alex. Through swaying with their arms and at the same time running around the tree in the preschool yard, Noa materializes the activity of crossing the Mario river. The tree and the gravelly ground also take part in enacting the plot through offering a physical space where the plot of crossing the river can be played out. Michele further supports the plot through their verbal comment: “Yes, we are crossing the Mario river.” Michele also adds to the plot through making sounds as to imitate a river being crossed by flying horse hoofs and swaying their arms. Moreover, the gesture of putting their hands on another child's shoulder further materializes a game character riding a horse and now the horse also gets a name; Joshi in Minecraft. The final comment by Amal underlines the hybridity of the game(s) enacted in the preschool yard; “When Luigi is tired, then Mario takes over and when Mario is tired, Luigi takes over.” The game characters of Luigi and Mario, originally from the Super Mario game, gets mixed up with Joshi and Alex in Minecraft, as the games of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted in the preschool outside yard.

Empirical vignette IIII

As I entered one of the rooms at the preschool one day, two children sat in a couch looking in a Super Mario instruction manual in the form of a book. I sat down next to them. They looked at the cover of the instruction manual. “What is this,” Lou said. “A death cap,” Mika said. “Are there such things in Minecraft,” I asked. “No,” Lou said, “this is not Minecraft, this is Super Mario and in Super Mario such things exist.” “What is this,” I asked, pointing to another picture in the instruction manual. “That is the control,” Mika said. “You can move around.” “I can spin,” Mika said and placed themselves in the middle of the round carpet in the middle of the room. Mika spun around. “No, that's the control,” Lou said, “You can spin-jump.” Lou also placed themselves on the round carpet. “Look at me when I jump two laps,” Lou said. Lou jumped up in the air and spun around at the same time. “This time it was two laps,” Mika said. “No one is to touch the Super Mario book,” Lou said. The Super Mario book, that is, the instruction manual still lies on the couch, opened. “This is how it is done,” Mika said. Mika placed themselves outside of the carpet, took charge, jumped up in the air and landed on the carpet. “Or like this, look,” Lou said, took charge and ran into the next room, making a jump in the air. “No, that is a spin-jump,” Mika said. Charlie came in and looked in the book. “What is this,” Charlie asked, pointing to a picture. “It means that you fly up,” Lou answered. “Up,” Charlie said and jumped up in the air. “Up and down, up and down,” Lou said and raised their arms and then took them down again.

Analytical interpretation IIII

Many different elements take part in enacting the game of Super Mario in the situation described above. The jumping and spinning activities that children perform in this situation are encouraged by the pictures of the controls in the Super Mario instruction manual. These jumping and spinning activities pick up on and enact one of the most crucial characteristics of playing a video game—the interaction with a user interface. Children's jumping and spinning bodies mimic the on-screen interaction with a user interface or input device—such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion-sensing device—with the aim of producing visual feedback for the player of the video game. But instead of a control, the picture of the control in the instruction manual, as well as the word “control,” work as a pivot producing the feedback. Moreover, instead of the visual feedback on the screen performed by the avatar body, the children perform the feedback themselves through jumping and spinning, that is, doing what the imaginary control tells them to do. The images and descriptions of the characters and the control in the book become activated by my questions, which invite children to show me how the control operates as you play the game. In this sense, The instruction manual and the pictures of the controls seem to work as encouragement for children to show me how it is done physically, in real life. For a nonexpert, like me, it is as if the children do not trust me to grasp the instructive pictures of the controls on my own just by looking at them. They need to show it to me as clearly as possible, with their bodies and the available interiors in the room. In this sense, the children's performance of the controls is as much an educational effort from their end directed at strengthening my expertise as it is showing the other children the movements and how “it is done.” In this sense, Super Mario becomes enacted as children are referring to the control and using it as something that navigates their bodies, making them jump, spin, and fly in order to master the game. Another element taking part in enacting the game of Super Mario is gravity. Gravity, in terms of a universal force of attraction between all matter, makes it possible for children's bodies to land safely on the carpet after jumping and spinning. All these relations between the elements of gravity, floors, carpets, children's bodies, the Super Mario book and myself as a researcher enact the game of Super Mario in that very time and place. Thus, gravity, children's jumping and spinning bodies, as well as the carpet, along with the other elements already mentioned, enact the game of Super Mario in the preschool interior.

Discussion

In the last concluding part of the paper we will return to the two research questions asked in the beginning of the paper: Through what relations between human and nonhuman elements is the game of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted in a preschool setting? In what ways do these relations enact the games of Minecraft and Super Mario in multiple versions in a preschool setting?

Using ANT, and more specifically the principle of general symmetry, the principle of actors as actor-networks and the concept of versions to study a phenomenon equates to explore how relations between elements enact phenomena in specific situations in local practices. In the present paper I have undertaken an investigation of how the video games of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted through children's play and material settings in a preschool milieu. Previous research within gaming studies and digital play have explored and conceptualized ways in which digital activities and material worlds are always blended (Balmford and Davies, 2020; Edwards et al., 2020; Giddings, 2014; Hjorth, 2007; Hollett and Ehret, 2015; Marsh et al., 2019; Schneier and Taylor, 2018).

The ANT methodology adopted in the present study adds to these studies of material and digital worlds as co-constituted through downplaying the interface–screen ecology even further, claiming that video games such as Minecraft and Super Mario are shaped by and made through, that is, enacted, in local settings practices, also beyond the interface–screen relations. Here, children are users, but not within the frames of the interface–screen ecology. Thus, the present paper claims, and here the radical claims of ANT have come to use, that the games of Minecraft and Super Mario attain specific characteristics and properties through relations with other elements as they become enacted in a particular setting.

Addressing the second research question, the paper claims that the games of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted in multiple versions. The ontological consequence of studying games as enacted in particular situations in local settings is that there cannot exist/be a single Minecraft video game that children use, play, and become affected by. This has been pointed out by for example Hollett and Ehret (2015), showing the multiple versions of Minecraft game-place events played out in a hospital milieu. Rather, there are a multitude of Minecraft and Super Mario games circulating in the world, molded and shaped in the local settings where they become picked up, in this case a preschool setting.

These findings call for a rethinking of the power balance inherent in discourses on active and passive gameplaying children, where video games are assumed stronger and (more) affective in relation to children and the settings in which they live. The present paper in this sense directs attention to the ways in which children and their settings, creatively add to and produce new versions of the games they play.

Conclusion: Multiple versions of Minecraft and Super Mario

While the present paper has shown how the games of Minecraft and Super Mario become enacted in a preschool setting, the paper has also addressed how new versions of Minecraft and Super Mario become produced in the preschool setting. When working from an ANT methodology the local, everyday elements that enact Minecraft and Super Mario also grant them specific properties. In the case of the preschool setting in the present study, the analyses have specifically pointed to the ways in which toys (Lego), floors, carpets, books, and tables of the preschool room along with children's bodies, movements, and verbal talk offer Minecraft and Super Mario places and objects through which they could become relevant and influential in the preschool setting, that is, become enacted or made as actors. This, in turn, grants the games their relational properties and abilities in the preschool setting, that is, provides the games with abilities that make them work even in the preschool setting. While previous research points to the way the digital gameworlds extend the material worlds, such as the preschool or the family home (Dezuanni et al., 2015), the results of the present paper also point towards the ways in which local settings extend the digital games, thus transforming the properties of the games.

Finally, we return to the polarized ideas, raised in the introduction of the paper, on the “passive” and the “active” child, the first implying a mechanical consumption of digital game content while the second involves social and creative children interacting with digital games (Mustola et al., 2018). In order to study what popular cultural video games entail in relation to gameplaying children, researchers need to acknowledge the different ways in which these games come to act and become transformed in local settings together with children, rooms, and materials. In relation to research on children's screen time and gaming activities the results of the present paper also raise new questions for the field of research focusing on children's consumption as well as production of digital popular culture (Giddings, 2017; Melander Bowden, 2019; Willett, 2018). For example, if we were to include children's engagements with games and game characters beyond the player–interface–screen ecologies to a higher extent in research, how can we analytically draw the line between consumption and production of digital popular cultural games? Methodologically, this also includes questions of what sites and spaces that could be studies and with what methods, at the same time ensuring children's integrity and right to privacy. However, there is an emancipatory aspect of this that connects to the aim of unsettling and expanding grand narratives on the “active” and “passive” gameplaying child. Ultimately, the situations raised and analyzed in the present paper have produced new and other “versions” (Mol, 2002) of the games of Minecraft and Super Mario in terms of their assumed properties and abilities. The games, according to the versions produced in the paper, encourage gameplaying children to jump, run, talk, play, and crawl, involving them in their respective gameworlds both cognitively and physically. On the basis of such claims, it becomes important to acknowledge how children's agency becomes constituted through the gameplay assemblages highlighted in the present paper. Bringing the blended gameplay experiences from home into the preschool play activities allows the children to exert influence over their daily schedule and allows them to pursue their gaming interests, beyond the player–interface–screen ecology, in the educational preschool space.

In this way, new and other possible ways, or versions, of being a gameplaying “active” or “passive” child emerge. These multiple versions are important to include in research and public debate as this could potentially produce more nuanced and locally informed debates among caregivers, school and preschool practitioners, policymakers, organizations, and other stakeholders concerning the productive contradictions and dynamics inherent in playing the games of Minecraft and Super Mario.