Minecraft needs no introduction. After 13 years since its full release in 2011, the game is closer than ever to surpassing Tetris in overall sales. That speak volumes of the game’s worldwide popularity.
That much is reflected in the community surrounding the game. Since its initial release, we’ve seen Minecraft become not just a videogame, but a substantial online space for people to express their creativity and engage with other players online. This phenomenon comes as a product of the game’s authentic experience, giving players the highest level of agency, defined by McKitrick as “the degree to which a game allows the player to create a unique experience for themselves while playing the game.”
The desire to create that Minecraft inspired in the players with its simplicity and freedom can be considered as an extension of Daniel Miller’s theory he proposed in “Photography in the age of Snapchat.” Essentially, Miller suggests that people use pieces of media as part of their communication, and there is a co-dependent process of the development between the platforms people use and the images they use for the sake of communication. Minecraft is very much the same, serving as an open canvas for anyone to make their vision come to life and share it with other people on the Internet.
The combination of the game’s freedom of player action, alongside its massive online popularity, created a perfect storm for people to gather into groups to use Minecraft as a platform to speak out about important social issues. One team took note of that. Their goal was to use Minecraft’s global popularity to expose the issue of press censorship to the world in a uniquely interactive way. That team was Reporters Without Borders, and in 2020,
On March 12, the “World Day Against Cyber Censorship”, The Uncensored Library opened its doors.
The Uncensored Library As a Political Digital Artifact
All the way back in 1980, political theorist Langdon Winner asked the one question that I believe will remain relevant until the end of time: “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” He suggests that technology itself is inherently neutral, but the way it’s used by people bends it to push their political beliefs into society. Before the Internet even existed, there were plenty of examples how it was the case with real-world examples such as Robert Moses’ infamous low bridges around NYC. That same logic can be extended to the Internet itself. As a technology, all it does is host data and provide access to it on a worldwide scale. It is the artifacts that can be found online that have a political connotation to them.
In that sense, the relationship between Minecraft and The Uncensored Library is very much the same. It’s a clever use of the loophole surrounding Minecraft’s status as a game that gives players complete freedom over what they create. Officially, Mojang and Microsoft push the game as a safe and child-friendly experience, as seen from their playful and colorful animated promotional videos for updates. This means they are free from any legal liability when it comes to community creations, since they officially have no control over them. That also means that the game can be legally accessed from any country around the world. That fact is placed in stark contrast to the governments’ increasing efforts to suppress the spread of information they might consider unfavorable. It’s a fact that’s reflected at the very center of the World Dome, where the book lists the freedom of press index of every country of the world.
Circumventing Limitations Through Visual Storytelling
Of course, using any game as a platform for pushing political messages has its limitations. A 2022 study by Cavalcanti, Siebra, Bufrem and Pajeú highlighted that Minecraft’s methods of storing text information are extremely limiting, making it impossible to turn the project into an actual Library-like archive and catalog of banned articles. Neither can the place serve as a social location, despite the existence of the official RSF server that hosts the world for anyone with an internet connection to visit without having to download the map from their website.
As a long-time Minecraft player, I can attest to these claims. The game features a way to write and store books, but I personally find it too cumbersome to do for any kind of purpose besides keeping myself immersed in the game. Any basic note-taking app is simply more convenient than Minecraft’s offering.
As for the social aspect, I hardly see Minecraft as a truly social game. Its text chatting features are very bare-bones, and the game does not officially feature any voice chat functionality. In comparison, games like PlayStation Home or VRChat rely on text bubbles appearing above player avatars and prefer players use their microphones to communicate with people who are immediately in front of them. Minecraft’s chat box that shyly hides in the corner is quite underwhelming and socially detaching.
The Uncensored Library’s creators understand the limitations of using a videogame as a space to spread their message quite well. That’s why they focused on using the tools at their disposal to create a visual story with their world that speaks much louder than any such collection of articles would otherwise. The building features separate pavilions dedicated to countries whose attempts to shut down free press are well-documented. In them, players can find visual representations of the methods that governments used to enforce censorship. After a quick glance and a read of a short introductory article describing the meaning behind the expositions, you can have a clear image of the threats journalists face in their countries.
And that is the true genius of this place. It understands the importance of symbolism as a means of spreading political messages that people will remember and talk about. It is an aspect of social movements that has become the central focus of studies of sociology last decade, and yet, according to findings, it plays a pivotal role in uniting people under a symbol that they all have a clear collective understanding of.
In the case of The Uncensored Library, that symbol is featured front and center. Before you even make your first steps into the incredible structure, you are greeted with a statue of a fist tightly gripping an ink pen. It’s a silhouette that’s easy to read and, perhaps more importantly, to recreate. The fist is a universally understood symbol for fighting against issues in society, and the ink pen serves to demonstrate two things; the first is the fight for freedom of press, as is obvious from the rest of the project. The second, however, shows a method of fighting against that censorship. The Uncensored Library encourages the creation and spread of information that supports truth and makes it impossible to contain thanks to the way the Internet works with content. It’s an encouragement to create more in order to thwart the attempts at suppressing free speech.
The Uncensored Library As An Icon Of Online Democracy
Lastly, I would like to discuss how The Uncensored Library is reflective of the Internet’s innate freedom and neutrality creating a space that’s truly democratic. Of course, online censorship is very real, but games offer a unique opportunity for people to express themselves freely. Outside of banning entire games, such as with the example of Call of Duty getting completely pulled from Russian store platforms for including content like the infamous “No Russian” mission, there is next to nothing that governments can do to control, what happens inside the videogames that are officially sold in those regions. And even then, the Internet offers plenty of ways to bypass these restrictions, meaning that even banned content can be accessed online without leaving any trackable traces.
In this sense, The Uncensored Library is far from being the only example of players taking full advantage of being able to express their freedom in games, but to me, it is the most striking. It is a bastion of digital democracy that will be able to be accessed at any point in time on any device that can run Minecraft (which is almost any computing interface at this point in Minecraft’s development).
Players will always be able to visit it and leave with a completely new understanding of the issue of censorship. It might be a creation that is entirely digital, but its story and impact on society are very much real.
That’s the beauty of the Internet. And that’s why I think that The Uncensored Library is the best reflection of that.
The Uncensored Library: My Story
While the rest of this blogpost is dedicated to covering The Uncensored Library from a more theoretical, research-first approach, I have also made a video where I talk about the impact the project had on me when I first explored it.
