Ecocomposition: writing ecologies in digital games

Minecraft’s crafting table sits at an intersection between nature, writing, and technology. Using the table’s grid pattern, players arrange “chunks” of the world farmed and mined from Minecraft’s environments into various symbols that signify items and devices players want to create. This article explores the ways that Minecraft frames this writing technology as an expression of the natural world, and it considers the problems and potential of this “nature writing” representation. This article was republished in 2017 in Digital Environments.