Minecraft and Let’s Plays How audiences engage with new media

Minecraft and Let’s Plays
How audiences engage with new media

Link to full article: https://jamiedevivobu.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/introduction/


Technological development has created a media landscape that is in constant transition; contemporary platforms such as Youtube and Twitch have blurred the lines between producers and consumers, allowing for so-called “Prosumers”. This has lead to a participatory culture saturated in paratexts and centered around fandom subcultures. The aim of this blog is to better understand the changes in production and consumption of contemporary media, using Minecraft (Mojang, 2011) and the ‘Let’s Play Phenomenon’, because of their recent success, to exemplify these changes.

YouTube

YouTube, launched in 2005, has laid down the tools for anyone to become a producer. The barriers to creating video content are lower than ever and this has led to an incredibly diverse collection of videos that include anything from notorious cat videos to short films. Petty producers have taken advantage of this to create their own work and this blog will analyse how they do this, how it’s been made possible by changes in the media landscape and what affect it’s had on key texts.

Using the concepts of fandom and participatory culture to analyse this phenomenon, this blog will explore how the culture of the way in which we consume these texts has transitioned from the past. Furthermore, it will also look at the reasons for the growing trend in Let’s Plays popularity and the overall effect they have on their parent texts and how these texts engage with audiences.