The game minecraft is bringing literary worlds to children

Most parents want their children to read more and play video games less. It would be hard to imagine a parent telling their child `put that book down and play some computer games! Get that novel out of your hands, and replace it with a video game controller. You won`t learn anything by reading War and Peace - you should be playing Pac man!`

The prevailing opinion is that reading a novel engages the mind in a way that playing a computer game simply doesn`t. Reading both stimulates and enriches the imagination, as you are drawn into a fantasy world, and become engaged and sympathetic with characters whom you create in your mind as much as the author has created them on the page.

There are many who would argue however that video games can be just as immersive as a novel, and they can stimulate the imagination in ways that may even be beyond great literature. For one thing gamers are making decisions that affect the progress of the game - they are involved and reacting to the challenges, engaging reflexively and strategically. While a game like space invaders might not offer much emotional and imaginative engagement, there are role play and exploration type games, that present players with a rich and involved fantasy world. Games like The Legend of Zelda, or the Final Fantasy series immerse the player in a rich and expansive playing area, while providing a detailed narrative which they can become actively involved in.

Games like these let the player participate in and influence multiple story lines, with the whole experience couched in cinema-like graphics and sound. Every day thousands of people around the world participate in Minecraft - a so called `sand box video game,` in which players can move around and build structures in a virtual 3D world.

Litcraft is a partnership between Lancaster University and Microsoft, which aims at mapping out and building literary spaces from the world of literature in the 3D world of Minecraft. Their first project has been recreating in painstaking and meticulous detail the world of Robert Lewis Stephenson`s Treasure Island.

The project is aimed at being more than just a curious rendition of a literary setting in a 3D computer simulation. Professor Sally Bushell, Lead researcher and head of Lancaster University`s English and creative writing department has said the role of Litcraft is to bring literature to more people, calling their project:
`An educational model that connects the imaginative spatial experience of reading the text to an immersive experience in the game world.`

Speaking about the treasure Island representation in Minecraft, Professor Bushell has expressed the hope that it will bring more people to the book, as well as providing a new dimension to those readers who are already familiar with it.

`We hope it will motivate reluctant readers – we can say, `We`re going to read the book and then at one point, we`ll go play on the ship.` I would have loved it as a kid. It is an empathetic task – you do what the characters did yourself, so you understand why they act they way they did in the book.`

Players of Minecraft are used to literary worlds being rendered on their platform - Westeros, the vast fantasy realm from Game of Thrones has already been created in its entirety; while there may be as many as 1000 accurate renditions of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter books.

Feedback from the Treasure Island Minecraft depiction has been positive, with one child declaring that `I like that you get to see the pictures. You don`t have to make them in your head. And I liked the ship, Ben Gunn`s cave and the parrots.`

The inherent multi player aspect of Minecraft opens up many interesting didactic possibilities - one example being that individuals can work together to reenact scenes from literature, with each player taking the role of a specific character, and seeing the story from their point of view. Professor Bushell has said that that a future project will be William Golding`s novel Lord of the Flies, and that the multiplayer aspect will develop children`s understanding of the book.

`In that case, you want all the kids in there playing out a scenario and asking philosophical questions. We hope they do some reading, then play the game, then do some empathetic writing based on what they did in there.`

While many people might balk at the idea of novels being made into video games - perhaps seeing it as a dilution of the art form - it would be worth remembering that there was in the past great opposition to novels being made into films, and that movies of famous works of literature inspire many people to later pick up the book and read it for themselves.