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DIGITAL EDUCATION AND LEARNING
Researching Virtual
Play Experiences
Visual Methods in
Education Research
Chris Bailey
Digital Education and Learning
Series Editors
Michael Thomas
Liverpool John Moores University
Liverpool, UK
John Palfrey
Phillips Academy
Andover, MA, USA
Mark Warschauer
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, USA
Much has been written during the first decade of the new millennium
about the potential of digital technologies to produce a transformation of
education. Digital technologies are portrayed as tools that will enhance
learner collaboration and motivation and develop new multimodal liter-
acy skills. Accompanying this has been the move from understanding
literacy on the cognitive level to an appreciation of the sociocultural
forces shaping learner development. Responding to these claims, the
Digital Education and Learning Series explores the pedagogical potential
and realities of digital technologies in a wide range of disciplinary con-
texts across the educational spectrum both in and outside of class.
Focusing on local and global perspectives, the series responds to the shift-
ing landscape of education, the way digital technologies are being used in
different educational and cultural contexts, and examines the differences
that lie behind the generalizations of the digital age. Incorporating cut-
ting edge volumes with theoretical perspectives and case studies (single
authored and edited collections), the series provides an accessible and
valuable resource for academic researchers, teacher trainers, administra-
tors and students interested in interdisciplinary studies of education and
new and emerging technologies.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14952
Chris Bailey
Researching Virtual
Play Experiences
Visual Methods in Education Research
Chris Bailey
Education
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield, UK
ISSN 2753-0744 ISSN 2753-0752 (electronic)

Digital Education and Learning
ISBN 978-3-030-78693-9 ISBN 978-3-030-78694-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78694-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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Cover illustration: © Mikhail Konoplev / Alamy
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
For Ava and Orla xxx
Acknowledgments
This book was made with the generous support of many people. Special
thanks go to Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant for showing patience,
encouragement and support far beyond their contractual remit. To Jess,
who encouraged me from the start. To Mum and Dad and Janet, for sup-
port, and Alan, whose absence is always felt.
Thank you to Sheffield Hallam University for funding this work. To
those I have met there and learnt from along the way, including Steph
Hannam-Swain, Ian Guest, Lauren Doak, Jo Ray, Kiri Langmead, Rachel
Handforth, Julia Leatherland, Nick Marshall, Karen Daniels, Roberta
Taylor and the Breakfast Champions. Thanks also to the comic critique
of Sumin Zhao, the wisdom of Jozef Sen, the generosity of Jennifer
Rowsell, and the academic kindness of Anne Kellock and Jackie Marsh,
for helping me feel like this was an actual thing.
I am, finally, extremely grateful to children and staff at the school
where I conducted this study, particularly to the participants who made
this such an exciting project to take part in.
xiii
Praise for Researching Virtual Play Experiences
“Chris Bailey’s Screen Play Experiences in Education: Explorations in Visual

Methods in Research Representation captures what photographer Hiro Wakabayashi
describes as central to image work, the ability “to extract from a life what has
shaped it along the way. Every experience has a hand in it.” Based on a longitu-
dinal research study on a Minecraft club, Bailey weaves his own story as a gamer
into the book accompanied by his skilled, attenuated theorising across an array
of disciplines and orientations to the visual. Observing children play and feel in
virtual worlds gives readers a treasured window into how children can settle back
into themselves and shape their sense of self through videogames. Children, in
Bailey’s research, display visceral, felt engagements with sheep, songs, and swords
in Minecraft; what is more, he manages to give researchers ways to appreciate
and navigate the art of visual research along the way. Ultimately, one of the more
moving and captivating aspects of this exceptional book are the illustrations
throughout done by Bailey’s own hand. This is a deeply personal book that gives
readers a strong sense of how virtual worlds give children room to think, feel,
and extract from a life.”
—Jennifer Rowsell, University of Bristol
“This is a dazzling account of digital literacies, multimodality and videogame

play in an after-school Minecraft club. The book outlines a novel methodology,
‘rhizomic ethnography’, which enabled a close tracing of the lived experience of
the children who engaged in Minecraft play through the use of a range of visual,
observational and interactive methods. The brilliant drawings throughout,
including the use of an illustrated comic, offer the reader an outstanding exam-
ple of visual methods in action. This highly innovative book makes an important
contribution to the field and is essential reading for all those interested in new
literacies, videogame play and visual methods.”
—Professor Jackie Marsh, University of Sheffield, UK
Contents
1 ‘Welcome to Banterbury’ 1
2 Situating the Study 37
3 Exploring Lived Experience 89
4 Plateau 1: Building and Being in Banterbury179
5 Plateau 2: Playing with the World237
6 Plateau 3: Visualising Soundscapes291
7 The Emergent Dimension of Play329
Index377
xvii
About the Author
Chris Bailey is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Sheffield Hallam

University. His work explores play; literacies; affective lived experience of
space and place; sensory and embodied meaning-making; neurodiversity;
multimodal, participatory methods in research and communication.
Chris is autistic and is interested in trying to work out what this means
for how he understands and represents the world.
Chris won the UK Literacy Association Student Research award in
2018 for the work that formed the basis of this book. He also received the
UKLA / Wiley ‘Literacy’ Article of the Year Award in 2017.
xix
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 A sign welcoming the children to the game 8

Fig. 3.1 Overview of methods used during project 94
Fig. 3.2 ‘The Go Pro Song’ comic strip 111
Fig. 3.3 Screenshots from the game 115
Fig. 3.4 Photographs of extracts from children’s notebooks 115
Fig. 3.5 Screenshot of server log 116
Fig. 3.6 Progression of the hand 164
Fig. 3.7 Images in the thinking process 165
Fig. 4.1 Avatars anticipating the Sheep Shear game 207
Fig. 4.2 ‘The Maze of Doom’ 207
Fig. 5.1 Mia and Molly behind the counter 253
Fig. 5.2 ‘The House of Coolness’ 277
Fig. 6.1 Computer generated visualisation of audio 302
Fig. 6.2 Representation of cyclical rhythm 303
Fig. 6.3 Soundscape ‘map’ 304
Fig. 6.4 Positioned within the soundscape 307
Fig. 6.5 Non-linear soundscape comic 308
Fig. 7.1 Screenshot from Discussion Session 6 357
Fig. 7.2 My re-appropriation of Magritte’s Pipe 363
xxi
1
‘Welcome to Banterbury’
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

C. Bailey, Researching Virtual Play Experiences, Digital Education and Learning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78694-6_1
2 C. Bailey
As we move further into the twenty-first century, children are spending

an increasing proportion of their time playing and interacting in and
around complex and involving digital, screen-based environments.
However, despite popular (mis)understandings and moral panics, ‘screen
time’ does not constitute a singular, homogenous phenomena. As such,
there is a growing and urgent need for researchers to develop ways to
engage with the complexity of these contexts, whilst also exploring the
possibilities they offer. With this in mind, this book describes a research
project designed to investigate the ‘lived experience’ of a group of partici-
pants in a year-long after-school club, involving the videogame Minecraft.
A focus on what I have called the ‘lived experience’ helped to direct my
gaze towards the children’s participation, rather than a particular aspect
of play or, indeed, the game itself. The club, led by me in the children’s
classroom, began with the objective to create a ‘virtual community’, an
open invitation for the children to play and create as they saw fit (rather
than as an adult envisaged). The children took up this invitation in a
variety of ways, building and exploring within the game whilst interact-
ing in and around the virtual space. As I found, researching such environ-
ments can be challenging and complex, sometimes in ways that cannot
be predicted in advance via a carefully planned research design. Driven by
these ideas, and with a focus on this distinct environment of play, this
book is as much about the ways in which we conduct and represent

research as it is about the club itself. It would, however, be difficult to deal
with the former methodological aspects without a thorough introduction
to the latter contextual concerns.
One possible, and perhaps conventional, way of contextualising this
club for the purpose of this introductory chapter would be to utilise the
kind of formal discourse often employed when talking about research in
educational institutions, primarily addressing the school’s socio-economic
and geographical context. In this way, I could introduce the participants,
eight boys and four girls, as ‘Year Six Children’ who were therefore enter-
ing their final year of primary schooling. The location could be described
as a smaller-than-average primary school located on the rural outskirts of
a large city in the north of England. I might note that the school’s catch-
ment area was one of the largest in the region, with all of the children in
the group being of white British heritage. I could also mention that the
number of children entitled to free school meals was below the national
average.
Relating this formal content would certainly impart some relevant con-
textual information. However, this kind of institutionalised discussion
would also begin to frame the setting, and to represent participants, in a
particular way, perhaps encouraging certain associations and assumptions
about the character or diversity of the group, or the lives of the individual
children involved. Whilst the above information is accurate, verifiable
from the school’s inspection reports and website, it does not necessarily
provide us with the foundations for the most useful introduction for illu-
minating the club or the children’s lived experience. I am not claiming
that the club was free from the circulation of discourses relating to school,
race, gender or socio-economic background; the club was indeed subject
to multiple tracings of the children’s schooled associations and the afore-
mentioned kinds of controlled discourse and this is emphatically not an
attempt to erase consideration of these concepts. However, I am propos-
ing that employing this kind of commonly used shorthand for context,
particularly as a starting point, has the potential to misdirect, allowing
other things to escape our view. Such ordered and potentially classifying
ways of accounting may not encourage an exploration of, for instance, the
children’s different ways of engaging with the world, their references to
4 C. Bailey
their out-of-school experiences, their experiences of popular culture or

their on-screen construction of a virtual community. In other words, some
of the formal discourses that permeate reports of educational research sites
are not the same as the discourses that circulate in the sites themselves.
Whilst it is no doubt important that these children were part of a particu-
lar (school) community, this should not necessarily be seen as a defining
feature of the club, where they drew upon influences from diverse cultural
and personal sources, from different times and different spaces.
Given this, it might be more relevant to impart that the group con-
sisted of twelve children, all aged between ten and eleven. These children
could be called (pseudonymously, of course) ‘Ben’, ‘Mia’, ‘Freya’, ‘Rob’,
‘Joe’, ‘Lisa’, ‘Molly’, ‘Callum’, ‘Ed’, ‘Tom’, ‘Jake’ and, in one case,
‘Unnamed’. These participants are individually profiled later on in this
chapter, and their voices and actions are present (or at least represented)
throughout this thesis. As a group they were variously fun, friendly, artic-
ulate, funny, inquisitive, knowledgeable, confrontational, playful, mis-
chievous and insightful. During the club they engaged in lively and
imaginative play, communicating whilst using laptop computers to play
Minecraft. They often sang, danced, did impressions, told jokes, laughed
and acted out roles. They frequently described their behaviour during the
club as ‘banter’ (also using its informal derivative: ‘bants’) a word which
also partially formed the name they chose to give their virtual world:
‘Banterbury’. The room was rarely quiet; conversation often digressed
from Minecraft, even to the extent that Minecraft itself sometimes seemed
a digression. Play was messy, inconsistent, exuberant, problematic and,
sometimes, mundane. Of course, describing the club in this way also
serves to position it in a certain light, as an introduction to this piece of
research. However, this description is perhaps more in keeping with
account of the club that flows though this book.
1.1 Introducing Minecraft

Whilst this research is not specifically about Minecraft, it may not come
as a surprise that the game itself played a significant role during this
club. Minecraft has been a commercial success; its profile has grown
exponentially from its inception in 2009 as a one-man project by pro-

grammer Marcus ‘Notch’ Pearsson, through to the creation of games
studio ‘Mojang’, purchased by Microsoft in 2015. The game has sold
more than 200 million copies (Deangelis, 2020), spread across multiple
cross-platform versions. Due to its creative potential, the game has
established itself as a familiar presence in homes, as well as institutions;
schools, museums and galleries. Studies examining children’s video-
game preferences have seen Minecraft rated highly (Beavis et al., 2015;
Holloway et al., 2013). Likeminded players have found opportunities
to connect remotely to collaborate on shared maps, resulting in the
completion of construction projects that would not have been viable
for players working alone (Mashable, 2013). The game has also inspired
popular channels on the video hosting platform YouTube, with
Minecraft used as a tool for producing creative, video-based content
(Guardian, 2015). Its appeal and subsequent cultural significance are
arguably a result of the game’s associations with a particular type of
creative play.
Minecraft is a first-person perspective, virtual world videogame that
can be played by single or multiple players. The game’s landscape is
constructed using coloured blocks (representing wood, grass, gold etc.),
and the game is sometimes likened to a kind of virtual Lego (Garrelts,
2014, p. 43). The player can explore any aspect of the procedurally cre-
ated, three-dimensional terrain that forms the game’s vast landscapes.
By using in-game tools, the player can enact changes on any aspect of
the game’s virtual space. When players connect to play with multiple
devices, a group of individuals can inhabit, interact, communicate (via
text) and create in a common world. There are two main modes of
gameplay: survival and creative. In survival, the aim is to collect
resources to enable the player to survive the threat of the monsters that
come at night. In creative, players create with the threat removed.
Particularly in this mode, the accessibility of the game as a creative tool
enables all manner of imagined spaces to be represented on-screen.
Gameplay during the club swapped between these two modes, at the
request of the children. Within the confines of the game, much is pos-
sible, as the game’s visuals act as a stimulus for imaginative virtual world
play. Steve is the central controllable avatar in the game; his blocky
6 C. Bailey
appearance, rejecting real-life representational detail in favour of a car-

toon-like abstraction, providing the recognisable eight-by-eight-pixel
square ‘face’ of Minecraft (Bailey, 2017). In the version played by these
children, then called Minecraft Edu and produced by a company called
Teacher Gaming but since superseded by Microsoft’s Minecraft:
Education Edition, the children could choose from a selection of differ-
ent ‘skins’ and were also able to rename Steve with their own choice
of name.
Given the game’s infiltration into the popular consciousness it regu-
larly features in mainstream media. However, where videogames are a
regularly enlisted as a scapegoat, historically blamed for all manner of
social ills (Parkin, 2015), Minecraft breaks this mould. Whilst some
concerns persist about the popularity of Minecraft leading to ‘addiction’
(Mirror, 2014; New York Post, 2016), much of the related media con-
tent is suffused with enthusiasm and positivity (BBC, 2016; Guardian,
2014). As such, Minecraft has helped to partially reframe popular per-
ceptions of gaming, providing the basis for a more positive narrative,
one that is increasingly sympathetic to the positive possibilities of vid-
eogames. In spite of this popularly, paralleled by growing academic
interest in the game, there is no longitudinal work that examines col-
laborative use of the game from a socio-cultural perspective. There is
also very little work that examines the potential of Minecraft, or similar
creative virtual world environments, in groups involved in co-located
participation.
1.2 Introducing Minecraft Club

I ran the year-long Minecraft Club that forms the basis of this study,
with the game’s virtual world hosted on my laptop, acting as a server.
The club took place in the children’s classroom for twenty-three of the
twenty-six weeks, during the academic year 2014/2015. On three occa-
sions we relocated when the room was being used for meetings; twice to
the school’s group room (Weeks 4 and 14) and once to the hall (Week
16). We met at the end of the school day on Tuesdays from
3.30 pm–4.45 pm. The children each used a laptop running the game
to connect wirelessly to my computer, accessing the same virtual space

whilst being located together in the classroom. I had previously set up
and supervised other Minecraft Clubs in the same school, where I used
to work as a teacher. Minecraft was originally bought to my attention
when a child in my class asked if we could use it in school. I investi-
gated and was soon hooked. Having grown up as an avid player of video
games through the 1980 and 90s, I felt the appeal of Minecraft’s blocky
aesthetics. It soon became clear that the original lunchtime iteration of
the club offered experiences that were distinct from the group’s more
formal schooling and other extra-curricular provision available to them
at the time. Although I left the school in 2013 to undertake this research
for my doctoral study, I continued to run the club for a second year, in
an after-school timeslot, with a new group of children. The club with
forms the basis of this study took place in the third year of the club,
again with a new group of children.
As I have mentioned, the club’s stated objective, intentionally left open
to interpretation, was to create a ‘virtual community’. This ‘community’
aspect of the club’s design arose largely due to the positive connotations
inherent in the word ‘community’ (Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 15). I
felt that this might help to negate potential (though perhaps imagined)
parental concerns considering the sometimes-negative perceptions of vid-
eogames (Gee, 2007, p. 10), whilst also facilitating an experience that
differed from the children’s use of videogames outside of school. This
prompt provided enough guidance to act as a starting point for the group’s
gameplay, enabling a range of group and independent activities. This
objective was shared verbally by me during week 1, and also on a sign
placed in the game (Fig. 1.1). I was usually the only adult in attendance,
although members of the school staff (including the class teacher, trainee
teachers, the headteacher, parents and teaching assistants) were occasion-
ally present in the room for other purposes.
Although I was familiar with the school, I did not know these chil-
dren well, particularly not within the context of a club. All children in
the class were invited to participate; sadly, some children had commit-
ments on the same night, which prevented them from participating.
Whilst most of the children had played Minecraft in some form before,
there were differences in the participants’ levels of proficiency, and I
8 C. Bailey
Fig. 1.1 A sign welcoming the children to the game
emphasised that prior experience of the game was not necessary. Initially
eleven children joined the club. After a few weeks, one child left due to
other commitments. Another member joined a few weeks after, mean-
ing that eleven children were present for the majority of the weeks.
As mentioned above, Minecraft Edu was a build of the game designed
for use in educational contexts. In most ways it was identical to the
commercial version of the game, however the ability to easily host a
local server and its compatibility with school networks were the main
reasons I chose it over the standard version of Minecraft. Minecraft Edu
also made it easier for the administrator to manipulate aspects of the
game, such as turning on and off weather or day/night cycles; enabling
or disabling the creation (‘spawning’) of animals and other non-play-
able characters (NPCs, known as ‘mobs’, short for ‘mobiles’); enabling
or disabling spells and teleporting players to different locations.
Following the established practice of the previous iterations of the club,
I used these features occasionally, largely at the request of the children.
The main alteration made during the club involved switching between
game modes, from Creative to Survival. Although the threat to players
was disabled for the full duration of the club (no player could die), to
reduce the potential for in-game conflict, the two game modes still dif-
fered in terms of the materials and movement available to the children.
Creative Mode offered unlimited resources for construction, whereas
Survival Mode required players to collect resources from the game’s land-
scape. Creative also allowed for avatars to move by flying, whereas Survival
required the player to negotiate the landscape more slowly by walking
and jumping.
Although the club began in Creative Mode, and I had originally
envisaged the full club taking place in this mode, the children negoti-
ated the change of gameplay mode on several occasions. As outlined in
the following comic strip transcript, assembled from screencast data
recorded during week two, some children argued that their in-game
behaviour would ‘be a lot more sensible’ and present a number of new
opportunities if we switched from Creative to Survival, where they had
to collect their own resources rather than being given them.
10 C. Bailey
Although initially reticent to alter my original plans, I gradually

become comfortable with adapting my approach, allowing children to
negotiate changes, based on consensual group agreement. As predicted
by Ben, the change of game mode did indeed lead them to ‘trade and
stuff’, (seen later in an episode called ‘An Emerging Economy’) creating
an opportunity that would not have emerged had I insisted that they
remained in the play mode.
As a means of supporting and supplementing the children’s Minecraft
play, several commercially published paper-based texts were also avail-
able for the children to use, including Minecraft annuals, player’s guides,
stories and construction blueprints. The children were able to use the
internet, giving them access to sites such as YouTube. Lined reporter
notebooks, biro pens, pencils and highlighters were provided to the
children for use in any way they wished. It was hoped that these
resources would enhance the children’s play experience, providing them
with texts and materials that were often available to them when they
played in their own homes. Children also occasionally bought in these
texts themselves. The ‘how-to’ texts, though used infrequently, provided
the more novice players with a means of finding out about the basic
functions of the game (although the children more often simply asked
each other how to play). More experienced players sometimes referred
to these paratexts for advice on how to access more complex elements
of the game, such as using ‘redstone’, the game’s version of electricity,
for making circuits involving switches and lights.
I originally envisaged that YouTube would provide a source of
instructional videos to support children’s in-game creations. However,
as demonstrated in the following comic strip transcript, compiled video
data generated during a week 22, YouTube was more frequently used
for playing Minecraft related videos for the amusement of their peers.
12 C. Bailey
1.3 Introducing the Banterbury Players

As it was the individuals involved in Minecraft Club who made the
experience of researching and participating in this context so distinct
it feels important to recognise their contribution as early as possible.
As such, the following participant profiles (written and drawn by me)
were assembled from comments made by the club members them-
selves, together with my observations made during the club and dis-
cussion sessions. Of course, such brief summaries, created from my
perspective, can only provide a very limited account of the club mem-
bers. In retrospect, I regret not having asked the children to write and
draw their own, to allow them to decide how they wanted to be por-
trayed. Unfortunately, this was an opportunity I missed as I did not
begin to write these profiles until long after the children had moved
on to their new secondary schools. Therefore, these profiles are pre-
sented to give the reader an (admittedly restricted) sense of these indi-
viduals as they featured in the life of the club, as perceived by me.
‘Real’ (pseudonymised) names are presented alongside the partici-
pant’s in-game avatar name (pseudonymised where appropriate).
14 C. Bailey
16 C. Bailey
18 C. Bailey
It is the above club members whose experiences, collectively and

individually, constitute the ‘lived experience’ of the club. These indi-
viduals all maintained a presence in the room and, through their ava-
tars, in Minecraft, on-screen. As the weeks progressed, however, I
began to see numerous examples that suggested that the events in the
club were not only shaped by these human participants but also by
other non-human participants present during the club. This led me to
broaden my conceptualization of ‘participant’ to include more than
just the human players. Below I describe a few of the non-human
participants that were present.
Here I outline some of the non-playable characters (NPCs) present
on-screen, in Minecraft, also known as mobiles (mobs). These charac-
ters inhabited the game, alongside the player’s own avatars and regu-
larly influenced events. Although these NPCs were only visible
on-screen, their actions often had repercussions for the club members,
both on and off-screen. I also position a number of physically material
objects as non-human participants, given their ability to direct events.
Miller (2010) suggests that ‘things do things to us’ (p. 94); these non-
human ‘doing things’ could therefore be considered to have an agency
of their own.
20 C. Bailey
This is not an exhaustive list for either type of non-human partici-

pant. However, I have exemplified the NPCs and objects that seemed
most regularly present or exercised the most visible impact on the
group, to provide a flavour of the kind of non-human participant pres-
ent during the club. These character studies, and the earlier comic strip
transcripts, serve as a gentle introduction to the approach taken in this
book whereby written text coexists alongside other modes, including
researcher produced illustration, comics and audio. As such, this book
constitutes something of a multimodal research text, aiming to convey
meaning in multiple ways, in addition to the written word. This visual
approach came as a response to the site under investigation and consti-
tutes one of the ways in which the project developed over time rather
than being pre-determined at the inception of the study.
1.4 bout the Author: Identity, Roles

A
and Perspectives
There was also one more human player; during the club I maintained a
presence in the game to play alongside the other players, although my own
progress was inevitably hindered by also trying to work out what was
going on around me. I also wasn’t as good at the game as most of the other
participants. A character profile will suffice here as a brief introduction,
but I will also use a little more space below to tell you about me, given that
my positionality is important in understanding the nature of this study.
22 C. Bailey
1.4.1 Remnants of Teacher-ness
As mentioned earlier, I used to teach at the school that provided the

physical location for this study. After leaving my teaching role I contin-
ued running the club and also occasionally returned to the school to
provide supply teaching cover. As I was no longer a full-time employee
of the school my role shifted to include almost no formal teaching, and
I spent significantly more time in school running the club and playing
Minecraft with children than I did teaching them. During this time a
new headteacher was also employed and, as I was no longer part of the
daily running and decision making in the school, I soon felt more like
a welcome visitor than an employee. With my transition in role from
teacher to researcher my perception of the school, and teaching in gen-
eral, began to shift; I became detached from the day-to-day routine of
formal schooling as the pace of my life altered to allow for reflection
and learning, rather than what felt like a rapid cycle of planning, teach-
ing and assessing that had been my reality for the previous nine years.
Although I did not formally collect data during the second year of the
club, continuing immersion in the club allowed me to reflect on my
positionality and to consider the methodological approach I would
eventually take to research the children’s participation in the club dur-
ing the following year.
Moving from my formal teaching role freed me up to become more
of an observer of the club. The presence of an observer in any situation
will always have an impact on the scene being observed, and any
researcher is ‘burdened with pieces of ready-made identities’ (Nespor,
2010, p. 203). This is especially true where an individual is required to
‘extend and redefine already existing relationships’ (Nespor, 2010,
p. 203), in addition to establishing, and accounting for the impact of,
a researcher identity. With this in mind, my role as researcher was
informed by considerations of reflexivity, taking account of the ‘inti-
mate relationship between the researcher and what is studied’ (Denzin
& Lincoln, 2011, p. 8). I was familiar to most of the children in this
study in my previous role as a teacher, and through my continued pres-
ence as occasional supply teacher at the school. I was still seen as a
teacher, or at least as having been a teacher, by some of the children;

one child even bought me a ‘Thank You Teacher’ during the final week
of the club. However, whilst it is important to take this into account in
terms of how it influenced the events in the club, it would inconsistent
with the conception of ‘identity’ being applied during this project to
suggest that my ‘teacher’ identity was fixed in time, or even that the
identity implied by the role of teacher is consistent and unchangeable
across all educators, and with all children.
The meaning of ‘teacher’ was demonstrably not fixed with the chil-
dren; on rare occasions when I taught the class on supply, my role
seemed more defined and our relationships more formal than during
the more relaxed extra-curricular club environment, in spite of the fact
that the same children were present in the same room. For instance,
children had allotted seats in which to sit during their lessons, whereas
in the club they were able to sit wherever they chose. During lesson
time there were also already established (although not necessarily always
strictly adhered to) rules about when to speak and when to listen, all of
which seemed connected more to their associations with school than to
any fixed conception of my ‘teacher-ness’. These rules did not apply
during the club. Indeed, my initial concern that my presence as a
‘teacher’ could lead the children to foreground certain types of schooled
practice seemed largely unfounded, as any rare instances involving the
children outwardly linking the game to their classroom learning were
addressed to their class teacher during the times they occasionally
passed through the classroom, rather than to me. Although I was per-
haps still seen as a teacher, I wasn’t viewed as being their teacher and
therefore demonstrating their academic ability to me maybe seemed
less rewarding. The group’s understanding of my role seemed to be that
I was there to see what they did in the club, rather than to encourage
them to demonstrate their proficiency in educational matters.
Whilst suggesting that children’s associations of the role of teacher
are not necessarily fixed, as the only supervisory adult present for much
of the club I was inevitably still a figure with some authority. First and
foremost, as the club supervisor, I was responsible for the safety and
wellbeing of the children. I was not, and did not try to be, an equal
member of the club; during the fieldwork I acted in a hybrid role as a
24 C. Bailey
club leader and a researcher who was open to contribution, co-con-

struction and participation at the invitation of the children. My role
inevitably had an impact on the club, just as any club is shaped by the
necessary presence of a supervising adult. I therefore carried with me a
complex set of interconnecting associations, through (however slight)
the remnants of expectations from my previous role, my role as the club
leader and my emerging identity as researcher. Inevitably, the nature of
my participation differed from the rest of the class. As an adult, I was
not part of their wider social group. Although I did discuss Minecraft
and some elements of my life with them (they often wanted to know
how my baby daughter was and enjoyed hearing about what she had
been doing) I did not confide in the children in the same way they did
with each other; I did not discuss my (many!) anxieties about life or
mobilise my own cultural reference points in the same way as them. I
did not sing or dance! I did not wear a uniform. I was generally reactive
in social conversation, rather than pro-active, although I did often ask
questions about what they were doing in the game. Underlying this was
the fact that I was ultimately in charge of them during the club, a role
that none of them had. The way in which I played the game was also
reactive, punctuated by long stretches of time spent observing or assist-
ing with technical problems.
My previous role as an educator had potential to influence my per-
spective too. Jones et al. (2010) suggest that the ‘spectre’ of a teacher’s
previous experience ‘haunts… their perspectives’ (p. 482). Similarly,
Mannay (2010) suggests that, whilst researching a familiar site can be
beneficial due to the ability to ‘elicit greater understandings’ that comes
from the reduction of cultural and linguistic barriers (p. 93), the
researcher may also retain ‘preconceptions about the topic’ (p. 93) that
influence how they view the research site and participants. Conscious
of this, I employed reflection as an essential mediating tool in the
research process (Watt, 2007, p. 83) to repeatedly scrutinise my per-
spective and to consider whether I could see things differently as the
research was ongoing. This happened during the fieldwork, where I
used a reflective journal as a ‘second level of reflection’ (Watt, 2007,
p. 83) on the process of conducting this research. In addition, when
reviewing, analysing and representing the data, I often highlighted my
presence in the events under observation, in an attempt to acknowledge

and evaluate the development of my own contribution to the meaning
making processes. This said, self-reflection alone cannot entirely over-
come issues of reflexivity (Siraj-Blatchford & Siraj-Blatchford, 1997,
p. 238), understood here as the process that involved examining my
own role in the research process and the construction of knowledge. I
was particularly conscious of the difficulty involved in reflecting on my
closeness to the site and the remnants of my teacher perspective, as I
was inevitably bound to be reflecting from my perspective.
With this in mind, in an effort to take on different ways of seeing the
club, I approached this research with an intention to ‘make the familiar
strange’ (Mannay, 2010, p. 91). Whilst making choices about what was
‘worth’ observing (perhaps drawn in by the extremes, the source of the
loudest voice, the liveliest action or those perceived to be the most
engrossed individuals), I also attempted to observe and record with an
open mind to what could later be significant. In particular, Mannay
(2010) suggests that using ‘participant-directed visual data’ (p. 107) can
assist with this process, providing ‘windows to new worlds’ (p. 100).
Therefore, elements of the research design also took account of issues
relating to power, agency and pupil voice (Marsh, 2010) by handing
control over to the children. Spreading the balance of power, children
were positioned as active participants in the club, given free reign within
the virtual world, whilst largely controlling the direction of the club
themselves. This enabled them to derive power from their deeper exper-
tise and knowledge of the game, and the wider network of related media
that surrounded it. Furthermore, the group of children was already
established to some extent, having been together in school as a class for
six years. As such, I was seeking permission from this group of children
to gain entry into an aspect of their world.
1.4.2 An Autistic Researcher
My observations, and the nature of this study, were also coloured by

other aspects of my identity. I am autistic and there are some ways that
being autistic potentially influenced this project. I see autism as an
26 C. Bailey
‘assemblage’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7) connected, unavoidably,

to the medicalised definitions (APA, 2013) but also constructed from
the wider cultural and social conceptions of autism. Work around neu-
rodiversity (Silberman, 2015) helps to focus on autism as an identity,
rather than a disorder or deficit (Fletcher-Watson & Happé, 2019).
There are a number of common characteristics shared by individuals
who identify as autistic, as a neurodivergent section of the population.
Autistic people are often said to have ‘special interests’ (Huxley-
Jones, 2020, p. 144) that often result in hyper-focus on particular top-
ics of intense interest. As a child, videogames were one of my special
interests or, what might, in literacy terms, be called a ‘ruling passion’
(Barton & Hamilton, 1998, p. 83). I was an early adopter of technol-
ogy, fascinated with computers from around the age of 5 when I would
spend significant amounts of my time playing and programming games.
I was also an avid reader of videogame magazines and other contempo-
rary ‘paratexts’ (Beavis et al., 2009). In the pre-internet age, I was a
regular contributor of articles to paper-based computer game fanzines
and made a number of valuable social connections via these literacy
practices. As such, part of my initial motivation for setting up a club
revolving around Minecraft stemmed from my own interest in video-
games and the wider culture attached to them. I still play videogames
and this longstanding, intense personal connection with videogames
demonstrates that I embarked on this research with a positive view of
the activity that was at the heart of this club. I certianly found myself
strongly drawn to Minecraft, regardless of its educational application.
Hyper-focus around special interests is also said to ‘promote a par-
ticular form of creativity’ (Fletcher-Watson & Happé, 2019, p. 74).
Being autistic also influenced my ontology and, in turn, my method-
ological approach. This is not to claim that there is a characteristically
autistic way of seeing and doing things, rather my approach to research
was shaped by my own individual autistic experience of the world.
Sinclair (1993) suggests that “autism is a way of being. It is pervasive; it
colours every experience, every sensation, perception, thought, emo-
tion, and encounter, every aspect of existence’ (n.p.). Whilst it would
be too reductive to suggest that there is a simple, direct line between the
‘heterogenous’ (Fletcher-Watson & Happé, 2019, p. 159) experience of
being autistic and pursuing a particular research approach, autistic peo-
ple are understood to experience the world in ways that are different to
those who are considered neurotypical. The neurological type said to be
shared by autistic individuals includes, for instance, differences in sen-
sory processing (Chown & Leatherland, 2020). Given that the world is
perceived through our senses, these sensory differences influence how
an individual interacts with and understands the world. Like many
autistic people, my brain processes sound differently (Davies, 2019)
including, for instance, an inability to isolate background noise and
both hypo- and hyper-sensitivity to particular sounds (Fletcher-Watson
& Happé, 2019). As such, my sensory processing had some influence
on my experience of the club and, therefore, goes some way to explain-
ing my choice to focus on the club’s soundscape. Of course, this alone
does not fully explain my methodological approach, as my personal
experience of the world is also bound up with wider cultural and social
perceptions what a valid research project can and should look like.
Autistic people also report differences in visual processing (e.g.
Grandin, 1996), and my own experiences around visual perception
underpin my use of multiple variations on visual representation and
investigation in this book. As this project progressed, using and manip-
ulating images in various forms became a way of thinking about and
representing the research, in a way that helped me to make meaning, in
synergy with what the psychologist’s report around my autism diagno-
sis that observes my own ‘novel and innovative way of looking at things’.
I will take up this theme again more specifically in Chap. 3 when I
address my use of drawing in more detail. I emphasise these aspects of
my identity here in order to clarify that my approach to this research
was never explicitly motivated by the need to do things ‘differently’, to
be ‘innovative’ or to see the world ‘in a different way’, rather I was
driven to do what seemed authentic to the fieldsite, within the broad
parameters of my own particular perception and understanding of
the world.
28 C. Bailey
1.5 Aims of the Study

In this book I aim to illuminate the lived experience of participants
involved in the distinct play environment generated through the club.
This small scale, longitudinal study that the book describes was designed
to provide rich description of the club and the group’s experience. The
study was driven by a number of open questions, building on my previ-
ous experience of running the club and a systematic review of the litera-
ture. These questions guided my observation and analysis, relating in
particular to the group’s play and their use of space:
• What is the nature of the children’s play in the club? What motivates
this play?
• What do the children draw upon in the club; what ideas and resources
fuel their play? How is Minecraft implicated in their play?
• How do the children use the on and off-screen space? What is the
nature of the group’s interactions in this space?
Given the complex and messy nature of such research I was also
interested in the following methodological question, which invoked
thinking about individual and group identities, and the ways in which
we represent the lives of children.
• What constitutes lived experience? How can I take account of the

lived experience of a group? How can I best represent this experience?
These broad questions, with their often-interrelated concerns, shaped
my observations and focused my analysis of the data.
1.6 Contributions
Reading any text requires a commitment from the reader. As such, I
would like to outline what the reader might gain from engaging with
this book, covering four main dimensions.
Firstly, I suggest that the reader will gain insight into a particular
methodological approach, developed as part of this project in order to
explore and account for the rich complexity of the children’s on- and
off-screen experiences. I refer to this here as rhizomic ethnography. This
constitutes a flexible array of methods, underpinned by an epistemo-
logical perspective that draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) rhizo-
mic ‘image of thought’ (p. 16). This emergent approach could have
affordances in other contexts as a means of tackling complexity in other
contexts. I demonstrate, for instance, how it enabled me to approach
the project’s data from multiple directions, thereby exploring the mul-
tiple and complementary ways of understanding the fluid and complex
concept of ‘lived experience’. This approach allowed for new under-
standings of the fieldsite, as exemplified in the latter two contributions,
that could potentially have been missed or written out of accounts
using other methodological approaches.
Secondly, the reader will encounter an academic text that relies on
more that the written word: what I later refer to as a ‘hybrid text’ and
an example of ‘neurodivergent writing’ (West, 2020). This results in a
text that employs multiple modes: words, images (in multiple configu-
rations, often constructed as comic strips) and audio are used at differ-
ent points, for multiple purposes. This experimentation with different
ways of conveying research serves to challenge the dominance of the
written word in academic research and could be seen as an encourage-
ment for others to do the same.
Thirdly, this book makes a contribution to the literature on virtual
world video game play. It provides distinct and rich accounts of the
club as a longitudinal case study of co-located play, in and around a
virtual world environment. These accounts help us to consider the
potential for the use of similar technologies with groups of players in
similar contexts, with a particular focus on the possibilities for creative
play and social interaction.
Finally, this book offers a theoretical exemplification of what I call
‘the emergent dimension of play’. In the case of Minecraft Club, this
emergent dimension was largely characterised by collaboration, sponta-
neity, exuberance, imagination, performance and mischievousness.
Furthermore, it involved collaboration that spanned difference spaces,
drawing upon a diverse range of resources from aspects of the children’s
lives and their experiences of wider culture.
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CHAPTER II
The full flood of the sun, now low in the heavens, poured through the
western windows upon the figure of the boy standing in the doorway.
The room was beginning to darken, and the ruddy firelight, too, fell
glowingly upon him.
The earl was instantly roused, and could scarcely persuade himself
that the boy before him was only fifteen; seventeen, or even
eighteen, would have seemed nearer the mark, so tall and well-
developed was he. Like all creatures of the highest breeding, George
looked handsomer the handsomer his dress; and although his
costume was really simple enough, he had the splendid air that
made him always appear to be in the highest fashion. His coat and
knee-breeches were of dark-blue cloth, spun, woven, and dyed at
home. His waistcoat, however, was of white brocade, and was made
of his mother’s wedding-gown, Madam Washington having indulged
her pride so far as to lay this treasured garment aside for waistcoats
for her sons, while Mistress Betty was to inherit the lace veil and the
string of pearls which had gone with the gown.
George’s shoebuckles and kneebuckles were much finer than the
earl’s, being of paste, and having been once worn by his father. His
blond hair was made into a club, and tied with a black ribbon, while
under his arm he carried a smart three-cornered hat, for the hat
made a great figure in the ceremonious bows of the period. His dog,
a beautiful creature, stood beside him.
Never in all his life had the Earl of Fairfax seen so noble a boy. The
sight of him smote the older man’s heart; it flashed through him how
easy it would be to exchange all his honors and titles for such a son.
He rose and saluted him, as Madam Washington said, in a tone that
had pride in every accent:
“My lord, this is my son, Mr. Washington.” George responded with
one of those graceful inclinations which, years after, made the
entrance of Colonel Washington at the Earl of Dunmore’s levee at
Williamsburg a lesson in grace and good-breeding. Being “Mr.
Washington” and the head of the house, it became his duty to speak
first.
“I am most happy to welcome you, my lord, to our home.”
“‘THIS IS MY SON, MR. WASHINGTON’”

“And I am most happy,” said the earl, “to meet once more my old
friend, Madam Washington, and the goodly sons and sweet daughter
with which she has been blessed.”
“My mother has often told us of you, sir, in speaking of her life during
the years she spent in England.”
“Ah, my lord,” said Madam Washington, “I perceive I am no longer
young, for I love to dwell upon those times, and to tell my children of
the great men I met in England, chiefly through your lordship’s
kindness.”
“It was my good-fortune,” said the earl, “to be an humble member of
the Spectator Club, and through the everlasting goodness of Mr.
Joseph Addison I had the advantage of knowing men so great of
soul and so luminous of mind that I think I can never forget them.”
“I had not the honor of knowing Mr. Addison. He died before I ever
saw England,” replied Madam Washington.
“Unfortunately, yes, madam. But of those you knew, Mr. Pope, poor
Captain Steele, and even Dean Swift, with all his ferocious wit, his
tremendous invective, his savage thirst for place and power,
respected Mr. Addison. He was a man of great dignity—not odd and
misshapen, like little Mr. Pope, nor frowzy like poor Dick Steele, nor
rude and overbearing like the fierce Dean—but ever gentle, mild,
and of a most manly bearing. For all Mr. Addison’s mildness, I think
there was no man that Dean Swift feared so much. When we would
all meet at the club, and the Dean would begin his railing at persons
of quality—for he always chose that subject when I was present—Mr.
Addison would listen with a smile to the Dean as he lolled over the
table in his huge periwig, and roared out in his great rich voice all the
sins of all the people, always beginning and ending with Sir Robert
Walpole, whom he hated most malignantly. Once, a pause coming in
the Dean’s talk, Mr. Addison, calmly taking out his snuffbox, and
helping himself to a pinch, remarked that he had always thought
Dean Swift’s chiefest weakness, until he had been assured to the
contrary, was his love for people of quality. We each held our breath.
Dick Steele quietly removed a pewter mug from the Dean’s elbow;
Mr. Pope, who sat next Mr. Addison, turned pale and slipped out of
his chair; the Dean turned red and breathed hard, glaring at Mr.
Addison, who only smiled a little; and then he—the great Dean Swift,
the man who could make governments tremble and parliaments
afraid; who made duchesses weep from his rude sneers, and great
ladies almost go down on their knees to him—sneaked out of the
room at this little thrust from Mr. Addison. For ’twas the man, madam
—the honest soul of him—that could cow that great swashbuckler of
a genius. Mr. Addison abused no one, and he was exactly what he
appeared to be.”
“That, indeed, is the highest praise, as it shows the highest wisdom,”
answered Madam Washington.
George listened with all his mind to this. He had read the Spectator,
and Mr. Addison’s tragedy of “Cato” had been read to him by Mr.
Hobby, the Scotch school-master who taught him, and he loved to
hear of these great men. The earl, although deep in talk with Madam
Washington, was by no means unmindful of the boy, but without
seeming to notice him watched every expression of his earnest face.
“I once saw Dean Swift,” continued Madam Washington. “It was at a
London rout, where I went with my brother’s wife, Madam Joseph
Ball, when we were visiting in London. He had great dark eyes, and
sat in a huge chair, and called ladies of quality ‘my dear,’ as if they
were dairy-maids. And the ladies seemed half to like it and half to
hate it. They told me that two ladies had died of broken hearts for
him.”
“I believe it to be true,” replied the earl. “That was the last time the
Dean ever saw England. He went to Ireland, and, as he said,
‘commenced Irishman in earnest,’ and died very miserably. He could
not be bought for money, but he could very easily be bribed with
power.”
“And that poor Captain Steele?”
The earl’s grave face was suddenly illuminated with a smile.
“Dear Dick Steele—the softest-hearted, bravest, gentlest fellow—
always drunk, and always repenting. There never was so great a
sermon preached on drunkenness as Dick Steele himself was. But
for drink he would have been one of the happiest, as he was by
nature one of the best and truest, gentlemen in the world; but he was
weak, and he was, in consequence, forever miserable. Drink brought
him to debts and duns and prison and rags and infamy. Ah, madam,
’twould have made your heart bleed, as it made mine, to see poor
Dick reeling along the street, dirty, unkempt, his sword bent, and he
scarce knowing what he was doing; and next day, at home, where
his wife and children were in hunger and cold and poverty, behold
him, lying in agony on his wretched bed, weeping, groaning,
reproaching himself, and suffering tortures for one hour’s wicked
indulgence! Then would he turn gentleman again, and for a long time
be our own dear Dick Steele—his wife smiling, his children happy. I
love to think on honest Dick at these times. It was then he wrote that
beautiful little book, which should be in every soldier’s hands, The
Christian Hero. We could always tell at the club whether Dick Steele
were drunk or sober by Mr. Addison’s face. When Steele was acting
the beast, Mr. Addison sighed often and looked melancholy all the
time, and spent his money in taking such care as he could of the
poor wife and children. Poor Dick! The end came at last in
drunkenness and beastliness; but before he died, for a little while, he
was the Dick Steele we loved, and shall ever love.”
“And Mr. Pope—the queer little gentleman—who lived at
Twickenham, and was so kind to his old mother?”
“Mr. Pope was a very great genius, madam, and had he not been
born crooked he would have been an admirable man; but the crook
in his body seemed to make a crook in his mind. He died but last
year, outliving many strong men who pitied his puny frame. But let
me not disparage Mr. Pope. My Lord Chesterfield, who was a very
good judge of men, as well as the first gentleman of his time,
entertained a high esteem for Mr. Pope.”
“I also had the honor of meeting the Earl of Chesterfield,” continued
Madam Washington, with animation, “and he well sustained the
reputation for politeness that I had heard of him, for he made as
much of me as if I had been a great lady instead of a young girl from
the colonies, whom chance and the kindness of a brother had
brought to England, and your lordship’s goodness had introduced to
many people of note. ’Tis true I saw them but for a glimpse or two,
but that was enough to make me remember them forever. I have
tried to teach my son Lord Chesterfield’s manner of saluting ladies,
in which he not only implied the deepest respect for the individual,
but the greatest reverence for all women.”
“That is true of my Lord Chesterfield,” replied the earl, who found it
enchanting to recall these friends of his youth with whom he had
lived in close intimacy, “and his manners revealed the man. He had
also a monstrous pretty wit. There is a great, lumbering fellow of
prodigious learning, one Samuel Johnson, with whom my Lord
Chesterfield has become most friendly. I never saw this Johnson
myself, for he is much younger than the men of whom we are
speaking; but I hear from London that he is a wonder of learning,
and although almost indigent will not accept aid from his friends, but
works manfully for the booksellers. He has described my Lord
Chesterfield as ‘a wit among lords, and a lord among wits.’ I heard
something of this Dr. Johnson, in a late letter from London, that I
think most praiseworthy, and affording a good example to the young.
His father, it seems, was a bookseller at Lichfield, where on market-
days he would hire a stall in the market for the sale of his wares.
One market-day, when Samuel was a youth, his father, being ill and
unable to go himself, directed him to fit up the book-stall in the
market and attend it during the day. The boy, who was otherwise a
dutiful son, refused to do this. Many years afterwards, his father
being dead, and Johnson, being as he is in great repute for learning,
was so preyed upon by remorse for his undutiful conduct that he
went to Lichfield and stood bareheaded in the market-place, before
his father’s old stall, for one whole market-day, as an evidence of his
sincere penitence. I hear that some of the thoughtless jeered at him,
but the better class of people respected his open acknowledgment of
his fault, the more so as he was in a higher worldly position than his
father had ever occupied, and it showed that he was not ashamed of
an honest parent because he was of a humble class. I cannot think,
madam, of that great scholar, standing all day with bare, bowed
head, bearing with silent dignity the remarks of the curious, the jeers
of the scoffers, without in spirit taking off my hat to him.”
During this story Madam Washington fixed her eyes on George, who
colored slightly, but remarked, as the earl paused:
“It was the act of a brave man and a gentleman. There are not many
of us who could do it.”
Just then the door opened, and Uncle Jasper, bearing a huge tray,
entered. He placed it on a round mahogany table, and Madam
Washington proceeded to make tea, and offered it to the earl with
her own hands.
The earl while drinking his tea glanced first at George and then at
pretty little Betty, who, feeling embarrassed at the notice she
received, produced her sampler from her pocket and began to work
demurely in cross-stitch on it. Presently Lord Fairfax noticed the
open harpsichord.
“I remember, madam,” he said to Madam Washington, as they
gravely sipped their tea together, “that you had a light hand on the
harpsichord.”
“I have never touched it since my husband’s death,” answered she,
“but my daughter Betty can perform with some skill.”
Mistress Betty, obeying a look from her mother, rose at once and
went to the harpsichord, never thinking of the ungraceful and
disobliging protest of more modern days. She seated herself, and
struck boldly into the “The Marquis of Huntley’s Rigadoon.” She had,
indeed, a skilful little hand, and as the touch of her small fingers filled
the room with quaint music the earl sat, tapping with his foot to mark
the time, and smiling at the little maid’s grave air while she played.
When her performance was over she rose, and, making a reverence
to her mother and her guest, returned to her sampler.
The earl had now spent nearly two hours with his old friend, and the
sun was near setting, but he could scarcely make up his mind to
leave. The interest he felt in her seemed transferred to her children,
especially the two eldest, and the resolve entered his mind that he
would see more of that splendid boy. He turned to George and said
to him:
“Will you be so good, Mr. Washington, as to order my people to put
to my horses, as I find that time has flown surprisingly fast?”
“Will you not stay the night, my lord?” asked Madam Washington.
“We can amply accommodate you and your servants.”
“Nothing would please me more, madam, but it is my duty to reach
Fredericksburg to-night, where I have business, and I am now
seeking a ferry where I can be moved across.”
“Then you have not to seek far, sir, for this place is called Ferry
Farm; and we have several small boats, and a large one that will
easily hold your coach; and, with the assistance of your servants, all
of them, as well as your horses, can be ferried over at once.”
The earl thanked her, and George left the room promptly to make the
necessary arrangements. In a few moments the horses were put to
the coach, as the ferry was half a mile from the house; and George,
ordering his saddle clapped on his horse, that was just then being
brought from the pasture, galloped down to the ferry to superintend
the undertaking—not a light one—of getting a coach, eight horses,
and eight persons across the river.
The coach being announced as ready, Madam Washington and the
earl rose and walked together to the front porch, accompanied by
little Mistress Betty, who hung fondly to her mother’s hand. Outside
stood the three younger boys, absorbed in contemplation of the
grandeur of the equipage. They came forward promptly to say good-
bye to their mother’s guest, and then slipped around into the
chimney corner that they might see the very last of the sight so new
to them. Little Betty also disappeared in the house after the earl had
gallantly kissed her hand and predicted that her bright eyes would
yet make many a heart ache. Left alone on the porch in the twilight
with Madam Washington, he said to her very earnestly:
“Madam, I do not speak the language of compliment when I say that
you may well be the envy of persons less fortunate than you when
they see your children. Of your eldest boy I can truly say I never saw
a nobler youth, and I hope you will place no obstacle in the way of
my seeing him again. Greenway Court is but a few days’ journey
from here, and if I could have him there it would be one of the
greatest pleasures I could possibly enjoy.”
“Thank you, my lord,” answered Madam Washington, simply. “My
son George has, so far, never caused me a moment’s uneasiness,
and I can very well trust him with persons less improving to him than
your lordship. It is my wish that he should have the advantage of the
society of learned and polished men, and your kind invitation shall
some day be accepted.”
“You could not pay me a greater compliment, madam, than to trust
your boy with me, and I shall claim the fulfilment of your promise,”
replied Lord Fairfax. “Farewell, madam; the sincere regard I have
cherished during nearly twenty years for you will be extended to your
children, and your son shall never want a friend while I live. I do not
know that I shall ever travel three days’ journey from Greenway
again, so this may be our last meeting.”
“Whether it be or not, my lord,” said Madam Washington, “I can only
assure you of my friendship and gratitude for your good-will towards
my son.”
The earl then respectfully kissed her hand, as he had done little
Betty’s, and stepped into the coach. With a great smacking of whips
and rattle and clatter and bang the equipage rolled down the road in
the dark towards the ferry.
A faint moon trembled in the heavens, and it was so dark that
torches were necessary on the river-bank. George had dismounted
from his horse, and with quiet command had got everything in
readiness to transport the cavalcade. The earl, sitting calmly back in
the chariot, watched the proceedings keenly. He knew that it
required good judgment in a boy of fifteen to take charge of the
ferriage of so many animals and men without haste or confusion. He
observed that in the short time George had preceded him everything
was exactly as it should be—the large boat drawn up ready for the
coach, and two smaller boats and six stalwart negro ferry-men to do
the work.
“I have arranged, my lord, with your permission,” he said, “to ferry
the coach and horses, with your own servants, over first, as it is not
worth while taking any risks in crowding the boats; then, when the
boats return, the outriders and their horses may return in the large
boat.”
“Quite right, Mr. Washington,” answered the earl, briskly; “your
dispositions do credit to you, and I believe you could transport a
regiment with equal ease and precision.”
George’s face colored with pleasure at this. “I shall go on with you
myself,” he said, “if you will allow me.”
The boat was drawn up, a rude but substantial raft was run from the
shore to the boat, the horses were taken from the coach, and it was
rolled on board by the strong arms of a dozen men. The horses were
disposed to balk at getting in the boat, but after a little coaxing trotted
quietly aboard; the ferry-men, reinforced by two of Lord Fairfax’s
servants, took the oars, and the boat, followed by two smaller ones,
was pulled rapidly across the river. After a few minutes, seeing that
everything was going right, George entered the coach, and sat by
the earl’s side. The earl lighted his travelling-lamp, and the two sat in
earnest conversation. Lord Fairfax wished to find out something
more about the boy who had made so strong an impression on him.
He found that George had been well taught, and although not
remarkable in general literature, he knew more mathematics than
most persons of twice his age and opportunities. He had been under
the care of the old Scotchman, Mr. Hobby, who was, in a way, a
mathematical genius, and George had profited by it.
“And what, may I ask, Mr. Washington, is your plan for the future?”
“I hope, sir,” answered George, modestly, “that I shall be able to get
a commission in his Majesty’s army or navy. As you know, although I
am my mother’s eldest son, my brother Laurence, of Mount Vernon,
is my father’s eldest son, and the head of our family. My younger
brothers and I have small fortunes, and I would like to see something
of the world and some service in arms before I set myself to
increasing my part.”
“Very creditable to you, and you may count upon whatever influence
I have towards getting you a commission in either branch of the
military service. I myself served in the Low Countries under the Duke
of Marlborough in my youth, and although I have long since given up
the profession of arms I can never lose my interest in it. Your
honored mother has promised me the pleasure of your company for
a visit at Greenway Court, when we may discuss the matter of your
commission at length. I am not far from an old man, Mr. Washington,
but I retain my interest in youth, and I like to see young faces about
me at Greenway.”
“Thank you, my lord,” answered George, with secret delight. “I shall
not let my mother forget her promise—but she never does that.”
“There is excellent sport at Greenway, and I have kept a choice
breed of deer-hounds as well as fox-hounds. I brought with me from
England a considerable library, and you can, I hope, amuse yourself
with a book; but if you cannot amuse yourself with a book, you will
always be dependent upon others for your entertainment.”
“I am fond of reading—on rainy days,” said George, at which candid
acknowledgment the earl smiled.
“My man, Lance, is an old soldier; he is an intelligent man for his
station and a capital fencer. You may learn something from him with
the foils. He was with me at the siege of Bouchain.”
What a delightful vista this opened before George, who was, like
other healthy minded boys, devoted to reading and hearing of
battles, and fencing and all manly sports! He glanced at Lance,
standing erect and soldierly, as the boat moved through the water.
He meant to hear all about the siege of Bouchain from Lance before
the year was out, and blushed when he was obliged to acknowledge
to himself that he had never heard of the siege of Bouchain.
CHAPTER III
Next morning, as usual, George was up and on horseback by
sunrise. Until this year he had ridden five miles a day each way to
Mr. Hobby’s school; but now he was so far ahead of the school-
master’s classes that he only went a few times a week, to study
surveying and the higher mathematics, and to have the week’s study
at home marked out for him. Every morning, however, it was his duty
to ride over the whole plantation before breakfast, and to report the
condition of everything in it to his mother. Madam Washington was
one of the best farmers in the colony, and it was her custom, after
hearing George’s account at breakfast, to mount her horse and ride
over the place also, and give her orders for the day.
The first long lances of light were just tipping the woods and the river
when George came out and found his horse held by Billy Lee, a
negro lad of about his own age, who was his body-servant and
shadow.[A] Billy was a chocolate-colored youth, the son of Aunt
Sukey the cook and Uncle Jasper the butler. He had but one idea
and one ideal on earth, and that was “Marse George.” It was in vain
that Madam Washington, the strictest of disciplinarians, might lay her
commands on Billy. Until he had found out what “Marse George”
wanted him to do, Billy seemed unconscious of having got any
orders. Madam Washington, who could awe much older and wiser
persons than Billy, had often sent for the boy, when he was regularly
taken into the house, and after reasoning with him, kindly explaining
to him that both “Marse George” and himself were merely boys, and
under her authority, would give him a stern reproof, which Billy
always received in an abstracted silence, as if he had not heard a
word that was said to him. Finding that he acted throughout as if he
had not heard, Madam Washington turned him over to Aunt Sukey,
who, after the fashion of those days, with white boys as well as
black, gave him a smart birching. Billy’s roars were like the
trumpeting of an elephant; but within a week he went back to his old
way of forgetting there was anybody in the world except “Marse
George.” Then Madam Washington turned him over to Uncle Jasper,
who “lay” that he would “meck dat little triflin’ nigger min’ missis.” A
second and much more vigorous birching followed at the hands of
Uncle Jasper, who triumphed over Aunt Sukey when Billy for two
days actually seemed to realize that he had something else to do
besides following George about and never taking his eyes off of him.
Uncle Jasper’s victory was short-lived, though. Within a week Billy
was as good-for-nothing as ever, except to George. Madam
Washington then saw that it was not a case of discipline—that the
boy was simply dominated by his devotion to George, and could
neither be forced nor reasoned out of it. Therefore it was arranged
that the care of the young master’s horse and everything pertaining
to him should be confided to Billy, who would work all day with the
utmost willingness for “Marse George.” By this means Billy was
made of use. Nobody touched George’s clothes or books or
belongings except Billy. He scrubbed and then dry-rubbed the floor
of his young master’s room, scoured the windows, cut the wood and
made the fires, attended to his horse, and when George was there
personally to direct him, Billy would do whatever work he was
ordered. But the instant he was left to himself he returned to
idleness, or to some perfectly useless work for his young master—
polishing up windows that were already bright, dry-rubbing a floor
that shone like a mirror, or brushing George’s clothes which were
quite spotless. His young master loved him with the strong affection
that commonly existed between the masters and the body-servants
in those days. Like Madam Washington, George was a natural
disciplinarian, and, himself capable of great labor of mind and body,
he exacted work from everybody. But Billy was an exception to this
rule. It is not in the human heart to be altogether without
weaknesses, and Billy was George’s weakness. When his mother
would declare the boy to be the idlest servant about the place,
George could not deny it; but he always left the room when there
were any animadversions on his favorite, and could never be
brought to acknowledge that Billy was not a much-injured boy.
Serene in the consciousness that “Marse George” would stand by
him, Billy troubled himself not at all about Madam Washington’s
occasional cutting remarks as to his uselessness, nor his father’s
and mother’s more outspoken complaints that he “warn’t no good
’scusin’ ’twas to walk arter Marse George, proud as a peacock ef he
kin git a ole jacket or a p’yar o’ Marse George’s breeches fur ter go
struttin’ roun’ in.” Aunt Sukey was very pious, and Uncle Jasper was
a preacher, and held forth Sunday nights, in a disused corn-house
on the place, to a large congregation of negroes from the
neighboring places. But Billy showed no fondness whatever for these
meetings, preferring to go to the Established Church with his young
master every Sunday, sitting in a corner of the gallery, and going to
sleep with much comfort and regularity as soon as he got there.
Madam Washington always exacted of every one who went to
church from her house that he or she should repeat the clergyman’s
text on coming home, and Billy was no exception to the rule. On
Sunday, therefore, instead of joining the gay procession of youths
and young men, all handsomely mounted, who rode along the
highway after church, George devoted his time on his way home to
teaching Billy the text. The boy always repeated it very glibly when
Madam Washington demanded it of him, and thereby won her favor,
for a short time, once a week.
On this particular morning, as George took the reins from Billy and
jumped on the back of his sorrel colt, and galloped down the lane
towards the fodder-field, Billy, who was keen enough where his
young master was concerned, saw that he was preoccupied.
Contrary to custom, he would not take his dog Rattler with him, and
Billy, dragging the whining dog by the neck, hauled him back into the
house and up into George’s room, where the two proceeded to lay
themselves down before the fire and go to sleep. An hour later the
indignant Aunt Sukey found them, and but for George’s return just
then it would have gone hard with Billy, anyhow.
As George galloped briskly along in the crisp October morning, he
felt within him the full exhilaration of youth and health and hope. He
had not been able to sleep all night for thinking of that promised visit
to Greenway Court. He had heard of it—a strange combination of
hunting-lodge and country-seat in the mountains, where Lord Fairfax
lived, surrounded by dependants, like a feudal baron. George had
never in his life been a hundred miles away from home. He had been
over to Mount Vernon since his brother Laurence’s marriage, and the
visit had charmed him so that his ever prudent mother had feared
that the simpler and plainer life at Ferry Farm would be distasteful to
him; for Mount Vernon was a fine, roomy country-house, where
Laurence Washington and his handsome young wife, both rich,
dispensed a splendid hospitality. There was a great stable full of
saddle-horses and coach-horses, a retinue of servants, and a
continual round of entertaining going on. Laurence Washington had
only lately retired from the British army, and his house was the
favorite resort for the officers of the British war-ships that often came
up the Potomac, as well as the officers of the military post at
Alexandria. Although he enjoyed this gay and interesting life at
Mount Vernon, George had left it without having his head turned, and
came back quite willingly to the sober and industrious regularity of
the home at Ferry Farm. He was the favorite over all his brothers
with Laurence Washington and his wife, and it was a well-understood
fact that, if they died without children, George was to inherit the
splendid estate of Mount Vernon. Madam Washington had been a
kind step-mother to Laurence Washington, and he repaid it by his
affection for his half-brothers and young sister. In those days, when
the eldest son was the heir, it seemed quite natural that George, as
next eldest, should have preference, and should be the next person
of consequence in the family to his brother Laurence.
He spent an hour riding over the place, seeing that the fodder had
been properly stripped from the stalks in a field, looking after the
ferry-boats, giving an eye to the feeding of the stock, and a sharp
investigation of the stables, and returned to the house by seven
o’clock. Precisely at seven o’clock every morning all the children,
servants, and whatever guests there were in the house assembled in
the sitting-room, where prayers were read. In his father’s time the
master of the house had read these prayers, and after his death
Laurence, as the head of the family, had taken up this duty; but since
his marriage and removal to Mount Vernon it had fallen upon
George.
When he entered the room he found his mother waiting for him, as
usual, with little Mistress Betty and the three younger boys. The
servants, including Billy, who had already been reported by Aunt
Sukey, were standing around the wall. After an affectionate good-
morning to his mother, George, with dignity and reverence, read the
family prayers in the Book of Common Prayer. His mother was as
calm and as collected as usual, but in the small velvet bag she
carried over her arm lay an important letter, received between the
time that George left the house in the morning and his return.
Prayers over, breakfast was served, George sitting in his father’s
place at the head of the table, and Madam Washington talking
calmly over every-day matters.
“I do not know what we are to do with that boy Billy,” she said. “This
morning, when he ought to have been picking up chips for the
kitchen, he was lying in front of your fireplace with Rattler, both of
them sound asleep.”
George, instead of being scandalized at this, only smiled a little.
“I do not know which is the most useless,” exclaimed Madam
Washington, with energy, “the dog or that boy!”
George ceased smiling at this; he did not like to have Billy too
severely commented on, and deftly turned the conversation. “Lord
Fairfax again asked me, when we were crossing the river last night,
to visit him at Greenway Court. I should like very much to go, mother.
I believe I would rather go even than to spend Christmas at Mount
Vernon, for I have been to Mount Vernon, but I have never been to
Greenway, or to any place like it.”
“The earl sent me a letter this morning on the subject before he left
Fredericksburg,” replied Madam Washington, quietly.
The blood flew into George’s face, but he spoke no word. His mother
was a person who did not like to be questioned.
“You may read it,” she continued, handing it to him out of her bag.
It was sealed with the huge crest of the Fairfaxes, and was written in
the beautiful penmanship of the period. It began:
“Honored Madam.—The promise you graciously made
me, that your eldest son, Mr. George Washington, might
visit me at Greenway Court, gave me both pride and
pleasure; and will you not add to that pride and pleasure
by permitting him to return with me when I pass through
Fredericksburg again on my way home two days hence?
Do not, honored madam, think that I am proposing that
your son spend his whole time with me in sport and
pleasure. While both have their place in the education of
the young, I conceive, honored madam, that your son has
more serious business in hand—namely, the improvement
of his mind, and the acquiring of those noble qualities and
graces which distinguish the gentleman from the lout.
“He would have at Greenway, at least, the advantage of
the best minds in England as far as they can be writ in
books, and for myself, honored madam, I will be as kind to
him as the tenderest father. If you can recall with any
pleasure the days so long ago, when we were both twenty
years younger, and when your friendship, honored
madam, was the chief pleasure, as it always will be the
chief honor, of my life, I beg that you will not refuse my
request. I am, madam, with sentiments of the highest
esteem,
“Your obedient, humble servant,
“Fairfax.”
“Have you thought it over, mother?”
“Yes, my son; but, as you know I am a person of deliberation, I will
think it over yet more.”
“I will give up Christmas at Mount Vernon, mother, if you will let me
go.”
“I have already promised your brother that you shall spend
Christmas with him, and I cannot recall my word.”
George said no more. He got up, and, bowing respectfully to his
mother, went out. He had that morning more than his usual number
of tasks to do; but all day long he was in a dream. For all his
steadiness and willingness to lead a quiet life with his mother and
the younger children at Ferry Farm, he was by nature adventurous,
and for more than a year he had chafed inwardly at the narrow and
uneventful existence which he led. He had early announced that he
wished to serve either in the army or the navy, but, like all people,
young or old, who have strong determination, he bided his time
quietly, doing meanwhile what came to hand. He had been every
whit as much fascinated with Lord Fairfax as the elder man had been
with him; and the prospect of a visit to Greenway—of listening to his
talk of the great men he had known, of seeing the mountains for the
first time in his life, and of hunting and sporting in their wilds, of
taking lessons in fencing from old Lance, of looking over Lord
Fairfax’s books—was altogether enchanting. He had a keen taste for
social life, and his Christmas at Mount Vernon, with all its gayety and
company, had been the happiest two weeks of his life. Suppose his
mother should agree to let him go to Greenway with the earl and
then come back by way of Mount Vernon? Such a prospect seemed
almost too dazzling. He brought his horse down to a walk along the
cart-road through the woods he was traversing while he
contemplated the delightful vision; and then, suddenly coming out of
his day-dream, he pulled himself together, and, striking into a sharp
gallop, tried to dismiss the subject from his mind. This he could not
do, but he could exert himself so that no one would guess what was
going on in his mind, and in this he was successful.
Two o’clock was the dinner-hour at Ferry Farm, and a few minutes
before that time George walked up from the stables to the house.
Little Betty was on the watch, and ran down to the gate to meet him.
Their mother, looking out of the window, saw them coming across
the lawn arm in arm, Betty chattering like a magpie and George
smiling as he listened. They were two of the handsomest and
healthiest and brightest-eyed young creatures that could be
imagined, and Madam Washington’s heart glowed with a pride which
she believed sinful and strove unavailingly to smother.
At dinner Madam Washington and George and Betty talked, the
three younger boys being made to observe silence, after the fashion
of the day. Neither Madam Washington nor George brought up the
subject of the earl’s visit, although it was a tremendous event in their
quiet lives. But little Betty, who was the talkative member of the
family, at once began on him. His coach and horses and outriders
were grand, she admitted; but why an earl, with bags of money,
should choose to wear a plain brown suit, no better than any other
gentleman, Mistress Betty vowed she could not understand. His
kneebuckles were not half so fine as George’s, and brother
Laurence had a dozen suits finer than the earl’s.
“His sword-hilt is worth more than this plantation,” remarked George,
by way of mitigating Betty’s scorn for the earl’s costume. Betty
acknowledged that she had never seen so fine a sword-hilt in her
life, and then innocently remarked that she wished she were going to
visit at Greenway Court with George. George’s face turned crimson,
but he remained silent. He was a proud boy, and had never in his life
begged for anything, but he wanted to go so badly that the
temptation was strong in him to mount his horse without asking
anybody’s leave, and, taking Billy and Rattler with him, start off alone
for the mountains.
Dinner was over presently, and as they rose Madam Washington
said, quietly:
“My son, I have determined to allow you to join Lord Fairfax, and I
have sent an inquiry to him, an hour ago, asking at what time to-
morrow you should meet him in Fredericksburg. You may remain
with him until December; but the first mild spell in December I wish
you to go down to Mount Vernon for Christmas, as I promised.”
George’s delight was so great that he grew pale with pleasure. He
would have liked to catch his mother in his arms and kiss her, but
mother and son were chary of showing emotion. Therefore he only
took her hand and kissed it, saying, breathlessly:
“Thank you, mother. I hardly hoped for so much pleasure.”
“But it is not for pleasure that I let you go,” replied his mother, who,
according to the spirit of the age, referred everything to duty. “’Tis
because I think my Lord Fairfax’s company will be of benefit to you;
and as there is but little prospect of a school here this winter, and I
have made no arrangements for a tutor, I must do something for your
education, but that I cannot do until after Christmas. So, as I think
you will be learning something of men as well as of books, I have
thought it best, after reflecting upon it as well as I can, to let you go.”
“I will promise you, mother, never to do or say anything while I am
away from you that I would be ashamed for you to know,” cried
George.
Madam Washington smiled at this.
“Your promise is too extensive,” she said. “Promise me only that you
will try not to do or say anything that will make me ashamed, and
that will be enough.”
George colored, as he answered:
“I dare say I promised too much, and so I will accept the change you
make.”
Here a wild howl burst upon the air. Billy, who had been standing
behind George’s chair, understood well enough what the
conversation meant, and that he was to be separated until after
Christmas from his beloved “Marse George.” Madam Washington,
who had little patience with such outbreaks of emotion, sharply
spoke to him. “Be quiet, Billy!”
Billy’s reply was a fresh burst of tears and wailing, which brought
home to little Betty that George was about to leave them, and
caused her to dissolve into tears and sobs, while Rattler, running
about the room, and looking from one to the other, began to bark
furiously.
Madam Washington, standing up, calm, but excessively annoyed at
this commotion in her quiet house, brought her foot down with a light
tap, which, however, meant volumes. Uncle Jasper too appeared,
and was about to haul Billy off to condign punishment when George
intervened.
“Hold your tongue, Billy,” he said; and Billy, digging his knuckles into
his eyes, subsided as quietly as he had broken forth.

Researching Virtual Play Experiences Visual Methods in Education Research 1St Edition Chris Bailey All Chapter

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Researching Virtual Play Experiences:

Visual Methods in Education Research

More information about this series at

ISSN 2753-0744 ISSN 2753-0752 (electronic)

Cover illustration: © Mikhail Konoplev / Alamy

“Chris Bailey’s Screen Play Experiences in Education: Explorations in Visual

“This is a dazzling account of digital literacies, multimodality and videogame

2 Situating the Study 37

3 Exploring Lived Experience 89

4 Plateau 1: Building and Being in Banterbury179

5 Plateau 2: Playing with the World237

6 Plateau 3: Visualising Soundscapes291

7 The Emergent Dimension of Play329

Chris Bailey is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Sheffield Hallam

Fig. 1.1 A sign welcoming the children to the game 8

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

As we move further into the twenty-first century, children are spending

book is as much about the ways in which we conduct and represent

their out-of-school experiences, their experiences of popular culture or

1.1 Introducing Minecraft

exponentially from its inception in 2009 as a one-man project by pro-

appearance, rejecting real-life representational detail in favour of a car-

1.2 Introducing Minecraft Club

to connect wirelessly to my computer, accessing the same virtual space

Fig. 1.1 A sign welcoming the children to the game

Although initially reticent to alter my original plans, I gradually

1.3 Introducing the Banterbury Players

It is the above club members whose experiences, collectively and

This is not an exhaustive list for either type of non-human partici-

1.4  bout the Author: Identity, Roles

1.4.1 Remnants of Teacher-ness

As mentioned earlier, I used to teach at the school that provided the

teacher, or at least as having been a teacher, by some of the children;

club leader and a researcher who was open to contribution, co-con-

presence in the events under observation, in an attempt to acknowledge

1.4.2 An Autistic Researcher

My observations, and the nature of this study, were also coloured by

‘assemblage’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 7) connected, unavoidably,

1.5 Aims of the Study

• What constitutes lived experience? How can I take account of the

“‘THIS IS MY SON, MR. WASHINGTON’”

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2 Situating the Study 37

3 Exploring Lived Experience 89

4 Plateau 1: Building and Being in Banterbury179

5 Plateau 2: Playing with the World237

6 Plateau 3: Visualising Soundscapes291

7 The Emergent Dimension of Play329

Fig. 1.1 A sign welcoming the children to the game 8

1.1 Introducing Minecraft

1.2 Introducing Minecraft Club

1.3 Introducing the Banterbury Players

1.4 bout the Author: Identity, Roles

1.4.1 Remnants of Teacher-ness

1.4.2 An Autistic Researcher

1.5 Aims of the Study