Video Essays — Cate Weiser Creative

Throughout my time at the University of Chicago, I took several video games studies courses. Two of the courses permitted video essays analyzing games as midterms and finals. The process included traditional essay research and planning, outlining, clipping videos, creating game footage, and putting the pieces together. While I have four years of experience writing essays for my History degree, I thoroughly enjoy flexing my creative muscle to develop persuasive projects.

Essay 01

Beyond the Bubble Wand: Ecological Exploitation in Animal Well

This midterm essay explores ecological exploitation represented in the video game Animal Well, created by game developer Billy Basso and released in 2024. Drawing on Krzysztof Jański's framework for analyzing animals in games and Alenda Chang's ecological readings of play, the essay argues that Animal Well's mechanics — uncertainty, resource extraction, hostile creatures, invasion of territory — serve as an allegory for humanity's exploitative relationship with the natural world.

Essay 02

CapitalistCraft? Why Minecraft's Community Turned a Sandbox into a System

This final essay examines how the Minecraft player community has transformed a game built on open-ended creativity into a proceduralist system governed by unspoken rules of a "right" way to play. Using Miguel Sicart's concepts of play-centrism and the frameworks of Fordism and Post-Fordism, the essay argues that the expectations embedded in Minecraft gaming culture mirror the same productivity-driven logic that Western capitalism imposes on work and daily life.

Essay 03

The Platform That Built a Platform: YouTube and Minecraft

This final essay traces how YouTube transformed Minecraft from a solo creative experiment into a platform for independent publishing on a massive scale. From Notch's development blog to Stampylongnose's generational storytelling to the giant builds of Hermitcraft, the essay argues that YouTube served as the art gallery to Minecraft's paintbrush — enabling the boundless creativity that Notch originally envisioned.