isn't it kind of strange that personal space is a thing in multiplayer minecraft? or that people tend to looking at each other's characters when they talk to each other?
these things don't fulfill the inherent social functions they have in person. there is are no facial expressions you're missing if you don't look at the other person's minecraft character. there is no functional difference between standing right next to someone and standing 3-4 blocks away, you're no impeding them in any way
yet people do it anyway. they keep a few block distance between each other. they look at each other when talking, whether it's by going afk with the cursor on the other person or by tracking their idle movement
which gives us these moments where they close that distance or exaggerate the eye contact and suddenly it means something, because it's different! this thing that has no difference in game mechanics, gains meaning through the social conventions. crouching at each other and staring at each other. bumping into the other player. standing right next to a player until slightly nudging them
and that evolves, like real society! it's not something i recall happening that much 10-15 years ago. proximity chat likely has something to do with it, giving the distance some slight game-mechanical meaning and also making the character feel more like a manifestation of the other person instead of simply an object in the game while you were chatting on skype. it pulls people deeper into the game world, increases the immersion and suddenly we have body language in a game where your only ways to manipulate the body are the way it's facing, walking, jumping and crouching. if you want to call it body language there's also the item you're holding - or the two items, in modern minecraft. it's incredible how much of a language can be built with such primitive tools
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