Articles from:April 2025

• Brock experts talk fandom’s move to mainstream, video game adaptations as Minecraft slays at the box office

  Thursday, April 17, 2025 | By Brock University

  EXPERT ADVISORY – April 17, 2025 – R0050

  With A Minecraft Movie already the highest grossing film of 2025 and poised for another big weekend at the box office, Brock University experts are commenting on the challenges of adapting video games for the big screen and expressions of fan identity.

  Associate Professor of Game Studies Jason Hawreliak said for decades, movie executives have seen the popularity of video game franchises and tried to capitalize on them.

  But according to Hawreliak, the Graduate Program Director of Brock’s Master of Arts in Game Studies program, most video game adaptations haven’t been very successful — save for a few exceptions, such as The Super Mario Bros. Movie in 2023.

  “One of the problems is that a core feature of video games is their interactivity, which you can’t really duplicate in film. That’s especially tricky for something like Minecraft, which is all about exploration, creativity and building a world,” he said.

  “It’s difficult to turn that openness into a two-hour, coherent narrative.”

  Having said that, Hawreliak thinks the success of the Minecraft movie isn’t too surprising, even given the history of unsuccessful video game adaptations.

  “Minecraft is among the most popular video games in history, and Jack Black has already established himself in this space by voicing Bowser in the 2023 Mario Bros. movie,” he said.

  While Hawreliak wouldn’t call it a particularly strong script, movie producers have been able to trade on Minecraft‘s brand recognition.

  “I do think they got some of the spirit of the game right,” he said. “Minecraft is still very popular, and a lot of young adults grew up playing it, so seeing that world on screen is fun for them.”

  Derek Foster, Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film, says crowd reaction to the film is only the most recent example of an upswing in participatory culture among audiences.

  “As fandom becomes more mainstream, this type of audience behaviour is going to be indicative of the ways in which people engage with media, the ways in which we engage with each other as we consume media and the ways in which people increasingly find value in immersive media experiences,” said the audience studies expert.

  According to Foster, audience members are not just consumers but users and producers who “actually help constitute the nature of an event” like a screening of the Minecraft film.

  “The immersive experience is co-created by the fans and their interactions with the movie and with each other, going beyond their existence as fans into the performance of the fan identity,” he said.

  Foster connects the current Minecraft movie phenomena with other recent examples of cultural immersion like the Taylor Swift Eras Tour, which invited fans to connect through collective identity practices.

  But he notes that while there is a marked overall trend of fandom moving from subculture to more mainstream, visible formats, it has not yet lost its “connotation of excessiveness,” which may explain some of the finger-wagging at the cinema.

  “Minecraft movie-goers playing ‘chicken jockey!’ may seem juvenile or even lawless from an outsider’s perspective,” he said. “But for insiders, for people who are part of Minecraft culture or community, it’s actually a form of cultural competency — they’re keeping their eyes open for the codes that they all recognize and then coming together and creating the spectacle.”

  Associate Professor of Game Studies Jason Hawreliak and Associate Professor of Communication, Popular Culture and Film Derek Foster are available for media interviews on this topic.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  *Maryanne St. Denis, Manager, Content and Communications, Brock University, [email protected] or 905-246-0256

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  Categories: Media releases

• Tired teens more prone to injury, research suggests

  Tuesday, April 15, 2025 | By Brock University

  MEDIA RELEASE – April 15, 2025 – R0049

  It’s common knowledge teens need a good night’s sleep to function well. But recent Brock University-led international research has raised the stakes on what could happen if their slumber is inadequate.

  “We observed a substantial risk of injury in adolescents who reported having poor sleep,” says PhD student Valerie Pagnotta (BSc ’21, MSc ’23), lead author of the cross-national study “Sleep difficulties as a consistent risk factor for medically treated injuries among adolescents in 46 countries.”

  The worse the quality and quantity of sleep, the greater the risk of any or multiple injuries, says Pagnotta. Girls with poor sleep were particularly vulnerable to being injured.

  The six-member research team set out to investigate the association of inadequate sleep to injuries in 46 countries.

  Using records from the World Health Organization’s ongoing Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children (HBSC) survey and involving multiple international investigators in the HBSC network, the research team surveyed 230,000 adolescents aged 11, 13 and 15 in Canada and 45 European countries.

  Participants reported on their sleep behaviours, including how often they experienced difficulties falling asleep, insufficient quality and quantity of sleep on school and non-school days, and social jetlag, which refers to different sleep patterns during weekends and other non-school days.

  Adolescents were also asked how often they had experienced an injury that required medical treatment from a doctor or nurse in the past year as well as if they had sustained a more serious injury that required a cast, stitches or surgery.

  The teens’ self-reported surveys found that:

  • 48 per cent had insufficient sleep on school days compared to 13 per cent on non-school days
  • 44 per cent had one injury, with 21.5 per cent experiencing multiple injuries
  • girls universally reporting higher proportions of sleep difficulties across each of the 46 countries
  • adolescents reporting difficulties in falling asleep were at the highest risk of experiencing any, and multiple, injury in all countries
  • girls displayed greater risks for one or more injuries compared to boys, regardless of the sleep indicator

  Pagnotta says adolescence is a particularly important time for physical, emotional and social growth and development.

  “If adolescents are not getting enough sleep or they’re having sleep difficulties, that can impair their cognitive functioning, especially in the areas of social information processing, attention and decision-making,” she says.

  “We think these impairments may contribute to increased risk of injury among adolescents,” she says, adding that the greater injury risk observed among girls needs further investigation.

  Mentoring Pagnotta on the study were Brock Professor of Health Sciences William Pickett and Professor of Public Health Medicine Peter Donnelly at the University of St. Andrews in the U.K.

  Pickett co-leads the HBSC study in Canada under the World Health Organization’s HBSC survey.

  He says the relationships Pagnotta uncovered between sleep and injury are “so consistent, and so powerful, that they can’t be ignored in health policy efforts.”

  “From a policy perspective, we think it is helpful for clinical and public health professionals to have data like this to support their efforts to advise their patients and populations around the importance of sleep hygiene, especially in children,” he says.

  The latest study, published last month in the European Journal of Public Health, was funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada. The federal government’s Canadian Institutes of Health Research Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplement and Canada Graduate Scholarship — Master’s supported Pagnotta’s work.

  The latest research builds on an earlier study conducted by Pagnotta, Pickett, Professor of Health Sciences Jian Liu and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences Michelle Vine.

  Their study, “Insufficient sleep, impaired sleep and medically treated injury in Canadian adolescents: a national cross-sectional study,” also found an association between sleep deficits and injury, calling impaired sleep a “quiet epidemic” affecting up to one-third of Canadian teens.

  For more information or for assistance arranging interviews: 

  *Maryanne St. Denis, Manager, Content and Communications, Brock University, [email protected] or 905-246-0256

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  Categories: Media releases