People are getting ready to put New York City in Minecraft.
Earlier, clever players have created processors that run real games and even Westeros from the Game of Thrones franchise. Now, a team of more than 2,500 players is recreating New York City at a 1:1 scale. A report published this week in Curbed stated that the project is led by a 21-year-old coder from Frankfurt whose username is Minefact. Instead of recreating his hometown, he settled on NYC because its public data, buildings, and infrastructure are easy to access.
Minefact told that he merged with a larger project that’s recreating the entire Earth on a 1:1 scale and thought it brought joy and companionship while people were stressed out from dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Everyone was trapped inside their house, and so people started to meet in-game, in this new real life, where they could create the world, they had known outside,” Minefact told Curbed. “So, it’s a bit like the metaverse, just in a different, low-key style.”
“This is literally gonna change Minecraft history,” one user commented.
The project is successfully in progress. MineFact posted photos of new sections of the neighborhood that are being built or improved only yesterday.
Projects like this tel how technology can be used for cool aspects and not just creepy advances. Whether it’s massive Grand Theft Auto role-playing servers or other impressive game builds, giant works like this are a sign of human creativity and passion. Even if you’re not into building Minecraft worlds we could all benefit from a little hope, collaboration, and fun right now.