Minecraft—the wildly popular video game that lets you build things out of virtual bricks—has emerged as a favorite of architects and enthusiasts eager to make everything from imaginary Brutalist buildings to miniature cities. But Su Yijun, a 22-year-old aspiring architect in Zhuhai, China, has created a true Minecraft marvel: a detailed replica of Beijing’s Forbidden City covering a site of 100 million blocks.
The virtual project had broken ground with the help of volunteers back in 2013, but when Su joined the group in 2014, they decided to start again from scratch. Su eventually became the project’s chief organizer, researching traditional Chinese architecture in order to perfectly replicate the palace’s nearly 1,000 buildings. He researched structure, decor, materials, and architectural history, even visiting the real-life site to learn details he couldn’t find elsewhere.
But this was tricky too: “Many areas are not open to the public,” Su told Sixth Tone. “And because of the exhibits, the interior decorations in the Palace Museum were not the same as how they originally appeared.”
Su worked with fellow Minecraft players to build the replica, but at one point their construction team was down to just him and another player. The effort, though, was worth it: “Through this, I hope to impart some knowledge about architectural aesthetics,” Su said, “and share my thoughts on architectural design.”
The game update will bring graphical updates, cros-platform servers and many new features to add fun to the game: stained glass, books, and banners. The later can be placed on walls or lie on the ground and they are made out of wool. The banners are the perfect medieval decorations. If you want an adventure map, then you can use books and quills. Your imagination will also be tested with the stained glad feature.
This new feature of the “Minecraft” Better Together update will allow you to design buildings in several colors and you will also be able to change Beacon colors. Regular glass block will probably fade in front of the new stained glass. Many “Minecraft” fanatics have written online what other new features they would like the game to have.
The update expected this summer will unify the Nintento Switch and Xbox One versions with the PC (Windows 10) and mobile versions of the game. This cross-platform play will be possible with the help of the Bedrock Engine. Players from any device will be able to gather together and enjoy the game. Play Station 4 will also be added to the cross-platform play. This coming together of players using multiple devices will help the expansion of the content creator and “Minecraft” Marketplace.
So far, the “Better Together” update, announced at the Xbox E3 press-conference, seems very promising and fans are very excited for its release. The PC version will be the only one to have a subtitle: “Minecraft: Java Edition”. The game will only be called “Minecraft” with other devices: Xbox, Nintendo Switch, VR and mobile versions.
Console players are excited to receive this news, especially if PlayStation 4 owners will also be able to enter this platform. Nintendo’s vision seems to be about unification and getting all players together in one place.
Minecraft is one of the biggest games ever, and with that comes with one of the largest communities ever. From mods to fanfiction and more, people are finding interesting and unique ways to be a part of their favorite game.
One of the biggest contributions to the community are videos about the game. Here are five fan-made videos about Minecraft that are worth your time.
1. Minecraft Hardcore – PBGGameplay
YouTuber PeanutButterGamer is best known for his series of longform comedic videos of various video games. However, he also has a very successful let’s play channel. And by far the most beloved series on that channel is his Hardcore series.
The premise of Hardcore is that PeanutButterGamer and a bunch of other YouTubers and friends set out to complete the main quest of a game. The catch is that if a person dies, they’re out for the rest of the game. The rest go along until either they complete the quest or they all die.
It’s pretty much a live and more genuine version of something like The Walking Dead, zombies and all. In between the threat of death, everyone on the team is all goofing around and bonding with each other. And when they inevitably die, it’s all the more heart-wrenching. Seriously, for all the silliness that goes on, some of the deaths in Hardcore are really sad. Everything is accentuated by the impeccable editing, which use music and special effects at just the right moment to really drive the mood.
PBGGameplay has five seasons of Hardcore for Minecraft, though I recommend the fifth one as that has the best production values and most memorable moments. He also has Hardcore seasons for other games like Terraria and MineZ.
2. Brentalfloss’ Minecraft Song – Brentalfloss
There are tons of musical parodies of Minecraft, but few are original songs. Enter YouTuber Brentalfloss, who does a brilliant job of summing up the appeal of Minecraft in a one and a half minute song. Describing it here would only spoil the experience, so take a look for yourself.
Brentalfoss has many other musical spoofs of video games in his extensive “With Lyrics” series, taking the melody of a popular video game song and adding lyrics that both celebrate and lampoon the game.
3. Lion King in Minecraft (Circle of Life) – CraftedMovie
This video recreates the opening sequence of Disney’s The Lion King but with the mobs from Minecraft. Watching this video side by side with the original, its amazing to see just how much this video gets right. The setting, camera angles, character acting, and original a cappella music are all spot on. It’s impressive in how authentically it recreates the mood of the original movie.
4. An Egg’s Guide to Minecraft – Element Animation
An Egg’s Guide to Minecraft is one of the better known animation series on Minecraft, also also one of the better ones. Featuring fun characters, jokes, and well-made animation, there’s a reason this series has lasted from 2012 to 2016.
The series is so well known, in fact, that the voice of the villager was featured in an April Fools update to the actual game in 2014 where the voice replaced the sound of the mobs and music. The update can also be accessed by downloading a mod.
If that doesn’t prove its prominence, I don’t know what does.
5. Realistic Minecraft – Nukazooka
Hardcore Henry meets Minecraft Hardcore in this fan film. The first-person perspective mends beautifully with the special effects to create a surprisingly intense yet humorous take on what Minecraft may look like in real life. Personally, I think this should be a new feature. Augmented reality, anyone?
Microsoft announced during its pre-E3 press event that Minecraft will be updated this fall with 4K graphics and complete cross-platform play, meaning that players on PC, consoles, and mobile devices will all be able to play together—with the one notable exception of Sony, which declined to join the party. The reason for that seemingly odd refusal, PlayStation global sales and marketing head Jim Ryan told Eurogamer, is that Sony believes it's “got to be mindful of our responsibility to our install base.”
“Minecraft—The demographic playing that, you know as well as I do, it's all ages but it's also very young. We have a contract with the people who go online with us, that we look after them and they are within the PlayStation curated universe,” Ryan said. “Exposing what in many cases are children to external influences we have no ability to manage or look after, it's something we have to think about very carefully.”
He acknowledged that Nintendo, which has a far more obvious appeal to younger gamers, was happy to get on board, saying, “Everybody has to take their own decisions.” And he also left the door open, ever so slightly, for the situation to change. “I don't think anything is ever a done deal,” he said. “Anybody who is dogmatic in that manner is typically a fool.”
Microsoft made its position on the matter clear shortly after the cross-platform update was announced.
Sony won't allow Minecraft cross-platform play on PlayStation consoles
Skyler Roberts is getting tired. For the past nine months, the 20-year-old has been on a solo journey across the United States. He has walked over 3,600 miles, and he’s still got a long way to go. Or as he puts it, “just 600 miles” to go. Just.
From his starting point near Ontario, Canada, Skyler has hiked through dozens of states, from New York to Texas to Washington. The finish line is San Francisco. On the way, he’s worn out seven pairs of shoes. He’s been stopped by police 20 times (without incident). He’s eaten countless packages of instant mashed potatoes and ramen noodles. He’s also found 16 spoons.
He did this to visit some online friends he met playing Minecraft.
Generating level, building terrain
It started as a joke. Skyler was in middle school when Minecraft entered public alpha, and he caught the bug almost immediately. He started playing just before the release of the Nether and has since logged thousands of hours across several servers, including his own ultra hardcore server (‘UHC’ is a survival death-game mode, and isn’t that fitting) and the Jsano fan server, an offshoot of the Mindcrack community.
One day, he told his far-off friends in server chat that he’d walk over sometime. He laughed it off at first, but somehow the idea stuck with him as he waded through high school. By his junior year, he was so busy with schoolwork and his part-time job that he didn’t have much time for Minecraft. He was feeling the pressure of graduation. What next? He wasn’t sure.
After graduating in June 2016, Skyler didn’t want to immediately commit to anything and risk exploding “like a bed in the nether,” he said on Reddit. He wanted to unwind. So he got a second job, worked 60-hour weeks, saved up around $5,000 Canadian and charted a gap year across America. You know, to cool off. He also wanted to sell his parents—his mother in Canada and his father in the U.S.—on the idea, which actually went pretty smoothly.
“From the get-go I was like ‘awesome!’” says Paul Roberts, Skyler’s father. “I raised him to be capable of these kinds of things. I trust him and believe in him and he thought about it … he thought about this for a while before he ever pitched the subject, and I could tell that, so I was like ‘yeah, you go!’”
In speaking with the Roberts, I get the sense that fear doesn’t run in the family. That being said, Skyler’s mother, Esther Roberts, was understandably concerned for his safety. She wanted to know where he would stay, how he’d get there and how he would fund his journey. Skyler started mulling over the same questions before he approached either of his parents, and because he had good answers, his mother had no qualms trusting him.
“You know, I have protected my kids to a certain extent,” she says. “And all of my family was shocked, you know, ‘how could you let him go?’ Well, how could I keep him back? You don’t really have a lot of control as a parent when they get older. If he was 16, I mean, absolutely not. I would be screaming bloody murder, absolutely you’re not going anywhere when you’re 16. But when you’re 20, that’s a whole different thing … he knew I would ask five million questions and he had the answers to all of my questions. He’d thought those through.”
With his proud parents behind him, Skyler started gearing up. He was an accomplished camper long before he punched a tree in Minecraft. Most of his 50 pounds of gear was leftover from previous, considerably shorter trips—among other things, a tent, a sleeping bag, a jetboil stove, a sturdy phone, a portable charger and a laptop that sadly can’t run Minecraft at a decent framerate.
Far lands or bust
It would be doable, but it wouldn’t be easy. Just getting acclimated to the walking regimen was tough enough. Skyler departed August 14, 2016, and by December his hip was killing him, so he exchanged his backpack for a jogging stroller. That eased the pain but also made passing through stretches like New Mexico’s Jemez Mountains even more of a slog. The day I spoke with him, his hip was hurting again, but Skyler is anything but discouraged.
“I’m really looking forward to this next month. A few months ago, I was more scared to do things,” he says. “A few months before that, I couldn’t even imagine being finished. Before that I was still getting my sea legs on. It’s interesting how it’s evolved. By this point I’m ready to be done. I’m excited for this last portion and I don’t want to rush it too much.”
Skyler was never in a hurry. His journey was always about meeting people and seeing new things. He had a rough route in mind when he set out, but his only goals were to “outrun winter” on his way south and visit as many Minecraft friends as possible. He originally wanted to meet seven, but he’s already up to nine. Skyler makes up the rest as he goes, all the while diligently chronicling his travels via his subreddit, YouTube and Instagram, always eager to share the day’s stories and scenery.
“I purposely didn’t read any books by people who have [travelled across the US]. I did my best to because I wanted this trip to be my own,” he says. “I just wanted to do it. I didn’t want any expectations going in. I just wanted to experience it for myself.”
And what an experience it’s been. Skyler can only spend a few days with each friend, so most of his weeks are raw travel. And though his route is malleable, he does have places to be, so he keeps to a schedule. Sunrise is his alarm clock and sunset his curfew, and there’s often little but walking in between. “Before, I was doing 10 to 15 miles a day,” he says. “Now I’m doing 20 to 25 … some days I’ll just never stop walking, just keep walking for seven or eight hours straight or even more. When it gets to an hour or two before sunset, I start looking for a place to camp.”
Skyler regularly rooms with local Couchsurfing hosts, and he’s spent plenty of time in churchyards and parks. Some nights saw less likely shelters, including the Kentucky Downs horse racing track.
“It was getting dark and there was no security around so I snuck in and camped right in the middle of the field,” says Skyler. “I got out before sunrise because it probably wouldn’t have been good if I was there too late on a weekday.”
He spends about half his nights indoors but he’s only paid for housing twice—once due to severe weather and again when his stroller broke. His GoFundMe campaign helped with that, not to mention all the shoes. I asked him what his most dangerous moment was and he told me about an eventful night near a small town in Idaho.
“I was about 10 miles outside of it and I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it there. The sun was starting to set, there was rain going on, so I was just going to find a place to camp. I started knocking on people’s doors—and this was really rural, so we’re talking houses a quarter-mile apart.
“Nobody answered until like the third or fourth house. The guy who answered, old guy, he didn’t feel comfortable with me camping in his yard, but he told me about a half-mile down the road there was a barn and I could stay in there for the night. So I left and I was going to head back to the road, and as I was going back this guy in a white pickup truck just comes barreling towards me. He stops right in front of me and his first words were ‘what the fuck do you think you’re doing knocking on people’s doors out here?’ And I was like ‘oh, shit.’”
After hearing Skyler’s story, the man stowed his rifle, which had been sitting in the front seat of his truck, and gave Skyler a ride to a nearby park. He bought him breakfast the following morning. It started with a threat, but ended with a meal. Skyler has mostly met friendly people during his journey and says he’s grown comfortable talking with strangers along the way, though he knows the dangers.
Before the trip, “tons of people” told Skyler he couldn't do it. He'd be murdered or robbed, they said. He listened, but went for it anyway. “It’s good to keep what people say in mind,” says Skyler, “but not to let other people’s fears prevent you from living your own life, experiencing the world for yourself.”
“The people he comes across, a lot of them are fearful of the unknown,” says Paul Roberts. “There’s so much stuff out there in the news about bad things happening, so he looks like someone who isn’t from [parts of the country], and you kind of have to overcome that fear with folks. And he’s good at it. He’s really good at it.”
Friends list
I also spoke with Chris Kreidler, who Skyler visited a few weeks ago. Kreidler has known Skyler since 2013, but while they’ve cracked jokes online for years, he never expected to spend a weekend together. But when Skyler posted a Skype message asking if anyone was near his northwestern route, Kreidler reached out.
“He got here Friday evening. I drove about 20 miles to pick him up because he didn’t make it all the way to [my home in] Seattle,” Kreidler says. “Then he was here for Saturday and Sunday. We went out and did some stuff Saturday, then he spent a bit of Sunday just writing some blog posts and we did a couple things later, then he packed up Monday morning. So two full days.”
Kreidler has made many friends through Minecraft, and met many of them in person through events like Minecon, but Skyler’s visit was more personal. He thought things might be tense since they’d only ever interacted online, but it didn’t take long for old habits to kick in.
“The very first part when I met him was a little awkward because I don’t really know him that well, but after a few minutes it’s not much different from talking online,” Kreidler says. “It went better than I expected it to. I was worried beforehand that it’d be awkward the whole time and that we wouldn’t really have anything in common, but it’s not too hard to start talking to him. And he had a lot to talk about, obviously.”
It’s testament to how easy it is to bond over games, and how legitimate and valuable those friendships can be. “I think having online friends is great, and [that] the Internet is great for making friends,” Kreidler says. “Because if you meet online you automatically have something in common. He and I had Minecraft in common. That would make for a really great real-life friendship as well.”
Thousands of miles later, Skyler is every bit as supportive of making and visiting online friends. “I would say go for it, definitely do it. It’s worth the experience 99 times out of 100. I can’t even articulate it,” he says. “I totally support anybody doing this, or anyone taking any sort of trip to experience more of life than you normally would.
“Meeting people is fantastic. I think walking across a country to visit friends is maybe not for everybody—probably not for everybody. But I think driving down or flying down and meeting someone and having some fun for a weekend, that’s something a lot of people can do and a lot of people should do.”
Ah, the Sydney Opera House. The name implies it's all about opera, but don't be fooled: in 2011 I watched gameplay footage of Rage on a big cinema screen in there, with the crowd hooting and hollering with every brutal murder. No, the Sydney Opera House isn't just a place for high-falutin ruling class flim flam. It's also a place for video games.
And that will become amply obvious when Minecraft at the Sydney Opera House kicks off next month – a festival celebrating all things Steve. Dubbed a “true choose-your-own-adventure experience”, it definitely seems to be geared towards younger Minecraft fans, but “devotees of all ages” are invited to attend.
“The Opera House’s grand Concert Hall and Northern Foyers will be transformed into a Minecraft extravaganza spanning three sessions over two days. Attendees can come and go between the main competition on stage and the activities in the foyer,” reads the press release.
There will be a bunch of Minecraft-related competitions, as well as appearances by Minecraft lead creative designer Jens Bergensten and Mojang brand director Lydia Winters. Tickets go on sale Thursday June 8, but pre-sales are on now.
