UPenn students recreated their campus on 'Minecraft' in painstaking detail while stuck at home — take a look

Damian Owerko

• Students at the University of Pennsylvania are recreating their campus on "Minecraft" after COVID-19 ended their semester early.
• Events including graduations and weddings have been moved online to "Minecraft," "Animal Crossing," and other online games since the coronavirus spread throughout the world.
• Most US colleges have moved to remote learning for the rest of the semester
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The school year at the University of Pennsylvania, like most other US colleges, is over, but some students weren't quite ready to leave.

A group of UPenn students set up a Minecraft server and coordinated recreating the campus together over the last two weeks of March. Since then, they've talked with Columbia University and Dartmouth University students working on similar projects to set up possible Hunger Games-like challenges between schools and made plans to host spring traditions in the server.

The block-building game "Minecraft," which Microsoft bought in 2014 for $2.5 billion, has been one of the most popular games worldwide over the last 10 years. As of September, it had a staggering 112 million active players every month, a number that has reportedly grown to 145 million.  

Colleges and universities across the US have sent students home and turned to remote learning for the rest of the semester. Some schools made the switch after a student tested positive for COVID-19, the coronavirus disease, while others did it preemptively. Colleges also noted the risk of bringing students back from spring break after they'd traveled all over the world.

While they can't be on campus, Penn students recreated their campus in painstaking detail, a process that is still ongoing. Take a look at their incredible work here. 

Junior Andrew Guo first came up with the idea for a virtual UPenn campus in "Minecraft" in March.

Damian Owerko

At the time, he said, he didn't know other colleges were working on similar projects, but he was inspired by news of a Japanese elementary school graduation on "Minecraft."

Damian Owerko

Soon after coming up with the idea, Guo told a friend about the plan. He wanted to start his own server but wasn't sure if there was enough interest.

Damian Owerko


See the rest of the story at Business Insider

See Also:

• Apple is offering store workers $100 toward work-from-home gear and a new stress-management tool as other retailers cut costs and layoff employees
• The best gaming laptops
• Apple Stores will reportedly remain closed until early May as the coronavirus continues to spread

SEE ALSO: Activists created a 12.5 million block digital library in 'Minecraft' to bypass censorship laws

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