These Indian students have rebuilt their entire college campus on Minecraft as classes go online

• Following the footsteps of students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of California, Berkeley, students at Ashoka University have built their entire campus on the gaming platform – Minecraft.
• WIth the next semester starting soon, the new batch will get to still see their campus and interact with people on the virtual platform.
• They started building around mid-May and spent five-six hours every day.

Following the footsteps of students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of California, Berkeley, students at Ashoka University have built their entire campus on the gaming platform – Minecraft.

While the administration had already moved the classes online, now the experience of the college life – from graduation parties to farewell, all the lighter moments of university life have moved online too, on Minecraft.

A group of eight students all in their third year at Ashoka University came together to build their campus online block by block. “Our aim was to recreate the life we had on campus on a virtual server,” said Aishwarya Das, a student of Physics. They started building around mid-May and spent five-six hours every day.

WIth the next semester starting soon, the new batch will get to still see their campus and interact with people on the virtual platform. “Around 700 people can join the server at any given point in time, and chat with each other. It's built on a similar basis how gamers talk to each other on the discord server. The server will be open to Ashoka students and alumni only,” said Das.

The group used Google Maps to check the actual dimensions of their college campus. “First we built the campus building, block by block. And then we built the experiences from our memories of the college. We used the discord servers to coordinate between ourselves and divided responsibilities – someone builds the admin block, someone looks at the auditorium etc,” said Atishay Khanna, Das’ batchmate who originally came up with the idea of building the platform.

The group now hopes to make it possible to hold classes on the platform and also hold live music fests online. They also got in touch with the students at Berkeley to understand more.

The server will be open for all by July 31, and while it is a student-led initiative the college too has recognised their efforts.

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