The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, the United States' only dedicated, open to the public video game museum, has teamed up with the Oakland Museum of California and the Paradise Minecraft Server to re-create Oakland in Minecraft.
Led by a dedicated community leader, HuskerGirlKC, and her dedicated Minecraft players young and old, this community had 10 days to reconstruct the city's downtown area, and the areas around 12th and Oak Street near the Oakland Museum of California.
The fruits of their labor will be shown at the Oakland Museum of California April 26, 27 and 28. The Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment will be hosting the Oakland Minecraft map at the OMCA, and will provide computers for attendees to use for playing Minecraft together.
Most of these virtual builders have never even been to Oakland. They're using Google Street View to see what things look like, then re-creating them, block by block, in Mojang's virtual cube-based world of Minecraft.
Participants will have the chance to improve, destroy, or just customize Oakland to their liking.
Alex Handy, founder and director of the MADE, said "I found HuskerGirlKC on Reddit, and she said her team would love to tackle the challenge of building Oakland in 10 days. With only one day left to go, the team on Paradise Minecraft server has reconstructed Oakland City Hall, the Tribune Building, the Cathedral Building, as well as corporate offices for AT&T, Wells Fargo, and Clorox."
While the ultimate goal of recreating every building in downtown is still far away, the effort to build Oakland in Minecraft will continue until the end of May, when the exhibit will be shown, again, at Maker Faire.
Founded in 2010, The MADE is an all volunteer organization created by Alex Handy, a video game journalist and technological archaeologist based in Oakland, California.