Minecraft Building Competition!

Last Wednesday, 22 teens came to Sellers Library to build in our first Minecraft Building Competition. Players had the option to play the PC edition (by either using a library PC or bringing in their own laptop) or playing the Pocket Edition (by either using an iPad provided by the library or using their own device of tablet of choice). Once everyone was situated, players were given two hours to build a treehouse of their own design. Game modes were set to creative, so players were allowed to use whatever they wanted to build. They were given a choice of either a jungle biome (by using seed "502661284222987106") or a forest biome (using seed "wolfies!"). With no jungle biome option in the Pocket Edition yet, players were given a seed for a forest biome, "Notchisacreeper".

After their two hours of creation time were up (which everyone agreed seemed to go much too fast!) I walked around to see what everyone had made. Creations were judged on three main criteria:

• concept and originality
• adherence to the theme
• technique and execution

Winners William and Billy

I scored each criteria on a scale of 1 to 10, then added the totals for each person's total ranking. I really think I had the hardest task of anyone, as it was REALLY hard to decide who should win, there were a ton of great creations! In the end, Billy won the PC competition prize, a life-size foam iron sword, and William won the Pocket Edition prize, a life-size foam pickaxe. Angela took home second place in the PE, and Sean took home second place in the PC edition, two tickets each to Eastern State Penitentiary. Like I said, it was really hard deciding on winners, there were so many creative creations!

While everything went pretty smoothly, there were some things that I plan to look into for future Minecraft events. Firstly, I would have loved if we could all have been on the same server, playing in the same world. My original plan was for everyone to walk around each other's treehouses during the judging phase, including myself. Then when the competition was over I could back up the world containing everyone's creations and put it online for everyone to see. The other problem was with the library's PC lab, which really strained to play Minecraft. Two people had their games crash while playing. I think next time the PC edition will be limited to those that can bring their own laptops.

I hope to do more Minecraft programs in the future. One of the great things about Minecraft is that there's so different things that can be done with it (although another building competition is certainly a possibility). It seems like everyone had a great time. Thanks to everyone that came!

Billy made a tree with a house inside! (PC)

This was a pretty amazing homemade tree! (PC)

Angela's tree house had trees topped with cakes! (PE)

Water slide! (PE)

Not sure how SAFE a roof of glass with a pool of lava is, but it looked nice! (PE)

Matt made some impressive pixel art! (PE)