(MIT News: Cambridge, MA) -- Many MIT students, like their beaver mascot, are well-known for engineering skills, industrious habits, and for creating some amazing things late into the night. So, an ambitious project to build a 1:1 scale replica of MIT in Minecraft may come as no surprise. “As MIT students normally are nocturnal people anyway, there’s no doubt that we would apply our normal schoolwork habits to a light-hearted project like this,” says Shayna Ahteck, a first-year student involved with building and community outreach for the initiative.

With the Covid-19 pandemic scattering students around the globe, Minecraft—a sandbox style game akin to digital LEGO—has served as a creative and cathartic outlet for some students while they are physically away from campus, while also providing the entire community with some sense of stability. “Getting back to the basic structure of what campus looks like, while not a replacement for the feeling that I got from people and everything, it reminds me of all the times that we had, as well as processing some of my own grief from leaving campus,” says Ahteck.

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