When I lived in Montenegro, I used to play Minecraft with two of my friends.  It was a lot of fun for us.  When my family left Montenegro, I was sad that I wouldn’t be able to play with my friends anymore.  When I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for a week, I met two other traveling kids who played Minecraft, and I played with them when we could.  Recently, I decided to try to arrange a time for all of us to play over the Internet, to connect and have fun.

About Minecraft

For anyone who doesn’t know anything about Minecraft, it’s a survival “sandbox” game.  The Minecraft world is made up of cubes, and you can destroy and place those different blocks anywhere you want.  It is an amazingly creative game, and I have seen many awesome creations.  You start with nothing, and you have to craft different things (like swords, pickaxes, and armor) to survive, defending yourself against monsters like zombies and skeletons.  One way you can play is by yourself, but there are also servers where players from around the world can work together to build or compete with each other.  On servers, players can also chat with each other.  If you are interested in Minecraft, just go to their website to learn more. 

Preparation

I decided that the best way for my friends and me to play together was to rent a server, and I asked one of my old friends for help.  He gave me some good advice.  Soon, I had rented the server.  I set it up in a few weeks, with my friend’s advice being very helpful.  I created a lot of stuff for the server.  I built some awesome buildings (but I haven’t used them yet).  I also learned a lot more about Minecraft itself, and many things about running servers too.  It’s a lot harder than it seems!  After everything was set up, we set a time to play online together. There was me, one of my friends from Montenegro, and the other two traveling kids I had met in Chiang Mai. 

Playing

I had made the world a small island, and we had to cooperate to survive.  One of us started mining down to collect coal and iron, and another went to another island to collect more wood.  We made a small sugarcane and wheat farm, and we soon had cookies to keep our hunger bar full.  We built a small cobblestone house a little off the island, and explored caves beneath the surface.  We had an awesome time playing together, and I would never have been able to connect with these friends without the Internet and collaborating with them!  It was a great thing for all of us to do.

Photos

This is the little house we built 

My brother and me in front of the house

The farm I built

And Merry Christmas! 

Continuation

I had a lot of fun doing this, and I hope I can keep it up.  My next step would be connecting to other traveling kids, and I hope this small community will grow larger and larger.  I will try to arrange weekly times to play together.  I spent a lot of time working on this, and I feel it really paid off playing together with my friends. 

The world is becoming more and more connected through the internet.  People from all around the world work with each other though the net.  It's an amazing tool, and it can be used for fun just as much as work!  

Anders Bruihler is a member of the Youth Travel Blogging Mentorship Program

All photos courtesy and copyright Anders Bruihler