Minecraft Minimester 2014: How I Inadvertently Established a Virtual Communist Society

Warning: This is a long-winded post that was written retroactively as I didn't find time to write it up as the course progressed. I found the whole experience to be extremely fulfilling and fascinating so I wanted to make sure I covered everything as it happened from my perspective. Some of the details may be somewhat inaccurate since I'm doing this entirely from memory and I expect there will be some minor timeline mixups. Names have been redacted in the interest of all involved as I have yet to ask them permission. Minecraft at GFS seems to be moving forward so expect more posts in the future. I hope you enjoy reading!

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Minimester was slated to begin the day following Martin Luther King Day, a Tuesday, and end that Friday which gave us four 3-hour days of class. Unfortunately, the Baltimore area seems to be subject to odd climate changes with minimal notice and we were hit with a snowstorm that caused Tuesday and Wednesday's classes to be canceled. I was concerned that they would not push the minimester schedule back and I would be stuck with only two days, but they adjusted the schedule and this helped even more as it gave me a whole weekend to recap before finishing the second half of the course. In the weeks leading up to this, I spoke at a couple of morning meetings and was able to poll all of the roughly 150 students about Minecraft to gauge the overall interest.

"Who here plays Minecraft?" I saw 10-15 hands raised

"For those of you that don't already play, who here would like to play Minecraft?" This showed even more responses, maybe 20-30 hands.

I found the response to be surprisingly positive compared to my initial and ignorant expectations. There were far more of the girls interested in the game that I could have ever guessed. Having even 10 of them register would have been exciting for me and, at this point, the estimated cap for this course was about 17-18 since the classrooms only accommodate that many. If I had about 30-40 hands raised during that poll, the course should fill up quick. Right?

A final roster was given to me in the second week of January and it showed a total of 17 students registered; the cap had been met.This had me more enthusiastic about the course, as I tend to be when people share my interests, but it raised the stakes and the pressure I placed on myself to do well. This is essentially the one chance I have to show how effective the game is for education and, honestly, I wasn't sure if I would be prepared enough to teach anything about the game to the girls. Remember, there was little to no traditional academic material within our minimester course, just teamwork and fun. There was a stark possibility that every single one of them knew more than I did about the game as some of them have been playing regularly for years versus the two months I had. Of course, despite the potential for failure, I wasn't going to pass on a golden opportunity like this.

Day 1
Since my duties are typically reserved for IT operations, I had to do what I could to minimize the possibility of leaving my department stranded while I'm busy with class. They were both kind enough to give this a shot and accommodate me as best they could. Unfortunately for them, I was so anxious the night before day 1 that I didn't get very much sleep and opted to come in a bit late so I was more well-rested for the day. This left me rushing to gather my equipment and thoughts before making my way to the classroom.

Afternoon minimester classes were all scheduled to meet at 12:15PM and I was paired with a Middle School History teacher which left us to use her classroom. Fortunately, she had enough desks and chairs for the students plus a semi-circle desk that I moved to the back of the room which I intentionally and 'dorkily' set up to be a 'command station' of sorts. My Helix sat to my right so I could monitor the Virtual Machine running the Minecraft server, and my ASUS laptop sat in front of me running the Minecraft client, connected to the projector and set up for screen capture and audio input. On top of that, this angle allowed me to see just about all of the screens of each player which minimized my need to get up and move to a student's desk. Managing the entire game and real-world class would ideally be possible from this seat: my nerd throne.

The girls started arriving here and there with excited expressions on their faces as they sat down and powered on their laptops while I scrambled to ensure everything was functional. Since we had two snow days, the schedule was adjusted such that some of the girls in my course had to attend the Beauty and the Beast rehearsal instead. The History teacher started going through the roster and comparing it to the roster of those in rehearsal and it wasn't long before we realized that we would only have five of the girls in class. It was a bit disappointing, but it relieved a bit of the stress as well. We would make do with what we had and pick up where we left off the next day when everyone returned.

As a result of the buzz surrounding this game, the MS Spanish teacher had been talking to me about Minecraft for weeks leading up to the course and asked if her son could stop by and play. He was an avid Minecraft player, but only played single player at home. He simply wanted a group of friends to play with. How could I turn that down? He was 7 years old and, in the end, he did just as well as the 8th graders did. I viewed it as one more valuable team player. This left us with 8 players total including the 5 students, the Spanish teacher and her son (they used the same laptop), the History teacher, and myself. At this scale, Survival Mode doesn't seem to get as complex and as interesting as it does when you get in to the double-digits and higher, but we could still test out the structure for tomorrow's full roster.

Given that this was a group of 5 students and 2 teachers who were brand-new to the game, there was little to no conflict. We constructed a shelter for everyone, had a chest for food, and we were able to collect enough iron to start making iron tools. Since all of the students here were regular Minecraft players, there was little need to give them directive on how to play. We just had fun for the whole day.

The highlight of day 1 was the incredible amount of laughter as a result of the History teacher struggling to open wooden doors. She unintentionally broke the door and unkowningly picked it up which caused the zombies to come funneling through in the middle of the night while Mr. Rowley had to fend them off with an iron sword. Everyone loved it! We now jokingly ask her "OK... how do we open doors, Ms. History Teacher?" to which she responds "Right-click!!"

Day 2
Everyone was present this day which proved to be a bit more of a technical nightmare than I had hoped for. Many of the girls were missing mice or chargers and some had laptops that didn't cooperate with MCEdu well due to unforseen software conflicts. Unfortunately, since Minecraft minimester was a last-minute decision, we weren't able to use the Media Room computers which would have made my job a tad bit easier in terms of deployment. Not to mention, I wouldn't have to force the girls to use minimized video settings in lieu of detailed graphics. No problem, though, as I came prepared with loaners and spare mice and chargers. They were kind enough to let me do this in the first place so I can't complain!

While I was busy getting the server in place, I had the girls complete a survey I made that would give me feedback on their Minecraft experiences as well as any other games. I wanted to understand not only their perspective on Minecraft, but games that I might have played too. Again, I was trying to bridge the gap of understanding between me and the mentality of a Middle School girl. The responses were very interesting.

By they time they finished the survey (and laughing at my question about their favorite flavor of Minecraft), I had the tutorial world loaded and the server address written up on the whiteboard. Most of the girls knew how to log in so they simply sat at the beginning of the tutorial world, frozen in place. I got the newer players connected and some of the other girls helped.

The simple explanation was this: we are going to complete the tutorial world to make sure that everyone in the class is comfortable with the game mechanics before we move back to Survival Mode.

One girl had a really tough time understanding how WASD controls work. Luckily, she was sitting right in front of me so I kept the pace with her step-by-step throughout the tutorial. I could watch her screen and use my player to provide feedback as to how she should complete the obstacles. I was worried she would struggle through the whole class. Nope. By the end of the tutorial world she had stopped asking me questions and kept telling me she was ready to go. Later I found out from other teachers that she is a particularly fast learner.

"Alright girls, listen up! It seems as though everyone is either done with the tutorial world or they are comfortable enough to move on. Who wants to switch to survival mode?"

Cue the excited screams. We were to move to Survival Mode after taking a 10 minute break.

Once everyone returned, I gave them the rundown on what was done the prior day and we built teams, each of which was to be led by one of the three experienced players. They were the two who met with me in the weeks leading up to minimester plus a good friend of theirs, also an expert player. I asked all three of them to pick teams and each one of them was more than happy to volunteer for what they thought they were best at. No arguments between them.

One of the group leaders raised her hand.

"Mr. Rowley, I think it's best if we re-balance the teams so that my build team has less players and the resource or farming team have more. If too many people try to build the same thing it gets complicated."

Great point. I took 3 out of her 7 players and re-assigned them to the other teams. She was left with 4 while the other teams both had 7-8. Her team would be easier to manage and, besides, if she needed more help, I would be playing an auxiliary position and could lend a hand.

"Girls, are we ready to start playing?"
"YES!!!"
"Everyone knows what team they are on?"
"YES!!!!!!"
"Everyone knows what they are supposed to do?"
"OH MY GOSH YES MR. ROWLEY LET'S PLAY!!!"

I was giving them a bit of a hard time. I unchecked the freeze box and let them loose.

My original fear was that I would have to constantly manage players as they would be prone to "running off in to the mountains" as I described it. I think it wasn't until after about 10-15 minutes of gameplay that I realized the girls were not deviating from the plan. They knew exactly what their responsibilities were and it was displayed very clearly. Build team knew we had to build a stone house with beds for sleeping and chests for storing resources. Food team built a wheat farm close by that was near a small body of water for irrigation. Resource team found a big entrance to a cave and constructed a stairwell to safely enter and exit.

Our process was running smoothly. However, did I mention that I had turned off day/night, weather, and monsters?

In the interest of not overwhelming the new players, I tweaked the game settings so that there was no immediate threat to them from the night cycle. They were aware of this and it seemed to be working well for everyone. No monsters meant not having to watch your back while mining iron deep down in a cave and Creepers weren't going to blow a hole in to the side of our safe-house.

Night and day mode was to be turned on once we all felt we had the proper provisions to defend ourselves. I gave fair warning and let them know I was turning it all on. It was the middle of the day (in Minecraft time) so it wouldn't be until nightfall that the zombies would come out. Remember, though, that one Minecraft day is only 20 minutes so at best we had 10 minutes before the threat of monsters was real.

"Oh nooo.. CREEPERS!!! AND ZOMBIES!!! HELP!!!"

Not everyone was prepared for this. Some knew what to do and others didn't. I was certainly prepared with an iron sword and did what I could to defend our group. I had them all get inside the safe-house so we could fight them off through the doorway which, unfortunately, only had wooden doors at this point which can be destroyed by monsters. The zombies knocked one of them down which left us with a major problem. In the end, we managed to survive our first night without any casualties.

"The sun is coming up. Everyone back to work!" I joked with them about it being their "job."

Near the end of the day, we had an exciting moment in which one of our newer players exclaimed "I THINK I FOUND DIAMOND!" Of course, this has everyone's attention so I asked her to collect it if she could and bring it back to me immediately so I could keep it safe.

Not even a minute later she shouts "I fell in the lava and I don't remember how I got there!"

I used this as an opportunity to explain that they should only be traveling through the caves in groups in order to defend each other as well as collect the inventory of a fallen player. Unfortunately for this girl, falling in lava means your items are destroyed too. She had to start over completely. They were beginning to see the real consequences of not planning carefully.

It was quite a letdown, but we were nearing our completion time of 3:15PM anyhow. I had them all re-surface and meet at the safehouse. We all logged out and packed up to go home for the weekend.

"Thank you Mr. Rowley!!!" they all told me as they walked out of the room.

No. Thank you, Garrison students, for letting me play such a fun game at work!

Day 3
The weekend gave me a great deal of time to ease my anxiety surrounding the course and to find ways I could improve our system. Communication became noticeably more difficult on Day 2 since we had a full roster. Build and Resource teams were requesting food by yelling across the room over the sound of everyone else's chatter and it simply was not effective. I thought I would try and have them utilize the in-game chat channel to supplement their needs for communication without sacrificing speed.

"What can we do to improve our system?" I asked.

A group leader raised her hand: "We should use the chat to request supplies between groups."

She took the words right out of my mouth. We have the benefit of two communication channels since we are playing in the same room. A typical online game of Minecraft doesn't provide that. 

"I think it would help to make chests for certain items and mark them with signs so we all know where to find everything." exclaimed one of the food team members.

Done. Each team would divide their respective supplies and resulting products in well-labeled chests.

The resource team leader chimed in, "Now that we have plenty of iron, let's upgrade to iron doors, buttons, and pressure plates so the zombies can't break in.

"Great! That will also prevent Ms. History teacher from breaking our doors too." I think I got a few laughs from that.

I'm sure there could have been more ways to improve, but this was a good start. We resumed in the same place we left off yesterday.

Up until this point in the course I felt everything was going very well. It wasn't until about halfway through the day that I had a realization that some funny things were afoot. Items and resources were seeming to disappear out of chests and furnaces and, despite being questioned about it, no one seemed to offer any explanation. Food was expected to be consumed regularly as we all need to maintain our level of hunger, but iron ingots were missing in large quantities yet they weren't stored in any of our designated chests and production of iron tools had almost halted.

In order to rectify this, I risked my own well-being to enter a cave that no one had been using in the hopes of gathering iron. Maybe the caves they were exploring had simply been depleted of resources which would explain the decline in iron production. I came across a large vein of iron and made my way back to the village to build tools and weapons for everyone.

The build team's leader shouted to another student, "Where did you get that iron armor?!"

To see what all the commotion was about, I teleported to the student in question. She was indeed decked out with a full set of iron armor. This requires a total of 24 iron ingots. I could have built plenty of tools with that quantity.

When pressed for answers as to where she got the ingots, she offered little explanation and only said she had kept it in a chest next to her bed. In the interest of preventing further conflict, I decided to drop the subject and move on.

"No one on our team has any food and there is none in the chests!" Said the resource team leader.

The food team assured everyone they were still producing food as quickly as always and, in fact, had started a pig farm to further expand production rates. Why, then, are we continuously running out of food? 

Without making it obvious as to what I was trying to investigate, I would subtely ask each player at various intervals "Do you need any food?" and, if they said no, I asked what they had and how much. It seemed as though they either had no food or they had quantities of food much greater than what would be considered reasonable for one player. I asked all of them to be more mindful of how much they take out of the chests and to limit themselves to as much as they think they need to last them before they return home. Whether or not this had any effect on their decisions I am not certain.

"I FOUND DIAMOND!" The resource team leader shouted.

"Bring it to me and I'll hold on to it until we get enough to make some tools." I said. She brought me 4 diamonds which was enough to build one tool, but I wanted them to first find more.

Unfortunately for this day, I had to cut the class about 20 minutes short as I was being summoned to resolve issues pertaining to my normal duties. Since the History teacher had to leave about halfway through class, I asked a teacher down the hallway to watch them until the class was originally scheduled to end. They just loaded up vanilla Minecraft and played for the remainder.

On this particular day I agreed to give my boss a ride to his mechanic on the way home from work. He asked about the class and we had a lengthy discussion about the events. I was feeling defeated due to the conflicts that arose and the backwards progress we seemed to experience. However, he made a comment related to the change in the players behavior that gave me a different perspective on the whole thing.

"You realize you've just described Communism, right?"

I was baffled. From the beginning I was encouraging this entire society to work for "the betterment of the people" and apparently I was playing the role of Stalin. I favored my team leaders and neglected the rest of them. I was trying to make things "fair" when I instead caused disparity between effort and reward. The players began to feel cheated as I recalled hearing comments like "I'm doing more work than her" or "She has better items than I do."

As I wrote this post, I decided to read about the characteristics of communism and our virtual society included just about all of them. Rapid industrialization, centralized state, collectivization, classless, moneyless, and common ownership. We were all working in one of three 'industries,' there was only one city being built, all of our collecting efforts were done as joint enterprises, there was no such thing as social class, we had no currency, and everyone shared the some property that no one technically owned. No one was able to attempt private ownership without the fear of being vilified by their peers.

I unknowingly started my own virtual communist society.

To wrap my head around this was a bit tough considering I was already overwhelmed enough by the experience thus far and now didn't know what to expect as a result of my misguided intentions. What would the faculty say about this? Do the students even realize this? Why the heck didn't I see this coming when I thought of the system?

It really didn't matter. The last day of the course was to come and I just had to go with it as it came to me. Who knows? Maybe the kids will get a good laugh out of Mr. Rowley's blunder.

Day 4
2:00PM was our cutoff time for the day since we were scheduled to meet as a group in the auditorium to present what we experienced during minimester. It wasn't until that morning that I received an email asking if I would be willing to participate and if I even had anything in mind to present. At this point I really had no idea what we could possibly show considering I completely scrapped the Creative Mode portion of the course, therefore leaving us without a completed project, and would be left with simply floating around our makeshift base and explaining what we did. Not to worry: I've been 'winging it' this whole time so why not wing it with the presentation, too?

We all met on time and the girls were seemingly in the swing of things as they all started up MinecraftEdu and waited for the server to go up without me asking them to do so. I told them I needed just a few minutes of their time to review some things and then we would go right back in to Survival Mode.

"After a rather lengthy conversation with Mr. Gephardt yesterday, it has come to my attention that I have unintentionally created a society based on ideals that already exist. Can anyone tell me what kind of economic structure we have set up here?"

Our build team leader's hand shot up before I could finish my question: "Communism!"

The whole class shared a laugh as my face turned beet-red from the embarrassment. She was right and, judging by the swiftness of her response, she knew this well before I did.

"Can you explain to my why this is a communist society?"

"Because everyone works for the same reward, but not everyone works as hard as each other." She explained.

"Exactly. And what kind of problems did this cause?"

She replied "Some people were hiding resources and making their own tools and armor without asking for permission."

I decided to spare them the more detailed lesson (even though my lesson would have been very limited) and moved on. Now we all knew what system we were using and could understand the disputes and problems we saw. The student with the set of iron armor felt as though she was more experienced and hard-working so she deserved more gain than others. I don't see this as a problem. I see this as students doing what they can to survive in the game. The same exact thing would have happened in a real-life Communist society.

We stifled our laughter and sat down to resume our game. The game initiated around 12:45 which only allowed for about an hour and fifteen minutes of gameplay. I told them we would have to stop early to write our reflections and then head to the auditorium so the attitude toward the game changed rather quickly. We were no longer specifically concerned with resources for the long-term and spent more of our time in risky endeavors like getting deeper in to the caves. The whole concept of communism seemed to drift and the system seemed to fall apart.

Luckily, one of the girls came across a good amount of diamond which left us with a large enough quantity to craft a few diamond pickaxes. I collected the diamond, crafted the tools, and gave them to our resource team. The resource team leader took it upon herself to find Obsidian blocks (which can only be mined using the diamond pickaxe) in order to construct a Nether Portal.

Now, I've never been to The Nether, and I had to ask the class what it was. It was essentially described to me as "hell" and I would soon find they weren't kidding.

In order to construct a Nether Portal, you need Obsidian blocks and Flint & Steel. You build a frame of Obsidian to outline the portal, then use the Flint & Stone to ignite the portal. At that point, anyone can walk through the portal and teleport to The Nether.

Once the portal was constructed and active, I froze everyone in place and gave them each a full suit of diamond armor, tools, and swords. We only had 15 minutes left so I figured giving everyone free reign in The Nether would be fun. It was indeed fun, but it was also terrifying.

You are immediately dumped in to an underworld filled with flames and lava pits which is what I would imagine hell is like. Not only that, but there are a new set of monsters to fight. One monster in particular gave me trouble: the Ghast. It's a massive floating white blob adorned with tentacles that emits an awful screaming sound while it relentlessly spews fireballs at you. I'll admit that I sort of screamed like a girl.

"Mr. Rowley! Use your sword like a baseball bat to hit the fireballs back at him!"

I tried. I really tried. It's no wonder I was a better fielder than hitter when I played baseball as a kid. I was bested by the Ghast's barrage of fireballs and had to retire. The girls continued on without me. Had we been allowed a little more time, we may have ventured in to The Nether far enough to find something even more terrifying than the Ghast. But, for now, that was enough for me.

To everyone's disappointment, I teleported us all back to our safehouse in order to log out safely. Our world was saved to the VM and I shut down the server. We marched down to the auditorium to present our experiences.

I had the three team leaders present using our laptops on the projector to give a visual reference. The entire Middle School was present including faculty. One of the team leaders started off by explaining what our goals were with collecting resources and crafting while the next went on to detail the farming system and how we managed to fend off monsters. Up until this point I had not said anything so I interrupted briefly to see if I could get them to explain our economic system.

The build team leader chuckled and said "Oh yea, and Mr. Rowley had us in a Communist society!"

Again, a few more laughs, particularly from the faculty this time. She gave a brief explanation of why we thought this was the case and moved on to our experiences in The Nether. For the most part, people still seemed a bit confused, but they were more so intrigued by the game. Five minutes simply isn't enough to explain Minecraft and what we had done during minimester.

To me, though, it was a fantastic opportunity to test out the game at our school and the group I had working with me couldn't have been any better. What I originally had planned for them was entirely forgotten. I thought letting the students decide what they wanted to do was probably better than any plan I could have devised. They got their chance to take control and show their knowledge about something that a lot of people do not understand: how to play Minecraft. I know when I was in Middle School I would have loved to show the adults and my peers what I knew about video gaming, but I feel the stigma surrounding video games in that era wouldn't have allowed for much more than Number Munchers or Math Blaster, both of which I played quite a bit in school. Now, over a decade later, there exists a kid-friendly video game that is appealing to parents yet serves as a platform for educating students in a vast number of ways. There's not much else you could ask for.