Minecraft’s Most Disturbing Experiment

Midnight may 7th 2012. an account is created on the minecraft forums named woodworks experiment two hours later at 2 10 am they make their first post not a month goes by and already several news outlets around the world are covering the story the post is titled closed map experiment and its contents

Are nothing short of disturbing the experiment describes a 350 by 350 block minecraft world enclosed by bedrock on all sides 30 strangers who prior to this have never interacted are thrown into this world in sessions two to five hours at a time over the span of two months communication is limited as

In-game chat is disabled forcing the players to interact with signs or obtain each other’s skype information which everyone is reluctant to do at first a few weeks in as one of the players opens minecraft to log in he’s met with something strange he tries again little does he know

His computer has been hacked los angeles california attire jay hudson returns home from his baseball tryouts he slings his bag on his bed and walks to his computer where he’s greeted by a message on the minecraft forums it’s addressed from someone going by woody an invitation to a minecraft event

Named the closed map experiments hello i see you’re active on the forums i have this cool idea for a test social experiment and i need people to participate you seem like a good fit i’ll fill you in on more details if you want to join intrigued jay responds i’m in

Tell me more the two go back and forth scheduling times when jay is available and woody explains the premise for his testing it’s study of resource management and the effect of limited resources on a population 30 people one box one rule no leaving jay agrees a choice he will later come to regret

The event is scheduled to begin in two weeks on march 1 2012 the release date of minecraft 1.2 in the meantime woody explains he has to get more people to actually participate jay refers him to a few other active members on the forums he asks if there

Will be any money or reward for participating woody says no two weeks come and go and woody sends another message to jay at 1 17 am the morning before the event hello participant the experiment will begin at 3 30 pm eastern standard time be there here’s the ip when he wakes up

At 12 jay notices the message and realizes he has less than half an hour to get up and join luckily he’s on a delayed winter break and school isn’t a problem after eating a quick breakfast and feeding his cat jay boots up minecraft he takes a breath and joins the server

Excited he’s met with a normal minecraft world that is if you don’t count the looming bedrock while behind him 10 players stand around him waiting for a sign for anything really more players begin to trickle in and finally jake and count 29 30 including himself

It’s 3 34 pm est when a message is broadcast to the server it’s one word begin jay looks around confused but excited no one seems to know exactly what to begin doing they’re all just there until finally a few wander off to begin punching trees just a typical minecraft experience

After a few minutes jay gets himself situated with iron armor and the decent supply of food he’s yet to interact with any of the other participants he’s not stupid he knows food will become a scarcity so he wanders around killing animals and collecting seeds this event is in recurring

Sessions woody had made sure to select weekly dates and times that every participant could be on at once anywhere from two to five hours in length the server would close when the session ended and open anew at the next one three days in and all clay has been mined up

Players resorted to stealing bricks from each other’s houses leaving ruin-like structures across the map but no real interaction between players took place yet jay made his house out of kabul a very abundant resource but because of this no one cared enough to steal from it trees also became scarcity and players began bartering

Iron for saplings jay made sure to set up a stash of saplings in a chest planting one every now and then and guarding it until it grew he enjoyed the experiment it turned into a sort of competition to see who could get the most leverage over the rest it was six days in

When jay was invited to join the axe players had begun to separate into groups realizing that by working together they would be able to maintain resources without as much fear there were four clans the dwarves the brotherhood the merchants and the axe the axe was led by a player going by pompeii

He took notice of jay saplingarding and decided to give him an offer messaging him through the minecraft forum hello i noticed you have a good idea of how to keep your resources safe join us and we can work together jay was hesitant at first but after all it was just a minecraft world

What did he have to lose and it was on march 8th 2012 that jay joined the axe the axe consisted of five members jay becoming the sixth accounting for 20 of the servers population the brotherhood was the largest group with nine members the dwarves had five and the merchants also had

Six four players were yet to join a clan pompei introduced jae to the rest of the axe their best fighter xander bite 12 had two of the total 17 diamonds in the world as his diamond sword and pompei had three in reserve out of any group they had the most diamonds jay

And pompei traded skypes to better coordinate although only jay ever spoke on their rare calls the four guilds didn’t interact much they had minor squabbles over the saplings in the world but each group had a small area for growing trees soon the act set up a mine and began

Construction of a cobblestone castle that would become their base the dwarves settled underground mining out a large corner of the world to live in the brotherhood set up a town consisting of several buildings and the merchants a simple but elegant house two weeks in and iron has now become a scarcity most

Of it was wasted on tools and armor but the dwarves had made several buckets and with the help of their lava and diamond pickaxe set up a community nether portal in the center of the world a naive endeavor that would soon be exploited the nether was an escape its lack of a

Border provided opportunities for infinite building blocks and netherrack was gathered in peace by all clans this didn’t last long though as the brotherhood quickly stole the obsidian and made their own nether portal in a vault at the back of their town the merchants capitalized on their greed and after searching for lava

Eventually set up their own optional nether portal that you had to pay wood or saplings to use it was at this point two weeks and three days in that the first player jumped ship xbcc decided there was no more fun in playing and left the server the player count dropped to 29

Jay disagreed he had fun mindlessly mining out large chunks of stone to use in the castle and it wasn’t long before he was promoted to scout jay was tasked with a role to look out to see what the other clans were up to which he did but didn’t notice anything too notable

Until he saw the spire a giant tower made completely of cobblestone stuck out in a random location of the world as far as you could get from any other clan base there were no name tags around so jay investigated he pillared up the side and found nothing on top it was just an

Empty spire he ignored it three weeks and six days in and most of the sand on the beaches was gone all of it had been used up and smelted into glass and bread was soon becoming the only source of food luckily pompeii had anticipated this instead of a small animal pen

Of three cows it was early afternoon when returning from a scouting mission that jay noticed the pen it was empty the cows had either been killed or taken he alerted pompeii who immediately accused the dwarfs he guessed that their tunnel network had allowed them to infiltrate the base

Jay agreed and vowed to steal back from them crouching jay infiltrated the dwarf space it was on a completely other end of the map but 350 blocks didn’t take long to traverse the base was a massive cave fitted with stone brick designs he dug behind one of their chests and without shifting

Broke it collecting what happened to be a supply of bread he returned to the ax who praised him the dwarves eventually noticed and not knowing who had stolen from them blamed it on the brotherhood the nearest base to theirs and so war broke out obviously the brotherhood

Had nothing to do with the raid and thought the dwarves had just lost it their numbers as well as superior gear allowed them to easily overpower the dwarves killing them and taking their items the merchants then ran over supplying the dwarves with food but demanding any remaining wood in return

However in the midst of all this several members of the axe had raided the brotherhood stealing their portal food and setting their town on fire when the brother had returned to see their base in shambles they gathered what they could and went to war with the axe this then prompted a server-wide

Conflict jay noticing the advance tunnel down and hid not wanting to risk death even with xander bite the axe did no chance against the group 1.5 times their size and was wiped out their castle was mined apart over the course of a few hours and with their base demolished and food supply ravaged

The axe disbanded jay was again clanless the merchants who this entire time had refrained from conflict were the least harmed because of it maintaining good trade relations with the others and not interacting with any groups demanding war which is why it surprised them so much to come back to a demolished base [Applause] from the three players who had remained clanless one had left the server but two had stayed these two took residence upon the spire they built they made a small dirt platform and coaxing over grass from a nearby mountain allowed them to have a miniature oasis in the sky

Far away from all the others they had a water elevator that could be toggled by piston and one of them stayed atop it at all times to operate the rest of the server called them the reefers they saw no rules and exploited it shattering windows stealing resources and

Using their sand for tnt instead of glass they had no reason for blowing of the merchant’s base they did so just for the fun of it among finn and almost all of the axe had left the experiment jay still found it entertaining to log on and scout around but he had no

Friends on the server grass had also become somewhat of a scarcity the merchants tried to collect some to be traded with but this was quickly exploded by the d.a griefers the brotherhood did have a small patch of grass but defended it so frequently they lost the rest of their town and

Their base broke down dirt was nearly gone from the world and the bottom near y11 was also torn up with little or left a scavenge the griefers found pleasure in repeatedly slaughtering those that didn’t pay them they accepted all forms of currency in flint gravel grass string wood

Food but if you refused you would be killed and your base exploded at this point six weeks in a lot of players had left the merchants still logged on and the brotherhood was reduced to only three members still helplessly guarding their patch of grass and trees four players including jay remained clanless

And the dwarves were just a trio now the d.a griefers had a monopoly over the server jay took this as a challenge though and decided to hatch a plan to take them down it was seven weeks in the dawn of the last week of the experiment that jay

Decided to take down the griefer’s base he had spent the last few days silently collecting cobblestone to set up a bridge but also trading as much netherrack as possible with the merchants one day he set up a small fort made of netherrack with a chest visibly inside it was of course

Empty as he hoped this caught the attention of both griefers who left their base to demolish the new structure jay then towered over mining out their entire dirt platform and burning their items with lava he smiled he had won the next day jay opened minecraft to log in but when

He opened up the server he was met with an error he tried again nothing he opened google to troubleshoot the error and to his surprise that didn’t work either nothing was unbeknownst to him he had been ddosed upset by the destruction of their base the griefers had launched a denial of service attack

Yes a real world attack over a block game at j they had managed to do this by coaxing pompeii to give them jay skype information for protection which he hesitantly obliged to from there it was only a matter of using j skype to identify his ip address a surprisingly simple process jay was

Stunned when it finally dawned on him but decided it wasn’t really worth carrying over if anything it was funny they had managed to be annoyed this much by a simple briefing he had served his purpose on the experiment and later that day told woody he was opting out woody

Agreed that it was for the best with five days left something strange happened the griefers had abandoned the server and their merchants remained shakily intact but the rest of the players had come together the world was getting unplayable with copious amounts of mobs spawning during the night time

As a result resources had been pooled and players had formed alliances just to survive the night a strangely wholesome turn and finally two months after the start on may 1st 2012 the closed map experiment ended it was over the author of the original forum post poses an interesting pair of questions

If the walls were suddenly torn down how do you think the players would react would they remain in groups and take care of the newfound resources or do you think they would indulge in the abundance of supplies with no regard at all for the environment until eventually given enough time

Nothing but wasteland would remain yet again but more interestingly does this say anything about the current human condition as a whole no it’s just a block game thank you for watching