Alumnus Christopher Bruns ‘86 Continues Community Project of Building Reed College in Minecraft

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By Rowan Horowitz; Video Work by Liam O'Brien

Many a Reedie enjoys Minecraft. This enjoyment is not unfounded — Minecraft is at the top of Wikipedia’s “List of best-selling games” articles, and boasts 238 million copies sold since its release in 2009. Because of the popularity of this sandbox game, many schools have decided to open servers creating replicas of their campus. And Reed is no exception.

Christopher Bruns ‘86 first became aware of this project because his nephew participated in a similar project at Cornell University, and decided to start the same endeavor at Reed. The project was started almost entirely by Bruns in the spring of 2021, about one year after the boom of college Minecraft projects. This project is intended to represent Reed’s campus as it is in the current day.

Bruns said that his main motivation for the project was to bring the Reed community together, even though he was not entirely confident in his leadership skills. One of the goals of this project is to create mindfulness about structures and presence in the world. 

A few features of the server include a resource pack that turns chickens into ducks (and even includes duck noises) as well as a feature that syncs the rain of Minecraft with the rain of Portland (i.e. when it rains in real life, it rains in Minecraft.) The server also hosts events! The most recent one was on September 18, and the next one will be sometime in November.

Paideia 2023 was one of the most active times for the server, with both current and prospective students collaborating. Even though engagement has declined since then, the server is open 24/7. If you have any interest in joining, the IP address for the server is lovereed.my.pebble.host, and to be recognized as an editor on the server you can fill out a google form at tinyurl.reedcraft. 

Any information submitted on the google form is protected by Reed. Bruns helps new players join the world and get used to playing. In addition, the server is looking for floor plans of non-dorm buildings as well as photos of the exteriors of buildings. Finally, there is also a Discord server for the server. DM me at “rowan a boat#8844” for more information.