When COVID-19 forced Penn students to leave campus, many Penn students were concerned about losing perennial Penn traditions like Hey Day, Quaker Days and Commencement. A small group of Penn students, including seniors Makarios Chung and Damian Owerko, junior Andrew Guo, and incoming Weitzman master’s student Michael Willhoit, got together (virtually) to recreate Penn’s campus in Minecraft, a popular game that allows users to create structures and terrain and “mine” resources.

Mr. Guo, who spearheaded the effort, got the idea to make a Minecraft of Penn’s campus from a Japanese elementary school whose students had recreated their school building in Minecraft and hosted a virtual graduation there. Mr. Guo recruited several friends and active Minecraft users in the Penn community, and the team set to work recreating Penn’s campus, building by building, block by block. Using Google Street View imagery and maps supplied by Penn Libraries as a guide, they began creating a faithful recreation of Penn’s campus in late March. They included intricate details as the brick patterns of Locust Walk and the topography of College Green, and they also added touches like programming a synthesizer-led rendition of “The Red and the Blue,” which plays automatically when Minecraft users walk around the area of Franklin Field.

After a Penn Today article in early April spread the word of the team’s efforts to build a virtual Penn campus, many University departments reached out to Mr. Guo with plans for collaborations, including using the Minecraft campus to provide prospective students with virtual campus tours. On April 24, the first-ever virtual Penn Relays took place in the Minecraft Franklin Field.

The builders plan to hold a virtual commencement ceremony on Penn’s Minecraft campus. All commentators agree that this virtual Penn campus has provided a much-needed sense of unity to members of the Penn community during a trying time.