Queen’s campus tours go virtual with Minecraft

Queen’s University found a virtual way to let prospective students tour its campus ahead of the fall 2021 semester: Minecraft. Minecraft is a popular video game in which users build their own worlds with blocks, similar to virtual ‘lego’.

This year, as a way to work around COVID-19 restrictions, members of QUCraft, the Queen’s Minecraft team, took it upon themselves to build a virtual version of the Queen’s Campus inside Minecraft for prospective students get a sense as to what life on campus could be like.

“It was an eye-opening experience,” said Kevin Deluzio, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. “The Minecraft version of Queen’s campus is astonishingly well built – you see the campus in a whole new way.”

“COVID can cancel our traditional tours, but it can’t stop Queen’s Engineers from innovating,” Deluzio added.

Nearly 100 prospective Queen’s Engineering students took part in the session on Wednesday, Apr. 21, 2021, which included touring the virtual campus, hunting for ‘eggs,’ and joined the Dean for a question and answer period.

“Students and even some alumni have really put their passion behind building parts of campus, often places special to them, and continue to build as part of the community,” said Alex McKinnon, co-President of QUCraft, the Queen’s Minecraft team.

Right now, the server can only be accessed through the video game, but Queen’s tells the Kingstonist that a web-based version of the map is being created for all to use.