Marist Minecraft Server in Development
Noah Yurasko '28 with the plans for the new Marist Minecraft sever. Photo courtsey of Noah Yurasko '28.
It’s time to dive back into the world of building, creating and survival: a Marist Minecraft Server is in development.
Though this notion is still evolving, Student Government Association Class of 2028 President Noah Yurasko ‘28, who is spearheading the project, is aiming for four different worlds to be created under the server.
The four worlds, the Adventure Showcase World, Creative Building World, Survival Factions World and Survival Collaborative World, will each feature unique aspects of the game, with each of those being private to Marist University.
The most notable world, the Adventure Showcase World, will feature a one-to-one recreation of Marist, where players can explore areas of campus on the server, learn information about the school and even allow prospective students to “visit” campus in a new, innovative way.
“It's been an idea since around the end of last year, because a couple of my friends on my floor were like, 'We should get a Minecraft server together.’ Then I was like, ‘Well, wait a minute, guys, imagine that for the entire school.’ So that's when I started working on this,” Yurasko said.
The sophomore sent out an email to the entire Marist student body population on Oct. 16, announcing the plan for the server. The email included a form for students to fill out if they are interested in seeing this project continue.
Just over a week later, Yurasko reported 200 responses to the form, with 50 of those seeking to help out with the technical development of the server. He is looking to narrow that list down to about 10 to 12 students to help out with IT/development, marketing and social media.
The inspiration for the server, which will hopefully unite the Marist community, came from Yurasko’s experience in high school, which began during the COVID-19 quarantine.
“Minecraft ended up being where friendships were made and broken, quite honestly,” he said. “That's where the drama happened, that first year of high school, at least for me. So I just thought it'd be nice to bring that social connection back to different areas on campus.”
Yurasko admitted that he knows very few people outside of his grade and his own social circle, and Minecraft might be a perfect way to connect people across the school.
However, Yurasko said his number one concern is that the server will get out of hand. The first layer of security is that students will have to log in to the server with their Marist email. Taking that one step further, Yurakso said that they will be associating player names with their actual names. Yurasko hopes that by ensuring no one can log onto the server anonymously, that will deter a lot of people from causing trouble.
Additionally, Yurasko decided to have four separate worlds to ensure that no student’s intentions butt heads with another student's.
“With the collaborative world, we’re going to have a lot more hands-on sort of features in place,” Yurasko said. “There'll be specific build plots which people can't mess around with, as opposed to the competitive mode, where we know there will be people who want to play like that, and so we want to give them their own space to do that, and kind of keep that separation.”
Yuasko finished the initial designs for the server a couple of weeks before the end of last year. Though he worked on this over the summer, he admitted he wasn’t sure where the idea stood within the admin. At the SGA Summer Session, the pitch of the idea was met with much disbelief.
“I came into this year expecting to get someone to give me a thumbs up, say, ‘Yes, do it, go, go, go,’” Yurasko said. “No one said that. Everyone's just said, ‘Oh, that's a cool idea.’”
But just a few weeks ago, Yurasko reached out to the Donnelly Data Center, which led him to Chris Algozzine, senior professional lecturer of information systems and Dominick Foti, professional lecturer of computing technology, who were fully on board with the idea and willing to help with the background development of the server.
Yurasko and the rest of the team hope to have the server up and running by the end of the semester. Once the server is complete, any Marist student can join to build, create and hopefully, make connections.