LionCraft
LionCraft is a virtual recreation of Columbia University's campus. Created by a group of CS research students in the Spring of 2020 during the onset of the pandemic, it was intended to serve as a medium to reconnect students after it was announced that Columbia was kicking all students off students off campus for the rest of the semester, and all classes would be hosted through a virtual medium. It saw over 500 students, staff, alumni, and prospective students log on and was a hub of activity used to facilitate school tours, art gallery exhibitions, and various other student gatherings. LionCraft was ultimately used to introduce Prezbo during Columbia University's Official 2020 Commencement Ceremony.
History
Origins
The idea for a Minecraft recreation of Columbia university, though perhaps envisioned by others in the past, was first put suggested during the 2020 Spring Columbia University Virtual Campus Design Challenge which was organized by Computer Science Professor Lydia Chilton in an effort to "address the challenges of virtual living" and reconnect members of campus.
The design challenge featured a variety of teams who each produced an application. Some winners of the challenge included Sentiment, a service which texts users daily encouraging remarks, Care From Home, an application designed to instruct individuals how to care for someone with Covid-19, and "Columbia@Home", an Augmented Reality Snapchat lens which allowed users to overlay camps buildings on their surroundings.
Professor Chilton, as the organizer of the challenge, encouraged her research team of undergraduate students to compete and they did just that. The original team consisted of Evan Tilley (SEAS '22), Hector Liang (GS '21), Annie Sui (CC '22), and Cindy Espinosa (BC '22). One student from each school, how fitting! At the onset of the Hackathon, while discussing project ideas, they were leaning towards some sort of application to encourage users to get away from screens. This was logical, as, due to the pandemic, students had been spending increasing amounts of time hunched behind computers.
While deciding on an idea to press forward with, Evan put forth the idea of taking the Virtual Campus design challenge quite literally and recreating the entirety of Columbia's campus in Minecraft. This was met by a surge of enthusiasm from the team members and so it was decided. They set out to build as much of campus as they could, with the idea that, once a significant amount had been created, others members of the Columbia community might take interest and help with the process of building.
