Yesterday, I posted a somewhat cryptic call for builders, for a personal, non-Mojang-related project. In the past, I’ve gotten a few good builders, and they’re now my go-to people: if I need something built, or need an opinion on something, I’ll usually poke them over Skype. A number of them are friends now (hi Tewkesape and Oviraptor!), and we’ve been doing stuff on servers for the last year or two, including Minecraft Marathon, lots of mini-events, and the Magicraft server.

Here’s the tweets:

I need a few great Minecraft builders for a personal project that I want to do. If you want to apply, tweet me an album with pics from (½) — Marc Watson (@Marc_IRL) January 28, 2014

(2/2) an underground forest, cyberpunk city’s alley, space station’s airlock, victorian-era house, and one other thing. Take your time! — Marc Watson (@Marc_IRL) January 28, 2014

The secret building project is secret. But if accepted, it’d be on a server, with a group of talented builders and programmers. Much fun. — Marc Watson (@Marc_IRL) January 28, 2014

The purpose of this was to gather a handful of people that wanted to work on a cool creative project. I wanted to see if people could follow directions and work with minimal oversight. I didn’t give it a deadline, because I don’t have a deadline for picking up good builder contacts.

Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly (it happens each time) the more immediate responses were underwhelming and none followed the instructions. Some advice: take your time. It’s meant to weed out people who want to just jump into something without doing any work. If we see an imgur album with pictures from the five requested builds, and they’re good, that person is probably getting in automatically. I imagine that out of 110,000 followers, I’ll only get 2-3 people who complete the whole process.

I’m not prepared to give more details at the moment, because I don’t want to hype something that’s barely been started, but it will be server-based, intended for a large audience, and should be lots of fun.

Some FAQs:

Q: Can I use mods?

A: Not going to say no, but if your build is full of Silverwood and Sorting Trees, you’re not going to get extra points for it, since we won’t be using those mods.

Q: Can I use superflat/redstone/<block type>/<item>

A: This is the working with minimal oversight part. Impress us.

Q: Can I tweet you the pictures one at a time over the next week?

A: Please don’t. They’ll get lost in the tweet flood. Send an imgur album of several pictures of each build, once you’re done with all five.



Q: I’m stuck on a build. Can you provide some advice?

A: Use Google images?

Q: Do you accept users who are <number> of years old?

A: If you have to ask, no. To be clear, I’m not concerned with what your age is, but if you are, you’re probably too young. I build with people who are aged from 16 to in their 40’s. Part of the neat thing about the internet (and one of the thing that younger kids might do well to know) is that you’re behind an avatar, and most people don’t know, and don’t care, how old you are. What matters is your ability to work well with others.

Have a question not answered here? Find me on Twitter at @Marc_IRL.