When we report on the state of games in Australia, it’s usually for steep pricing, or its Ratings Board’s relatively conservative rulings on dildos and alien narcotics. It’s the pointy corner of a frame rather than the full picture – so it’s nice to be able to show that Brisbanites also recognise a game that’s good for children when they see one.
Brisbane Council has commissioned and developed a Minecraft map of the city and made it available for download – in the hope that local children will see benefits in reading, writing, maths, geometry, collaboration and “general creativity”.
The map incorporates Brisbane’s most iconic buildings – including the Brisbane River, South Bank lagoon, Brisbane Square, the Story Bridge and the Gabba – which is a very Australian name for a cricket ground.
It’s been built to scale using the council’s Virtual Brisbane 3D model, and is intended for creative mode – but I don’t expect there’s anything to prevent you from hiding out the night in City Hall in Survival.
Brisbane Council reckon the map highlights “our commitment to position Brisbane as Australia’s new world city”, and themselves as leaders in “digital communication through the use of games to educate and promote the city”. Seems fair.
The beta version of Minecraft Brisbane [direct link] is free to download in a zip file 7.65MB across. After that, it’s the usual procedure – pop the files in the equivalent Minecraft folders and you’re good to go. Unless this is your first time running a Minecraft server, in which case, urrrrgh. That’s still totally horrible for beginners, right?
Did you ever try qCraft, the quantum physics pack from Google and the MinecraftEdu lot? Or trek across the Ordnance Survey’s Minecraft Great Britain? A bit empty, but conceptually cool.