In what seemed like a brilliant move, the government in Denmark recreated the entire country on Minecraft, block by block, to try and get the nations youth interested in geography. They reasoned that if children were participating in a fun activity they would be more attentive, and learn faster and better. You can hardly argue with that kind of logic. If you’ve ever seen a kid playing a game you will see exactly why they decided to give it a try. When it comes to gaming, kids pick up the intricacies very quickly. So it was a good idea and mostly well thought through, but they didn’t plan on one thing. Hackers! Before long Minecraft Denmark was attacked, and would more closely resemble the baron wastelands of a digital battlefield.
The Minecraft Denmark was not built by hand, nor was it built by an overly dedicated team of Minecrafters hired by the government. The Danish Geodata Agency (DGA) uploaded a topographical map of the country to their own servers in Minecraft. This map created the country block by block, and furthermore it is available for download for you to use on your own server. To protect the artificial country, they also banned dynamite (the Minecraft kind) from their servers. But a small glitch was discovered. It was found that if users hid dynamite in mining carts it could be detonated. Oops.
A user who goes by the name of Whezolor on the Minecraft forums has taken credit for the vandalism, terrorism or maybe even act of war against Minecraft Denmark. The user landed in part of the Danish country and started detonating hidden dynamite, destroying buildings and other digital structures. They then erected large and small American flags, along with what kind of looks like tanks, with America all over the place. He then went onto the forums with a screen shot of his work stating that he had “Americanized the place a bit.” No crap.
The damage wasn’t permanent. The DGA said that other users quickly repaired the damage the following morning by replacing the damaged buildings with green fields and flowers. It’s still not absolutely clear who the perpetrators of the damage. But at least it was all in good fun. Bravo.
