Minecraft Player Spends two Years Building Virtual City

Minecraft player spends two years creating a virtual city By Zoe Kleinman Technology reporter, BBC News

17 October 2014

A student from Delaware has spent two years creating the virtual world he named Titan City in the video game Minecraft.

Titan City is constructed out of 4.5 million Minecraft building blocks and includes 96 buildings.

Duncan Parcells says it has taken the project two years to complete the project, and he is averaging five hours a week working on the project.

His first construction was a virtual replica of the World Trade Center, which took 18 months to finish.

However the 19-year-old says Titan City is not a real-life model of New York.

"It's inspired by New York," he said to the BBC.

"A lot of people believe it's a recreation but it's not."

He constructed the city using the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft but has now moved it to the PC version, which, he says, offers more construction options.

Mr Parcells plans to add an airport and a sports arena.

He said, "I suppose it's an outlet for energy and architecture."

"Architecture has always been something I have loved. I'm most proud of more traditional buildings, and the more art deco, Victorian-style builds.

"A lot of people drop in and want to explore the area or assist in the construction." Many of them assist with roads."

While Titan City has been welcomed by the public with open arms, Mr. Parcells said that he has kept his virtual world a distance from his real life.

"I've kept it secret it's sort of an additional life I'm not talking about, but people are starting to find out," he said.

"My parents believe it's cool. I'm guessing they're just happy I don't do it too much."

Microsoft recently signed an agreement to purchase Minecraft studio Mojang for $2.5bn (PS1.5bn).

The game reached its 100 millionth player in February 2014, the game's creator Markus Persson, aka Notch, announced on Twitter. Minecraft

After the initial purchase of the game Minecraft is completely free to play but there are in-game purchases that can be purchased.

The game is played in a virtual space that's made up of cubes made of various materials. A majority of these materials can be used to build blocks, while some can be transformed into usable raw materials such as iron, wood and diamond.

The game demands you to survive by using blocks to construct shelters and to turn raw materials and mixtures of them into items (swords and armour, bows and bows, etc.) to defeat the many monsters in the game.

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