In early May, a Minecraft user by the name of WordWorksExperiment posted the "results" of an experiment on the official Minecraft forum. Boundaries were set by massive walls. The rules of the experiement were quite simple, as only one existed: Stay within the confines of the walls. 30 gamers played on, through a period of about 2 months. Typically in Minecraft, with enough people on a server, they'll often come together to make something amazing. Builds have taken on completely original, unique, and innovative designs, or taken inspiration from everything from Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water," to re-creations of Star Trek's U.S.S Enterprise. This was not not to be the case for the "Closed Map Experiment." The end result was not a pretty one.
According to WordWorks, the world quickly devolved into four separate teams, who spent the better part of the rest of the game attacking each other over resources. According to WordWorks, "Five weeks into the experiment a lot of players had lost the will to play. Most players resorted to staying underground and endless 2x1 tunnels were formed, giant chasms were found by players overmining and ultimately a large majority of cobblestone was lost through lava and the players fighting each other."
Apparently, WordWorks created a virtual "Lord of the Flies" scenario. However, unlike "Flies," Works did notice one unforseen consequence. "While there was still rampant war and grief the players that had little had banded together to try to survive the harsh environment." Take that "glass half empty" people!
Not bad for an independent virtual social experiement. In the end, no one was hurt, and we all learn something about the nature of humanity in a virtual world, possibly even the real world.
Or do we? Shortly after the story was posted, a few Minecrafters began raising questions. And by the time the story was picked up by prominent websites (PC Gamer, EuroGamer, even Minecraft creator, Marcus "Notch" Presson was intrigued, re-tweeting the story from PC Gamer's article ), several Minecrafters were calling outright shenanigans.
From 30 players all playing anonymously (no one player coming forward to support the results of the experiment), to the ignorance of tactics to generate more materials (farming, making generators, etc.), WordWorks has quite a few questions from people that he/she isn't answering. Add in WordWorks long gaps on the forum to answer such questions, and you have a very sketchy "experiment" indeed. Some have even accused the player of lifting the entire story from another source, images and all, and copying it to the forum.
Despite claims that the entire story is a fabrication, it has evoked quite a few players to reproduce the experiment, and see how it would play out for them.
Regardless, it is just one more thing for players to do in the literal sandbox world of Minecraft. WordWorks has promised to answer questions in an interview with PC Gamer.
