The amount creativity of Minecraft players can express knows no limits, and now they could have the power to cross over into the real world. Verizon recently announced on its Github blog that it has partnered the creative team at BlockWorks to introduce web-enabled features in the game world of Minecraft. Meaning that with the right materials and a special app, players can construct a virtual cell tower and smartphone to place calls to the real world.Â
The list of virtual smartphone features include:
Video Call
Users can activate their in-game phone to send and receive video calls from other people, and, as you can see in the sample videos below featuring popular YouTube stars Captain Sparklez and SethBling, it takes a real-time image and converts it into the game, but with blocks.
Web Browsing
The video above also demonstrates web browsing that can also be done through a player’s in-game phone device, although it uses very blocky images, which fits in with the game world. This feature also connects to the real world from inside the game, so it’s like one reality connecting with another.
Text/MMS
Finally, users can build their own selfie stick and attach it to their in-game phone, taking a picture of their character to send to others via text messaging. This is bound to be a fun social feature, especially for friends staying in touch with one another while they play the game.
This service came together with the help of a web application called Boxel, which translates web pages and imagery from streaming video into blocks, allowing them to be put into a Minecraft server. In addition, Verizon has also open-sourced the library of this tool, so devoted fans can write their own code to play around with however they see fit.
These are fundamental features that should be popular in the Minecraft community, which has millions of fans across various platforms, including PC and mobile. The video call feature in itself should be a fun way to see what Verizon’s technology can do, although web browsing and selfie photos should be produce creative results as well. Verizon benefits by having putting its technology on full display for the Minecraft universe to see and use.
It’s unclear whether the server based app will work on all versions of Minecraft, since the demonstration appear limited to the PC, but hopefully it will work across all platforms so that everyone can take blocky selfies.
