London’s British Museum apparently has no problem with Microsoft’s recent $2.5 billion acquisition of beloved online world-building community Minecraft—veteran Minecrafters, however, are up in arms. In fact, the beloved institution is launching an initiative to construct an exact replica of itself, building, galleries, artworks, and all, inside Minecraft.
According to the BBC, the museum is looking to the public to aid in the construction of the British Museum’s Minecraft avatar as part of its Museum of the Future project. The museum has already begun recruiting virtual builders on Reddit.
“I work for the British Museum on a project called Museum of the Future,” the Reddit post reads. “The Museum has agreed to support a ‘build the British Museum in Minecraft’ project, with a couple of builds taking place in the actual Museum, though most of the work will be done whenever people are free.” The post also promises to share blueprints of the museum building with Minecraft builders who volunteered.
The first stage of the massive project will be to build the museum’s façade and its dramatic Great Court, which is the biggest covered space in all of Europe. If that sounds like a lot of work, well, it is.
“It’s the digital equivalent of building the British Museum in Lego,” Ovum gaming analytics expert Ed Barton told the BBC. “You have to build it brick by brick.”
The British Museum hopes to have made significant progress on its Minecraft replica in time for October 16’s public debate “Changing Public Dialogues with Museum Collections in the Digital Age.”