A political sandbox built in Minecraft

Submitted by MinarchistMineman on June 19, 2016

I've been playing on a political Minecraft server lately... I wasn't sure if this was the right forum to post about it, but if it isn't please move it to the right forum.

Tired of arguing politics with friends and family? Ready to see if your ideas and philosophies would actually work?

Put away your endless debates over ideologies and government structures and put them into practice.

Try a political sandbox called Devoted. Built on top of Minecraft, a well populated and intuitively controlled game platform, we leverage a custom plugin set that allows players to moderate the community by working together. The result? A unique opportunity to put your philosophies and ideals into practice.

I’m an American; I had no experience with any other governments or ideologies than my own.

I had read about them, but that was about it.

Then I joined a town in game that had a minarchist-style government. And… It worked. We had order, justice, and even unofficial organizations that made roads between people’s houses answering the age old question: “But who will build the roads?”

It had problems (border conflicts, other towns trying to stuff our ballot boxes, legal disputes), but the people living there worked together and made the city function.

I was hoping you guys could help me brainstorm what other political systems would work best on Devoted

Since the server’s inception, many nations have arisen from the initial chaos to protect and provide for citizen players. Some nations have grown strong, spanning many continents. Others have collapsed into atrophy, or have been crushed and annexed by larger, rival nations. Yet still the large southern continent remains an untamed wild, ready for new players and their new nations to shape the land as they see fit.

We have a few dozen nations whose governments span the political gamut of representative democracies, monarchies, socialist co-ops and fascist dictatorships.

Below are a few highlights from the major political players on Devoted.

Agoran Republic of Devoted
Estimated population: 16
One of the first cities founded on Devoted, Agora has been an active part of the history on the server. The citizens of Agora elect 5 players onto a council that then governs the nation. They recently went to war with the Pirates and were utterly defeated. Most of their citizens were imprisoned in a maximum security vault for a period of time.

Oxeye
Estimated population: 21
A peaceful town that claims to be a Corporatocracy, with their capital at Vegas. The citizens of Oxeye haven’t as a whole gotten involved in any wars but this small and growing city is gaining power and influence.

Pirates
Estimated population: 14
Arguably the current powerhouse on the server, this loosely associated nation of fighters owns a large vault and currently holds the most prisoners on the server. They’ve received a lot of public backlash and bad PR after they waged war against Agora and broke the Agoran vault.

Server Plugins
The plugins that allow the server to function as a political experiment are listed below:

Citadel
This is our reinforcement plugin, simply hit a block with a rare resource or material to make it reinforced. It will then take more time to break that block. You can use this to protect your items and towns from criminals.

PrisonPearl
This plugin allows players to imprison other players, this allows you to detain and punish criminals. Some less-savory groups have used it to subjugate political dissidents, or enslave innocent civilians. It’s up to you to decide how you’ll use these tools.

JukeAlert
This plugin acts like a security camera, it will let you get information on who accessed certain areas you have ‘snitched’ and will give you information on who broke the window on your house or stole from your chests.

Visit our website or our subreddit for more information on the plugins and the server.

If you want to connect with Minecraft the server IP is play.devotedmc.com

Zeronowhere

7 years 9 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Zeronowhere on June 19, 2016

With whom, Minecraft users? Perhaps for the more degenerate of utopian socialists who merely envision abstract worlds outside of the overthrow of systems and their historical place.

It is in any case relying on people of a given 'stripe' to fully understand their system beyond ideological illusions sourced from that system, which is unlikely.

Anyway, the competitive, atomised, co-existent perspective extended in this case to social systems may only favour capital - which could hardly exist verbatim in such a context, anyway, so there's no real comparison here either. Minecraft was not merely created from a company of robots, and its profits did not go to robots. Communism would involve interaction, if it had to be involved in such a game, with the actual interests and actions of people within this, from the actual society they derive or derived, which would not require such a context and certainly not try to abstract from them as in this case. In any case, communism as it relates to the overthrow of an existing system at some point likely has more relevance than a communism which does not do so, which if actually put forward in extensive form is merely apologism for this. Otherwise, this likely has no relevance outside of recreational uses, which people might want to do with others who have the same political persuasion instead.

Communism is not a mere game to be lost or won.

MinarchistMineman

7 years 9 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by MinarchistMineman on June 19, 2016

Communism is also such a different beast, it's hard for most members of a western society to understand what the point of it is.

This is your opportunity to show what Communism is like, to interact with it, to see how it feels.