When I was in Highschool my favorite game was the survival / building game Minecraft, and I spent a large amount of time playing it. My favorite part of the game was using it as a creative outlet by building whatever sounded like a fun project.

Eventually people on public servers had noticed that my builds were quite good and offers started coming in to create for servers. These projects ranged in scale dramatically: anywhere from a massive city like citadel for a server’s central hub world, to small 1 vs 1 pvp arenas for players to fight in.

As more projects came in than I could handle on my own I started a team of players by recruiting and interviewing other talented builders. At the peak we had around 10 active builders working on commissioned projects.

Unfortunately this was quite some time ago and I didn’t put much thought into documenting what we were making. All I have left is a handful of scattered screenshots and random world saves that survived the years. Fortunately what did last over the years was the lessons I learned making these environments. It taught me invaluable lessons in designing spaces with creative restraints in mind. It taught me how design restraints can ironically boost creativity since you’re put into a situation where you’re forced to think outside of the box. Most importantly It gave me a newfound passion for creating spaces and having people explore and enjoy them.

Since then I’ve viewed the games I play in a new light. Where I started to look at games with much more curiosity to the design decisions that went into their creation.