Making geosciences fun with Minecraft

Minecraft is not just a successful video game: it is also an invaluable aid for teaching and learning about the geosciences. The geology of Minecraft worlds is simplified but coherent and has many similarities with the real world.

Minecraft is not only one of the world’s most popular games, it is also the best-selling video game in history with over 300 million copies sold. Made up of billions of blocks, the Minecraft world is a key part of the game’s success. Players can explore a wide range of environments both above and below ground.

The rise of serious gaming

With the development of serious gaming, games are becoming a recognised learning tool in their own right.

The term refers to games designed to teach, learn or inform children or adults about a wide range of subjects. Although serious games is a fast-growing area, the idea of appropriating mainstream games for educational or teaching purposes is not yet widely established. And yet this is what serious gaming is all about. The idea is to use mass-market games, originally designed for entertainment purposes, as a learning medium.

Minecraft is also available in an educational version that tweaks the original game with multiple teaching features: improved multiplayer mode, coordinates to help students move around the map more easily, an online portfolio where students can take photos of their creations, customised avatars, world import/export function, interactive characters, and more.

An underground world to explore

Much of the world of Minecraft, however, lies beneath the surface of these biomes, with a vertical stack of rocks. The deepest is the bedrock, or parent rock.

While this is a fairly simplified version of what you might find in the real world, the blocks are nevertheless stacked logically. The different rocks making up the Earth’s crust can form stacks of layers that are more or less horizontal, resting on an older, solid substrate.

Although the game offers only a simplified vision of the geosciences, designed for entertainment, Minecraft has the potential to raise awareness and teach the public about this field, through its mechanics, diversity and community of players. For example, you can directly visit the subsurface of our world at several points around the UK, with the 3D geological models provided by the British Geological Survey.