A Valley High School student has recreated downtown Des Moines within the open-ended, world-building video game, Minecraft.
Sean Eddy, a 16-year old resident of Beaverdale, has spent the last three years recreating the downtown Des Moines area within the popular video game.
After recreating Stillwell Junior High School for a seventh grade school project, Eddy decided he wanted to pursue a larger Minecraft project.
“After that school year was over, I thought of the potential I had in building other things with more detail,” said Eddy. “Eventually I built 801 Grand intending for it to be an independent project like Stilwell, but it ended up turning into the project that is now ProjectDSM.”
“After I built 801 I started building the neighboring parking garages and once I realized I wanted to continue building downtown, I started a public server so my friends and others could joint to contribute to the project or visit,” said Eddy.
Since opening up a server the public in 2017, Eddy has spent much of his time on the project going back over previously built buildings and adding more specific details.
Going forward, Eddy says he plans to eventually expand the project east and west and begin to work on the Court Avenue District and Pappajohn Sculpture Park.
“Only two years have passed since that server was created, but the progress has been monumental,” said Eddy. “Notably, beginning last summer, I redid every building and road in the city to scale, so the 801 Grand I built initially no longer exists as I replaced it with a more detailed accurate model. I never thought when I built 801 it would be the beginning of a much larger project I would continue to work on 3 summers later.”
Eddy’s Minecraft server of downtown Des Moines is available to the public and to anyone with access to a Minecraft server.