At a Jan. 12 faculty meeting, high-school teachers debated Minecraft, a popular PC video game, for the school and its students.

“Whenever something new crops up that students are doing on campus, the faculty wants to make sure that it is something that fits into what we are trying to accomplish here,” Sue Nellis, head of high school, said.

Currently, 15 high-school students polled own Minecraft—just a fraction of a nationwide community numbering in the millions.

After learning the game wasn’t too violent and wouldn’t interfere with school servers, the faculty’s reception of the game was relatively positive.

“Students need some downtime,” librarian Joanne Melinson said.

The faculty decided they would intervene if they found students with academic problems playing Minecraft or students making too much noise while playing the game.

“As long as students are getting their work done and done well and there isn’t negative fallout from the game, then it is fine for students to play it on campus,” Nellis said.

If Minecraft does cause problems in the future, the game’s appropriateness could be re-examined.

“If problems arise and we get com-plaints from parents or visitors, then we will certainly revisit our decision,” Nellis said.

Credited with starting the Minecraft trend among upperclassmen, junior David Coffill began playing the game in September when he found positive comments about the game on various news Websites.

Coffill introduced the game to others, who loved its versatility and Lego-like gameplay.

“Minecraft is what you make it,” Coffill said.

The two main aspects of Minecraft are “mining” and “crafting.” Mining allows the player to obtain resources, and crafting lets the player use these resources to create tools and build-ings.

The terrain of the game is made up of cubical blocks that represent different materials, such as dirt, stone, water and tree trunks. Players can move and rearrange these blocks in different ways to create various structures.

“It’s like Legos for big kids,” junior Nicholas Neal said.

Junior Nicholas Samson says he likes the game because he can build structures with his friends.

“It’s like a shared art project,” he said.

Unlike most video games, Minecaft has no story or objective other than surviving against monsters that spawn in dark places.

According to junior Richard Whitney, the game more than makes up for the lack of objective with the artistic ingenuity its massive land-scape offers.

The game’s scope measures nearly eight times the surface area of the earth, the most of any video game.

“The game opens a world of infinite possibilities,” Whitney said.

Others find the game’s classic 1990’s graphics attractive and suit-able, giving it a striking resemblance to something out of a Lego set.

“If the graphics were better, the game would be overdone,” Neal said.

The school’s Minecraft community also plays multiplayer, in which multiple people play simultaneously in the same game environment with a chat system for communication.

“It’s basically taking playing Legos to playing Legos with friends,” freshman David Myers said.

Mojang, the company that produces Minecraft, currently has no official multiplayer servers, forcing players to create their own servers or find servers created by other people.

According to school regulations, students cannot use the school server or Internet connection for gaming.

Thus, Coffill and other players use laptops to create their own servers and phones to establish an Internet connection through tethering—connecting a computer to the Inter-net via phone—for their laptops completely independent of the school’s.

“Minecraft gives a good opportunity for someone to learn basic server set-up and administration,” a junior said.

Coffill, Neal, Cabot Jackman and other juniors also use the game for extra credit in teacher Bruce Baird’s U.S. History class by building struc-tures relevant to Baird’s curriculum.

“It was amusing and creative,” Baird said.

Minecraft costs about $20 and is still undergoing development.