Minecraft players will no longer need to close their game whenever a call is coming or an urge to take a selfie occurs. Verizon Wireless, one of the largest wireless telecommunications providers in the country, developed an app that lets players create a phone that actually works inside the game.
Before this new update is released, Verizon said that even if players built a phone they wouldn’t be able to use it to call, text or take a selfie. Verizon, together with Wieden+Kennedy and BlockWorks, developed a function that gives Minecraft players the ability to browse the Internet, make video calls, and send MMs selfies to their friends by creating a selfie stick.
SethBling and CaptainSparklez, both Minecraft experts, conducted the beta test of this new Minecraft update. They showed how the phone functions during the game through video demos
“Users can open up websites, take an MMS selfie using a selfie stick, and even make a video conference call to a cell phone-all visualized within Minecraft’s standard blocky interface of course,” Verizon stated.
Verizon explained how they came up with the new changes. “In the world of Minecraft, almost everything is made of blocks. We’ve created a web application, Boxel, that translates real web pages and streaming video into blocks so they can be built on a Minecraft server in real time. Our server plugin uses Boxel-client to handle the communication between Minecraft and the real world as translated by the web application.”
The codes behind the stunts created by the game experts are posted on a special Verizon page in Github. These libraries were open-sourced so that everyone can try it out, even those who only have a little knowledge in coding.
Kelsey D. Atherton of Popular Science posted his own explanation about the new Minecraft feature. According to the post, in order to make a cellphone call, one must first plant a cell tower tree in the Minecraft’s “blocky” soil. After a few seconds, the planted tower will rise which will provide players an actual cellular service. To complete the tower, the user should just switch it on, and the Minecraft phone will then connect to the Internet.
‘Minecraft’ Updates & News: Verizon Develops an App That Lets Users Create a ‘Working’ Smartphone