Coders Rest In The Office Of Swedish Company Mojang In Stockholm
Coders rest in the Mojang company office in Stockholm January 21, 2013. A pool table, a pinball machine, board games and Lego dot the offices of Mojang, the small Swedish company behind the wildly popular Minecraft video game, and one of its founders is wearing a tuxedo and purple tie on a recent "formal Friday". The atmosphere reflects the independent spirit that has contributed to the raw identity of the game that has just sold 20 million copies. The founders want to keep it that way. Mojang, the Swedish word for gadget, has so far resisted selling to a bigger player or listing on the stock market even though that could mean monster payoffs for the 25-person staff and funding to expand dramatically its games. Picture taken January 21, 2013. Reuters/Ints Kalnins

Worlds will collide when the millions of PC players who play sandbox creation game Minecraft get to visit a stunning recreation of Westeros, a major continent in the "Game of Thrones" fantasy universe. This is all thanks to a dedicated team of 125 gamers who are taking on the seemingly impossible task of recreating the entire continent, block by block.

It's an endeavour that involves extensive retooling of the base "Minecraft" game to allow for the creation of the custom content required to implement a faithful recreation. Project lead Jacob Granberry spoke to Kotaku about the difficulties involved in executing such a complex plan.

"We've developed a custom launcher for the game that comes packed with our WesterosBlocks mod which includes over 50 new custom blocks and textures specifically made for our server," said Granberry. "So, we completely repainted our map with new textures, and some of our old builds we are building over, bigger, better and more realistic."

Dubbed the WesterosCraft, the "Minecraft" project has been in development for over two years, and is currently about 70% complete. The video linked below shows off the sheer scale of this mammoth undertaking. The size of the game world is estimated to be an incredible 806.51 sq km/501.14 sq miles. It includes popular locations and cities from the show, including Winterfell, Castle Black, The Wall and King's Landing.

WesterosCraft organizers say that after work on the current continent is complete, they'll consider expanding to other continents in the Known World. One such area they're looking at is Essos, the immense landmass located to the east of Westeros. Interested gamers can donate time, creativity or money to the project, or download builds of the current game world on the official WesterosCraft website.

"Game of Thrones" is a highly successful HBO fantasy TV show, based on a series of books collectively known as A Song of Ice and Fire, written by acclaimed fantasy author George R.R. Martin.

"Minecraft," originally created by independent Swedish game developer, Markus Perrson, is a an extremely popular sandbox creation game. "Minecraft" encourages the creation of user-generated worlds using a simple grid system into which gamers can plug in blocks of different kinds. Microsoft acquired Perrson's development outfit, Mojang, in late 2014 for a fee in the region of $2.5 billion.

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