While waiting for ray-tracing technology to become the norm in Minecraft, some players are going online to buy gorgeously detailed cities made by building professionals. It's a market of which many aren't aware, but it rakes in real-world cash for the builders that render customers' dream worlds.
With its vast, open-ended nature, easy moddability, and widespread ubiquity among dozens of millions of players, Minecraft attracts some of gaming's most talented individuals to create things in-game that its original designers likely never thought possible. Being so visually distinct with its faux-voxels and emphasis on building, there's a huge segment of the game's playerbase who exclusively use the sandbox to forge works of 2D and 3D art, including real and fantastical works of architecture. Coupled with shaders that elevate Minecraft from a vaguely retro-looking experiment to a graphical feast for the eyes, this particular group of players makes some of the most breathtaking creations in the community.
Although it was previously unknown, many became familiar with the apparently thriving market for paid Minecraft city-building after a post on Reddit's r/gaming subreddit went viral. As some came to find out after digging a little more deeply, those responsible for this 3D recreation of Orario (a fictional city from the anime series Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?) shared that all of the city's "houses have interiors" and that the city was built to specification for a client. Their site, Varuna Builds, showcases a gorgeous variety of completed projects that the group of talented 3D artists have created and sold. Using external editors to render their beautiful worlds, Varuna claims that it will "build maps, spawns, hubs, and anything else you can possibly imagine" for a price.
As if more evidence were needed at this point, the likes of Varuna Builds further proves how much further Minecraft has transcended its original light survival and crafting intentions thanks to its wildly creative - and apparently valuable - players. Servers hosting ambitious world creation servers like Minecraft Middle-Earth and the Build the Earth Project, today's Block by Blockwest in-game music festival and COVID-19 relief fundraising event, and now the revelation that the game has indirectly caused an entire art market to spring up around it are astonishing testaments to the growing flexibility and maturity of the gaming medium.
Varuna Builds certainly isn't the only premium custom map designer out there, so they surely wouldn't mind the extra competition if any similarly crafty and talented 3D artists try their hand at selling works of Minecraft art of their own. The next generation of visual designers and architects might be cutting their teeth on similar virtual projects, and there's probably few greater honors for which developer Mojang could have ever hoped.
Source: VarunaMC, Varuna Builds
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