Blockeley University creator on giving Berkeley students a virtual graduation

UC Berkeley senior Bjorn Lustic joins The Final Round to discuss how he came up with the idea to build a virtual version of his soon-to-be alma mater using Minecraft and how he plans to give the class of 2020 a commencement ceremony despite COVID-19.

Video Transcript

JEN ROGERS: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance. We've been talking a lot about higher education this week. We had the news out of California that the Cal State system is not going to be having in-person classes in the fall. And, of course, college students in California are already not in class.

I want to bring in one of those students, Bjorn Lustic. He is a student at UC Berkeley. And, Bjorn, you haven't been in class. The graduation at Berkeley is coming up on Saturday. You've been spending your time creating a virtual "Minecraft" world, and graduation is going to take place there. Can you tell us how this all started?

BJORN LUSTIC: Yeah, so when news came out that we were no longer having a physical commencement, I was trying to think of different ways where we could provide students a way to go to commencement from their homes. So me and my friend decided to recreate Memorial Stadium, where the general commencement is held, in "Minecraft" because that's a popular game that we like to play, and you have a lot of resources to build and stuff.

So we started building there, and we've gained a lot of support from the University and a lot of support from my peers. And it's turning out to be a much bigger event than I expected it to be.

JEN ROGERS: So how much of the university is in "Minecraft" now?

BJORN LUSTIC: We have all of the exteriors of buildings on campus. So we built all those. We are working on the interiors, but we just had our final map sent off to kind of be cleaned up today.

JEN ROGERS: Tell us what this graduation is going to be like. I mean, how many students do you expect will show up to graduate virtually?

BJORN LUSTIC: So no one has had a virtual commencement in "Minecraft" before, so we don't really know how many people are going to show up. We have allotted around-- we think about 7,000 people will come on. So our servers have that kind of capacity. We've had some custom code written so our "Minecraft" servers can handle that large of a population of people come on the server.

AKIKO FUJITA: Bjorn, we've been talking so much about, you know, what the sudden stop has meant for college students. You know, those who are sophomores and juniors potentially still have another year to go, but I'm just curious what the conversations have been with, you know, your-- those in your class. I mean, what are you thinking in terms of what's beyond this given that college suddenly came to a stop and you don't know what's ahead?

BJORN LUSTIC: Yeah, it's definitely a really interesting time. A lot of my friends had internships planned for summers, even jobs lined up, and those have kind of gone out the window as office buildings are not open. Employers don't really know if they're going to have cash flow to be able to support their employees. It's been a really difficult time because people-- or the graduating seniors also don't get that kind of closure, and they miss out on their final year of college. So we-- we're at the Berkeley-- at UC Berkeley community we're trying our best to kind of bring some positive light to the environment that we're in right now.

JEN ROGERS: So part of that, I guess, is what's happening with "Minecraft." We keep hearing about higher education is going to be making this shift to technology. Do you see this virtual world being able to have legs beyond a graduation-- so in terms of being able to learn online or socialize online? Where do you think this is headed in the next few years?

BJORN LUSTIC: Yeah, so I think we're definitely going to have to be really creative with how we plan to teach higher ed or even high schoolers and middle schoolers online because some-- everyone learns differently. Some people like more hands-on stuff. Some people can learn through the screen. But I think we're going to have to try and adapt to what the individual's strengths are in their learning platform and how they best retain information and are able to use it in their jobs or a day-to-day scenario.

MYLES UDLAND: And, you know, Bjorn, I think all the boomers here on the show think that working from home is so great, and we're all established our careers. We think distributed work is the future. You know, you're younger. You're starting out your career. Do you feel like a future where offices are kind of scaled down and there aren't these, you know, young-professional gathering spaces that, you know, we all had as we were coming up, like, is that something that you think is going to happen? When you talk to your peers, are people excited about trying to find some place to work from home forever, or is everyone sitting around being like, you know what? This sucks and I can't wait until we can, you know, hang out together in person and go to an office?

BJORN LUSTIC: Yeah, I think-- I think the main part of being a young person is being able to socialize with your peers and being able to talk to them and learn how to, like, make friends and learn new ideas that are coming up. I definitely think that you can spread information online, but the physical presence of another person is definitely going to be something that we're going to have to try and, like, figure out if the future is going to be this virtual learning and working environment.

The digital world can be pretty cold and harsh sometimes because of, like, the lack of a physical entity, and you don't really have any restrictions on your speech, or you can kind of make a new identity. So as we go further, I think that it's definitely going to be challenging trying to communicate best our, like, emotions and our feelings over the internet, and that's something that we can see that's kind of been a huge hassle over, like, transitioning from a physical world into a virtual world.

RICK NEWMAN: Hey, Bjorn, it's Rick Newman here. I'm an old person, so I don't speak "Minecraft," but I would like Myles to know that old people like to socialize too. It's not just young people.

But I want to ask you, you think there's any chance you have a business idea here, you know, virtual gathering places?

BJORN LUSTIC: I have not really explored that idea. I'm more interested in the creative aspect of the virtual worlds. I don't-- there will definitely be businesses related to virtual communities, but that is not something that I'm really looking into or have thought much about. I enjoy just creating and trying out new ideas and trying to put the world we're in now a little bit more into the future.

RICK NEWMAN: I might steal your idea then. I think it's pretty clever.

BJORN LUSTIC: OK. Good luck.

[LAUGHTER]

RICK NEWMAN: We'll make formal partnership off air here.

BJORN LUSTIC: OK.

JEN ROGERS: Bjorn, to get back to the graduation, do you dress up to go to a "Minecraft" graduation? Like, what are you going to wear? Do you bring your parents to it? Does somebody speak?

BJORN LUSTIC: Yeah, so we have custom-- we have custom skins-- or we have custom, like, armor. And so you have an avatar in "Minecraft," and you can-- you can customize it by, like, making your own skin if you're, like, a pixel artist. But we've made custom armor for those avatars that mock the cap and gown.

And so going in game, we're going to have people registering beforehand to get their cap and gown if they're graduating, and we're also giving them the ability to throw their caps and gowns up. We've kind of changed some items around. So when the commencement is finally done, you'll see a bunch of caps and gowns shooting up in the sky in the game.

JEN ROGERS: All right, Bjorn Lustic, hope it goes well. Thank you so much for joining us, telling us about "Minecraft" graduation, and so much more.