Sub-project objectives
To engage a wide audience of Minecraft players with soil health by making soil critical to player survival.
Monoculture Mod: Monoculture a Minecraft Modification
Location of activities and scope
Zurich, Educational Video Game
Switzerland – Festival animation – Videogame
Executive Summary
Monoculture is a Minecraft modification that turns survival into a story of soil. Players begin in a post-industrial wasteland where biodiversity has collapsed and soils are close to exhaustion. Survival depends on learning to observe, test, and read the land before making decisions about farming, building, or restoration. Every choice pushes ecosystems either toward depletion — where erosion and disease take monstrous form — or toward resilience, where mythical creatures return as signs of ecological recovery. The core tension is between industrial speed and restorative patience. Built on Minecraft’s enormous global community, Monoculture brings soil literacy to millions through play.
Motivation Statement
Growing up on a farm and later moving to the city, I was struck by how completely disconnected urban life had become from the land. Conversations with people working in nature kept circling back to the same subject: soil. The more I learned about it — formed over millions of years, hosting invisible ecologies, shaping every ecosystem — the more fascinated I became. My background straddling rural life and digital culture led me to one question: if Minecraft can teach millions how glass is made, why can’t it also teach what soil is, and why it matters?