''Chain World'' is a

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

Jason Rohrer Jason Rohrer (born November 14, 1977) is an American computer programmer, writer, musician, and game designer. He publishes most of his software into the public domain (Public domain software) and charges for commercial platform distributed ve ...

, and built on the game ''

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being ...

''. ''Chain World'' won the 2011 Game Design Challenge. The goal of the challenge was to create a game that could become a

religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

. The official name of the challenge was ''GDC: The Game Design Challenge: Bigger Than Jesus''. Only one known copy of the game exists on a customized

USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since firs ...

. The game was designed to be played by only one player at a time who would alter the game world. Future players were to be chosen by the current USB drive holder. After his GDC presentation, Rohrer passed the game on, apparently at random, to audience member Jia Ji. Jia Ji created controversy by selling the game on

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

for charity, and imposing his own set of rules about who could play ''Chain World'' after the auction winner. The current location of the flash drive is unknown, though in June 2012, ''Positional Super Ko'', believed to be the winner of Jia Ji's auction, tweeted that they still have the drive. In February 2016, ''Positional Super Ko'' tweeted again that they no longer have the drive. The game was originally created using

Beta 1.8 version, using ''Chain World'' as the seed. The

USB stick A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since first ...

itself was given a custom treatment by Rohrer to create the appearance of an ancient artifact.

References

External links

Video of Jason Rohrer's PresentationeBay Chain World Auction"official" Chain World website by Jia Ji
(defunct)
Mirror of original site
(defunct)
A new kind of minecraft chain world on reddit
Indie video games {{Computer-game-stub