Campus is Always Under Construction. But This Time, One Man is Doing It Block by Block

COURTESY IMAGE // NOAH TOMLINSON. Tomlinson views his completed Tucker Hall build in Minecraft.

The College of William and Mary’s historic campus seems to always be under construction. West Woods Dining Hall is still being built, the Randolph Complex is still being demolished, and the Sir Christopher Wren Building is still under renovation. It’s always nostalgic to look at photos of the campus of old before all of this. But this is not the only way our community is reimagining our humble abode. Last spring, the College invited the community to build the ancient campus brick by brick with Lego. And now, block by block, Noah Tomlinson ’27 — also known as the “W&M in Minecraft Yik Yak guy” — is building the campus in Minecraft. 

Few pieces of media have captured the hearts and minds of this generation more than this sandbox block game. Countless YouTube videos, parody songs, minigames, spinoffs, and even a feature film have been made to celebrate this phenomenon. Growing up, Tomlinson saw Minecraft as a constant in his life.

“As far back as I can remember, ever since I was young, I loved Minecraft,” Tomlinson said. “I mean, I watched Minecraft YouTubers, like DanTDM and all that. And I would play it all the time, I mean, my parents had to pry me off of our Xbox; every weekend I would just sit in front of it for hours.”

Having lived abroad in Egypt and the Philippines, Tomlinson kept playing Minecraft with his friends in the Philippines after relocating back to the United States throughout the pandemic.

“All my friends, we decided to just keep playing on Minecraft throughout that entire period. So it's definitely had a big impact on me,” Tomlinson added.

With the game being so ingrained in his identity, Tomlinson would often look at a building and wonder how he could remake it in Minecraft. He recounts enjoying the experience with his siblings.

“I used to play all the time with my siblings. We played on my Xbox, so we did the split screen thing where us two would play at the same time. But I played on servers as well with my friends. Yeah, I really, I mean, I would mix it up. I'd play online, you know, I do Bedwars on Hypixel and whatnot, or I'd play on servers with my friends,” Tomlinson added. “But I also do enjoy just building on my own, either doing it in survival or creative. I love all aspects of the game.”

One day, as he was scrolling on the anonymous campus social media app Yik Yak, he stumbled upon a post of somebody’s Wren building they had made in Minecraft Pocket Edition.

“I was like, ‘Oh, that's really cool, I would love to try that.’ And their Yik Yak post had 1,000 upvotes. I thought, ‘There's clearly people [who] find this cool,’” Tomlinson said. “I decided to go, you know, on just one of my worlds, create a new flat world.”

Tomlinson would later befriend the original creator of that post, Nya Folk ’28.

“I got to shout her out because she's a good friend of mine,” Tomlinson said. “Every time I talk to her, she gives me so much cr— about how I was the one who started the Instagram account and is getting all the attention. But she's the OG.”

Tomlinson said he never expected to gain this much traction from the account. 

“When I made the original post, I really wasn't sure if people were going to like it or not. I'm going to be completely honest with you, there were a couple of things that I missed in my original post,” Tomlinson added. “I think I left out the chimneys on the Wren, and I thought for sure people are going to roast me in the comments.”

However, the response was immediate — people kept appreciating his content. The first post on his Instagram account — @wm_in_mc_guy — reached approximately 70,000 views and over 3,000 likes, and the account grew to about a thousand followers during the first month.

With his academic workload and other commitments, Tomlinson has had to step away from building a little bit, though he hopes to start again soon. 

“Yeah, it's been a little while since I've posted and I've had quite a few people come up to me and be like, ‘Hey, when are you gonna make the next post?’” Tomlinson, who is planning to join the United States Army after graduation, said. “The problem is I just got really busy out of nowhere last semester. Because, like I said, I mean, last semester was the first semester that I was in the ROTC program, and it's definitely demanding on top of schoolwork.”

“So it just got to a point where I was like, ‘I don't have any time to do this,’” Tomlinson added. “I mean, I would love to keep going. I'm really hoping that this semester I can make more time, kind of manage my workload better, and it looks like I'll be able to, but I'd love to pick up again and potentially expand too if I have the time to do that.”

Initially, Tomlinson decided to keep his identity separate from the account. But after some people saw that the account only followed the university and himself on Instagram, they started to put two and two together.

“I would have people come up to me, and they'd be like, ‘Hey, are you the Minecraft guy?’” Tomlinson shared. “And it would take me back sometimes where I'd be like, ‘Oh, shoot. I didn't realize that people were looking into it like that and recognizing me out of nowhere.’ But, of course, I was always happy to meet people and talk to people about it.”

Tomlinson went on to describe the reception he has received for the project.

“It's been amazing. It's really cool to meet people who are passionate about this,” Tomlinson said. “Typically, it is usually build requests. People are like, ‘When are you going to build my dorm?’ Or, ‘When are you going to build, you know, the bars or, you know, some old building?’ — which I love. I love that people are passionate about it and they want to see more about it. It's definitely a lot for one person, you know, to build the whole campus, which is why I'm thinking about maybe expanding a little bit.”

Tomlinson’s process combines creativity with careful observation. While some Minecraft builds rely on imagination alone, his project requires a more methodical approach. Early in the building process, he relied largely on memory and photographs to replicate buildings, but as the scale of the undertaking grew, he began using tools like Google Earth to study terrain and building layouts. He also walks around campus taking photos and videos of structures to capture architectural details.

COURTESY IMAGE // NOAH TOMLINSON. A view of the Sunken Garden in Tomlinson’s Minecraft world.

“One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the buildings on campus are very similar,” Tomlinson said. “So I think it's James Blair, Chancellors, and Washington, they are all technically the same building. If you look up pictures of them from when they were originally built, you can't tell the difference between them. I know that because I have all the pictures saved on my computer, and I forgot to label them, and I was going through, and I could not tell you which one was which.”

As far as the rest of the process goes, Tomlinson uses a Mac mini to play Minecraft, record, and edit the footage. Initially, he utilized QuickTime to record but found it to be glitchy. He then switched to the Replay mod, which allows him to record the process and sets up different camera angles in timelapses. While the editing process takes a bit longer than he would like, just because of how slow his computer is, it usually turns out to his liking.

“I’d say typically a build from start to finish will take anywhere from three to four hours, and that includes recording and editing and getting that process done,” Tomlinson shared. “I just throw in like a movie and I just start building and I enter like a flow state. I can just knock out buildings really quickly. It's the editing part that I'm not the best at.”

The Wren Building is his favorite build, having served as the starting point for this journey. Earl Gregg Swem Library, however, is his least favorite. Not because he did not enjoy making it, just that it took a lot of time.

“It is such a big building compared to the other buildings that I had built previously,” Tomlinson said. “And so like getting the scale right, there were so many times where like, because it's kind of broken up into like three parts where you have like Special Collections and then like the middle part with all the student seating and then the big part with the glass windows. I don't know how to describe it, but it's three big distinct portions. I’d build one and then I'd start building the second one and I'd realize that the first part was way too small. I'd have to go back and make it bigger and then I'd go to the second part and then I'd realize, ‘Oh cr—, that's too big.’”

Going forward, he hopes to open the project up to other builders from the community.

“One of the ideas that I had was building the dorms on campus and then letting people just like on their own build their own dorm rooms and then send me like the picture of it or like the file for it and then actually putting it in the dorm buildings that I build,” Tomlinson said. “So that way, hopefully, if the world is ever put out as a download or as a server, people could go into those buildings and be like, ‘Hey, this is my dorm room that I built.’ So I think it'd be really cool to incorporate to get more people in.”

Beyond the campus itself, Tomlinson has also considered extending the project into nearby Colonial Williamsburg, whose historic streets sit adjacent to campus. He has already built the Governor's Palace. For now, however, his primary goal remains completing the digital campus — one building at a time.

The primary thing he hopes people will take away from his project — appreciating the small details around campus, and in life.

“One of the examples that comes to mind is when I built Wawa, I incorporated that desired path. You know, the path on the grass, and people commented about that,” Tomlinson said. “And there was part of me when I was building it that was like, ‘Do I incorporate it into the build or not?’ I wasn't really sure if it was necessary, but I was like, come on, it's the desired path, like everybody knows the desired path. Yeah, so those little details, you know, like something as simple as a desired path.”

Tomlinson is grateful that he has had the opportunity to enjoy walking around campus more often. 

“And with the weather, you know, clearing up and it being really nice out now, I would highly encourage people to just go for walks and just look at the buildings on campus,” Tomlinson said. “Look at the little, you know, details that you might brush off anyways. I think that's a really good way to go about just living your life, you know, because it's these small details that really, you know, differentiates any building from another. And I think there's joy in that.”