YUMC of YU joined by various majors such as philosophy, computer engineering, visual design, etc. to quickly build a ‘metaverse campus’
‘Expertise/creativity’ beyond a college club level... Pursued ‘metaverse project’ after receiving proposal from LG Electronics
Hold various interactive meetings and events such as admissions ceremony and military send-off ceremonies... Space to form ‘social relations’ for the MZ generation
[August 11, 2021]
<Members of the YU Metaverse Club, ‘YUMC (Yeungnam Univ. Minecraft Server)’>
(From left to right: Park Gwan-gyu, Jang Seon-ah, Seo Seung-wan, Chae Si-eun, Lee Bo-gyeong, Kim Hyun-do)
What can students majoring in completely different areas such as philosophy, computer engineering, chemistry, materials engineering, English language and literature, family housing studies, and visual design gather to do?
The ‘YU Metaverse Campus’ created by various majors has been the talk of the town lately. The word metaverse is a combination of the word meta that means abstract and universe that represents the real world. It has recently become a global issue and has exhibited possibility of use in various sectors such as the industry.
At the spotlight is the YUMC (Yeungnam Univ. Minecraft Server) club. They used ‘Minecraft (metaverse game of Microsoft)’, which is the representative platform for configuring metaverse, to build the YU campus.
YUMC President Seo Seung-wan (24, master’s degree program in philosophy at the YU graduate school) said, “I felt bad over the loss of the value of communication and interaction within school due to the prolonging of COVID-19. I organized this club thinking that it would be nice to form a student community for engaging in interactive activities in the virtual space of Minecraft.”
YUMC, which was founded in February, already has 300 members. The club members voluntarily cooperated and set up the YU campus in the real world exactly the same in metaverse. Starting with the Central Library that represents YU, major buildings such as the Student Hall, Outdoor Auditorium, Chunma Art Center, and International Exchange Center were constructed identically as that in reality. But they did not stop at just imitating the exterior of buildings on campus. The library reading room also has information known only among YU students such as the best restaurants on campus, tips for registering for classes, test information, etc., and actual individual students are freely visiting campus to enjoy campus life. It held admissions ceremonies and is also holding various meetings and events like military send-off ceremonies for students.
<Metaverse campus constructed by YUMC (view of YU Central Library)>
Lee Bo-gyeong, a senior majoring in English Language and Literature, said, “We held the new ‘21 freshmen admissions ceremony via metaverse in March of this year. We wanted to hold an admissions ceremony prepared by seniors of freshmen who did not get to have a proper admissions ceremony due to COVID-19. We worked day and night for about two weeks for the admissions ceremony to construct the interior of the Chunma Art Center and invited the new freshmen. Though not many new students were able to participate, it was a meaningful event to our YUMC clubs by holding the admissions ceremony, which is the first step to life in college, via metaverse.”
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to go on, students from ‘20 and ‘21, who had few opportunities to visit the real-world campus, have now become more familiar with the metaverse campus than the real campus. Park Gwang-gyu (sophomore, Family and Housing Studies) who enrolled to YU last year, said, “As soon as I was admitted, classes were offered online due to COVID-19, so I visited the YU campus constructed on Minecraft before visiting the actual campus. I visited various parts of campus in the metaverse, and I was surprised when I visited the actual campus because it was exactly the same as that in the metaverse.”
YUMC should not be viewed as a club that simply follows trends. The metaverse industry says that it has gone beyond the level of college clubs that simply share hobbies. It recently received a proposal for a project from a conglomerate and successfully completed it. YUMC received an offer from LG Electronics to construct a metaverse for the in-company training program completion ceremony and to carry out the event. After two months, it successfully completed the project and received a plaque of appreciation from the company. The ‘metaverse admissions ceremony’ that was held by YUMC drew a lot of attention from metaverse communities and professional researchers, and YUMC was thus recommended to LG Electronics by a Korean metaverse expert.
YUMC President Seo Seung-wan said, “It is not just a game for constructing a virtual space on an online environment. The MZ generation holds meetings and events here, and is creating social relations just like in offline worlds.” He added, “YUMC has just started but there are many members with different expertise. As it is a club where students with different majors voluntarily get together, there are many unique and creative ideas. Various events such as humanities lectures and campus tours can be held through the YU Metaverse Campus. I hope that we can come up with various programs to form social relations in the post-corona era by integrating the metaverse.
