CamCraft is a Minecraft server that I started sometime from 2013-2015 as a simple server for my friends to build in. The exact launch date is unknown and much of the early history is undocumented. It has a very long and complicated story, including multiple structure/model changes and relaunches.

CamCraft Original v1

Back when I was in 5th grade, I started a Minecraft server with the goal to make it a fun place for all my friends to build and socialize. When the server started up, it was just me. The first CamCraft player was jkmonster21. I was friends with the player in real life. I hosted the server off of my computer, so I had to start the server up whenever my friend wanted to play.

After a few months of that style of play, another one of My friends, Ender451, joined. The player count of 2 (not including me) was relatively unimpressive but they still had fun fooling around and building various structures. Eventually some more of my friends joined, including a player named NoahH99.

NoahH99 somehow convinced me to install Spigot, along with many plugins, which made CamCraft stray from the vanilla-only model at the time. This led to various and undocumented complications and disagreements, and everyone eventually stopped playing. The server shut down.

CamCraft Original v2

I eventually got a whim of inspiration to get it going again and started the server back up. This time, I decided to go back to the all-vanilla server model. My friends began playing again, however this time arguments regarding the server rules and structure broke out between the players, which led people to stop playing yet again. This rendition of the server did not include jkmonster21, as he kept calling me the "CamCraft killer" after the first shutdown. jkmonster21 didn't seem to show any interest in playing on the server ever again, and neither did he show interest in playing Minecraft at all. The server shut down again.

CamCraft Revised v1

After some time passed, I asked the players why they stopped playing. The reason from NoahH99 was reportedly that the world wasn't going to be reset and that he was "tired of the old world". Other players simply said they didn't play because the server wasn't running. I started up the server with a new world along with Spigot and various plugins. CamCraft got some activity, but not much. Eventually the few players that were on that server either stopped playing or were only AFKing to get claim blocks (the spigot plugins included land claiming). I, again, shut down the server. I admit that I did not know how to run servers back then 😂.

CamCraft Original v3

Somehow, again, after a month or two, I got yet another whim of inspiration to build and started it back up. This time I was about 13 years old and was arguably a little wiser and smarter than the 10-year-old me that started the first one. The server was using the original world from the first launch, and Spigot was included (but only for server optimization). The newly added feature of "data packs" was made use of in this version, as CamCraft had a few installed. Players started playing, and the server slowly kept gaining players.

CamCraft v3 was the peak of CamCraft and still is to this day. I think this is partly due to the nature of how it was run, but also to do with the demographics of my friends at the time (thing the avg. age of a Minecraft player).

Government of CamCraft (GOC)

One thing that I believe really helped this version succeed was the GOC (Government of CamCraft). The GOC was something I started to allow players to run the server (mostly), not me. I still had the power to do small things without asking, such as change the MOTD (the message that displays under the server in the Minecraft servers list) or the max number of players, but most changes had to be accepted by the players in order for them to have taken effect.

For example, if a GOC official (or a player) wanted to pass a law to make it illegal to put dirt in a chest, the vote would have had to first pass through the other player-elected GOC members. Then, if it passed, it would have had to be passed by the players (the players must have liked the changes that occurred on the server). All of this was done by 50% or more voting.

The GOC was likely created sometime in December of 2018, as that is when the first official vote was sent out to players.

All was well until June of 2019. Something happened that caused the CamCraft world to begin to corrupt itself. Players were losing bases, even entire farms randomly started disappearing. Multiple things were tried to fix this problem, and the world was reverted to earlier states multiple times, but in the end a GOC vote was drafted to reset the world as nothing seemed to be working.

Fresh Start (v3b)

When the vote passed, a new world was generated in Minecraft 1.14, and the spawn consisted of a cozy spruce village.

CamCraft was then set on an interesting timeline of events, from players trying to create a communist GOC party to everyone being terribly annoyed with constant raids at the spawn village. Many players actually moved far away from spawn because of all the raids. One of the last events that transpired was the introduction of the "Towny Advanced" Spigot Plugin. This was most likely the cause of a mass drop in players, as more and more became confused with the workings of the plugin and/or didn't like how it strayed far from vanilla. I also built a spawn in creative mode where the spawn village was and made the remaining residents move out somewhere else. These were some of the last changes ever made to this version of the server, and only two more changes were made before the server had it's model remade once again.

Looking back on it, the changes I made trying to resurrect the server only did it mass harm. I guess you have to learn management somehow.

TPerry451 and I worked on reverting to the way things were when the server was popular. This included removing the majority of the installed Spigot plugins, and starting with a backup of the CamCraft Original v3 world from before it became corrupted. Many channels on the CamCraft Discord server were archived, including over 20 "User-Created Channels" that were mostly just troll/spam chats.

Back to v3 (v3c)

Things continued on this new version of CamCraft Original v3, and it was, relatively speaking, a success. Many players were playing once again and new builds were being constructed regularly, including a giant apartment building, a spawn town with over a dozen buildings, a farm, and an entire recreation of my real house. This continued for a longer span of time compared to the other versions of the server.

Unfortunately, this version of the server was shut down due to lack of player activity on March 18th, 2020.

CamCraft Revised v2

On September 7th, 2020, player TPerry451 asked me to reopen the server after asking multiple times before. I said if he could get 5 players that want to play, I would open the server. He did and I did indeed open the server.

As of September 8th, 2020, CamCraft was online, using a new world and an all-vanilla model, with some new players including a few returning players, such as Elven_Blade.

On September 10th, 2020, TPerry451 reported to me that the world was corrupted. I then shut down the server, installed Spigot for a more stable server environment and reverted the world to a non corrupted backup.

The world was later found to still be corrupted, so a new one was made. The new world worked just fine after that.

As I anticipated, the server was relatively inactive, with the Discord server being used mostly for communications while the members played a game called "Among Us". Most players did not even realize that the server isn't up 24/7. However, TPerry451 began to construct a city in the new world which led to the server becoming active again with himself and friends working on the city.

Switch to Creative Mode

In an effort to save time gathering loads of resources many times over to build TPerry451's City, the server was switched from survival mode to creative mode and CamCraft was now more of a building server than a survival server. Other players hadn't done anything on the server yet and nobody seemed to mind so there was not much need for any kind of vote.

World Backup Loss

Unfortunately, soon after TPerry451 abandoned his city, I had a Microsoft Windows update corrupt one of my hard drives, which led to the permanent loss of all CamCraft Revised v2 worlds.

Switch to Original World

To allow TPerry451 the ability to build his city in a different world and add to a world that already has lots of builds that would make it that much more "lively", I switched out the world for the original CamCraft v3 world. However, TPerry451 has not yet decided whether he wanted to use a "superflat" world, one of his own worlds, or the CamCraft v3 world for his project.

Either way, I was now able to build in my world no matter where I was (since it was on my server again) and CamCraft was back to the CamCraft Original v3 world, just with some additions I had made while it was just my single-player world in creative mode.

What I Learned

I think the biggest thing I learned was not actually anything to do with Minecraft at all. It was more a broad lesson in management and leadership. It's that both pure democracy and pure dictatorship don't work.

When you give 100% control of the server to the players, essentially making a really large fully insider-based board of directors, what ends up happening is that they remove all rational barriers to mischief and incorporate free-lunch type policies, often without realizing it. This lead to the server not becoming fun because there was no drive to work or compete in the economy, as well as the fact that there was increased crime and annoyances across the board.

On the flip side, when 100% of the control of the server was in my hands, I had absolutely nothing stopping me from unknowingly implementing changes that would detriment the server. There was no system of checks and balances. This lead to the server not becoming fun because nobody had any say in how it was run and everybody felt controlled by the bad changes to the server that had no way of being stopped. This system only works when everyone is in favor of the leader and his choices, which is almost never because everybody has their own opinions as to how things should be run.

It is no coincidence that the height of the server's popularity was during the time when we had a republic. When the GOC was the governmental system, players voted for a small group of officials (leaders) to make the decisions of the server. I, as the owner, had veto power but that was "checked and balanced" by the officials rejecting my veto with a landslide vote. The officials were encouraged to make decisions to keep the server going well so that people wouldn't vote them out of office, which meant often rejecting "free-lunch" policies as they knew they would not end well, that would have otherwise been voted in by the players.

And being a leader is often a thankless job.

• When you do a good job, it seems as if all is going well and few people notice you doing anything. There will also be some people complaining about restrictions you have to implement without realizing that without them, everything would fall apart (these are those "free-lunch" type policies I was talking about).

• When you do a bad job, everyone notices and blames you for not being a good leader.

In order to run a successful endeavor, you need a mix of single leadership and democracy, with checks and balances to make the "game" fun. Otherwise, everyone will leave. Even with a good system, no matter what, you can only please some of the people...some of the time.

Current State of the Server

CamCraft is currently still online, as my personal building server. It uses the original world that was created back in 2015, and still has some of the oldest CamCraft builds from the original players! It is open to the public and anyone may view the world. Some of my close friends are builders on the server and help out with projects occasionally. I'll soon make a much better website to showcase the server and the builds that reside within it.

The server can be joined at camcraft.cameronmcgehee.com in Minecraft Java Edition.