For anyone who isn’t friends with someone who owns a computer, Minecraft is a “game about placing blocks and going on adventures. Explore randomly generated worlds and build amazing things from the simplest of homes to the grandest of castles,” according to its site. The game reached 100 million users in 2014, according to one of the creators of the game, Markus “Notch” Persson.

Devoted takes Minecraft’s idea a step further by setting up a server – or world – where the players can not just build buildings, but build a government, administrator Jon Holmquist said.

“The whole point of it is a political experiment about what happens when the players are told to figure out how to make civilization from nothing,” Holmquist said. “It’s sort of an open platform for people to discuss ideas.”

Holmquist, a 23-year-old consultant for Bitcoin companies, got involved in this style of Minecraft in 2012 when he joined the server Civcraft. Civcraft is similar to Devoted’s style of creating your own government.

“I was intrigued by it and started playing and I thought it was pretty fun … (and then) the giant war sort of erupted on Civcraft, which sort of dragged me in and made me really intrigued,” Holmquist said.

He said overnight, the “server went from a sort of peaceful, happy place” to a place where about 200 players were held against their will: “No one was able to walk around in any of the major cities without fear or a means to defend themselves.”

Holmquist decided to team up with another player from the original Civcraft server and start their own server, with an emphasis on minimal administrative involvement.

“I decided to try to make my own server with what I thought would make sort of the ultimate sandbox for an actual political experiment,” Holmquist said.

Holmquist said he thinks one reason this style of game is so popular – with more than 400 Reddit subscribers on the Devoted page and more than 8,000 on the Civcraft page – is that it gives people a chance to prove why their political ideals are valid, rather than just talking about it.

“Instead of debating the ideals and going around in philosophical circles for hours, we’re actually giving people the chance to band together with a bunch of other friends who have the same ideals and actually try to put them into place,” Holmquist said. “This is more just a tool or a sandbox where people can actually test it out themselves and see how it feels and see how it functions.”

For the Devoted server, Holmquist said the type of governments range from communist and tribal to monarchs and even a republic.

“Historically, the server’s political spectrum has been more communist, anarchist and then libertarians to an extent,” Holmquist said. “You get to experience a new political system that you’ve probably never experienced before.”

Trying out political systems like this can be persuasive. Holmquist said that after living in a semi-anarchist Civcraft town for about a year, he became open to the style of life.

“We had our troubles, but as a whole, it actually worked out pretty well,” Holmquist said. “Me getting involved with Civcraft has actually made me more of an anarchist to the extent that I think anarchy is actually a decent system. As technology progresses, we’re getting more and more self reliant as a species, so I don’t think we need as much help from the government or  even as much protection or regulation from the government.”

For more information on the rules and plugins that make Devoted what it is, you can check out their subreddit.

“Our focus now is growing the community out, getting more people participating,” Holmquist said. “The more players that start playing, the more members of the community are sort of introduced to each other, and it’s kind of an exponential growth thing. It just gets much more interesting the more people that are participating.

A group of millennials gather outside of Northwestern University’s campus in Evanston, Illinois. (Photo by Amber Reece/News21)

CHICAGO – Despite consistently low voter turnout, who says millennials don’t care about politics? Many in this generation – roughly ages 18 to 34 – say they simply prefer to spend their time on specific issues, not specific candidates.

As News21 traveled across the country, we met with millennials who are taking a new approach to political activism on the issues they care the most about – from the climate, to elections, to racial injustice.

Maurice Forbes: Campus Crusader

Maurice Forbes, a 26, works at NextGen Climate as the Nevada youth director. His job: visit college campuses and communities to organize and empower millennials to find climate solutions.

“You can see across the country, millennials are increasingly driven and motivated behind a sense of purpose, and climate change and climate solutions is definitely one of those issues that we feel is really most important to us,” Forbes said. “You find a lot a students who are really excited and engaged with the possibility of having more political power and having an outlet to express their feelings and their views and ways that they think would really make a positive impact on our country.”

While Forbes said millennials are ready to bring about social change, they want to see how the results will affect their communities, which is why Forbes works with his team to localize issues.

“Our strategy is really to go to them and start engaging in these conversations relating to the issues and fights that they’re having,” Forbes said. “I hear a lot from theses campuses across Nevada that ‘I care about these specific issues that are going to be affecting me and less so about a particular candidate that is expressing their views on that.’”

Forbes said the real power of millennials comes from their ability to connect with each other across the nation and organize their issues.

“A lot of millennials are coming into their power, and we’re finally at a place that we’re able to speak out through really cutting edge ways,” Forbes said. “We’re able to speak out through mass platforms, through social media platforms, to get our voices heard, and those voices are moving and sharing and galvanizing our support. And I think that now is a key time. Never again will you be able to be elected to an office without making a plan to support the issues that millennials care about.”

Take 5 minutes to register to vote now, or spend four years watching Donald Trump trumpify the country! Your choice! https://t.co/1ISQtkdws2

— Jadon-Maurice Forbes (@MoeForbes) July 8, 2016

Sierra Hudson: Social Media Savvy

San Diego resident and political activist Sierra Hudson uses the power of social media as a tool when trying to ensure government accountability.

The 21-year-old recently organized a group of activists to help make sure people’s votes counted in the June 7 California primary election. Hudson said her team noticed poll workers were giving provisional ballots to many Latinos, college students and residents who live in poorer areas.

Hudson said that when she organized a protest and confronted the board of elections about it, they invited her and her team of nearly 60 volunteers to watch officials count the ballots.

“I felt a little bit comfortable there, but I was still like ‘we need to make sure that they do count it,’” Hudson said.

Hudson said the main way she organized this protest and got volunteers was through social media. She said she started #MichaelVuWeAreWatchingYou. Michael Vu is the the registrar of San Diego County.

San Diego #Berners are not giving up until the last vote is counted! @rosariodawson #MichaelVuWeAreWatchingYou pic.twitter.com/LskkMv6Veh

— Kekilei (@808_katsu) June 27, 2016

“The biggest thing is to find someone else who has interest and other people in your community, friends and family and bring them together and talk,” Hudson said. “We’re going to have some awesome things happening. I’ll tell you, we’re an awesome generation.”

Cameron Flowers: Creative Communicator

Cameron Flowers, a 22-year-old Chicago native, is using technology and the power of communication to spread his message about America’s broken political system and racial oppression.

Flowers is a co-founder of the company IncluDe Innovation, which is a team of “developers, designers, strategists, and most importantly activists,” according to its website. They are a design company that focuses on web and mobile design for small and minority owned businesses.

“I really wonder, what if the phone in your hand wasn’t a distraction, but a way to plug you in even more into a movement,” Flowers said.

Flowers said using creative ways of communication is one of the key ways he’s trying to spread his message about the flaws in the American political system because of its basis in “fundamental racism.”

“F— the idea that one president or a system of presidents will help me in this structure,” Flowers said. “I don’t believe that the structure is set up in a way that benefits black or brown people – or all people – because everyone is oppressed.”

He’s been collaborating with the social group Black Youth Project, which Flowers describes as “representing youth 18 to 35 of all orientations, fundamentally coming together under the premises of a queer, feminist lens, ideology and thinking.”

“By adapting to these frameworks, we can really create in this space an open and loving space full of solidarity amongst black individuals that is necessary in the fight against institutions of policing and structural racism altogether,” Flowers said. “I love it, and I look forward to now being home from school and organizing and get more active with the organization.”

Cameron Flowers Drops a Beat from News21 on Vimeo. Produced by Amber Reece.

Amber Reece is a Dallas Morning News fellow. Follow Amber on Twitter at @_amberreece. Follow Elizabeth Campbell @ECampbell360.

We asked the millennials gathered there one question: What issue are you most passionate about? And then we asked them draw it.

Here are a few of the responses we got.

See someone you agree with or think an issue is missing? Send us a picture of you and your doodle using the template below or on a sheet of your own paper. Include your name, age and hometown. You can email them to elizabeth.campbell@news21.com or tweet them at us @news21. Make sure to use the hashtag #MyIssueIs

Download the PDF:

– Reporter Michael Olinger contributed to this report.