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Arius is a collaborative story with 100+ people participating.
The project lasted over 5 years.
Arius was founded in November 2019.
I joined then and two months later i became Lead Writer and Head of Community, and eventually took over as owner in April 2020.
At that time, Arius was a Minecraft server but when I took over, I saw an opportunity to do something unique. Players loved creating their own stories and shaping the narrative, so I built on that. I allowed each player to create their own world for their character, with every world influencing how this new Arius would unfold. It was a hit, players loved the freedom and creative control, and from that, the new Arius was born.
Arius became a mix of creative writing, acting, and roleplay. Everyone contributed their own stories, characters, and ideas to the overarching narrative. Of course, there were still rules and guidelines, not everyone could join, and not every idea could be implemented, but it was no longer just a Minecraft server. Arius had grown into a living world beyond the game.
Game Balancing
Game Balancing
A large part of what made Arius succesful is the fact it was not minecraft anymore, it was a new game using minecraft as an engine. I programmed my own datapacks, plugins, custom items, events, mobs, and more...
What comes with that is the need to understand balancing, and I had to understand it fast. It was almost a live service because I was making updated every month with new features or updates to older features. Rebalancing according to metas and player requests.
Since players could write their own stories I had to be able to create their experiences and fantasies in a fast format, luckily JSON is an easy language.
Community Management
Community Management
Making things is good and all, but when you have over a hundred people playing the game and influencing it, you need to be able to properly convey everything you do, and everything other players do.
I achieved this by using 3 main forms of communication: Discord, Youtube, Wiki.
Players would be able to inform themselves in multiple platforms, communicate with each other through discord or in game and most importantly, communicate with me (and other staff) to keep us updated on major events.
Writing
Writing
The biggest part of Arius was the writing, combining hundreds of stories and ideas into a cohesive universe is a challenge I wish on nobody.
I had multiple documents with characters, teams, worlds, rules, events and timelines which I had the final say over. Luckily I always had a small team with me who had access to these documents, who I could ask for help.
I also had to write new events to keep players entertained, so I couldn't focus all my time on the past, but instead I was more focused on future events. Which is where I learned the art of "the past is future". By looking at different player's stories I could draw elements from multiple backstories, combine them to create a new storyline, with the best part being the players felt included because their characters could be immersed in a new world.
The Future
The Future
I'm currently working to revive Arius, I'm collecting all data the younger me left behind to reconstruct the timeline. I'm learning to make full custom modpacks in minecraft. I'm making a website/library and a new community.
I have the hope that Arius can once again inspire people like it did years ago!
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