Minecraft gets cellphone coverage thanks to Verizon — check out these blocky video calls

The Minecraft community continues to produce cool mods and inventions, and this one is probably the neatest one yet.

Verizon, virtual architects Blockworks, and ad agency Wieden+Kennedy have created a way to bring cellphone data coverage into the blocky world of Minecraft. If that sounds crazy and weird, that’s because it is. Essentially, Verizon coded cellphones and cell towers into the game, and when you combine the two, you have a working Minecraft smartphone. We’ve seeen similar features added to games like World of Warcraft where you can order pizza in the game, but that looks pretty silly next to Minecraft’s virtual phone. This device can send text messages, surf a low-pixel-count version of the Internet, and make video calls.