My MineCon 2011 Experiences

[all else failed]

Sad day everyone. My camera, in which I took lots of great pictures of the last day of MineCon including the "Into the Nether Party" with deadmau5 is gone, presumably forever. I lost it at MineCon and despite efforts in finding it and looking for some sort of lost in found (apparently the lost and found was lost itself) I came up empty handed. So my disclaimer in this review is none of the pics of videos are mine, only evidence that I found online proving MineCon really did happen.

Nevertheless let me share my experience at MineCon 2011:

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you read my review of MineCon 2011:

• Before Day two of MineCon, I had never played Minecraft before. So I was and still am a noob to say the least.
• I had never been to a Convention like this before, in fact, this was the first convention I think I have ever been to.
• Before MineCon, I did not know who Notch was, what Yogacast was, and I only had heard about a Creeper from limited stories I read online in place like at .

Day 1, Getting this party started:

Two old friends of mine arrived from San Diego Thursday night after a very busy and tiresome week of work for me. They had come for MineCon, inviting me to join them in what we later would described as the ultimate geek experience. I headed out with them in anticipation of what was to come. When we arrived at the Mandalay Bay Event Center, I was surprised...yet not surprised...at the crowd of Minecrafters. There were senior citizens, middle aged men and women, doods in there 20's like myself, teens, parents, children, and yes, even some babies. (Youngest person registered was 4 years old, oldest being 76, babies were free I'm guessing) The diversity of this group turned out to show the true community Minecraft has created in its short existence. More than 16 million Minecrafters all around the world, and perhaps the most tight gaming community of its kind. I felt very comfortable right away which just made me all the more eager to experience this convention.

Entering MineCon:

After registering and picking up my Creeper bag full of Minecraft goodies including a sweet Minecraft mouse pad, we entered the Exhibition Hall as we wait for the opening ceremony. The first thing you notice walking in the Hall was a in the middle of the room. The atmosphere around Mandalay Bay those two days started off mellow only to increase in activity and excitement as the weekend went on. There were many Minecraft life-size statues all around the area, including Creepers, a Cave with torches, cows, chickens, pigs, wolves, and one huge Ender dragon on display. Even a strange pinkish "Mushroom Cow" was found by the Xbox 360 area.

You're weirding me out dude:

I was really looking forward to seeing some Minecraft costumes at MineCon and boy was I not disappointed! Right away I notices plenty of "Steves" and more Creepers than you could ever hope to see in one place. Many people got very creative with there costumes, including a Lava Bucket, a Wolf, a Squid, and a Enderman or two. There was even a robotic Creeper who literally creep around although it wasent creeping anyone out since it would breakdown about every three feet, but at least it looked cool.

Opening Ceremony: Minecraft chick, Notch, and confetti:

Around mid-day on Day one (Friday) we took out seat for the Opening Ceremony to MineCon. I was impressed with amount of people who came and you could really get the magnitude of it in this large Hall. According to the MineCon web site and what was shared on stage was that more than 20 different nations were represented at MineCon and a total of 5,000 attended which was a sold out crowd.

The Ceremony was fun, with standing ovations for Notch and the development team. The Mojang team are full of a bunch of cool people as far as what I saw. The type of guys (and girl) who anyone would want to be friends with. There was two videos of interest, one which was a very educational vid of Minecraft's history, especially for a guy like me who knew little about the game and community behind it. The other video was the Official Minecraft for the 360 trailer. I was personally really excited to learn more about Minecraft coming to the 360 since I am much more of a counsel gamer and frankly Minecraft on the 360 would have a longer lifespan for me than Minecraft on my PC.

The Opening Ceremony ended with the official release of Minecraft 1.0:

Cheesy, yes. Fun, yes. But it was a big deal after all and later on they announced staggering numbers of downloads and activity on the Minecraft web page following the release.

The Costume Party!

Day One ended with a "wild" costume party in the Exhibition Hall. I say wild sarcastically. Pretty much we walked around checking out the booths some more, looking at the people, and drinking Gin and Tonic. Thats really where the party was, at the portable bar. But of course this was a all ages party, so things stayed family friendly.

The Costume Contest was fun. I really wanted TNT Boy to win since his costume lighted up systematically, in other words it took some real science to make. But in the end, Wolf Girl, or as we called her, "The Slutty Wolf", won. Of course the contest was judged by the crowds cheers. And when you put a bunch of nerds together in one giant room, half of them under the age of 20, there are going to drool (no pun intended) over the slutty wolf girl. The winner of the contest won a free ticket ($500 value apparently) to a "Lunch with Notch" on Day Two. Lucky Notch.

Day Two: Panels, Redstone, and Deadmau5

Day Two began with me attending one of many Panels offered throughout the weekend. The first one I attended was "Minecraft as a tool for Education". This one struck me as interesting especially with me being a father and thinking about how I can introduce my young kids to video games in the future. The Panel consisted of one of the Minecraft developers, along with "famous" Minecraft community members from around the world, all of whom are teachers and have utilized Minecraft into their curriculum. It was interesting, but boring to say the least. I did gain a better understanding of how the game can be used as a tool for education, along with why it should. Generally speaking, I totally agree with the concepts shared. The game offers such room for the mind to imagine and create, and young students can gain so much understanding from it. Now I only wish a movement of smart bold educators would step up and radically change the shrinking influence the public school system has on its children in America. Ok, let me get off my soap box now.

The second panel I went to was about Redstone. I have never heard of redstone before MineCon, and it struck me as very interesting what some of these kids around the world are doing with it. And so I attended with expectations of seeing some impressive work. Instead I sat through 1 hour of interesting yet extremely boring talk on the concepts of redstone. It was pretty much a Q and A for 1 hour with no videos to keep me interested. I think I learned more from the kid in front of me who was playing Minecraft and using redstone to make a bunch of pistons move. Panel planning must be improved if there is ever another MineCon.

Side Note: Through out the event, MineConers were encouraged to complete a contest card by visiting all the main sponsors of the event including Xbox, Cole2's World, Razor, IGN, Curse and more. After standing in extremely long lines and completing what ever activity the booth wanted us to do, we would get a diamond sticker to put on our card. Once completed and turned in, we were eligible for many prizes including a custom Minecraft 360, a super gaming PC, and more. The exciting part about this is my friend actually won! He was one of the few who won out of 5,000 people there. He won a hard drive, value of about $250US.

Into the Nether Party:

Never in my life could I imagine what was going to take place that evening of Day Two. It was "this thing that happened" if you know what I mean. The Into the Nether party was planned for Saturday night from 10-? at a trendy nightclub at The Wynn Las Vegas for those 21 and older. For some reason I expected it to be a MineConers only party, but I could not have been more wrong.

As we walked up to an extremely long line outside the club, we MineConers waited to be let in. Right away we all felt out of place, but not in a bad way but more of a this is really funny way. All the stereotypical Las Vegas clubbers starred at us as they walked by almost to say "this play has really gone down". Here we are, awkward, poorly dressed, fat, hairy, thick glasses on, too tall, too short, talking about WoW and Minecraft 24/7. All I was thinking was how amazing it was that the stars aligned in such a way that these two incredibly different lifestyles are about to colide.

Sure enough, as we made our way to the front of the line, we realized we were not alone in this club, but in fact the general public is coming in as well to dance, drink, drink some more, and listen to Deadmau5.

My friends and I only stayed a few strange hours. I would need to take in a LOT of alcohol in order to ever be caught dancing in public. And so my time spent at the Wynn that night was used to admire the incredible event that was unfolding right in front of my face. Just imagine the biggest nerd you know (I say that respectfully), you know the guy who has extremely bad hair, showers twice a month, thick glasses, cant talk to females outside of his mother and sister. Yeah, that guy. Now put that guy in this place, a super famous and trendy Las Vegas outdoor/indoor nightclub. World Famous Deadmau5 is performing, Notch it there, celebrities are there. Incredibly beautiful yet ultra fake women are dancing all around in very small dresses. The alcohol is flowing, the music is loud. Now imagine that nerd, dancing all around these women with a Creeper head on, Deadmau5 is playing Minecraft music, with Minecraft paraphernalia all around. That was the Into the Nether Party. I am still stunned.

What I learned at MineCon 2011:

• The Minecraft community worldwide is epic, and one I want to be apart of.
• After playing Minecraft at MineCon 2011 for the first time ever, I realized the game it is actually pretty fun.
• Both Scrolls and Cobalt, games in development by Mojang, look sweet. MinCon attendees are going to receive Cobalt for free when it is released sometime before Christmas. Scrolls will be release in the first part of 2012.
• Minecraft for the 360 will not please the die hard fans, but will expand the game to a broader audiance. This is a good thing.
• Slutty Wolf Girl needs to eat more meat.
• Deadmau5 knows a thing or two about music.
• I loved being around such cool people for two days. I seriously cannot remember when I was around so many people and it felt like each and everyone of them would be my friend if we lived near eachother.

A few more pics to leave you with:

[Jawwi]

Man that looks awesome!!

[The Unirocerous]

I really wish I could have gone .

[Smore ninja]

Took me forever but I finally put in the time to read your fantastic post. Glad to see you enjoyed yourself! I really wish I had some questions but I am drawing a blank.

[all else failed]

Took me forever but I finally put in the time to read your fantastic post. Glad to see you enjoyed yourself! I really wish I had some questions but I am drawing a blank.

If it took you that long to read imagine how long it took me to write it.

Also, you not having any questions in response means either I did a quality job reporting on the events, or I was two days late on writing this and you already read up on MineCon events somewhere else.

[Start a Riot]

I don't know much about Minecraft, but it seems like you had a great time and learned a lot about it! Great write up by the way

(p.s. sorry about your camera )

[all else failed]

(p.s. sorry about your camera )

Thanks. I was surprised that no one else mentioned that terrible news. I am really hoping for a new one. Sad part was that camera was only 6 months old and is was not cheap. And there was lots of other photos on it from before MineCon that are also now lost forever. Im still not over it.