Happy 6th birthday Minecraft!

Happy 6th birthday Minecraft! (Notch started development May 10th 2009)
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Version_history/Pre-classic
It's an interesting thought that there are kids playing Minecraft right now who have never lived in a world without it. 

Happy Birthday Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition!

Fire up your Xbox, load up Minecraft, then throw a freshly-baked cake at your television! It’s the most appropriate way to celebrate Minecraft: 360 Edition’s birth!1It’s three years old!

To celebrate this monumental occasion Mojang is giving the 20 million players on Xbox 360 and Xbox One a heap of colourful skins. From today until the 17th of May three packs will be available to download for free. There’s a brand-new bundle featuring veteran Mojangstas and a few cheeky extras, our 2nd Birthday Skin Pack from last year, and our 1st Skin Pack from Minecraft’s first birthday.

Veteran 360 players might already have the older packs, but this is the first time any of them have been available on Xbox One. Be sure to snap them up, early(ish) adopters.

Big thanks to 4J Studios for doing such a great job on the console versions and massive thanks to you for playing our game, no matter your platform of choice.

And The Crowd Goes WILD!

YouTuber Mumbo Jumbo messing about with armor stands in water streams and discovered something strange. When an armor stand is on top of a slime block, next to a block, being pushed by a water stream and has recently been airborne, it will do this little dance where it never stops bouncing. Naturally he decided to make a full crowd of them and it worked out really nicely! Here is the video showcasing the contraption.

MINECON Panel Application

It’s time to submit your MINECON panel application! A good panel will give attendees tons of information or inspiration. The BEST panels give a bunch of both!

You’ll need to shoot a video of yourself pitching your panel, talking about why the panel would be awesome at MINECON and why you’d be the best one to be on it. Upload it to Youtube as an unlisted video if you don’t want others to see it, and submit the link with the rest of the information about the panel, including the other people you want to be a part of it.

Submit your panel application here. All applications must be submitted by May 15, 2015.

All selected panelists will get free admittance to MINECON.

Good luck with those submissions!

Where Does Minecraft End?

A quest to the edge of an endless world can feel like an eternal glitch.

The YouTuber Kurt J. Mac is currently on an impossible mission. He is trying to reach the end of Minecraft.

To clarify, he is not trying to get to “the End,” the final level where you do battle with a big dragon and win the game. That’s been done by many.

Rather, he has vowed to walk to the furthest reaches of Minecraft’s cubic wild to a strange and transcendental place once dubbed “the Far Lands,” now mostly known as “the world boundary” or “the edge of the world.”

In some ways, it is not dissimilar from the center of a black hole, or the once lawless frontier town of Deadwood, South Dakota. It is a place where the rules that govern the rest of the world break down.

Minecraft, perhaps the most important and successful game of this century, is endless. Unlike the real world, where you will eventually loop back around to the same spot if you travel long enough and stay the course, Minecraft is programmed to go on forever and ever.

At least, that was the initial plan.

However, the system it is built upon has trouble keeping up with the demands of eternity. If you wander far enough from your starting point, the source code will eventually malfunction, and the game ceases to run correctly.

It becomes “buggier and buggier the further you are out,” the game’s designer Markus Persson, a.k.a. Notch, wrote in a Tumblr post.

These mysteries have attracted at least one rubberneck on a digital pilgrimage.

One reason that walking to Minecraft’s outer rim is so interesting is simple. The distance is absurd.

So far, Mac has been walking for over three and a half years, and if he keeps up his pace of playing on average for an hour and 15 minutes a week, his estimated date of arrival will be sometime in the year 2036.

Between now and then, he will cross over interminable miles of mountain ranges, rectangular oceans, tree lines, and lakes.

There is a pastoral charm to Minecraft’s scenery, complete with bleating sheep, but this unprecedented act of virtual tourism is more than exploration for exploration’s sake. In a roundabout way, it is also an exploration of technology itself.

MINECON 2015 tickets announcement!

Get your tickets for MINECON 2015 which will be in London on July 4-5 at the London ExCeL Convention Center! Tickets are being sold at minecon.mojang.com on Friday March 27th and Saturday March 28th. As always, if you attend MINECON you’ll also get a fancy new cape! There’s a lot of information below but please read it if you plan on purchasing tickets, it’s all important.

Here’s how it will work:

– Tickets will be £129 ($200.11 US Dollar) each
– Tickets will only be sold at minecon.mojang.com, and they will be sold through Eventbrite
– 5,000 tickets will go on sale at 6pm GMT (that’s London time) on Friday, March 27, 2015
– 5,000 additional tickets will go on sale at 12pm noon GMT on Saturday, March 28, 2015
– You will be able to purchase up to 6 tickets on one order
– You will need the name of EACH person you are buying a ticket for at the time you purchase tickets, you’ll need to enter these details to complete your order.
– Tickets cannot be resold and are non-transferrable, the person whose name is on the ticket at the time of purchase is the person who will be admitted to MINECON
– When you book your ticket you will also be able to book a hotel afterwards, we have hotel rooms blocked off and you will get our discounted rates
– Any child aged 3 and under will be admitted for free. Children aged 14 or under must be accompanied by a parent or guardian and both the child and adult need to purchase a ticket. Young people 15 years and over are allowed to attend the event alone as long as they have a ticket.

Some frequently asked questions:

Q. What will there be to do/see/enjoy at MINECON?
A. We will have tons of panels, lots of exhibitors showing off cool things they are doing with Minecraft, and a bunch of interactive attractions during the event. Saturday night there will also be a party for everyone who attends MINECON. For some ideas of what happens at MINECON see the YouTube videos from our last one.

Q. Will there be a costume contest this year?
A. Absolutely! We love having people show off their creativity when it comes to their Minecraft costumes. There will be prizes and accolades for the best of the best. Here is a video of our costume contest from the last MINECON.

Q. Can I sell my ticket to someone else if I can’t attend?
A. Nope! You can request a refund and those tickets we will resell at a later date! This will keep it as fair as possible.

Q. How can I volunteer to be a MINECON Agent?
A. Each year our MINECON Agents help make MINECON possible, it’s a huge event and couldn’t happen without them! If you want to volunteer, head over and fill out this form. If you’re chosen you will not need to purchase a MINECON ticket!

Q. Can I buy a MINECON ticket just to get the fancy cape?
A. We want all tickets to go to people who will come and enjoy the event, so only people who come to MINECON will get their cape. When you arrive, we scan your ticket, and only scanned tickets will get a cape.

Q. I’m taking my daughter/son/nephew/neighbor to MINECON but I’m an adult and don’t play Minecraft, do I need a ticket for myself as well?
A. Yes you do! We have players of all ages and we have events and things to do for everyone (even a bunch of cool panels for parents of Minecrafters) so all attendees will need to purchase a ticket.

Q. I have an awesome idea for a panel!
A. Well that’s not a question, but soon you’ll be able to submit panel ideas, and maybe yours will be chosen!

Q. What if I miss out on tickets or can’t make it all the way to London?
A. Worry not! We will have an amazing live stream that will run during the entire convention. We’ll be streaming the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as some of the coolest panels! Information on the live stream will be announced before the event. Afterwards, all the panels will be uploaded to our YouTube channel, as well as some videos we make capturing some of the fun of the event.

There will be more information at minecon.mojang.com before tickets go on sale, so if you have a question you didn’t see answered here you can tweet at me and I’ll try to include it on the site.

MINECON 2015 announced!

It’s time again to announce the next MINECON!

As usual there will be panels, contests, tournaments, events and a soon-to-be-announced show-of-some-sort for our Saturday night bash.

WHEN: July 4-5, 2015

WHERE: ExCeL London Exhibition and Conference Centre

WHO: You, hopefully!

Since you’re bound to have more questions, Check out this Q&A:

How do I get tickets?
Ticket sales will happen in February, exact date and time will be announced in the next two weeks. You’ll head to minecon.mojang.com to purchase them, but they will go fast! To accommodate different people’s schedules, they will be released in two batches on the same day, different times, 5,000 tickets in each batch. When you buy your ticket you’ll also get access to our discounted hotel pricing, so don’t go booking a hotel room just yet!

How do I become a volunteer (aka MINECON Agent)?
So you want to be a part of the event? You’ll fill out this form. Watch mojang.com for more details.

I have a great idea for a panel, how can I make it happen?
Community submitted panels have been some of the best panels! Panel submissions will begin in early March. You’ll need to submit your panel application here.

I want to exhibit at MINECON. How do I get a booth?
Each year we have a nice selection of awesome exhibitors, and you could be one of them! You can contact minecon@mojang.com for exhibition booth requests.

More details and information will be coming in the next couple weeks, keep watching mojang.com for all the answers you seek!