‘Minecraft’ MineCon Convention Builds Up For London Appearance In July
The next date and location for the next MineCon Minecraft convention was finally announced by Mojang on Monday. The convention took the year off for 2014, but it returns for 2015. Now the question is how it will look now that Mojang and the uber-popular open-world sandbox game are under the Microsoft umbrella.
The 2015 edition of MineCon will take place in London, England on July 4 and 5 at the ExCeL London Exhibition and Conference Centre. 10,000 tickets will be placed on sale by Mojang at the official MineCon site sometime within the next two weeks. The tickets will go on sale in two separate batches on the same day with each batch containing 5,000 tickets.
Those that are able to snag tickets will be able to get discounted hotel pricing through Mojang. So, the developer suggests not booking any rooms just yet.
MINECON will be in London on July 4-5, 2015! Some more info here: https://t.co/p0wtzYJjCS
— Vu Bui (@vubui) February 2, 2015
Mojang is also looking for MineCon volunteers, panel hosts and exhibitors. Information for volunteers and panel hosts will be made available soon, with panel submissions opening up in March. Exhibitors looking for booth space are asked to contact Mojang at minecon@mojang.com.
This will be the fifth MineCon convention hosted by Mojang. The very first was a small affair in 2010 that took place in Bellevue, Washington. There were only 50 people that attended that convention and got the chance to meet with Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson.
The 2011 MineCon took place in Las Vegas, Nevada and was the first for the newly founded Mojang. That event saw more than 5,000 people show up and it’s only gotten bigger since then.
Disneyland Paris served as the host for the 2012 MineCon, which came with plenty of unique challenges and weird anecdotes from the Minecraft creators. The book “A Year With Minecraft: Behind the Scenes at Mojang” detailed the troubles the game maker had with local French union workers who had no problems taking off before the show was completely setup. This sent the Mojang employees on-site scrambling to complete the work they could by themselves.
The 2013 MineCon was the last with Persson as the head of Mojang, though we didn’t know it at the time. It took place at Disney World in Orlando, Florida and was attended by over 7,500 fans. The studio then took 2014 off because it did not have the time or resources, and needed a break.
That brings us to 2015 where the landscape of Minecraft has changed greatly with its purchase by Microsoft. That should put even more resources behind MineCon, but Mojang’s note makes it clear that the convention will still be very much focused on and driven by the game’s community.
Are you going to try and go to MineCon this year? Sound off in the comments below.
[Image via Planet Minecraft, Florida Geek Scene]
