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Introduction:

Good evening, everyone! If you don’t know who I am, I'm Devon, a long time player in the competitive Minecraft scene. I’ve been a livestreamer for numerous tournaments on Avicus and Stratus, I am the founder and leader of Team Rocket, and I was an official on Avicus. Now, I am taking the next step in competitive Minecraft and starting a movement to push the game to finally be recognized as an eSport. We are partnering with an event called Minefaire where we will host live LAN tournaments for players to compete in PGM-style gamemodes.

What is Minefaire?

Minefaire is a public Minecraft fan convention with an average attendance of around 14,000 people. When Mojang stopped hosting Minecon in 2015 and transitioned to Minecon Earth, it left a lot of fans of the game disappointed they couldn't share a real experience with other players from around the world. So, a group of avid Minecrafters got together and started Minefaire, a community convention for Minecraft! You can read more about it on their website. minefaire.com/

The next step..

16 players facing off against each other as they sit on a stage playing Capture the Wool at an actual convention tournament would be a dream come true for any competitive Minecraft player. The one issue we’ve always run into is money. No server or individual can afford to rent out a space and host a national tournament. It’s unrealistic. In the last few months, I got in contact with a fellow named Steve, who happens to be the lead content producer for Minefaire. I sent in a help desk ticket when the event was near me, pitching the idea of Competitive Minecraft. A month later, I got an email from Steve, asking me to explain more about the competitive community we have here, and what we could bring to an event. From there, I pitched my idea of a LAN tournament at Minefaire on an eSports stage.

Partnership with Stratus:

This whole plan will not be possible without our new partnership with Stratus. Stratus will be hosting servers at the event and will provide the plugins, maps, and maintenance, along with their extensive tournament experience. In return, Stratus receives free advertising throughout this event and I expect their player counts to grow significantly during this time. Stratus will be able to market themselves at this event, sell merchandise and help further support the CompMC program as a partner.

Our Plan:

Chicago Minefaire is on September 21st and 22nd. We are launching a pilot event that will take place throughout the weekend. We will either have one CTW tournament lasting two days, or two different tournaments, one on each day. Myself, along with my Minefaire team, will be traveling to Chicago to put on this event. The tournament will be 5v5, with pre-registration available on the Minefaire website along with open registration at the event itself for several hours. We also plan to have a prize pool that we are currently building.

For these events to be successful, we need to ensure that we have funding, which we will partially be able to do through selling merchandise.. My graphic designer (The EpicDirt) is currently working on an exclusive CTW T-Shirt design that will be available to the community and at these events. We will also be working on other products such as stickers, bottles, and more!

My team, Team Rocket, will be competing in this tournament as well, as an example that “Hey, there are actually gaming teams for Minecraft”.

What does this mean for me?

If Minefaire Chicago is successful, we will be joining them on their 2020 tour across the United States and possibly into other countries. With the funding from these events, and exposure to eSports organizations, we want to support teams currently in the Stratus community. If you are currently a team leader, teammate, or member of the Minecraft community, you could end up at one of the events on this tour. For the teams who qualify at each event, my goal is to have their travel costs paid for when they return at the end of the tour for the finals.

The top two teams from each Minefaire location will be invited to the “finals” at the end of the tour in 2020. They will then compete against the top teams from all the tour locations in a giant finale tournament with a large prize pool. Please note, this idea has only been proposed to the Minefaire team and is not official yet.

How can I help?

We’ve seen the potential of the Stratus community through the numerous tournaments its held and the foundation of OCN from which it grew. Competitive Minecraft will benefit from your participation whether you’re competing, at a live Minefaire event, or at home watching the livestreams - everything helps. From these events we hope that the Stratus Network, with Operation Ares, will become the hub for a new influx of players eager to learn about Competitive Minecraft and explore the various gamemodes that are popular in this community. Playing a role in welcoming these new players so they can have a great experience will help create a very long-lasting community.

Here are a couple specific ways to help...
- If you live near one of the tour locations, please contact myself or one of my team members on how you can volunteer at the event.

- Purchase merchandise online or at one of the events and spread the word.

- Don’t want to purchase an item or volunteer? WATCH the livestreams, RETWEET/LIKE the tweets, PROMOTE the social media posts.

Twitter: MinecraftCompMc 

Discord: https://discord.gg/XGeT3xg

CONCLUSION

That was a lot. Shoutout to amactus for shortening it and making it presentable. In summary, we are trying to get Minecraft recognized as an eSport by taking it to the live stage through LAN tournaments. If you have any questions, we will be hosting a livestream on 7/29 at 11am PST where we will answer and document all questions you have. Please submit those here: https://forms.gle/SEZMrRC12EBD6PfH6

Any questions or concerns please message me via discord, or email. Thank you all!

Devon Jack

compmctournaments@gmail.com

dev_revs #8470

13 teams, with a maximum of 14 players each partook in the last tourney. That's 182 people, online. I don't see how a LAN event in one city could get anywhere close enough to a decent number of good players for a competitive event.