Minecraft 15 Year Anniversary: The Ender Cup
In July 2024, Noxcrew hosted a special MC Championship (MCC) event, titled The Ender Cup, specifically designed to celebrate the 15 Year Anniversary of Minecraft.
To celebrate the 15 Years of Minecraft, Mojang reached out to Noxcrew to work directly in collaboration with one of the community’s biggest Minecraft events, MC Championship.
The Ender Cup was designed with Minecraft’s history at its core, celebrating it while also giving the audience and the contestants a great show.
The Noxcrew team was responsible for ideating the full creative brief, executing it, and promoting it. Internally, the team scoped, designed, and implemented all required art assets, both in-game and for promotional purposes.
All of the classic MCC mini-games in The Ender Cup were themed in a key Minecraft release era to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of Minecraft. For example, the mini-game Hole in the Wall celebrated the Bountiful Update, which was released in 2014. Hole in the Wall (HITW) is an obstacle-based movement game that made its debut at the first-ever MCC event as one of the core games. For this event and to celebrate the Bountiful Update, HITW was set in a long-buried ocean monument, surrounded by the new stones the update brought. But the most important thing the Bountiful Update brought with it were sticky slime blocks, which are used during this game to try and push players off the platform.
For more information on the other games for this event, and how they celebrated a key Minecraft update, visit: The Ender Cup website.
The detailing required to create a true storytelling event was thought through from the moment the event started, through to the closing sequence. This cinematic penultimate moment had contestants and audience members getting emotional as we dived through the 15-year history of Minecraft. The response on social media was huge!
The contestants who joined The Ender Cup included classic MC Championship players, former contestants, and a variety of streamers.
As well as being broadcast live via the 40 contestants, for this special event, Minecraft hosted a centralised live stream across both YouTube and Twitch and had a team of casters and production staff to help bring the production to life. Noxcrew leveraged existing experience producing Twitch Rivals events to connect Mojang with Esports Engine to run the broadcast. The event was adapted to be viewable and entertaining both from the player and camera perspectives, as well as prepared video segments, broadcast graphics and live show running.
The ten teams of four battled it out to take home the prestigious Ender Cup in July 2024. Their 40 broadcasts, combined with the central stream, resulted in over 480,000 hours watched globally!
The prize (other than bragging rights) was a huge IRL Ender Cup trophy, designed by Noxcrew, then created and shipped by Mojang to the four winners: Smajor1995, PearlescentMoon, fWhip, and bekyamon!
