From Sweden with love
Hello Noxcrew community!
We’re back and what an adventure we’ve had!
Sweden was incredible, we met so many wonderful people and had so much fun! But let’s not get gushy about it, let's get to the gossip!
On our first day in Stockholm, after everyone had finished screaming about the Game of Thrones finale, we went on an exciting historical adventure!
In Vikingaliv, a Viking museum, we spent at least 3 hours playing the ancient game of Hnefatafl, where players square off to attack or defend the king! It led to some very tense moments, especially between Markus and Stu, where the game seemed lost only for Stu to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat!
Probably didn’t help Markus that we were all gathered around making lots of ‘ooh-ahh ing noises but we’re a bunch of gamers, what can you do?
In Skansen, Stockholm’s open air museum, we saw gorgeous nordic animals like bears and wolves as well as some vicious geese that nearly killed CrushedPixel! Thankfully he survived his near decapitation and made it to the Noxcrew team dinner, where we had a delightful time looking out over beautiful Stockholm (and running out to leave Noxite with the bill but that’s standard Noxcrew shenanigans)
Wednesday saw us kick off the creator summit with an opening party. We went over to Mojang's amazing offices to catch up with old friends, meet some new ones and just have fun getting to know people!
We all gathered extremely early the next morning, ready for the first series of summit seminars. There were a lot of discussions about the past, present and future of Minecraft, celebrations for the 10th anniversary, including a balloon dance party, and a sneak peek at upcoming projects, including Minecraft Earth, Dungeons and some yet to be announced stuff (You’ll get no spoilers from me!)
There was also an award ceremony celebrating the best selling maps on the Marketplace. In lieu of actual awards, the Marketplace team handed out ‘Iron’ and ‘Gold’ plates as prizes. We’re very proud to have won 2 iron awards for Millionaire Mansions and Summer Mini Games Festival! One day we will match Pixelhead’s record. One day…
The celebrations continued as we headed to Gröna Lund theme park, where the boys enjoyed themselves in the fun house and we jumped out of our skins in a proper american style scare house!
This was all followed by a ‘fairytale meal’ at Junibacken, a children’s museum filled with really interesting and creative interactive exhibits, including a mini-spaceship!
Our last ‘work’ day started in an activity park, with the day’s summit being full of exciting information about upcoming Bedrock features. (We’ve got a lot of fun toys coming our way!)
After the Noxcrew Team played a cheeky round of Mini-Golf, we got together for the main event, a competition where random teams took part in traditional Swedish Midsummer activities to become the champions of the Creator Summit!
There were normal activities such as archery and puzzles but there were also some very strange games like a relay race where you had to hammer nails into a log, a game where you had to push a plastic cup along a piece of string with a water gun and a race where you had to get super dizzy and throw bean bags into a bucket. Chaos ensued and JakeL epicly face-planted as a result but it was all good fun (Don’t worry, he was fine)
The winners were announced that evening as the confusingly named ‘Team Five’ who had not been allocated the number 5 during team selection, but called themselves that for some reason, much to the actual Team 5’s confusion (I will never forgive Mewulf for this treachery)
The rest of the night’s highlights included the annual ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ tournament, competitions to get the highest scores on punching bag and hammer arcade games and Noxite nearly burning the place down with a napkin (because we just can’t take him anywhere)
The next day we were free from ‘work’ but there was no time to rest!
Noxcrew, along with a few friends, visited Icebar, a beautiful bar made, unsurprisingly, of ice and is constantly kept at a barmy -40°C! We all kept toasty by living our Titanic fantasies, with Mewulf and Avon being a particularly lovely couple.
Once we’d all warmed up, we teamed with Pathway Studios to host what was to be the greatest get-together of the week, an evening of video game action at a local gaming bar!
Unfortunately, as you might expect from something organised by us, it didn’t quite go to plan. Despite booking out the entire venue, it became apparent that it just wasn’t big enough to accommodate everyone we had invited safely. Acting fast, we led everyone to a decently sized bar nearby where we could all hang out without crushing each other to death.
And so the night was saved and we partied once again, saying tearful farewells to an amazing week and all the friends we had made.
Now we’re home. Tired but excited for the future. Of Minecraft, of the marketplace and of The Noxcrew. We had a brilliant time, meeting with people who share our passion and dedication to continue making this life-changing game exciting and innovative for another 10 years.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this small glimpse into our Sweden trip, I could have added so much more, so many exciting adventures and special moments but then we’d be here all day.
All I can say is that it's an exciting time to be a Minecraft fan!
Join us next time for all the Noxcrew news as we try to catch up a week’s worth of work!
Until then, have a great week!
Noctis