The Noxcrew Gameshow turns Ten!
If you’ve ever experienced the chaos of The Noxcrew, either through our events, our maps or our streams, you’ll know we’re not the best at dates. Not romantic ones (wink) but, like, keeping track of important dates and being on time. Just ask MCC Island. Or Terra Swoop Force. Or Jeoffrey’s Chamber 3.
We even missed Noxcrew’s 10-year anniversary by a whole year! (Yeah, we turn 11 this year, isn’t that wild?!) But, this time, we decided to focus up, take time seriously, and celebrate the anniversary of one of the most important projects we ever worked on as a team. The heart of so many projects that came after it and a microcosm of what Noxcrew is all about:
The Noxcrew Gameshow
On May 30th 2022, it will be 10 years since the very first Noxcrew Gameshow episode was released on our YouTube channel. It would run for two seasons, a couple of live shows, and then gracefully fade into Noxcrew history, outshined by later endeavours such as the Geo Descent Labs series and Gameshow’s eventual offspring, MC Championship.
I want to share some love for that old classic, the inspiration for so much of what was to come, by taking you through the history of The Noxcrew Gameshow - how it got started, how it went, and the impact it had on us at Noxcrew as creators, not just as a company.
We start, as all good stories do, at the beginning. It was 2012, Paladin’s Quest Part 1 was in production and the team were not even a year into the whole being a build team thing. Ideas were flying around on what to do next: Fable Hunters, Paladin’s Quest Part 2, and other projects lost to history.
Until Epic_Landlord approached Noxite with his idea.
Landlord had been experimenting with other sandbox games, searching for the perfect outlet for the ideas buzzing in his head. Initially, he tried using Halo: Reach’s Forge mode. Forge is a free-build game mode where players can create their own maps, courses, and even games using Halo assets. Fans of Halo: Reach may remember mini-games such as Griffball, Avalanche and Mongoose Sumo - all designed in Forge mode.
Garry’s Mod (Gmod) was also a popular physics engine at the time, as it still is today. Giving players access to Valve’s extensive assets and their Half-Life 2 physics engine allowed players to make games, such as Trouble in Terrorist Town and Prop Hunt. A limitless sandbox presented a way to create in whatever style they wanted without the tedious ‘learning how to be a game developer’ or ‘how to code’ stuff.
Inspired by the versatility of these games, Landlord suggested that Noxcrew could do something similar but in Minecraft. What’s more, they could make a show of it… a game show.
When we were younger, there was a golden age of TV game shows, with the genre spreading into every facet of British TV. You had game shows for kids, like 50/50 and Get Your Own Back, game shows for teenagers, like Raven and Jungle Run, and even game shows for adults, like Crystal Maze and Fort Boyard. Everywhere you looked, there were teams of contestants taking on mini-games of all shapes and sizes, from the ridiculous to the sublime.
We grew up watching these shows and their oddball sense of humour, bright lights, and energetic pace. So it seemed only natural for us to emulate our childhoods and format our series of mini-games into a game show, giving reasons and justifications for why we’re forcing people to play silly and dangerous games.
The premise of the Noxcrew Gameshow would be simple - two teams of three battle it out across five different mini-games, with the team winning the most games taking the show. But where to set this madcap Gameshow? What setting seemed logical and natural?
The Noxcrew Gameshow Factory, of course! This was the in-universe factory where games would be produced - they didn’t just appear one day out of nowhere; that would just be silly.
The Factory allowed us to create a more kinetic environment than just a simple game show venue. Pipes and conveyor belts created a sense of space between places, making the Factory feel bigger and grander than it actually was. They also gave us a nifty excuse to include rail carts to and from the games when teleportation commands were in their infancy and we had to find ways around the limitations of Minecraft.
Most of all, the Factory allowed us to establish our own lore and rationale in the world as to why things were as they were, from the core powering the whole facility that was found by Noxite and Landlord in the 50s, to the presence of The Butcher and the creation of the giant Mother Chicken. All of these weird additions to the Factory could be explained in the context of the world, rather than just strange additions we added because we found them funny.
After a lengthy development period, we were finally ready to unleash The Noxcrew Gameshow onto an unsuspecting YouTube.
The first episode of The Noxcrew Gameshow was released on the 30th of May 2012, with Team Heros - InTheLittleWood, SoTotallyToby and MusicByPedro (Yes, Heroes is spelt wrong, thanks Toby), fighting against Team Forest Fire - Aizovox, The Regizide and KingBrown, with Team Heros eventually coming out on top.
From the start, The Noxcrew Gameshow showcased games and maps that would become synonymous with Noxcrew: Sprint V.1, Mayan Hunt, Bathtime, and Pyramid. All games that would either be converted or homaged in later projects. While they weren’t the most refined mini-games at the time, their high energy and unique aesthetic carried the show, creating something people genuinely hadn’t seen before on YouTube.
Thanks to this and despite how rough and ready the first episode was (some of the jokes have aged like milk), the idea proved to be a popular one. As the series progressed, our ideas for Gameshow started to crystalise and become more refined. This was helped by Minecraft updates that drastically changed and improved elements of the game, allowing us to do more with the tools available to us.
New mini-games were added, updated and improved to flesh out the game roster. Textures were refined and made brighter and clearer while maintaining the classic Gameshow aesthetic. Help Bots were added to assist players in the event of a game break, adding more character to a world already filled with the weird and wonderful.
During this time, we ran six episodes, including Youtubers like CaptainSparklez, Antvenom, FyreUK, and many others. While there were some minor controversies during this season (we don’t talk about the Sheep Game), thanks to Gameshow, Noxcrew started to grow, helping us to make a name in the Minecraft community. This gave us the opportunity to work with creators like The Yogscast and the Insomnia Gaming Festival to show off our work to more people, inspiring us to push harder to create the best projects we possibly could.
However, as was often the case in those early years, our ambition far exceeded what we could reasonably achieve at the time. Though we had planned a 16-team tournament leading to a grand finale, we realised we didn’t have the time, resources, or contestants to fill out the bracket and complete the season. Projects like MCStrike, Noxpocalypse and Jeoffrey’s Chamber began to take up more and more of our time.
It was time to change tact, to regather, regroup and create one complete event from start to finish. The first season, or the YouTuber Season, was rechristened The Pilot Season. In 2015, we began anew with the actual (factual) Season One of The Noxcrew Gameshow.
Released on March 21st 2015, The Noxcrew Gameshow Season One gathered 24 contestants from the Noxcrew community into eight teams of three to compete in a new and revamped Noxcrew Gameshow tournament. With the scope of the tournament scaled down, it allowed us to focus on improving and reworking existing Gameshow games and updating them with the latest Minecraft updates. Classic games such as Sprint, Bathtime and Mayan Hunt got fresh maps and mechanics, while new games, such as Shoot ‘em Down and GridLock, were added to the roster.
The Factory itself was completely reworked, refining the builds to match our growing building prowess and updating its overall aesthetic. On top of that, we expanded the facility, not just the parts the audience saw but the whole build, fleshing out the world to create a more immersive experience for our contestants than ever before.
Thanks to those Minecraft updates, we could update and expand the small in-jokes of the lobby. We created a penthouse for contestants to get to know each other before the event, different gags for the introductory door opening scene, more kinetic elements to the lobby to show that this was a living, breathing factory, as well as more practical additions such as teleportation pipes to add lore justification for the new teleportation system.
Our greater experience with creating projects also meant that the show itself got refined, with better transition and scoreboard graphics as well as a cleaner, more refined editing style. It even provided more opportunities to add jokes and asides, including a whole section about a Factory Worker called Bob in the disclaimer screens at the start of the video.
With all these upgrades, improved planning, and having all the teams locked in at the start of the tournament, Season 1 ran for 19 episodes. This thrilling tournament culminated in The Ungentlemen claiming the Noxcrew Gameshow Trophy and ultimate victory. A community match-up was planned but, wouldn’t you know it, it just never turned up. (Strange that)
But The Noxcrew Gameshow wasn’t just about the YouTube series. Even then, we were willing to push ourselves and our projects to bigger and better heights.
Running concurrently to both of the series, The Noxcrew were bringing Gameshow to audiences beyond the world of YouTube thanks to the Insomnia Gaming Festival. Insomnia is a triannual UK gaming convention where gamers worldwide come together for a weekend of LAN-ing, table-top gaming and tournaments. Insomnia is also where gaming companies show off new releases, demos for upcoming releases or, in the case of Mojang in 2013, host their yearly convention.
In 2013, Insomnia was chosen to host the UK Minecraft Expo (essentially the UK Minecon) alongside their i49 event. Many UK Minecraft creators were invited to the event to participate, including Noxcrew! We used the opportunity to premiere Episode 5 of The Noxcrew Gameshow at that event, releasing it to YouTube a week later. For the next event, i50, we were invited to run our own booth, where attendees could play Noxcrew Gameshow games with their friends or other attendees at the convention.
While we were only provided with eight computers to run the i50 booth, it proved to be a huge success with attendees. We were invited back multiple times to run larger booths and host stage shows where fans and content creators could play The Noxcrew Gameshow themselves rather than just watch it on YouTube. We even ran a booth and stage event at the 2015 Minecon event in London, where we met and hung out with a lot of the content creators who would eventually participate in MC Championship.
At the same time, Noxcrew were developing their first foray into the world of servers. MCStrike, our Minecraft based first-person shooter server, was gaining a dedicated and passionate following, drawing more eyes to Noxcrew and our work. It would eventually be paired with Noxcrew Factory, a server where players could play Noxcrew Gameshow games with their friends, including games like Bomber Team and Bath Time. While we didn't find success with our early server ventures, it taught us a lot about developing mini-games for groups of people larger than six, which would become very useful later down the line.
Eventually, following the end of Season 1, we began to wind down the project with Noxcrew Gameshow Live. Combining the YouTube series with the live nature of our convention appearances, Gameshow Live pitted two YouTubers teams against each other in live events over on The Noxcrew Twitch Channel. But the Noxcrew were growing up. Its members were moving on, looking for the next big project to sink their teeth into. And so, The Noxcrew Gameshow gracefully retired in 2016.
Despite the project coming to an end, The Noxcrew Gameshow didn’t die with Noxcrew Gameshow Live. Its spirit lived on in ways we could never have expected, influencing our work as well as our creative ethos.
Gameshow games appeared in projects such as The Mini-Games Festival series and inspired others like Grid Runners/Grid Runners Pro, Terra Swoop Force, Pirates’ Christmas and, most famously, MC Championship (MCC).
MCC took Gameshow and dialled everything up to 100: bigger teams, bigger events, crazier lore and more opportunities to work with the fantastic Minecraft community. But MCC is not just the louder, flashier child of The Noxcrew Gameshow; it's the culmination of everything Gameshow taught us.
It showed us the value of organisation and coordination. Of planning a project out from start to finish rather than just starting a project with an idea of how it will go and bumble our way from there. It taught us how to produce for a live event, how to fix issues on the fly (looking at you i53) and how to create games not just for ourselves but for the players and the audience.
Most importantly, The Noxcrew Gameshow taught us to have fun with what we create. No matter how weird or wonderful the idea is, if you’re passionate and believe in it, other people will believe in it too.
The Noxcrew Gameshow may be 10 years old, but its legacy shines brighter than ever, leading us forward, ever forward, to the next big adventure.