Two months after the massive success of Marshmello’s in-game Fortniteconcert, a slew of musicians are gathering together to put on an entire in-game festival – this time in Minecraft.
Announced today, Pixel Festival will be held in the blocky mining and building game over the weekend of April 6-7 – or rather from midday on April 7-8 in Australia due to the time difference
Presented by URL Events, the festival will feature talent from all around the globe – as well as a good number of Australian artists. Heimanu is scheduled to perform on Pixel Festival’s first day, while the second day is packed full of Aussie talent such as What So Not, Slumberjack, Anna Lunoe, Blanke, Yvng Jalapeño and Made By Tsuki.
Incredibly popular Fortnite Twitch streamer Ninja will also be performing at the festival. No word yet as to whether he’ll try to make the crowd floss.
Admission to Pixel Festival is free, but you can buy a VIP pass for US$5 or an artist pass for US$25. However, exactly what these passes get you is unclear, as Pixel Festival’s website is currently down.
To attend the festival, you’ll need a copy of Minecraft. Once you’ve booted it up, select ‘Multiplayer’, click ‘Add Server’, then type in ‘MC.URL.EVENTS’.
This isn’t the first time a live performance has been held in Minecraft.
Back in 2016, Norway tech conference The Gathering held an event in which artists AlunaGeorge, Broiler and Lemaitre performed in real life, while volunteers copied their movements with in-game avatars.
In September 2018, performers including ANAMANAGUCHI and Electric Mantis took to the virtual Minecraft stage at Coalchella.
Even more recently, Fire Festival (not to be confused with Fyre Festival) was held this January in Minecraft, featuring performances from artists such ARTY, Ekali, Hudson Mohawke and Luca Lush.
However, the incredible success of DJ Marshmello’s Fortnite concert last month has renewed interest in the still relatively experimental format. In a statement to The Verge, Epic Games said that 10.7 million people attended Marshmello’s concert, making it the game’s largest event to date.
The idea was that children might engage more with the Bible if they had a familiar vehicle – in this case, religious stories in a game-themed book — helping them do it, according to the Bailiwick Express.
In the British Isles, the schools received “The Unofficial Bible for Minecrafters – Stories from the Bible told block by block,” which gives children ages 7 through 11 3-D versions of Bible stories such as the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark.
The Rev. Beverley Sproats of St John’s Parish Church said the game-themed religious books made the Bible more “accessible.” Her church donated 30 such books to St. John’s School.
Francesca Allen, who heads Humanities Faculty at Le Rocquier School, said her school “gratefully received” the donation.
“We were previously having to print extracts from the Bible to support students in their Judaism and Christianity studies,” she said, “which meant they never got to grips with how to negotiate a real Bible.”
The book that was donated to the 24 schools is one of a series that tells religious stories through a Minecraft approach. Other books in the series include, “The Story of Moses, A Children’s Guide to the Old and New Testament, Life of Jesus, and Heroes and Villains.”
The schools in Europe have a lot of company when it comes to using Minecraft to connect children to the Bible.
“Because Minecraft is so open, any player can design a world,” said Vincent Gonzalez, a scholar who has examined Christian video games, to USA Today in an interview last year.“And whenever things are open, religious people tend to use it to express themselves.”
Professor Rachel Wagner of Ithaca College sees parallels between video games and religion. Both, she noted to USA Today, have rituals, rules and structure.
“Even if they are ‘open’ in the sense of allowing players to construct entire worlds for themselves, as Minecraft does, games always offer spaces in which things make sense, where players have purpose and control,” Wagner added. “For players who may feel that the real world is spinning out of control, games can offer a comforting sense of predictability. They can replace God for some in their ability to promise an ordered world.”
On a broader scale, educators are finding Minecraft an effective way to teach other subjects.
“We first heard from kids themselves about Minecraft, and we started watching a lot of YouTube videos to see what the buzz was about,” said Debra Dorfman, Scholastic’s vice president and publisher for licensing, to The Associated Press a few years ago.
“Kids, parents and teachers were all saying Minecraft was good for you. Kids are given free rein to play, build and watch YouTube videos of other people playing. Teachers were talking about the educational aspects of creative thinking, geometry, geology and problem solving so parents were agreeing to let them play for hours at a time.”
“Minecraft” is set in a procedurally generated blocky world whose trees, terrain and bodies of water can be mined for resources to build things like shelters, tools and armor to protect players from the zombies, skeletons and creepers who come out at night. The calculatedly simple mix of survival gameplay and Lego-like digital construction has captured the imagination of players who’ve recreated landmarks like Walt Disney World, the White House and Westeros from “Game of Thrones” across the game’s sprawling virtual landscape.
If you have chased your fair share of Minecraft Achievements, chances are you are aware how precious individual shared worlds can be for efficient hunting. The last thing anyone wants is to lose all of their hard work, so players should be particularly cautious about accessing the 1.11 beta which they may have received an invite to — even if they weren’t invited to the private build.
We’re running into an issue where players are receiving the Minecraft 1.11 beta on Xbox One without being opted into the beta program. While we work on a fix, DO NOT open your worlds with the beta.8112:40 – 26 Mar 2019Twitter Ads information and privacy38 people are talking about this Matt Gartzke is the Community Manager for Minecraft, and while no further details have been given it seems like beta invites have gone out to people who haven’t signed up — and therefore haven’t read all of the rules, warnings and details included in the sign-up page. One of the most critical aspects to understand about the beta is that crashes and lost saves are perfectly possible. If players access the Beta unawares, they may find themselves losing their meticulously crafted worlds.
At present there is no ETA on a fix to this accidental access, so the general consensus is to avoid the Beta invite completely for the time being. Perhaps this time around it’s best to simply wait until the features being tested in the Beta arrive in the final game.
This Minecraft update includes a set of new weapons, a new lantern, new enemies, and, of all things, an adorable cat.
Gaming phenomenons have come and gone as the years have passed, but one game has stood the test of time in terms of popularity and that is Minecraft. To this day, countless amounts of players are still jumping into build creations and Microsft continues to add more and more content. And the latest patch has just been released adding a number of new items.
In this update, crossbows are making their way to the game, as well as shields that just need one iron ingot and 6 wooden planks to create. On top of that, lanterns will be joining the fray as well.
Another enemy has been added as well named Pillagers. However, the new enemy is only being added to Creative Mode in this Update.
Although there have been new items added, the real star of the update is the addition of Jellie, a cat fans voted to be added into Minecraft.
While Fortnite continues to dominate the video game scene and Apex Legends is growing in popularity as the days go by, Minecraft has continued to evolve and stay relevant even after the acquisition by Microsoft. It is quite impressive and doesn’t get the credit they deserve.
Minecraft is available across Xbox One, Windows 10, iOS, Android, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and practically any device with a screen. If you are thinking about finally jumping into Minecraft, you can pick up the game right here through Amazon. I have to say, there might not be a better game to just sit down, relax, and just build.
Minecraft players have fruitful imaginations and are very creative and imaginative when designing new worlds. Others rebuild reality brick by brick, shovel by shovel. Jake Webb has constructed a replica of the Mackinac Bridgeand takes us across in this YouTube video.
If you have kids in your life you know about Minecraft. Maybe all you know is that kids disappear for hours at a time when you tell them to go play. I have a niece and nephew who haven’t stopped playing Minecraft for 6 years now. I don’t get it. Let me build a drug empire by beating up hookers and stealing cars while listening to a killer 80s soundtrack on the Wave, Emotion or V-Rock. Minecraft just has that droning, soothing, ambient soundtrack and there’s no real goal of the game- you can’t “win.”
You can, however, do interesting projects like rebuilding the Mackinac Bridge and taking the Labor Day Weekend walk across the span anytime you like.
Note that the Apple TV, Xbox 360 and original Xbox One editions of the game will not receive this update.
The achievement is tied to the incoming Bedrock update which adds a crossbow, three new enchantments, shield crafting, a loom (which we suspect will be needed for the achievement), a lectern and a lantern — plus a new type (breed? flavour?) of cat called Jellie, as picked by the community. A new enemy mob, the Pillager, is headed into the game too — but only in Creative Mode for the time being. The update from Mojang warns that with the new update, HD textures on mobile devices are causing crashes. It’s recommended that the HD textures are disabled until the developers get to the bottom of the issue.
Are you ready to jump back in to all of those versions for another precious Minecraft achievement? Let us know in the comments! Don’t forget, the latest Xbox One version — simply named Minecraft — is headed to Xbox Game Pass next month if you have yet to get around to that stack.
