Minecraft World Championship: Exploring the unlikely Esport

The eSports industry has reached new heights in the past decade and gone on to become a legitimate career option for passionate gamers. Minecraft, being one of the most popular cultural phenomenons in gaming, doesn't exactly seem like the game to lend itself to an eSports tournament. However, there have been more than one worldwide tournament in Minecraft.

While there is no official league hosted by Mojang or Microsoft, that hasn't stopped independent tournaments from taking place all over the world. One of the most prominent competitions is the Minecraft Championship, hosted by Noxcrew.

Minecraft Championship 8 recently concluded, and did amazingly well on streams on Twitch and other platforms. Fans of the game enjoyed the high-level plays in a variety of match types and games.

Minecraft Tournament hosted by Noxcrew

Noxcrew, an active community of creators involved with Minecraft for a long time, has been creating adventure maps, skins and texture packs to sell on the Minecraft Marketplace, among other things.

They have successfully held eight iterations of the Minecraft Championship, with MC8 recently wrapping up with Pink Parrots taking home the championship. The tournament has multiple unique games created in Minecraft, out of which eight are played, namely:

• Parkour Warrior
• Hole in the Wall
• Battle Box
• Bingo But Fast
• Ace Race
• Skyblockle
• Survival Games
• To Get to the Other Side (and Whack a Fan)
• Big Sales at Build Mart
• Dodgebolt
• Sands of Time

Minecraft Championship (MCC) is streamed on multiple platforms, and takes place over four stages:

1) The Hub

(image credits: noxcrew)

The Hub is the common area where the teams participating in the tournament can check in on their current standings in the competition and personal scores between the games.

2) The Decision Dome

(image credits: noxcrew)

The Decision Dome is a phase in the event where players can vote for the next game. With a coin multiplier in action (where later games will be worth more coins) the order of games may make a massive difference for the teams. Dodgebolt isn't a part of the Decision Dome and is reserved for The Final Duel.

3) The Games

(image credits: noxcrew)

The core phase of the tournament where the teams compete in 8 games decided in The Decision Dome. Each game nets a certain number of coins, and they must compete to get the highest number of coins at the end of The Games.

4) The Final Duel

(image credits: noxcrew)

The two top-scoring teams are brought into an intense game of Dodgebolt, while the other teams spectate.

Teams and players that participated in Minecraft Championship 8:

Red Rabbits

• Ph1LzA
• WilburSoot
• DangThatsaLongName
• TommyInnit

Orange Ocelots

• Shubble
• Strawburry17
• RIPmika
• Joey Graceffa

Yellow Yaks

• PearlescentMoon
• cubfan135
• ReNDoG
• falsesymmetry

Lime Llamas

• PeteZahHutt
• Katherine Elizabeth
• InTheLittleWood
• Solidarity

Green Guardians

• Sapnap
• GeorgeNotFound
• Krtzyy
• The Eret

Cyan Creepers

• Mefs
• TapLHarV
• CaptainSparklez
• captainpuffy

Aqua Axolotls

• Quig
• fWhip
• Smallishbeans
• HBomb94

Blue Bats

• rodtricked
• seapeekay
• MiniMukaYT
• SB737

Purple Pandas

• Fundy
• Krinios
• Kara Corvus
• sylvee

Pink Parrots

• Dream
• Technoblade
• King_Burren
• Michaelmcchill

(source: dot esports)