It’s past 3am. I’m plumbing the depths of Elena’s Art Museum halls looking for some merch. Nothing on the first floor. Nothing on the second one. Patience, after all I’m pretty much a newbie here on Minecraft, I’ve always preferred Counter Strike. After a quick look at the timetable I realize i haven’t much time before Mia Khalifa (William Crooks b2b NotActuallyRobin) starts their set, and it would be a sacrilege to miss the dons. I quickly put together an (irl) early-morning survival pack, with a half empty Redbull can, a bunch of cookies, a bottle of water, and teleport to Angle Stage just when the first notes of vocoder kick in. 27 hours later only the water bottle survived Fire Fest. The can, the cookies, my brain; everything is out. Too tired for the afterparties, I fall exhausted on my bed, closing my eyes on the dawn with the conviction of having witnessed something memorable.
Now, raving as a cube-headed character may sound like nothing compared to going to Bonnaroo or Printworks. But, to all the snobs and purists out there, I’d like to remind you that the true spirit of dance music is anywhere. It’s people moved by passion, enthusiasm, love and respect. It doesn’t really matter if you’re in a dusty basement, at Berghain, at Hakkasan, or in a fucking Minecraft server. In the twelve plus hours spent in the pixeled reality, through the thick layers of dank memes, savage drops and mash ups, what I’ve seen is the triumph of a healthy movement blossomed from a shining community, our community.
After all the buzz Fire Festival has triggered, we connected with the team in order to obtain an inside view of the event and to learn more about the movement behind it, where the original idea came from, and above all, where it’ll go.
Surfing the web I’ve seen so much confusion about Fire Festival and the concept of a virtual festival. Let’s pretend we’re in r/explainlikeimfive. What is Fire Festival? From which seed/need was the idea is born?
Max: Fire fest is a music festival in the video game Minecraft. We built stages and a festival grounds that you can interact with in the game, and an audio stream on our website.
Robin: This idea was born from the desire to have everyone experience something together where otherwise cost or time would inhibit them. Our events are entirely free to attend and all that is required is a computer with an internet connection (and ideally Minecraft).
Oh and let’s clear the origin of the name for everyone’s sake, is it actually a troll or a “naive coincidence”?
Robin: The name definitely wasn’t a “naive coincidence”. Just like our previous event, Coalchella, the inspiration behind the name should be pretty obvious. The parody names are sort of a tongue in cheek way for us to acknowledge how goofy the idea might sound while simultaneously likening it to some of the more well known events that might allow for others to get a better grasp on what the event is<
Umru: Luckily we ended up literally emulating Fyre Festival by nothing in Minecraft working for much of the first day so I guess that worked out.
All those whom I told I’ve spent my weekend on Minecraft attending a music festival, looked at me like I was a freak and after exhaustive explanations, all they did was label the whole thing as a random childish play. Can we contradict these non-believers with some good objective numbers? How long did you take to prepare every aspect of the event? How many people were involved and attended?
Eden: Rather than numbers, my approach would be inviting the folks you were talking to to come see for themselves. Numbers don’t do it justice. That said, this thing was big. Over the two days:
- 5.3k unique minecraft players joined our servers
- we played 20 hours of music across the two stages, by 60+ performers/li>
- we had 6.5k members in our Discord
- our website reached 28.6k unique visitors
- our audio streams were listened to 87,754 times
- we raised $1,750.97 to donate to The Trevor Project
The folks you were talking to weren’t wrong, they got the “play” part right: as much stress and work this was, it was unbelievably fun to see it all come to fruition. It was a surreal experience.
Brenda: The development and recruitment process for this event began almost right after Coalchella last September. People were really eager to start working on building the festival grounds and the whole in-game experience which started that same week. About a week after that we had the lineup mostly finalized and started scheduling, logistics, and development.
A big part of this whole thing for me is being able to make space for marginalized folks to comfortable be together, to help folks feel safe and respected and able to be themselves without fear.
Fire Fest wasn’t just fun and entertainment. Tell us about the Trevor project and the charity aspect of Fire Fest.
Robin: The Trevor Project is a charity based in the US that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth. Seeing as this is a cause that we all care about deeply, it only felt right to try to support it with our event. We decided early on that we wanted all of our profits to be donated to charity and through donations made by attendees we were able to raise $1,750.97 USD. Our events will always be open and inclusive to all and we’ll continue to do whatever we can to make sure everyone is comfortable.
Eden: A big part of this whole thing for me is being able to make space for marginalized folks to comfortable be together, to help folks feel safe and respected and able to be themselves without fear. Many folks end up finding groups of like-minded people online, whether that’s on Twitter or Discord or whatever. A lot of us are queer in all sorts of different and wonderful ways, and, speaking from personal experience, what The Trevor Project provides is incredibly useful and supportive. In many ways, by donating to them we’re giving right back to our own community.
For this edition you’ve gathered a giant line up, full of hot names from both the underground and main stage circuit. How did you approach the big names and how did they react to the request? Had they already heard about Coalchella or your birthday party?
Brenda: For the most part, a lot of the lineup curation process for these events was confined to our extended group of friends.
Umru: While we did reach out to some big names outside of our circles of friends, the majority of the lineup was formed of just asking members of our community. A lot of people assumed that it was a very calculated and thought out process but really we were just sort of saying “this person would be cool, does anyone know them?” for a few months until we built up the lineup. A lot of the bigger names we reached out to had heard of the previous event and some even reached out to us.
the levels of absurdism and self-parody that we aim for with our events wouldn’t ever possible to pull off in real life. It’s so much fun.
I think we can feel free to say that you guys are pioneers. Do you feel like that you’ve started something that will inexorably change the world of music festivals in the future? I think that if we combine Minecraft festivals with VR and technologies behind games like ‘Just Dance’ we can already have a glimpse of the future of virtual events. What’s your prediction/expectations? Do you think that Blockchain will be a useful ally?
Eden: I sure hope so! I think there’s a ton of ways these kinds of events will spread, and I’m excited to see how people take our ideas and make them their own. Virtual music events are not a new thing, they’ve been around at least since the mid 2000s in games like Second Life, but I think this is the first time something’s happening at this scale and with this level of mainstream attention. As our social lives become more and more integrated with (and in many ways dependent on) digital and virtual spaces I think we’ll see lots more virtual happenings of all sorts. I for one would love to try this in VR, though I don’t think we’ll take our events in that direction until VR becomes much more accessible than it is now. You mentioned blockchain technology, I’ll touch on that briefly: in the foreseeable future for us, blockchain is pretty irrelevant. Our events are centralized, and for good reason – it allows us full control over the experience (at least, when things work), and it vastly reduces the complexity and number of moving pieces as compared to a decentralized blockchain-based system. It might be technically possible, but I don’t see a reason why – these kinds of events require a great deal of initiative, organization, and dedication from those creating them, and that lends itself to centralized systems. It’s not impossible to imagine an event like this happening on a general-purpose decentralized network with widespread adoption, but right now nothing like that exists.
I don’t think virtual festivals will ever aim to replace irl festivals, but that’s not our aim – this is something new, not something old but changed. I expect some virtual festivals will try to emulate irl festivals, but their real potential is in being what irl can’t ever be – the levels of absurdism and self-parody that we aim for with our events wouldn’t ever possible to pull off in real life. It’s so much fun.
Max: I hope that the event industry is able to learn from some of the lessons that have been shown by these events. Underground musicians can make equal/better sets than some current mainstream artists, and that interactive sets open up a whole variety of new options.
What were the trending memes in this edition of FF?
Max: Pooman, ekali, yiff yookie, rihanna doesn’t shit, rustlebuck is a good dog, hit or miss, fuck Jeff Bezos, fuck Elon Musk, FUCK NOTCH, tweeting at donald trump to turn fire fest back on, #VERIFYMAXSCHRAMP, the pit 2, umru (as always).
Umru: The craziest part of the “memes” in these events is that unlike the usual Minecraft or Discord chats we leave the chat totally open to spamming messages so you can really get the effect of the entire crowd “chanting” crazy phrases like “fuck elon musk” and “rihanna doesn’t shit” that were often prompted by the DJs.
If now you regret missing Fire Festival, well, you’re right, but don’t worry, you can relive part of the madness through the official recap playlist.
Picture by @NOLONGERKAI
