Day 3 - The Launch, and Day 4 - The End news

Day 3 - The Launch

After some seven hours of sleep (nice), we went to the wrong room for breakfast. Confusion started setting in until someone figured it out. Breakfast in the USA apparently consisted of cake bread with peanut butter and jam, and extremely crispy bacon. I am not complaining.

We went to rehearse the opening session, and I got mic-ed up by what I think was CNN, who are filming something about something. I tried to pay attention, but so much was going on, I kinda faked understanding what was happening. There was a big Minecraft lever on stage that I had to pull, timed to a snare drum / bass drum kick in a song. I couldn't pull it too hard, or it would pop out, as it wasn't actually held in place by anything other than pressure from the material on the sides of it.

We had lunch backstage, I had some refreshing beverages to soothe my nerves, and then fans started filling the room for the opening ceremony. Thousands of them. My personal security guard (provided by the hotel) also arrived. His job is to help me get from place to place when I need to go somewhere without getting mobbed, and to make sure I'm “safe”. Turns out he's been a cop for many years, so he had awesome authority just by looking at people. He's done stuff like this for a long time.

The opening ceremony went well. We started with an opening trailer by Hat Films, watched a video by Captain Sparkles, listened to Stuart Platt from Microsoft who showed the Minecraft Xbox 360 trailer (also made by Hat Films), listened to Daniel talk about the iOS version, then we introduced everyone at Mojang. Then Mega64 came on and played their Minecraft 1.0 release funny video type of thing. It was funny :D. I got to be mocked by Rocco, which has been a goal of mine for a long time.

I got a standing ovation when I came on stage. There's no way to deal with that. Emotions ran wild. Then I did a short talk, then we pulled the lever, and I ran off to watch my sister get married, Vegas style.

After the wedding, we had the Mojang Panel where the Oxeye team talked about Cobalt, the Scrolls team talked about Scrolls, then everyone from Mojang answered questions from the audience. Or rather, Jakob, Mattis, Jens and I answered questions. The rest mostly just sat there. ;)

A quick snack later, we went to the main expo hall and sat down in the signing/taking pictures area, and spent a total of three hours signing stuff as fast as we could. It was absolutely crazy, with the queue leading all the way around the hall, out the doors, and all the way over to the stairs. Since we had to cut the line when we started running out of time, the volunteers handed out tickets for everyone who couldn't reach the front in time. We'll have a special signing session just for them today at 11 am.

We ended the night in our common Media Suite, where there was food and drinks. I didn't last long before leaving for bed.

Then I slept.

Day 4 - The End

I am incredibly tired right now, so this might be a bit short. ;)

Breakfast was at 8 am, being filmed by CNN. People were looking tired, but happy, and me and Jakob had bacon with far too much Tabasco sauce on. Then I went and did an interview with CNN, finishing with playing some Minecraft next to a fan. I went back to signing stuff for two hours.

Then there was the charity lunch. The food was excellent, and everyone there had paid a lot of money that later got donated to the Make A Wish Foundation. I ended up signing even more stuff at that lunch.

After lunch, I did an interview with Machinima, followed by me heading over the backstage area of the closing session thing. I got even more things to sign there, for IGN and something else I forget what it was. The closing session got delayed 20 minutes due to total chaos, but we eventually got on stage and thanked everyone for coming, thanked the sponsors, gave away a huge fake check to Make A Wish, and brought a guy and his girlfriend up on stage for a proposal. She said yes.

And then we were done. We had some beer and champagne, and now we get to rest. Elin and I just ordered room service, and will take a short nap.

Then there's the party tonight. It's going to be crazy.

<3

(Development blog link #1 #2)