Couriway is debuting his brand new Minecraft esport, Gridlock, this June. Teams of two will hop on a happy ghast and fly down into a massive custom Minecraft world, completing challenges and competing against other teams in the hopes of being one of the lucky few to make it to the grand finals. We sat down for an exclusive interview with Couriway to talk about what Gridlock is and how it came to be.
Newly unveiled event Gridlock is a massive lockout bingo tournament unlike anything else. As with Couriway’s Free 4 All tournament, it will be open to the public, with people able to sign up in teams of two to compete. The event will span six months, from June 13th to the end of the grand finals on December 13th, and feature a total prize pool of $45,000 USD split across the circuit stage of the tournament and the grand finals.
Gridlock is based on lockout bingo: a game where players have to complete a variety of tasks to claim squares on a board to form horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines. Completing a square “locks out” the opposing team from claiming the same one. Some of the tasks will be ‘Quest Squares’ that are unlocked over time and give players an opportunity to earn even more points. “The teams will be working on the normal objectives throughout the game, but as soon as Quest Squares unlock, it’s a mad dash from both teams to try and get them as quickly as possible,” Couriway tells us. “We’re really trying to force an aggressive playstyle, trying to get as much action to happen as possible.”
The tournament has been Couriway’s passion project for some time, and he’s been working with Evil Geniuses and a team of talented people from across the Minecraft event space to put it all together. While he is known mainly in the speedrunning community for his goal of completing 100,000 Minecraft speedruns, and for his involvement with Ranked Playoffs, he is broadening his horizons with Gridlock. “I’ve always loved the event space. I’ve always loved the speedrunning space obviously, but I’ve always loved the idea of Minecraft esports the most. I wanted to try and find something that was a bit more of a middle ground between everything – a real Minecraft esport that represents not just my niche, but all of Minecraft.”
“I am getting bored of a lot of the more popular events in the space looking very similar, and following a very traditional format,” Couriway explains. “I think there needs to be something that is fresh, new, and exciting.” Gridlock is his answer to that problem. “We’re doing something that’s really out there and unorthodox. It’s something that I’m just excited for people to see, and I hope that people like it – but more than that, I hope that people see it as a sign to branch out of comfort zones in the community and try some new things.”
“Obviously lockout isn’t brand new, but we’re putting a real twist on it. I had originally talked to SmallAnt early on in this process, as I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t stepping on his toes because he really started the Minecraft lockout stuff.” Couriway explains that talking to SmallAnt reassured him that Gridlock really is something new that can stand on its own.
When the tournament starts, both teams will spawn into a custom world created specifically for the event, and get to work. “We’ve commissioned a massive 1000 x 1000 block map that is basically vanilla plus. The goal is to find out how much you can push a lockout-style gamemode to the limit when you know where everything is.” Since the map will be staying mostly static throughout the tournament, players will be able to learn the map and come up with strategies to potentially give them a leg up over less studious opponents.
While the overworld won’t be changing much, the Nether is an entirely different story. Bastions will be entirely custom-made so that speedrunners won’t have as much of an advantage. Unlike the other structures of the world, bastions and fortresses will also change locations every week to keep competitors on their toes.
“I think my favourite thing is that I’m requiring hard difficulty. I don’t want speedrunners to have an advantage, since they are so used to playing on easy mode and just breezing through everything,” Couriway says. He is making a big effort to ensure the event is balanced for all the different Minecraft communities, and that Gridlock is as holistically representative of Minecraft as possible. “It’s about showcasing what Minecraft has to offer in a way that we believe is a very Mojang-focused way, and hopefully that catches their eye.”
There are a lot of different tasks for the event. Some will have players interacting with their opponents, some with their teammates, and some with the world itself. “I think one of my favourite ones is to smash five decorated pots at the same time with a firework crossbow,” Couriway says. “We have one called Golem Party which means having a copper, iron, and snow golem within ten blocks of each other. We also have some questionable ones morality wise, like taking a dolphin to the nether.”
Gridlock will be played in version 1.21.11, and takes full advantage of features added to Minecraft in recent updates. While Gridlock likely won’t be able to incorporate Tiny Takeover or Chaos Cubed, it won’t be in the traditional speedrun version either. “You forget how hamstrung you are on 1.16.1,” Couriway says. “On the more recent versions, I can mess with trial chambers, I can mess with wardens – it allows us to do as much as possible and have more fun Bingo things.”
Couriway also mentioned that he hopes they will be able to put on a second season of Gridlock in the future. That would give them the opportunity to explore the new updates and how things like sulfur caves and sulfur cubes could be used to create even more fun objectives and challenges for players to enjoy.
“All of these things really force the player to think on their feet,” Couriway says. The new version, the custom bastions, having the game be in hard mode – they’re all things designed to encourage that kind of high-level gameplay. “That’s a skill that I really want to see, because I think Minecraft knowledge in general is the most exciting thing about any event.”
There are two official regions for the tournament, with the prize pool split between the two. The European tournament will start at 11am BST / 6am EDT on Saturdays, and for North America it will start at 5pm BST / 12pm EDT on Sundays. “Anyone from anywhere in the world is able to play – the NA and EU regions only represent where the server is located. Just because of server costs, it unfortunately doesn’t really make sense to do like an Oceanic region or an Asia region at the moment.”
Though there will be accommodations in the form of a substitute system if a player cannot make it to one of the tournament weekends, Gridlock requires a lot of commitment. Teams will need to be ready to play each weekend of the tournament. “It’s a big commitment, but there have been other tournaments that have had big commitments for less money, and I think it’s such a high quality product that people will be absolutely dying to play.”
For the open qualifiers, teams will have to play seven matches per week, and so long as they win the majority of their matches, they will be able to stay in the competition. Matches last for thirty minutes and whichever team has the most points at the end takes the win, though some games might be shorter if the point gap is large enough.
After the open qualifiers, the top twenty four teams will move on to a bracket stage where they will compete in best-of-three match-ups to fight for a spot to be one of the eight teams in the circuit stage. “We have a really lengthy process to actually make the final circuit because we want everyone to have a chance, and we want the eight teams from both the NA and EU regions who do end up qualifying to feel like they are a part of something special,” Couriway says.
The circuit is “where Gridlock gets heated” according to their website. During this stage, competitors are competing for money, fighting for a total split of $5,000 USD per month per region. Teams will be competing to place in the top two by the end of the stage and move on to the grand finals.
The event started taking shape when Evil Geniuses partnered with Couriway to help him realize his creative vision for Gridlock. “I would literally leave during the Tubbo subathon to go take calls with Evil Geniuses, and we came up with something that worked for all of us,” Couriway says. “I’ve been with them for just a bit over three months now, and I could not ask for a better experience with the team at Evil Geniuses.”
The Free 4 All tournament was the first event Couriway put on with Evil Geniuses, with it also serving as a stress test for what it might look like to put on an event as big as Gridlock. The success of the Free 4 All shows that it is possible to get such a large group of people where they need to be at the right time, and all streaming their perspectives. Organising so many people might be a monumental task, but it certainly isn’t impossible.
It’s one thing to have an idea for a Minecraft event, but it’s another thing entirely to be able to make it a reality. “I’m very out of my depth,” Couriway reflects. “I think it’s very easy to criticise events a lot of the time, and I try my best to not do that. I’ve been in events that go flawlessly. I’ve been in events that are absolute train wrecks, but it’s important to remember how insane it can be sometimes [behind the scenes].”
The team for Gridlock are people who have done a lot of work in the event scene, from minigames to speedrunning events and more. The team is led by bumpyJake, who has been a developer and organiser for Money SMP, the One of Us Festival of Voices, and a number of other projects around the space, alongside Rizendor, who has worked on Pandora’s Box and is the Lead Game Designer for Gridlock. “Being able to work with those two and then building a team around them from people that they trust or work with, from artists to developers to web designers, it’s become incredible,” Couriway says.
“I am deferring as much as I can to the people around me because I believe in the team that I built more than anything else, and I believe in my ability to guide them through anything that they need. Their expertise is why I picked them in the first place, and I want their creative ability to shine.” Couriway adds that he plans on helping out a lot with playtesting and ensuring things run as smoothly as possible during both development and throughout the event itself. “I knew Kaelten was unbelievable at game design, and I knew Jake was so good at running events, and everyone else working underneath them is just doing such an incredible job. I want their hard work to pay off more than anything.”
“To be honest, a lot of the thought process behind certain decisions is that I imagine how long of a review Feinberg would leave in a feedback form, and try to make that as short as possible at all times,” Couriway says. Feinberg is known for giving a lot of feedback when he participates in events, and being very open with his thoughts – but to Couriway, that criticism drives him to try and make everything as good as possible. “If we add something, I think, how can Feinberg abuse this and complain about it? It’s a legitimate thing that I’ve been thinking about.”
Unlike a lot of events in the Minecraft space which tend to be less competitive and only last for a day or two, Gridlock more closely resembles a lot of mainstream esports. “I’m modelling this off my own experience working in Overwatch League, and watching other esports like that,” Couriway tells us. “I really like the seasonal format, and I’m excited to see how that works in a Minecraft space.”
Over the past year, the popularity of Minecraft esports has been skyrocketing – most visibly in the speedrunning community – though it is still hard for Minecraft esports to really thrive. “When I think of thriving, I think of people whose full-time job is playing Minecraft, not as a streamer. Obviously, Feinberg and I play Minecraft for our jobs, but we’re not esports professionals, we’re Minecraft streamers. I think it can get to that point if Mojang ever got involved, but unfortunately that’s not something that’s happening right now.”
That could be changing. Mojang has been expressing more interest in events like MC Championship, and recently featured Tubbo’s Midoffs in Minecraft Live, putting competitive events in the spotlight in ways they never have been before.
While people may not be able to rely on tournament earnings alone, Minecraft esports like MCSR Ranked have been able to help many people grow their audiences on Twitch and YouTube because it provides visibility to very skilled players. The hope is that Gridlock will be able to give that same opportunity to more people. “Maybe it’s more speedrunners, maybe it’s more PVPers, maybe it’s people who have no real niche but have just played Minecraft for so long,” Couriway says.
The sixteen players from each region who make it to the circuit stage of the event will get help from Evil Geniuses and the Gridlock team to help make a name for themselves in the community. “I want to do content pieces, I want them to feel like they’re a part of a real esport ecosystem,” Couriway tells us. “There’s so many behind the scenes opportunities for them through Evil Geniuses, to really just grow their brands as top tier Minecraft players pushing the game that we all love.”
“I want to see passion, I want to see Feinberg pop off, I want to see Infume pop off. I want to see Kelawesome or Sandwich’s little pngtuber do the thing on the screen. I want people to be able to be themselves and be passionate.” Couriway’s focus for Gridlock is highlighting and celebrating the growing competitive community that exists in the Minecraft space. This isn’t just a tournament for speedrunners or PVPers or event players – it’s something the entire community can get behind.
“I’m really trying my best to be as inclusive of all of Minecraft as I possibly can. I just want to see what people’s reactions are to all of this. That’s really what I’m looking forward to the most. I understand that not everything will be fully positive – I’m not expecting that or anything – but I think that people will appreciate that there’s something new, and hopefully we did a good job and the community really likes it.”
People will be able to watch the premiere of this event on Saturday June 13th on Evil Geniuses’ and Couriway’s Twitch channels, and on the streams of any of their favourite creators who might be competing. More information can be found on the Gridlock website.
About The Author
SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!