On Saturday, Kimmeridge House at Bournemouth University was transformed into the bustling venue of the Lewis Fulham Invitational Speedrunning Tournament. More than a hundred people came from all around the world, some flying in from as far as Australia, Hong Kong, and the USA, all to be able to watch the biggest LAN Minecraft speedrunning tournament ever.
It was no easy feat to put on an event this big, and it took months of work for everything to come together. The tournament was originally Sivianox’s idea. He is a student at Bournemouth University and the head of production for LFI. “During [MCSR Ranked] Season Seven playoffs, which was quite close to TwitchCon, I saw a lot of posts from people saying it would be so cool if there were events in person for MCSR,” Sivianox told us in an interview a few days before the tournament. “This is the kind of thing that I do, so I developed the idea a little bit on my own, then pitched it to Fulham, who decided it was something that he wanted to work on.”
Prior to the event there were a lot of nerves. It’s difficult to pull off such a large event, especially one that is so important to everyone involved. “I’m just kind of nervous that everything’s going to go wrong,” Sivianox explained. “We’re doing a bunch of testing stuff tomorrow to make sure that everything is going to go according to plan. There will be scuff, that’s just how it’s going to work – I’m just nervous about the level of scuff that we’re going to encounter.”
The team from Bournemouth University worked hard to set up audio and camera equipment so that everything was ready for the show, the speedrunners, and for the viewers at home. “Having to put my trust into other people and not have full control over an event is really scary,” Fulham told us. “It’s not something I’ve done before. In the green room today, I was pacing back and forth for three-ish hours, just not being able to help because I don’t know much about production.”
The organisers weren’t the only ones who were nervous either. “Obviously, just playing in front of a crowd is weird,” LFI participant and recent MCSR Ranked Playoffs champion Hackingnoises, a.k.a. Hax, told us. “It’s weird to be observed, it’s so different. When I’m just playing in my room, it’s like I’m so insulated from the rest of the world, but here I don’t have that barrier anymore, so it’s a lot harder.”
In-person events are rare in the Minecraft speedrunning community, giving both players and spectators the chance to do something they’ve never done before. While there has been PACE – a series of IRL events run by the Global Speedrun Association (GSA) covering multiple different games – and MCMC Live – two events, one in France and one in Germany – neither compares to the scale and excitement within the Minecraft speedrunning community that the LFI tournament has brought. “I’ve never been to a LAN – it’s a cool experience,” Hax explained. “It’s almost like a one of one event. There’s been PACE before, but it’s so cool to be somewhere where there’s so many people. I’ve never had an experience like this.”
One of the commentators, Bendoeslive a.k.a. Bendo, also shared how he was feeling going into the event, and how he thought a live crowd might change how he commentates. “You can see the crowd the whole time, you feel the atmosphere, you have to kind of try and play with the crowd,” he said. “As a commentator, you have to think about how you build hype moments, how you calm the pace down. You are kind of a conductor, as much as the game is a conductor. That’s going to be really, really interesting – I can’t wait to do it.”
The first match set the tone for the entire event. The match was between Vstrid – who has played more Ranked games than any other runner – and Kxpow, who is known to be a high-level RSG runner. Vstrid was heavily anticipated to win both by the crowd and the commentators. In an unexpected twist, Kxpow did take both seeds, but Vstrid was always close behind, with neither seed being without struggle for either runner.
Every match brought something unexpected to the table, but the crowd could always depend on seeing wildly impressive displays of skill. “These runners are at such a top level,” Bendo said. “They are really, really close in ability, which just delivers a treat.”
Throughout the matches, the crowd remained engaged and energised. Every time a runner would successfully kill the dragon, the entire room would erupt into thunderous cheers. A collective gasp would go out every time a runner died, and boos for particularly bad jokes from the commentators. “Hearing the crowds cheer when something happens is fun, but it’s also kind of distracting,” competitor Vstrid said.
Energy in the crowd rose even higher during the Midoffs Showmatch, in which Tubbo joined the commentators’ table, and Jumperwho and Jonnaay, the two finalists of Midoffs Season One, took to the stage for a rematch. While the other matches maintained an air of professionalism and competition, the showmatch had no such pretences. “I’m not treating it as strict as Midoffs because that was more competitive,” Jumperwho told us before the match. “If I lose 5-0, I really don’t care – I’m just going to have fun.”
“I think the quality might go down a little bit,” Jonnaay explained, “but I think that gap in skill will be made up for in content. It will be so bad it’s funny.” Between empty water bottles being thrown at players, and an impromptu game of rock paper scissors as both runners were entering the End, it’s clear the goal of this match was to have fun and entertain the crowd as much as possible.
Once the showmatch was over, it was finally time for the grand finals. The two runners who made it through the bracket were 7rowl and Big Big Mongey. The grand finals was a tense match with back-and-forth between the runners that brought the match to a fifth seed, and kept everyone on the edge of their seats.
As the final seed started and the runners entered their shipwrecks, the auditorium fell silent for the first time all day, everyone focused on the match. When 7rowl killed the dragon, the crowd cheered louder than they had all day.
7rowl gave a little speech to the crowd when he was presented with his trophy. “I honestly just don’t have any words, I wasn’t ready for this at all. […] I’ve been competing for so long, and with how many failures I’ve had with Playoffs, every time I would lose in round one, Hax would talk to me and try his best to help me with nerves and any micro-details in my gameplay. I’m so glad I have such amazing friends in Mongey, Hax, and Beef, and I’ve been talking a lot with Silver too. I couldn’t do this without any of the runners.”
Things didn’t always go entirely smoothly. The event didn’t start until almost an hour after it was scheduled to, and there were some other issues with audio and video, both in person and on the livestream. “There were things that you can’t foresee, there were things that I would have liked to change,” Fulham explained. “The first things I’m thinking of are that the headphones for the players were just not good enough, and I feel awful for that. Unfortunately, there’s so many other things – the PCs weren’t perfect, the setups were not that great, there’s a lot of things that I need to improve for next time.”
With the success of LFI, it seems likely that there will be a next time. It can be difficult to gauge if online engagement will translate to in-person events – after all, it is easier to tap into a stream than it is to take a bus, train, or in some cases a plane to see an event – but the auditorium at LFI was packed and lively. “People will have seen this and thought it went amazingly, and if I don’t put on another one myself – which I’m very much hoping that I do – I will be, without a shadow of a doubt, expecting someone else to be taking inspiration,” Fulham said.
While the tournament was the event of the day, a lot of the excitement came from having so many people from the same online community in the same place. Even before the event actually started, people were getting the chance to meet up and hang out with people who they may never have been able to meet otherwise. “I’ve never met any of these people IRL, but I’ve known some of them for more than four years now,” competitor TigerMCSR told us. “I got the invitation in the middle of the summer and I just said yes, because even though I didn’t know if I had the money to come, I just knew that I could figure it out. I’m trying to live this part of my life as much as possible because I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to, especially with getting a job and finishing college and everything.”
“It’s been fun to hang out with people that I’ve been talking to on the internet for a while,” Vstrid explained. “It was fun to play, too. Even though I lost, it was really cool to play on a different setup in front of 100–150 people.” Having these kinds of events is so important because it demonstrates the importance of community in these online competitive spaces. LFI really did well in highlighting both competition and community in this event.
It is easy to tell how much this event meant to so many people – fans and runners alike. Throughout the event, the audience was passing around notebooks and posters for people to sign, artists were giving out prints, and people were meeting long-time online friends for the first time.
“I think that’s what really matters – the opportunity to meet people in person who have the same interests as you, and the people that are willing to travel so far for it because they’re just so dedicated to it,” Sivianox said. “As much as it matters in online spaces, you just don’t get the same feeling as when you are there in person experiencing it.”
“I’m over the moon,” Fulham told us. “I started crying on stage, which I think is the sign of a good show. Rowl’s reaction at the end, seeing how happy he was to have won, just meeting everyone, having everyone here, and to think that Sivianox and I put this on – it’s a dream, and I will remember this forever. The crew all loved it. The fans loved it. My friends loved it. Everyone seemed like they really enjoyed it, and that is all I could have asked for.”
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