June 10, 2026 - TwitchCon Rotterdam 2026

Wow another blog post! I'm honestly feeling quite a bit of writer's block right now. But a couple people have asked for a blog post about TwitchCon so I'm going to try my hardest! I'm also going to keep this blog post relating to specifically Minecraft and not my other adventures in Rotterdam.

It was late April, when out of nowhere Minecraft drops this announcement:

My instant reaction was to run and book tickets:

I decided on leaving on Friday and just effectively have an extended weekend trip to Rotterdam. This was going to be my first time in the Netherlands!

I arrived very early to TwitchCon on the Saturday. Wanted to ensure I had my badge and wristband before the event actually started.

Before the main Minecraft exhibit hall was even open for the public, there was a huge line sprawling around to even get into the hall! I found this humorous - there's a line to even get into the hall where, in and of itself, is just a place where you go into lines for other things. A line for a line!

One of the staff accidentally pointed me to a staff only area which was a very dark hallway… when I opened the door I saw the Minecraft hall. I decided to backtrack as this is a restricted area, oops.

Gotta say, walking into the hall for the first time was surreal. Reminded me so much of the Minecons of days past. I loved the floating happy ghast in the sky. And the Minecraft Dungeons 2 set was fantastic.

Once the event started, I honestly just wanted to get my cape code ASAP so I could not think about it for the rest of the event and just relax. First thing I did was a fun photo shoot where you pretend you've died on the floor of a sulfur springs cave, with items and experience points on the ground. I've got to say the theming was very elaborate and I especially liked the lighting.

The lines were especially bad on the first day. It seems like they got better at crowd control on day 2. And maybe it was also less busy on the second day. On the first, multiple times there would be a line to even get into the hall - so if you left you'd have to wait your turn to be let back in. Second day I don't recall seeing this.

I also got a photo with a chicken jockey made of Legos!! Don't tell Bricks and Minifigs about this, they'll probably steal it. (This joke will probably date itself - when writing this, there was a well known internet scandal relating to a Lego thief!)

Interestingly almost everybody I talked to was only doing all of this for the cape lolol. It might just be because it was rope drop though.

Got my cape! And whilst walking out the line I already saw somebody offering 40 euros to buy somebody's code. I heard a lot of folk got heckled/solicited for their codes through the event and although I saw it firsthand, nobody ever bugged me personally. No fun! Had a silly gag I was hoping I could do…

Anyways, onto the most important - or at least my favorite part of TwitchCon. The people, or more specifically, my friends! A significant majority of my Minecraft friends are from NA. So I wasn't expecting to meet all too many people. When I booked tickets I wasn't even certain if anybody I knew was going.

Luckily turns out quite a bunch of buddies ended up making the trek! A friend of mine is local to NL and decided to come for a day. He couldn't come both days, his excuse was… he's getting his skydiver's license.

I also met my buddy Leroidesafk and all his friends. It was very cool to put a face to all the Minecraft usernames.

That's something Mojang did that was very smart - there was a booth where you could get your username nameplate printed on a headband so you could wear it on your head. I walked past so many people being like, hey I recognize that name. Even said hi to a few of them!

Leroides is French and so is his entire friend group. When I was with them I was like a lost dog. Everybody was speaking in a language I didn't understand around me! I held up my translator app sometimes to get an idea of what was being said… everybody was very friendly and cool though, was a fun time!

I wish I announced further and wider I was going to TwitchCon. There's at least a handful of people I would've loved to say hi to but sadly they didn't know I was there. You know who you are! Let's meet up next con. I really hope this becomes a frequent thing!

Minecraft Live was… weird. It basically wasn't live for most of the event. We watched a pre-recorded stream - basically the same everybody was watching at home - for half of it. Why host a live event if it isn't truly live? I feel sorry for Vu and Mojang, they had to just awkwardly stand in the middle of the stage whilst a 15 minute pre-recorded video clip played!

Funny photo of when the video feed cut out NotLikeThis

After live they revealed a gift just for us people there in person. They were giving us all free Minecraft plushies! I got an enderdragon and my friend got a wolf plushie. I ended up giving the wolf plushie to a girl in my hotel elevator as she wanted it - it would just collect dust in my closet otherwise. I'm planning on giving the enderdragon to somebody too. Just have to figure out a fun opportunity. I'll bring it with me next Minecraft related adventure!

I'll be honest, I'm not a big Twitch watcher! I'll maybe hop in a random stream after binge-watching somebody's channel, say Couriway. But I'll never stick around meaningfully to become a true Twitch watcher (twitcher?).

Gotta say my overall impressions of the event was - despite the fact I'm not really a stream enjoyer, TwitchCon itself felt so deeply ingrained in the Minecraft community. It felt like a Minecon in a weird way. Maybe Minecraft will continue to sponsor other conventions to a large extent like they did here. Likely in a way far less expensive and resource intensive than hosting your own conventions. But I will always dream of a return to form Minecon.

I hope they do another event in the U.S. - I would likely meet so many friends across the pond.

April 19, 2025 – Minecraft Experience London (+ Bonus Minecraft Movie Review)

Earlier in April I went to the Minecraft Experience opening day in London! Below are my general thoughts on it, this isn’t really a properly formatted review, it’s more of just a stream of consciousness of what I thought about the event. I’m likely very nostalgia biased regarding this event. Even just seeing the huge Minecraft banners outside the event really brought back the feelings of Minecon registration day. The Minecraft Experience Felt a lot like the Toy Story ride at Disney. Each room had a new gimmick or theme that kept it feeling fresh. I went alone, so as an adult I definitely felt out of place. But adult nights (which they did in Dallas so hopefully will do in London) sound like a super fun time. As a techy I was super interested in the screen and handheld orb tech. The screens they use are so durable! So many kids were smashing their orb onto the touchscreen!! 😅 I talked to HelenAngel a bit about this, a former Mojang Community Manager, and they told me about how for the Minecraft Museum touring event they also had to do a lot of research into very durable touch screens.

Non-Minecraft players will have fun and can understand the concepts for most rooms too- other than the crafting room, which was super engaging, might be my fav part of the event as a player, but I actually had to help out a couple parents who didn’t know the crafting recipes and didn’t understand the clues as they aren’t Minecrafters. But honestly being helpful to others kinda added to the fun!

Everybody I talked to through the event said they had a great time, young or old. A similar event at a future Minecon, fully made for Minecraft pros and a leaderboard would be a super fun time!

Surprised this was fun for all ages! Reminded me a lot of the little cave maze they had at Minecon Paris. Hope they do adults nights like they did with the US event, would be fun with a more mature crowd!

Can you beat my groups score? To cap off the day, I also went and saw A Minecraft Movie in Leicester Square. My non-spoiler review of the movie is as follows: So much ❤️ went into this. A very fun movie. Lots of cameos and Easter eggs fans will love. Watched it in 3D & I’m going to watch it again in standard as well. Unexpectedly charming, just a bunch of dumb fun - and makes me excited for hopefully more movies in the MC universe! Seeing the Mojang logo on the big screen was so surreal. There is definitely more they could’ve done with the movie, but just seeing so much of Minecraft “in real life” made it a very special experience. Welp, that’s all the thoughts I have. Thanks for reading!

Apr 17, 2025 – John's Cape Friends: How A Scam Email Created A Community

From John: “Hey, I was wondering if you are the owner of the account on minecraft, if so I would be interested in purchasing it. Please let me know whether you'd sell or not, thanks! If you are interested in selling please let me know your discord or other form of contact which will be easier to chat on if you happen to have one.”

It was a regular Monday on June 7th, 2021 when I received an all too common email for people with desirable Minecraft accounts. At first, this seemed to just be another in a sea of phishing/buying attempts - or so I thought. That was until I saw a reply in my inbox: Now to preface this, who the hell doesn’t know to bcc when sending out a mass-email campaign? Or to put it in a more colorful way from somebody in the email chain: The answer to that is simply: people part of the “Minecraft Account Black Market”. A lot of them are younger teenagers, brought up in the age of social media and simply haven’t ever had to send out an email themselves. The cc list was full of people in the Shotbow database breach, which we’ll discuss further a bit later.

At this point, the flood gates have officially opened. We use this as a silly little group chat to flex our capes: Hilariously, the original John guy is still watching the email chain, and the only email he even replies to is from the only guy who says he doesn’t have a cape to give him: Notice the quotations in his reply, where do we think he’s copy-pasting his response from? Some Discord group chat or translator tool? 😛 We all basically reply in jest to his email, and then move onto discussing other things. Xinabox, a YouTuber known for making YouTube videos on rare usernames and accounts, who also attended Minecon 2013 is in the email chain! He makes the reply below: Xinabox, or Nicky as he’s known as is a good mutual of mine. At this moment, I realize this could be a fun opportunity to create an actual group chat, a Discord server for everybody in this chain to share Minecon memories, be educated on account security and the latest phishing attempts or scams going on, and just overall have a fun time. I send out this email:
And the rest is history. The Discord server “John’s Cape Friends” (now known as Minecraft Account Security) was made.
We have a section called #funny-emails which is entirely for these kinds of emails. We’d be able to tell when a new batch of people were sending these messages just based on this Discord channel. One of the leads of Shotbow, the breach that caused our emails to be in such a list to even get these types of buy requests in our inbox joined the server and vented about the breach and the lessons they learned from the mistake. Luckily, in 2025 the Discord server no longer really needs to exist. Account migration happened, name history was removed publicly. And most of these emails have all but stopped as people understand cold-emailing hardly works like it used to. But this was such a fun story, and I had to share the memories!

April 12, 2025 – Launching nimble.cx

Just launched nimble.cx - below is an old blog post I never posted publicly.

December 22, 2021 – Becoming the owner of a rare Minecraft account

Ever since I was a kid playing Club Penguin in 2010 I always had an interest in owning rare digital assets in video games. I was extremely fascinated with the coveted Club Penguin Beta Hat, an item only available in September 2005 for a 2 hour time span. Only a total of 428 out of the 330 million registered users had this item. As I started playing Club Penguin over half a decade after the game began, I obviously had no chance to legitimately own anything considerably rare. I counted my losses and kept it in the back of my head for years.

Then in mid 2011, when I was over at a friend's house, I found out about a game called Minecraft. Around the same time the great Club Penguin to Minecraft migration started. All the big Club Penguin YouTubers such as Graser, Kyletiv, ThinkNoodles, CPBroadcast moved from CP to Minecraft. I followed suit.

The game was already beginning to gain traction, the main userbase back then was people who'd play all the small breakout indie games that released, trying to find hidden gems. I instantly became very attached to the game, because it was very similar to Club Penguin. You could use the game as a tool to create your own projects. Back in the CP days I'd create music videos, skits, and now something that allowed me to do that on a grander scale was brought to my attention, Minecraft.

After about half a year of owning the game, Minecon 2011 was happening. And as a result, the Vegas cape became a thing, the first publicly available cape for the general userbase. I unfortunately couldn't attend this convention as I am in the United Kingdom and my family didn't have the money to fly to Vegas, but I was fascinated by the idea of it and watched so much content of the event.

I recognized that now was my chance to own a rare item in an online video game, this would be something I knew I'd look back on in many years, similar to my Club Penguin days. But instead of being the person that 'missed the train' and would try anything to get the items retroactively, I could get the items legitimately, and they'd have actual meaning for me.

2012, my family's finical situation got considerably better, and 2012 Minecon was in Paris, somewhere not too far from me. I asked my parents if we could go, they already knew how much I loved the game, and we went! This was my first time outside of the country too, it was such a memorable experience and in my opinion the best convention. Because the con was within Disneyland Paris itself, they paid homage by creating a walk-through attraction of a Minecraft cave, similar to the Le Passage Enchanté d'Aladdin attraction in the adjacent Disney park. I even met Jeb as I was walking to the New York Hotel to get my Minecon tickets, firstly I saw him but I was too scared to talk, my Dad said "Don't you know him?" And I exclaimed, "Yes that's Jeb!" I then walked up to him and asked "Can I get a picture with you?" He then replied jokingly in his thick Swedish accent "In the rain?" We then walked into the hotel itself and got a photo together. I sadly don't have the photo anymore as it was taken on a very old camera and my parents didn't take good care of it and it's lost, probably forever.

This trip was what sparked my love for Disney and theme parks in general. Even though I was too scared to go on many rides, I pushed myself to go on the Tower of Terror, which is still one of my favorite rides of all time. This was also my first time staying in the magnificent Disneyland Paris Hotel, which is honestly one of my favorite places on the planet. Staying there feels so nostalgic and cozy.

It's certainly strange how poetic everything is, because then the next year's Minecon was in Florida. One of my favorite places on earth. I love the weather, the people and the lifestyle. This was my first time going to the United States, and I instantly fell in love with it. I don't remember too much of my time in Florida other than loving it, but a few memories were drinking hot cocoa at Disney, and finding the huge Christmas Ornaments hidden all over the park for the photo opportunities. The convention itself was great. Although not the highlight of the trip. This was actually the theme moving forward. I'd use Minecons as an excuse to travel the world, using the con as the kicker.

Then suddenly, Minecons stopped for a bit. But all was not lost. There was something else quite exciting creeping it's way through. The 2015 name change day. This was my chance to get a nice name, as opposed to a 'crappy' looking username. I knew something like this was once in a lifetime, and something people would talk about for years to come, and I wanted to be somebody who hopped on the train early, instead of being upset in a few years because I was living under a rock. I opted to get 2 rare one word usernames that made me happy.

Moving onwards to Minecon London in 2015, this honestly felt like a 'Local Minecon' even though it was a few hours away. It was in my home country. Every other Minecon was a huge culture shock, as it was in an entirely different place to my native location. It felt very cozy and not like a vacation at all. This convention was fun and felt much more professional than all the others.

2016 Minecon was definitely the most professionally ran convention, although I don't remember too much about it, other than waking up early for the preregistration process. Poetically, I began my Minecon journey going on Paris' Tower of Terror, and for the final one I witnessed the closure of Disney California's Tower of Terror, which shut down in 2016. Very surreal.