Mineorama might not be all it had cracked up to be, after a month of silence about it’s postponement.
Minecraft is one of those universally loved things. Starting out as a simple building game, and quickly evolving into a globally dominating brand, Minecraft has fans all over the world.
With so many people having a passion in common, it would be a great idea to run conventions dedicated to this wonderful game, that could run in parallel to the official “Minecon”, which obviously many would not be able to attend. Whether this was the mindset of New York based Mineorama’s organizer, Lou Gasco, is currently unclear and tipping the scale toward the answer no as time goes on.
Mineorama was meant to be hosted last month on the weekend of the 12th, but was announced through twitter to be “postponed because financing fell through” just five days prior to the events launch. This obviously put a lot of fans into alert mode, and with the follow up Tweet beginning with “PLEASE NOTE WE ARE NOT A SCAM” it is looking more likely that that last quote is definitely not true. In fact, if it were not a scam, then you would not need to even mention it. To add to the stewing pot of deception and paranoia, the twitter account associated with the aptly named CONvention, @Mineorama, has been deleted (though the account name has been reused by an apparent teenager, who is relishing the surge of followers). To add fuel to the fire, the official Mineorama website has mysteriously disappeared, leaving a husk of a website. Not only this, but the Facebook page has not been active on since the 8th of July, the same date the “We are not a scam” tweet was posted.
Over a month later, with complete silence on the offending parties side, it has become hauntingly probable, that these fans of Minecraft, will neither be attending a convention, nor getting their money back. Kotaku’s Jason Schreier revealed that he had attempted to phone Timothy Carroll, one of Mineorama’s co-creators, but after announcing he was a journalist, was responded to with “No comment” followed by a swift dial tone.
Whether this was all a mistake, that Lou Gasco had fully intended to host a Minecraft Convention but was overwhelmed by the amounts it would actually cost to do so, or whether it was an out right grab for peoples money is still unclear, but the fact remains that thousands of people are out of pocket, and out of luck in regards to a convention.