Around 6 p.m. on Saturday, thousands of people gathered for a music festival featuring emo titans American Football, chiptune trailblazers Anamanaguchi and electropop pioneer Baths \u2014 while still respecting proper social distancing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These concertgoers weren\u2019t standing six feet apart. In at least one instance, three attendees were actually teetering on one another\u2019s shoulders like a bizarre statue, the top fan touching the ceiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that wasn\u2019t a problem, because the entire thing was virtual. Welcome to Nether Meant, a music festival that took place entirely within the video game Minecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The event was the latest in digital festivals created and curated by Open Pit, a virtual events producer. Instead of spending months creating massive festival grounds like they have for Coachella and Mine Gala, the team spent two weeks creating a pixelated, scale recreation of the actual Brooklyn venue Elsewhere, which they dubbed Elsewither. Their primary goal? To provide some at-home quarantine entertainment with \u201cfun, unique, community-driven chaos,\u201d said Robin Boehlen, the org\u2019s community management lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interested parties could \u201cattend\u201d in a few different ways. Some watched on the video game streaming site Twitch. To really get into the action, though, you needed to log into Minecraft, plug in the proper server info and, voil\u00e0!, you\u2019d pop to life in a hallway and then explore the venue through your first-person viewpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Purchasing a VIP pass (with real money) allowed access to special cordoned-off parts of the venue and the chance to chat with the artists on the gamer hangout app Discord. Meanwhile, the nearly 100,000 unique viewers on Twitch were encouraged to donate money to disaster recovery org Good360, which ended up with roughly $8,000 in proceeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The primary method of communication was an enormous group text chat \u2014 the game doesn\u2019t allow for individual conversations \u2014 which mimicked crowd noise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt gives us an opportunity to play some fun stuff that we\u2019d never really play, even in a DJ set,\u201d said Anamanaguchi guitarist Peter Berkman, explaining \u201cno one\u2019s really expecting anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a first-timer, the experience can be equal parts fascinating and confounding. To avoid disappointment, it\u2019s best to think of it more like a video game than an actual concert \u2014 particularly since the music isn\u2019t actually live. Most of the fun comes from exploring the world, dressing up your avatar, hearing the curated set lists and engaging in the group chat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the bugs, Lamos thought the event might have brought the band\u2019s music to a new audience. \u201cI think this is a window to the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Nether Meant was much smaller in scale than Open Pit\u2019s other online festivals, it drew a much larger crowd. That\u2019s partly because American Football brought a new audience \u2014 but also because people stuck at home are thirsting for a communal experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n