Celestale
Cité des Nations
The first international Minecraft event produced by Skytale, the team behind Celestale
100 streamers, 5 nations, 1 map, a week of live play. A co-production by Siphano, Endorah and Skytale, from 1 to 8 August 2021.
An event beyond the norm
Cité des Nations moved Skytale into another category of projects. 4 months of production, more than 60 people, and an audience across 5 countries. The figures speak for themselves.
Weekly recap by TheGuill84, 2.3 million views
100 streamers, 5 communities
The cast brought together influential figures from each country's Minecraft scene. The list stands here as a record of the event.
5 nations, 5 monuments
20 streamers per team, each based around a monument emblematic of its culture, rebuilt with documentary care by the Endorah teams.
France
Italy
Germany
Spain
United States
At the centre of the map, the city concentrated everything. A market to sell resources, a river dedicated to the triathlon, 2 arenas, and spaces laid out for each event.
Conceived as an Olympic village, it remained a shared living space where each country kept its visibility. Its outskirts were also zones of constant tension, where players waited to steal teams' resources before they could reach their safe houses.
Where Cité des Nations comes from
The cité format is one of the oldest in the French-speaking Minecraft community. Cité des Nations belongs to that lineage and takes it to an unprecedented scale.
A heritage of cités
It all starts with the Cité des Sables, created by Zelvac. Gather, trade for emeralds, win with the biggest treasure. A simple principle that inspired a whole generation of events.
La Cité des Cieux
Skytale's first major production, designed as a real game. More than 200 players, 96% satisfied, and the attention of a leading creator, Siphano.
The meeting
Siphano wants to go a step further, to bring together 100 streamers from 5 countries. He entrusts development to Skytale and construction to Endorah. 3 crafts for a single project.
A cité reimagined as a real game
The classic principle fits in one sentence, gather to trade for emeralds. Cité des Nations enriches it to give every player a role within their team.
Gathering
The most classic path. Teams set up their bases, build farms, then carry the resources to the merchants of the central city.
The daily events
Every evening, at peak audience, a minigame brings the teams together in the central arena. The rankings pay out emeralds and create the highlight of the day.
The emerald hunt
100 emerald blocks hidden in the scenery. A tiered system rewards the teams that find the most, and pushes players to explore every corner of the city.
How far we pushed the balancing
Balancing is the heart of an event like this. We had to make several approaches worthwhile in parallel, and hold attention for 7 days, for players and viewers alike.
3 ways to produce, all viable
- Fully automated factories that run in the background without the streamer.
- Semi-automated factories, more profitable in exchange for manual work.
- Manual methods, including fishing, highlighted to connect the player to their character.
Bases that evolve on screen
The first days, sugarcane fields and pens. The following days, machines take over and the bases become miniature industrial sites. This visible progression tells a story and makes viewers want to come back every day.
3 game modes at once
Survival, minigame and spectator coexisted on the same server, each with its own rules, constraints and rights. Running these 3 modes simultaneously was one of the project's major technical challenges.
Balancing that shifts every day
The travelling merchants changed regularly, the balancing varied from one day to the next. Teams had to constantly reassess their strategy and spot the opportunities of the moment.
9 events in 7 evenings
Every evening, a special event broke from the farming routine and brought the whole audience back to the same point on the map. Teams picked their champions, the others watched as spectators.
The Triathlon
By far the most complex event to build. A race across the whole city, mixing an animated course, a boat race and a horse race, with bonuses and penalties able to overturn the ranking at any moment. A considerable feat of orchestration and staging.
Pitch Out / Knockout
Push opponents into the void, with a stick up close and a bow from afar. Players are invincible, they can only knock each other back, and everything must stay in the arena.
King of the Hill
Hold a zone as long as possible while the others try to push you off. Positioning matters as much as fighting.
The PvP arena
A direct clash in the city's closed arena, crowd packed in the stands, nations face to face. No way out, last one standing wins.
TNT Run
A race over platforms that collapse underfoot. The last one standing wins.
Jump
A technical jump course where the slightest mistake sends you back to the start.
Thimble
A pure precision event, where timing makes all the difference.
Treasure Hunt
A themed exploration of the city, with a reward for the most observant.
The Great Dragon Hunt
The grand finale. Every nation gathered one last time to hunt the dragon unleashed above the city, through a night of fragile alliances and final flashes of brilliance.
The verdict, Sunday 8 August
An intense week, marked by dramatic turnarounds and a France-Germany duel that stayed in memories. On the evening of the final day, the definitive ranking falls.
The official Skytale recap
Our own retrospective of the week, from kickoff to the final verdict.
What Cité des Nations left behind
The Skytale Map Editor
The game's entire engine ran on a plugin built for the event. That constraint revealed a need, the ability to iterate without going through code for everything.
From there was born Skytale's in-house game editor. Cinematics, animations, music, voice-over, object physics, everything becomes accessible to non-technical creators, directly in-game. It is the project's most lasting legacy, used on all our games since.
A reference in the community
Cité des Nations became a landmark of the Minecraft community, in France and internationally.
The event placed the studio among those able to produce ambitious experiences with no commercial budget, by mobilising a collective of enthusiasts.
Who made Cité des Nations
A 3-way co-production, more than 60 people working continuously across Skytale and Endorah, and a network of partners and volunteers to serve 5 language communities.
Siphano
The casting of the 100 participants, international coordination, communication and the live broadcast during the week, plus a contribution to game design.
With Falc0rn and Prototype.
Endorah
The map, the monuments, the terraforming, the scenery, the cinematics and the renders. Work organised in teams mobilising more than 30 people.
InoRyth, bigbublle, adrichefclan, SolHeaven, TaMyS, Cryzopha, Blackreed, Helione, Hyperlive, and many others.
Skytale
The proprietary game engine, the infrastructure, gameplay balancing, and support on communication and studio production.
The team behind Celestale.
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