We Are Analyzing Discrepancies In “1000 Players Build Massive Civilization In Minecraft”
…because we are not real journalists
A few days ago I released two blog posts — one was about the recent Christopher Nolan movie, and the other was about a Minecraft video someone else made two months ago. I was curious which of the two would be more popular, and the crowd has spoken.
The Oppenheimer post has almost 2K views, which is quite a lot by Kurt Shiba Inu standards, and traffic remains heavy. Interestingly this is 97% external traffic, so I am glad I did not paywall block it. There was even a very small Twitter thread about it.
Nice! I can still embed Twitter posts. Interesting that I can do that, but I need an account to log in. This means the account block is probably easy to bypass. No negative comments, YET, and fortunately this post has been favored by SEO but not by the Medium algorithm. Whenever I invoke the Medium algorithm, hatred rains down. I can see the negative comment now: You IDIOT! I am a game theory quantum physics software engineer KING, and I did not read your blog post, but I can tell from my 40 years in the field that you do not adequately respect Oppenheimer. Kill yourself. Instead we have this interesting post.
I’ll have to google that later.
John von Neumann is something of a hero, at least in computer science circles, though his politics were controversial. I really was disappointed he was not in the movie, but all I found on Google was that no one else seemed to share my disappointment.
The Minecraft post, in contrast, got maybe a couple dozen views.
Over-Analyzing The Story
The “Desert Arc” storyline goes a little bit like this: The theocratic dictator, The Sultan, demands his subjects work tirelessly and surrender their food and crops; a democracy called Theria forms. The Sultan’s two trusted bodyguards, Davarit and Zombta, are twin brothers; one betrays The Sultan, joins Theria, and attempts to assassinate him but is killed; the second brother kills The Sultan in revenge. The remaining followers of The Sultan decide to join up with their allies in the “Snow Nation,” to oppose Theria.
In the beginning, this story seems to check out. The following are some pretty long POV videos from people in the same “story arc.” I will summarize them, but obviously you are welcome to check them out in their entirety.
Here is someone’s perspective living under The Sultan’s tyrannical rule. He is hunted down and killed by players who have no idea why he was targeted. Some YouTube commenters sarcastically say, “Well, that’s just the cost of blindly following orders.” This corroborates the view that The Sultan was a tyrant.
Then we have this, and it also seems to fit into the narrative. This man was an absolute, die-hard fan of The Sultan and loyally served at his side. He, as a trusted agent, was shocked and betrayed by Davarit, who was once his brother in arms. Then, in The Battle Of Aculon, he has the opportunity to fight for his allies against the traitors.
Then things get…interesting. In Ish’s “1000 Players” narrative that tied everything together, Davarit dies trying to kill The Sultan, Zombta kills The Sultan in revenge, and then Zombta successfully escapes to later die in the Battle Of Aculon. Here, we can clearly see that Davarit is still alive.
Finally we have this.
…which some people refer to as “The Sultanate Documentary, whereas Ish’s video is the Hollywood movie based on it.”
The Ish Narrative: The desert had two warring factions, The Sultanate and Theria. Davarit defected to Theria and tried to kill The Sultan. Zombta killed The Sultan. The Sultanate survivors supported Aculon
The EJK Narrative: The desert had two warring factions, The Sultanate and Theria. Davarit and Zombta BOTH betrayed The Sultan and managed to flee. EJK and the Sultanate survivors supported Aculon, but all they really wanted to do was kill Davarit and Zombta to avenge The Sultan
If you, like me, are obsessed with the story, all of this is starting to fall into place. If you are a casual reader looking at this, you are probably thinking, What? Who the hell are these people and why should I care?
Well, it could make for a pretty interesting fanfiction.
Ish’s story is fairly black-and-white. There are good democracies. There are evil dictatorships. The democracies win by dropping roughly 100,000 kilotons of democracy on their enemies.
I recently watched Andor, a TV series so good that I decided to never watch TV again because nothing will ever be that good. What makes Andor Andor, in my opinion, is that it also tells the story of The Empire. Are they good? Absolutely not. Are they relatable? Yes. The series is sometimes compared to The Banality Of Evil.
A central question in Star Wars George Lucas grappled with is how a democracy becomes a dictatorship. Hitler comes to mind, but the story plays out constantly in history. Rather than oversimplify, some questions one may ask are:
- How are people capable of such cruelty?
- Could our own country become something like The Empire? If not, what is preventing it? If so, how close are we?
- Why would anyone give into dictatorship? What motivates them?
Reconciling Plot Threads
This video is, in my opinion, the closest to being a self-contained version of Ish’s video. It depicts someone who gets disillusioned by The Aculon Empire and rebels against it.
Their arc is a bit like this:
- Elanuelo is the Big Bad. He runs a police state
- The other three nations form a united democracy and attempt a peace treaty with Elanuelo. Instead Elanuelo kills their beloved hero
- Elanuelo calls in his allies. They have the most advanced defensive fortress in history. The united democracy triumphs anyway
The main problem I have with Ish’s perspective is that EJK’s is more interesting. Ish is the reason this story is popular. Had it not been for Ish, the experiment might have just been the story of how a bunch of people in a Discord server decided to play Minecraft one weekend, then built a lot of random stuff until the admin got bored and deleted it.
Ish’s character motivation we go with is that The Sultanate members supported Elanuelo because they were allies, but EJK shows no evidence that they really interacted at all. The real reason he got involved is too meta for my taste, but it’s also really funny: They wanted to be main characters. If they went ahead with their plan to conquer Theria, the whole thing may have been dropped from the story; if they decided to fight in the Battle Of Aculon, they would get screen time.
Ish’s explanation, which I think he hoped would make for a good story, is that The Sultanate survivors would want revenge against Theria. The problem is that Aculon was seriously outnumbered and did not have a meaningful relationship with The Sultanate. It would make much more sense for EJK to just remain in the desert and attempt to conquer Theria, which is what he was planning to do.
Three ways this fanfiction story may be plausible:
- EJK and Defnd, from their respective Sultanate remnant nations, have absolutely zero desire to actually help in The Battle Of Aculon. Their true motivation is to immediately ditch the battle and find their Theria enemies. I think this would be a really fun plot line because it is reminiscent of one of the anti-climactic battles in Game Of Thrones, in which the battle consists of many soldiers running away from combat, but it would also be hard to take seriously
- Elanuelo lies to them. They have no idea just how many allies there are, but they are willing to put it all in the line for the promise of revenge
- The fanfiction simply makes stuff up about why The Sultanate would want to risk everything for Aculon — perhaps they rely on them for their critical supply of…um…snow. Notice how resource scarcity is not really a plot point? That is because this is Minecraft
EJK’s reaction to their “hyperadvanced defensive fortress” is hilarious to me. Ish frames it like they have managed to build an invincible structure. EJK’s reaction is more like: What the hell? Who designed this? A roof full of lava and a thin ceiling. WOW, WHAT COULD GO WRONG? All right, screw this, I’m out
Closing Thoughts
EJK makes it clear why he liked The Sultanate: His friend is killed by someone in Theria, and all Theria does is pay them off. Human lives = payment. EJK wants revenge, not payment.
Then The Sultan comes along with an iron fist, and he deals with trouble.
This is a good contrast to that Aculon story arc. One of their workers dies on some state project, and Aculon just pays them off. Human lives = payment. He becomes disillusioned and joins a rebel democracy.
They are effectively joining two opposite sides for the same reason.
