We need to talk about the Minecraft community.

We need to talk about the Minecraft community.

Do you get the sense that the Minecraft Community isn’t quite right whenever I go to places where Minecraft is being discussed there’s so much anger so much vitriol I think you know what I’m talking about there’s a growing sense that we’re becoming a more harsh aggressive and hostile Community

Obviously not all of us but I don’t think I’m alone when I say I’ve sensed a trend hop on Twitter Reddit YouTube it kind of doesn’t matter I feel like people are angrier than they’ve ever been I’ve been playing Minecraft for well over a decade and I can’t recall a

Time when the rhetoric was quite like this it pains me to see what this community is doing to itself and I’ve started to wonder why is that how did we get here and I think maybe just maybe I have some explanations let’s go back in time specifically let’s Circle October

3rd 2020 this was the date when the Minecraft live 2020 live stream occurred for those of you out of the loop Minecraft live is an annual event hosted by moyang the developer of Minecraft it used to be iners but for obvious reasons the 2020 version was live stream only

There are many parts to the show including commentary by developers and content from the community the main event however is the announcement of what’s going to be in the next Minecraft update the features announced in 2020 were well amazing it’s the caves and cliffs update the theme of 1.17 was

Caves and cliffs after years and years of waiting the cave update was finally announced there would be several brand new biomes this included Lush caves with brand new plants and the spectacular dripstone caves was still flm mites and stalactites the cave shapes would be completely revamped with the possibility

For huge spaces and waterfalls amethyst geodes would be a rare find there was even the addition of a brand new metal copper the First new ore in nearly 8 years this copper could be used to create a telescope and lightning rods finally providing a way to protect wooden houses against thunderstorms as a

Building material it oxidized over time slowly changing its color to Green but it didn’t stop there an entirely new system called archaeology ology was announced players would be able to craft a brush and find Dick sites using the brush to discover ancient artifacts Pottery Shard could be un earthed and

Used to create new custom clay pots the star of the show was the new deep dark biome it contained a strange material called skull skull sensors could operate as Wireless Redstone fulfilling yet another long requested feature within the deep dark was a terrifying New Mob the warden which was totally blind and

Used sound to hunt a fascinating concept it was so strong that it could quickly kill even a player with full netherite armor for the first time in years there was something to be afraid of in Minecraft that wasn’t all though moang had listened to the community’s long-standing concerns with inventory

Bloat and had created a solution bundles which were sacks that could hold multiple items by the way candles were also spotted another requested feature oh and did you think that the mountains in Minecraft were too small well moang addressed that too with totally revamped Mountain generation there was even a new

Type of snow and the addition of mountain goats and the cherry on top was the introduction of the Axel a new mob that would help players fight underwater and could even heal them needless to say the hype was through the roof I can’t recall another time people were this

Excited so many new features and lots of them had been on the community’s wish list for a long time a cave update new Inventory management a challenging boss mountains that were actually big the promises were so unexpected so grandiose and so requested that the community was

Elated this was shaping up to be one of the best Minecraft updates ever and it came at a great time too after the misery and exhaustion of Co there was finally something to look forward to a light at the end of a long and dark tunnel the features announced for 1.7

Were ambitious too ambitious as it turned out in April of 2021 it was announced that caves and cliffs would be split up into part one and part two there were good reasons moang felt that they couldn’t deliver the update on time at a high quality level and we realized

That if we don’t release some of the features the more like complex features in Holiday there’s a risk that they will not be in like a good enough quality this was compounded by the considerable technical challenges that arose from the huge changes to World Generation the final issue was that releasing all the

Announced features would potentially compromise development team Health especially important during the continued pandemic with the caves and cles update we realized if we’re going to release all the features in the summer we would have to crunch a lot and we shouldn’t and we like we don’t want

To force anyone to work over time so it’s much better to make sure that the team feel as good as possible and are as happy as possible the solution was that caves and cliffs part one would introduce the new blocks and mobs giving developers more time to solve the

Technical issues in part two while this change was disappointing the community overall was very supportive of moyang moang provided three really good reasons for the delay and they were especially understandable given the recent botch launches of games like cyberpunk 2077 if it took more time to prevent a fiasco

Like that then so be it caves and cliffs part 1 was released June of 2021 and it contained the expected features a relatively small update but worth it if it meant that future updates would shine but some cracks started to show during the 2021 edition of Minecraft

Live streamed on October 16th it was announced that the deep dark and the warden would not be coming to caves and cliffs it had been delayed to the following update the Wild update there was also no mention of arch ology or bundles and when caves and cliffs part 2

Was released in November these features were both missing but not to worry the Wild update was going to have some fun new ideas including a more fleshed out deep dark there would also be the mangrove swamp biome in these swamps the Wild update signature new mobs could be

Found frogs and fireflies the frogs would even eat the fireflies in a very Charming animation oh yeah also they’re frog food yeah forgot to mention that they’re frog food these types of interactions would contribute to a stated goal for the wild up upd date finding unique identities for biomes

Another such biome would be the Birch Forest which would be light and peaceful with taller trees flowers and other adjustments the 1.19 update was released in June of the following year it did include the deep dark and the warden as well as several other features not announced in 2020 like the ancient

Cities these changes were well received despite the extended delay the deep dark had been expanded and improved far beyond what was initially announced unfortunately though there were still no bundles and no Arch ology to be found but more concerning was the fact that 1.9 was lacking features that had been

Announced at this year’s Minecraft live fireflies a fan favorite were missing from the final version the reasoning fireflies was originally part of the plan for the Wild update we wanted them to be a food source for the new Frogs but then we got great feedback from you

Guys in a lovely community and you taught us that a lot of species of fireflies and firebugs that are out there are poisonous to toads and frogs and of course we didn’t want to add that into our game so we provided the frogs with a safer food source the tiny

Slimes and fireflies are sadly no longer part of the plans for the Wild update that’s right an entire mob was removed because they were poisonous to frogs to many in the community this explanation felt Hollow why not just make the frogs not eat the fireflies was this really a

Good enough reason to cut the mob alt together the irony is that the replacement food source magma cubes which are eaten to produce a Frog Light wouldn’t frogs eating molten magma also be bad for them the reasoning provided by moang confounded many players but fireflies weren’t the update’s only

Missing feature remember that Birch Forest Improvement Agnes talked about that was gone too why at Minecraft live we did show some concept art with Birch Forest improvements however concept art is not the commitment and this time around Birch Forest Improvement is not something that we have continued working

With now let’s go back and take a listen to ages during the announcement we also want to focus or have focused on biod diversity so we want to find like a unique identity for different biomes for example the Birch Forest as you can see in this beautiful concept art so in the

Bird Forest we want it to be like light and peaceful and the Sun reaches the ground the trees are taller and the flower flowers things like that it’s really beautiful it looks very Swedish in the bir Forest that’s true that’s actually very Swedish Forest why spend so much time talking about something

That’s just a concept why mention that a focus for the update is finding unique identities for different biomes and then give several specific details about how the Birch Forest would be a great example of that then to suddenly say concept art is not the commitment well that calls into question the entire Liv

Stream at best it’s clumsy at worst it’s disingenuous isn’t everything we’re seeing on screen a concept can we trust moang when they say anything the the tone felt really demeaning like we were being talked down to for what was a very logical thing to assume would be added

And I think this was an inflection point of sorts in terms of the growing Community discontent the positive Goodwill towards moyang had begun to evaporate people started to realize that this was not the only error they’d committed it had been well over a year and a half since caves and cliffs was

Announced and there were still major features that were nowhere in sight archaeology forget it they haven’t mentioned it since 2020 bundles who knows it seems as though moang no longer cares about Inventory management problems and Now features that have been recently announced are also getting cut with unsatisfactory reasoning wouldn’t

Figuring out if lightning bugs or poisonous to frogs take about 15 minutes of research why even mention the Birch Forest on a show specifically designed to provide announcements about a future update did they not think these features through are the moing developers incapable of implementing these features or are the announcements intentionally

Misleading but just 1 month after the 1.19 update was released gasoline was about to to be thrown on the simmering Community sentiment a new feature was announced for 1.19.1 Java Edition chat reporting in a break of longstanding java Minecraft tradition it would soon be possible to report other players in

Online sessions even on private servers these reports would be seen by a team of investigators who could Dole out punishment as they saw fit while similar systems exist in most online games some in the community felt that mang’s implementation had issues take for example the reporting categories you can

Report a player for promoting alcohol a substance that is legal in almost every country in the world there’s a category for false information would claiming that you saw Herobrine in your world get you banned what about profanity what counts as profanity the lack of context and detail regarding this system

Bothered many it would be easy enough for there to be a message that in isolation appeared to be a threat to others saying that you’re going to kill someone in a PVP match could be taken out of context and reported as a serious threat some in the community fear the

Worst and the initial lack of transparency by moang did not help and the negativity and anger was Amplified Beyond where it had ever been on YouTube the videos went on and on with major creators expressing their displeasure with the change some pronounced a dark future for the game they lambasted the

Terrible rules a terrible feature a failure you will get banned this is the end of Minecraft things are getting worse Microsoft is destroying Minecraft does Minecraft not have much time left Minecraft is ruined Minecraft’s downfall has begun Minecraft is dying it’s still dying it’s already dead Minecraft Bedrock sucks Minecraft isn’t fun

Anymore oh yeah did you hear Microsoft will delete Java no seriously Java is cancelled it’s ending your Minecraft accounts are being Deleted okay listen yes there are some valid criticisms of the game and the way that moang has handled itself but there’s something else at work here a negativity bias negative videos get more clicks more engagement we pay more attention to negative headlines than positive ones you clicked on on this

Very video because it works negativity is addicting our brains want it and while that doesn’t mean there can’t be negative things it’s possible to go too far with it and this synergizes with an overall negative Community sentiment when people are upset at moyang they make negative content which causes the

Community to further refine their negativity which provides even more of an audience for additional negative content and the cycle continues if it goes on long enough the negativity starts to become way too big for the issue at hand is chat reporting different from what had been done

Additionally yeah of course did it have potential issues sure but it was done with the intention of keeping people safe from the dangers of online gaming it wasn’t some diabolical plan I do believe it genuinely had good intentions but if you look at the community you’d think that moyang had removed the

Creeper or something the response was way overblown for the issue at hand that was the state of the Minecraft Community we were prepared for negativity and we viewed the world through that lens 5 months later Minecraft life 2022 occurred this time time moyang changed how they approached the announcements

For the new updates Having learned from the past mistakes of over promising and underd delivering this Minecraft live would only show features that were far in the development process presumably close to being released in a snapshot while this was logical it did result in a set of announcements that felt

Somewhat underwhelming there were new default skins bamboo wood hanging signs camels and well that’s about it unsurprisingly there was some disappointment to many the lack of announcements felt underwhelming and while it did cause damage in the long run I think some of us missed that sense of hype from 2020 when several long

Requested features were announced and it once again brought to the Forefront the continued and consistent failure to deliver features from that show it had been two full years and there wasn’t so much as a hint of bundles things announced now were just retextured wood new skins a slightly different horse why

Even bother talking about the update at Minecraft live would it have been better to just say nothing now we reached Minecraft live 2023 which was just a few months prior to the release of this video this was the shortest Minecraft live lasting only 50 minutes and I have some doubts as to

How much of it was actually live at all but that’s a different conversation few new features were shown once again only things that were relatively close to completion this shortened presentation format brought more Focus onto an element that I haven’t been mentioning much the mob votes the Minecraft life

Tradition is to present several potential mobs that could be added to the game and have the community vote on which one they like the best this system has had its fair share of controversy perhaps most memorably with the dream situation in 2020 since then the mob votes had ballooned in popularity with

Turnout increasing each consecutive year while there is some advantage to the community getting to decide the future of Minecraft there’s a clear disadvantage as well 2third of the presented ideas are not added to the game despite mang’s perplexing decision to occasionally offer hope that the losers will return it has never happened

This creates a sense that if the mob you loved failed to win it was gone forever the 2023 vote was especially notable because the mobs included several long requested features the armadillo could be used to craft wolf armor the penguin would be able to increase boat speed and

The crab would drop a claw that would extend the block placing range of the player a mechanic that had not been changed in a decade this combination of possibilities felt especially bad because these were all improvements that people had been requesting is extended reach better than wol armer that’d be a

Pretty huge mechanical change especially for Builders but if the crab one would tamed wolves forever be naked why would mowing Force us to sacrif rifice the losing features why do we have to choose on online communities such as Reddit it seemed as though the crab was going to

Win users could select flares for a specific candidate and team crab was chosen by nearly 50% compared to 30% for the armadillo and 20% for the penguin for those on the subreddit the choice was clear extra placing range was easily better than wool farmer or boat speed but when the vote actually happened

Something different occurred the armadillo won by a landslide beating the other two mobs by 10 percentage points for some this was a shocking development how could this have happened and the toxicity was cranked up another notch I saw this firsthand on my Discord server they came up with ridiculous

Explanations some said that it wasn’t a level vote and people with more playtime should have more say apparently not everyone’s opinion is equal value maybe because people voting were too young or they didn’t fully understand the game and were casuals the excuses were varied in plentiful anything other than

Accepting that their preferred mob lost fair and square and this right here is an excellent example of a phenomenon that has been affecting everything I’ve mentioned in this video so far there’s a tendency for online discussion forums of games to gravitate towards certain conclusions this generates beliefs that

Are held by many in the community and as you spend more and more time in these online spaces you slowly start to think that this sentiment represents the beliefs of the broader player base if most people you talk to online say a similar thing then surely everyone who

Plays the game also thinks that thing but here’s the reality if you’re talking about a video game online you’re already in a relatively hardcore group of players of that game you have an interest Beyond just playing it you want to discuss it to see how others are

Playing it to compare it to yourself finding an online community where you can do that is a really great thing it’s so much fun sharing your passions with others however it’s important to remember that these discussions are not necessarily representative of the overall player base they instead represent that hardcore group The People

Willing to spend time in their day discussing a video game with strangers most who play the game aren’t like that they don’t browse the subreddit they’re not on Discord they don’t watch YouTube videos about the game and this is especially true for an exceptionally popular game like Minecraft while

Sources vary approximately 160 million people play the game per month the Minecraft subreddit has 7.4 million subscribers the most popular Minecraft live the biggest Community event of the year has only about 10 million views these are all a tiny subset of the total number of players the fact is most

People who play Minecraft don’t care about the things the hardcore Community cares about they might not even be aware of events like Minecraft live I’ve talked to a lot of people in real life who enjoy Minecraft but don’t know things that would be considered very basic by a more serious player things

Like how to build a nether portal what was added in the last update or even the fact that Java and Bedrock are different versions and forget about chat reporting the average player probably neither knows nor cares about it for a lot of people Minecraft is just a fun relaxing

Block building game it’s not something that requires extensive thought or research to play instead it’s an enjoyable way to pass the time but when you’re on Twitter Reddit or Discord you’re not with those types of people you’re seeing a limited subset of the player base a subset that watches every

Move moing makes a subset that develops its own culture of thoughts and ideas about the game and one where angry voices are Amplified and repeated again and again a place where negativity can fester and snowball this entire video we’ve been watching the reactions of this group of serious players now let me

Be clear I’m in this subset I’m a relatively Hardcore Minecraft player I’ve been playing since the alpha days and I care deeply about about the future of this game I enjoy talking about it online and making content about it but I also recognize that I do most of my

Minecraft discussion in a bubble of similar people a place where there’s a growing culture of anger and frustration and it’s so easy to get sucked into this negativity clicking on Angry YouTube videos reading comments posting your thoughts and if we aren’t careful these places can become an echo chamber

Negativity Builds on itself and breeds more and more negativity the default state becomes angry frustrated irate I think it’s important every once in a while to take a step back and seriously think about the communities that you’re a part of is there a set of prevailing existing beliefs do you ever

See people with dissenting viewpoints are those perspectives considered or are they immediately discarded does the community demonize those who are different or consider them less important than the people within the community is there a tendency for reactions to become overblown where relatively minor things are elevated to unnecessary Heights unfortunately I

Think some of this is happening in the Minecraft Community our journey to this point was the the sum of a lot of little things some of it was caused by actions made by moyang the decision to scrap fireflies the poor roll out of chat reporting the teasing of impactful

Features behind mob votes some of it was bad communication the large overpromise during Minecraft life 2020 the poorly explained Birch Forest concept art it’s so frustrating because it’s not just one theme it’s a slow cumulative build once it gets going it’s hard to slow it down and unfortunately I think it still might

Get worse however I have a susp that I’m not the only one who looks around and asks myself is this really the kind of community we want to be is this what Minecraft is all about is this negativity and anger the best use of our time this is a complicated problem and

It’s a problem that isn’t limited to the Minecraft community no this is much deeper if you look around you’ll find that other communities are in a similar State sometimes communities about things that are way more important than Minecraft I can’t tell you why this is happening but I do think that it’s a

Serious problem perhaps the one positive take way is that those people I talk to in real life who play Minecraft casually aren’t feeling this way they’re enjoying the new cherry blossom biome they’re figuring out ways to outsmart the warden they’re creating new houses out of bamboo maybe just maybe those people are

Doing something right maybe we as a community need to learn from them close Reddit close Twitter and go build a cute little house take a step away and remember that we’re all humans who are passionate about the game I’m a human the users on Reddit are humans the

Developers at moang are humans let’s just take a breath we are the Minecraft community and we control its future I truly hope that we will choose a different path than the one we’re on right Now thank you so much for watching this is a topic that’s been on my mind for several months now and I hope you enjoyed this analysis as always please leave your thoughts in the comments I’m really interested to hear how you think about this do you feel the same way as I

Do about the community is this a problem you’ve noticed I want to know let’s talk about this together this has been Retro Gaming now thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you all in the next video have a great Day n

Do you get the sense that the Minecraft community has become increasingly toxic, angry, and hostile? Why is that? I think I might have some explanations.

All quotes in this video are from real people, but do NOT search for them or harass them.

Link to the RGN Discord: https://discord.gg/retrogamingnow

Music by RetroGamingNow:
“The Depths” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYLE1YghV1E
“Gemini” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O9gkVTXxz8
“The Watcher” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgqi0diIx30
“Unknown Enigma” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7vshK288xY
“A Secret Mission (Outro Theme)” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Og02e7XFuro

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