The 100-person social experiment in MC.
We’ve talked a lot about Minecraft players’ stories.
Thanks to people’s unrestrained imagination and almost infinite possible game features, MC players build towns, research science, start wars, arrange performances, or challenge extreme survival under various resource constraints in this world.
From the release of MC in 2009 to the present, servers with various gameplays have emerged one after another. Some have been gradually eliminated by people in the process of the times, while others have been re-excavated by people and injected with new vitality, such as-simulating civilization in the MC world.
Simulated Civilization, or “Social Experiment,” is what most streamers who plan to make these kinds of MC videos call them. Although there are differences in many details, the gameplay is similar: a large number of ordinary players gather to build their own civilization on a server, and each simulation will lead to a different ending.
1
It started in 2012, when a Mod named Civcraft caused quite a stir in the overseas MC community at that time.
Civcraft’s first promotional video
The purpose of this mod is to “experiment the community, political ideology, debate and discussion”. Simply put, it is hoped that players who join can use trade, territory and other settings in the game to simulate the development of civilization in the real world, starting from the village. Gradually develop into a large country – just like the MC version of “Civilization”.
Country distribution map released by Civcraft in version 2.0
Player uploads city-state map on CivWiki
The way of trade and diplomacy between countries in the game is quite interesting, so it has attracted many people to join. But after several server crashes and massive upheaval among players unhappy with the update, Civcraft was officially a thing of the past in 2016 as staff retired.
Since then, players have tried to revive this gameplay, including various alternative servers and player patches, but the impact has never been as good as before.
Until the end of 2020, a YouTuber named MagicGum revisited a classic question in his video: What if people were trapped in the MC world?
In that video, he proposed two basic conditions that have a huge impact on simulating civilizations in the MC world:
- Players will not be revived as usual, but only have one life as in Hardmode.
- Maps are not infinite, nor are resources and boundaries.
Based on these two points, through reasoning and imagination, MagicGum finally came to the conjecture that surviving in MC is the same as surviving in modern human society.
Even if the world changes, people’s lives don’t change much. Daily technology can be replaced with redstone technology, and special maps such as the Nether and Hell will become strategic resources. Due to the existence of monsters and hunger, people still have to divide their labor and cooperate, gather together for warmth, and finally rebuild the country step by step.
This conjecture was enough to fascinate another group of players. Under their urging, MagicGum began to recruit players to try this simulation experiment.
However, the first experiment was unsuccessful, because MagicGum still failed to give up the setting of resurrection. The scenarios he simulated were basically no different from ordinary servers, and there was no cost to killing and dying. Even when he added the red name system to the system, the massacres became more frequent – because people quickly discovered that the more red the name, the greater the deterrence and power in the crowd.
In short, nobody wants peace in this world.
Player “IknowDeath” is resurrected, murdered, and finally leaves the game
Player “IknowDeath” is resurrected, murdered, and finally leaves the game
After reflection, MagicGum finally decided to rely on his own initial guess for the setting. Finally, nine months after the conjecture video was released, he uploaded this first successful experiment video.
MagicGum assigned the players who participated in the experiment to birth points such as oceans, deserts, and plains, and this time, the resurrection function was strictly limited. Whether it was falling to death or being murdered, there was no possibility for people to be resurrected again.
In order to manage the unruly guys, they also opened an exile island to exile these guys, and the name of this exile is: Australia.
Could this be a little too historical?
The experiment seemed to go fairly smoothly at first.
Due to the differences in resources and enemies between certain regions, players in some regions began to develop together almost immediately. In order to seek shelter faster, players in the jungle area established a community, set up a shared resource box in the settlement, and directly embarked on the road of communism.
For the administrator, the players also showed a considerable degree of cooperation this time, and even built a temple for them to worship.
This may be because MagicGum and others have intervened too many times in this game as gods. Players can talk to the protector of their own area at any time. If they are sweeter, they may get blessings from God.
Magic Gum I surrender to you (so use your magic power to conjure some diamonds for me)
Similar frequent interventions are also reflected in the rules of the game, perhaps because players are afraid of losing control again. The development goals set at different stages in the game, such as electing leaders and building cities, are directly assigned by administrators. player’s.
To simulate winter, MagicGum put a constant hunger debuff on all players. In order to promote people to set out for adventure, monster strongholds have been set up around the world for players to attack. The final winning goal of the game is to snatch the beacon on the map and bring it back to your main city.
The consequence of this is that although the game went smoothly and the players and the officials were very happy, this could not be called a civilization simulation experiment, but more like a speed-pass challenge between players.
2
MagicGum’s video has inspired many people. Although there are more entertainment elements than experimental spirit, this does not prevent everyone from following his ideas and continuing to make the gameplay of civilization simulation experiments more perfect.
Two months after the video of the MagicGum 100-person experiment was released, the YouTuber of the second successful experiment appeared. This video selected 200 players to join the same server, and let players choose where they want to be born in four areas: plain, desert, snow, and jungle.
In order to be more realistic, ish disabled special maps such as hell, and set up a border wall in the early stage of the game. The server will only be open for one hour at 7-8 pm every day – to avoid the rapid development of the liver emperor civilization. Apart from occasionally asking about the players’ situation and encouraging them to act boldly, ish basically does not interfere with any behavior of the players, and acts as an honest observer.
Facts have also proved that his choice is completely correct. The final effect of this civilization simulation experiment may be beyond everyone’s imagination.
Ish released the video on October 27, 2021. According to Google Trends, after the release of his video, videos of civilization experiments on YouTube became popular, and the number of searches for Minecraft Civilization began to peak.
At the beginning of the game, due to the abundance of wood and food, the jungle and the plains took the lead in developing production industries. On the plains, some players have built farms and pastures to provide everyone with sufficient food, while others are digging in the ground to find ore.
And the jungle players, once again embarked on the road of communism.
Familiar material sharing box
Due to the harsh conditions in the snowfields and deserts, players had to huddle together to keep warm, so they first produced their own leaders.
It is worth mentioning that most of the players who choose the desert are a group of survival bosses who have participated in various challenges before. When most people are still holding stone manuscripts and iron manuscripts, they have dug up a lot of desert terrain. Diamond resources. This paved the way for their later ending.
Death also began to appear, the first player accidentally fell to his death in the cave, and players in the snowfield area erected a tombstone for him.
Due to the server, the protection methods that players usually use to fall from high places such as “falling water” or “falling boat” will fail due to the delay problem. Although this led to the occasional death phenomenon caused by misoperation, it was also considered to have wiped out the strength level of some players by accident.
A player who tried to demonstrate his landing craft skills died
In addition to the player who was thrown to death, the second hapless person who died was ordered to be executed by the leader.
Execution scene, charged with stealing material to build a memorial to singer Cardi B
The first day of the game passed like this, and the next day the jungle and the plains also gave birth to their own leaders. The development paths of these two regions are similar but different.
The similarities are: Dictatorships and Democrats divide in both regions; The difference is: The jungle’s democrat leader 9209 managed to drive the dictators out of the colony, and the peace principle is ruled by the dictator player ewaj, The dissatisfied had no choice but to return to the original village to continue development.
So in the first clear world pattern, except for the snowfield, which was led by a player named solev, most of the other areas were split into two or three settlements.
The situation in the four regions and the main enclaves
Although there are differences in the desert, for development reasons, the two factions in the desert region agree to remain neutral and respect each other.
With a unified leader on one side and two factions coexisting peacefully on the other side, the development of snowfields and deserts began to accelerate significantly. In contrast to the increasingly stressful political environment in the plains and jungles, desert players even started to role-play in a friendly atmosphere.
This desert city called Soberon has set up a commandment card, “Praise my Lord three times a day”, “Porm eaters are killed without mercy”
So far, the entire simulated civilization world has taken shape. However, although it seems peaceful, various events that accelerate the progress of civilization are about to happen one after another.
The people of Soberon soon found themselves stealing materials and hunting livestock. Although they chased the thief out, he returned one after another to wreak havoc in the days that followed, eventually even stabbing the lord of Soberon at his chance.
After the incident reached the neighboring city of Amazon, they immediately assisted Soberon in killing the fleeing chaotic evil assassin. This event united the two cities in the desert area, and when the new lord of Soberon took office, the two cities became closer through constant talks and trade.
To commemorate the success, Amazon even took a photo with the assassin’s head.
A blissful sight – if you don’t count the head hanging at the back
The same is true in other regions, unlike the union of desert cities, the first insular war broke out between the two factions in the jungle region. The previously expelled dictator player led his followers in an attempt to attack 9209’s main base at night. However, the enemy was outnumbered, the dictator commander fell to his death in the middle of the battle, and the jungle was unified through war.
Then the jungle also entered an era of great development, and players began to build various buildings and facilities – but most of them were relatively unclear.
Like putting hundreds of ships in the water to slow down attackers’ graphics cards, or building raucous sound machines and giant “Among Us” statues in cities.
His Majesty! The wonder is wrong!
They also built a huge stone tower, and when the manager asked about it, they didn’t say much except to tell him it was called a “wooden fence.”
Who would have thought that this tower would later have great significance
At the same time, buildings of unknown significance began to be built, as well as the flourishing snowfield area under the leadership of the unified leader. They built a large temple for their protector (administrator) and worshipped him in it.
It’s some kind of sacrificial dance.
Although there have been a few small fights, generally speaking, it is still peaceful everywhere. It’s just that the style of the video has changed drastically here, and the butterfly effect has begun to prove its correctness again.
The cause of the incident was that a player in the Snowfield area believed that although the Snow King Solev appeared to be relatively democratic on the surface, he was an out-and-out tyrant behind the scenes. So the player secretly planned to unite the leaders of all other regions to form a secret global alliance to pressure Solev to voluntarily resign.
There is nothing wrong with the plan itself. Soberon and Amazon, the two countries in the desert, have agreed to join the alliance, and the dictator ewaj camp in the plains has also agreed.
The problem is that the player doesn’t know that the leader of the jungle, 9209, and the leader of the snowfield, Solev, have already established a secret alliance. So under the tip of the jungle, the player was finally executed. In the display of the later footage, the Snow King Solev sat on the high platform and said angrily, “They have already made their decision, so now it’s my turn.”
From the point of view of action, Solev really did what he said, because the dictator ewaj of the plains was assassinated on the same day. An assassin took the lead in showing his axe to ewaj. After the assassin was besieged and resolved, ewaj, who survived the disaster, was immediately killed by another player who suddenly appeared.
The two assassins, both from the same disaffected village of ewaj, formed a strategic partnership with the Snow King Solev, who wanted revenge.
So prepare well, ewaj doesn’t notice that there is another person aiming at him in the upper right corner
This is almost another Sarajevo incident, the plains immediately plunged into chaos, and the inhabitants of the small village, knowing that they were about to be retributed, immediately fled through the tunnel to the territory of the snow field. After the loss of ewaj, the dictator camp re-elected another leader, but this successor was immediately killed inexplicably.
Most of the plains residents began to flee to the other three areas, and the remaining players who remained in the plains formed a militia.
Desert players are nervous about the international situation, they are dissatisfied with the snow king solev’s practice of sheltering the murderer, coupled with many heavily armed snow dwellers landing in the desert area at will. Fearing that the solev would soon attack them again, the leaders of the desert held a vote to decide whether to strike before the war came.
After the resolution was voted on, the desert dwellers began to build fortifications and sent a troop of heavily armed troops towards the snowfields.
The attack was quite successful. Almost all the residents on the snowfield were wiped out. Solev took the remaining people and fled to the allied jungle area, and the snowfield completely fell.
On the jungle side, after learning that the war was imminent, a total martial law was imposed. The wooden fence they had been building before also showed its true colors at this time – a huge defensive fortress filled with magma in the center and filled with weapons and food.
So at the end of this experiment, the battle of the wooden fence began.
The desert army assembled their men and began to attack the fortress, initially trying to climb up the platform along the perimeter of the wooden fence, but the medieval fortification gave the jungle army a huge advantage. They poured magma from the top down, shot arrows from peepholes, and drove the desert army back.
In the end, the unbearable desert player gave up the bottom-up tactics and built a higher platform on the side, which was successful in breaking into the wooden fence.
The whole battle was fought from day to night, in the melee, the jungle leader 9209 was killed, and the snow king solev fell to his death from a height. The remaining jungle and snowy inhabitants began to flee the battlefield, the whole battle was drawn to an end, and the desert civilization became the final winner.
3
The reason why this social experiment organized by ish is successful is that there is no script for the whole game, electing leaders, starting wars – all actions and decisions are made by the players themselves.
Although in order to show the video effect, ish edited most of the places, and let the players make up some scenes afterwards, but these cuts did not cover the players’ voices. The whole video looks like watching a historical group drama starring 200 players.
Counting the entire game time, it only took 14 hours, but the events and characters that happened in it are enough for all players to remember it all the time.
In addition to the influential snow king solev and dictator ewaj, there is also a legendary player named LegacyAN in the video.
The legend to the whole video starts with his appearance
Not only did he gain a great reputation on YouTube, but after the video was moved to Station B, he was also respected as a “Mr. Wolong” by netizens.
From the beginning, he didn’t want to take part in any battles, he just wanted to live peacefully in the jungle with his parrot. So he left the crowd alone and lived quietly in a hut by the stream. With his keen sense of smell and overall situation, he predicted the coming of the jungle civil war in advance, and successfully escaped the catastrophe.
People heeded his advice and built a new city on the site of his hut, and in the process he led a team to kill a traitor who was about to betray the camp—and his reputation continued to grow. He received the remnants of the snow field defeated by the desert, escaped successfully at the end of the battle of the wooden fence, and finally returned to the peaceful life he longed for with his parrot.
Players like him who have participated in history but have swiped from the edge abound, but they are not small.
The biggest wish of a player in the desert area is to open a flower shop in the desert and sell petals of various colors to people, so that people can rest after work and war.
A player named zuffiii in the dictator ewaj camp has been helping his teammates to collect resources since the beginning. He has no understanding of the conflict between the small village and ewaj, and he does not care at all. Instead, he often went to what his teammates called the “rebel camp” to fight with the players in the small village, eat cake together, and dance with them to the music.
He even independently built a bridge of friendship to the small village.
After the plains were in chaos and the players in the small village fled en masse, he became unsure of whom to trust, so he decided to go out to find his friends. After returning without success, he had to join the plains militia, and finally died in the battle of the wooden fence.
After the end of the world war, the world returned to peace, but there were no players in the snowfield, and only a cemetery that was built by someone who is unknown.
RIP all the players who have survived on the snow field
The remaining people rebuilt new secret settlements in the jungle, and the desert civilization built various magnificent buildings and gradually became more and more prosperous. At this point, the video has ushered in the end.
4
Now people have more and more novel settings and rules that can be simulated. For example, in order to ensure the safety of leaders, the administrators distribute crowns that can increase the meaning of blood and power; or cancel regional differences, and instead give people a racial Different settings; or adding props such as resurrection totems in the game.
ish also stated that his next plan is to gather 1,000 people to conduct a prison simulation experiment. On March 15th, he tweeted that all filming was over, and the editing process began.
Even though a month has passed, there is no update news
Speaking of which, despite the title of social experiment, most of these videos don’t really set the background in the way of scientific experiments. Most of the players just put it into it as a large-scale role-playing game, whether it is a dictatorship or a democracy, it is just a way to choose a route.
Many people argue endlessly about the choices made by players in the game after seeing the video, mostly out of a “I can, I can” mentality – people always seem to be curious about the emergence of their own civilization, and are interested in participating in the game. This process is just around the corner. MC has inadvertently become a carrier of people’s desires, and a new civilization simulation may be the best interpretation of the creativity of the game world.
This article is reprinted from: https://www.yystv.cn/p/9061
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