You've Changed
I got a comment on the latest Facepalm from a discouraged viewer. He said I should go back to "How I was" on my old channel. I wanted to address him personally, but I have a bad habit of only commenting to negative criticism through the comments. But I'd like to address it here:
To put it simply, I'm no longer an expert at Minecraft. There was a huge chunk of time where I knew everything there was to know. Like, everything. I could have recited every fact from every wiki page from updates 1.6 (beta) and prior. And I still do retain a lot of that knowledge. But the game kept expanding in directions that didn't excite me and I eventually just stopped caring. I used to read the changelog and my heart would beat faster, wondering how the world I loved would be improved. But time and time again, it would just tell me the game was going a direction I didn't care about. Mineshafts and villages destroyed the feeling of solidarity that I loved. Graphical "optimizations" made the game run smoother, but destroyed the look and feel of the game with lighting errors and invisible chunks. The need for "experience" and "magic" shattered the illusion of "survival" and turned it into "fantasy". Because of all this and more, I stopped caring. I didn't even read the changelogs when I played. So I stopped being an expert. I was tired of Minecraft. I stopped playing on TheMinecraftMuse because I was no longer willing to represent Minecraft as part of my persona. To me, Minecraft was a hardcore survival simulator that rewarded perseverance, planning, and automation. Apparently, that's not what other people saw in it, so it evolved accordingly. It evolved away from me.
My problem isn't that it's a bad game. On the contrary, it's a pretty damn good game. It's just not what I was expecting.
So I'm going to take something from my childhood and apply it here. Imagine you're planning a paintball session with your friends. You talk about the field you're going to play in, the equipment you're going to use, and the alliances that you're going to make. You plan out the games and start making equipment for it. You get custom clothes with team colors, tie flags onto the end of sticks as objectives, and your excitement grows. But as the day gets closer and closer, things start to change. Instead of providing your own guns, suddenly everyone wants to rent one, so that it's fair. It may be better, but it's not "yours". Also, it turns out that too many people were complaining about the field that you usually play in. Apparently there's snakes there. So they decide to change it to an indoor course. Suddenly there's a lot more rules, and a lot less options. Sure, there are things like walls for cover, but it becomes less about stealth and camo, and more of a free for all. Oh and all that stuff you made is useless now. Then that one kid says he has a paint allergy or some shit, and everyone agrees to do lazer tag instead. No one is ever out for more than 30 seconds, score is kept automatically, and the guns are more accurate. Everyone wins, right?
...right?
On any other day, lazer tag would be perfectly fun... But you were expecting paintball. You were expecting to be lying in the dirt, ignoring the centipede that's crawling on your arm so that you don't get spotted. You were imagining the feelings of accomplishment after hiding for 20 minutes in the dirt just so you could get a jump on their whole team and return to your base victorious. You were imagining the fear that would overtake you as you hid behind a tree trunk while tiny paint-filled missiles whizzed by your head. Instead, you got lazer tag.
And so you trudge around the dark, smoke-filled course feeling lied to and disappointed while everyone gallops around you laughing and talking about how much fun it is.
The topping on the cake being that, as a YouTuber, there's that kid with a lazer gun saying "Sorry, I can't watch your videos any more. You've changed".
...
The irony is that most people want you to be yourself. But they also want you to please them. If those two things don't align, you either disappoint your fans or you "sell out".
Do you remember Kiershar? If you do, then you're probably one of "my generation" of Minecrafters. He was the first person to invent the gravity trap. His inventions were simple, and his videos were straightforward. He was one of the few people that I actually went to when I was starting out. Some of his videos have almost 5 million views, and you've likely seen one before. These days, he gets about 4,000 views on each video (Same as me), despite having about 5x as many subscribers. His problem is that being "good" at Minecraft is fleeting. It's what people want, and it's what people "respect", but it's temporary. The same person who "loves" your authenticity and skill will unsubscribe from you a week later because they got bored of Minecraft.
My true passion comes from making videos and telling stories. Minecraft is just a medium for that passion. There was a brief time when my unhealthy obsession with Minecraft overlapped with my love of storytelling, and that's where a lot of my fan base came from. If you watched Muse Farms, think about why you liked it. I doubt it was the builds, because nothing was really that effective. You probably liked it because of the storyline. The characters. Wiggles was always around for comic relief. Beednox (The dog) had a tragic death. I would do things that weren't related to building, such as visiting a grave site to pay my respects. In the end, it was a story about stalling, wasting time, and finally, about facing the inevitable "end". I actually approached the whole series as a metaphor for "retirement" and "death". Finally, my last miniseries, Minecapsule, was a reference to "Life flashing before your eyes".
ALL THAT BEING SAID: I need to get the fuck over myself. I may not have the same "love" for Minecraft that I used to, but it is easily my most effective medium. One thing that's missing from Facepalm is an overall narrative, but I can't control what Chris does, which means I have no real control over the narrative. Not in any way that I'm used to, anyway. So I'm keeping the focus of that show on the interactions between Chris and I. But I'm also working on the "story" for a new vanilla series. I think I'm pretty much over being bitter about what Minecraft "could have been" and I'm ready to accept it for what it is. I've actually been playing the 1.62 snapshot and enjoying myself quite a bit. I plan on playing it for a while longer to re-accustom myself to some of the changes that have happened while I was in my apathy torpor and then starting up a new vanilla series. I looked at possible custom maps, but... meh. I work better in an environment of my own creation.
Just like Rooster Teeth eventually got away from Halo videos, I will eventually need to transition away from Minecraft videos. I want this channel to be about quality, good editing, and storylines, either within the game, or that I bring to the table. But for the time being, Minecraft just so happens to be "my game". And until that changes, I will be producing videos for it.
Also my new music video is almost done, which I'm sure will get a few million views. So that's cool.