i was a minecraft blog before it was cool i swear (it was never cool) i dont tag spoilers sorry. fic writer. dsmp, 3rd life, empires, & hermitcraft currently.
it's so like. when someone who's never been into MCYT says they hate MCYT I roll my eyes sooo bad because like you don't GET IT you were never invested in this YOU DON'T GET IT AND YOU NEVER WILL... but when someone who obviously dearly loved MCYT like I did says they hate MCYT I hold them closely in solidarity because yeah man. fuck all minecraft youtubers and streamers
(id: two gifs of snails in minecraft, it is raining in both gifs. gif 1 is of a single snail slowly crawling toward a flower bush. gif 2 is four snails, two of them bumping into one another while a third peacefully crawls past in the background and one bigger red snail watches in the foreground. end id.)
I cant stress it enough but Yeah. He was nominated to minecraft streamer of the year and decided to change his last name to minecraft because obviously that would make him win it .
mcyt fans will be like yeah my favorite ship is the smart, nerdy twink and the big friendly hunk and all the other characters are supporting roles haha. and then you look at the characters and it's a genuinely intriguing look at manipulation and guilt and how it can lead people to dark, desperate places. and also the hunk is literally physically disabled but no one wants to talk about that because it's hard to draw yaoi fanart that incorporates a wheelchair
we need to reintroduce the concept of a "content play" to mcyt fandom because there are a lot of people unclear on why saying something behind the scenes ≠ actually changing behavior onscreen and why people almost never outright veto onstream bits even if they're uncomfortable
Okay, so: the Content Play is something we first saw demonstrated outright in an old Legundo video -- it's the Game of Thrones scenario,* y'know, pretty much one of the single best ones? Anyway. We're sure the term saw use before as well, but for us this is the first time we saw it acknowledged directly and by name.
* We will be returning to Legundo's run of Scenario SMP a few different times in this essay. It has been a long enough time that we feel its worth as a case study outweighs the risk of offending anyone involved.
The Content Play is based on the following principle: competitive MCYT series have the stated primary goal of "win the game", but the implicit goal is "make a good video". This is important for one reason -- playing a death game optimally is boring. The optimal play is either to slaughter everyone in a single go if you're good at PVP (which, to be fair, does look cool... if you're the person doing the killing), or to simply hunker down like a mole in a branch mine and skitter around the walls until you've reached critical resource mass and everyone has killed each other off, all while never speaking to another person.
Hence, the Content Play -- "telling a story takes precedent over optimal gameplay". This extends past the realm of death games, too -- building competitions, challenge runs, and even just "people hanging out" videos are subject to the whims of the Content Play.
Let's return to Scenario for a bit, though, since it's frequently at its most obvious form in the series. Instead of focusing on the actual namedropping of the term in GoT, though, we'll go back to an earlier one -- Zombie Apocalypse.
Partway through Zombie Apocalypse, everyone's comms light up with an announcement: Sean/Forge Labs (serial backstabber) has Kim, who has been tormenting everyone the entire Scenario thus far, trapped in a box. He calls out a location and tells people to meet him there if they want revenge.
Legundo, onscreen, says he is torn. On the one hand, Forge backstabs people like he has a quota to meet and he's behind for the month, and Legs has already experienced what that means for him at least twice now. On the other hand, Sean has put him in a very tricky situation from a storytelling perspective -- he alludes to this, but doesn't state it outright.
What Sean is doing here is setting up a situation in which the only story-viable move is to do something incredibly tactically unsound. The "smart" move would be not to play and simply to go find something else to do. Unfortunately, that turns the person denying the content play into the jerk -- there is a story beat that has been set up, and they are saying "no" and walking away for the sake of playing safer.
Legundo has a choice mechanically, but he doesn't have a choice narratively. He has to go see whatever Forge is up to, or he might miss out on an important plot beat for a video that is supposed to be more entertaining than it is supposed to be a candid recording of someone playing on a pseudo-anarchy server. As player, he can do whatever he wants to win the game provided it's within the established ruleset. As storyteller, the stakes are high enough that walking away would be insensitive or even outright rude -- and there is no alternative action that would be as interesting.
Forcing a content play is sometimes bit of a jerk move. People do it all the time, mind, and it is quite tactically advantageous to do so, but it is still a jerk move when done in excess. When someone "forces" a content play, they set up a situation in which the only "right thing to do" from a story perspective is exactly what they want other people to do, and anything else results in a "less compelling" story (or at least seems to do so in the moment).
In addition to innumerable times Forge does this throughout the course of Legundo's Scenario run, we might also consider Scott setting up a narrative arc for his character last-minute in Vampires SMP that seems to make killing him an unsatisfying conclusion, or Grian offering a life debt to Scar in Third Life, or the obstacle course the dead folks set up in the original S6 run of Hermitcraft's Demise, or every single one of Branzy's redstone games during Lifesteal. In less high-stakes situations this can also be as simple as flirting with another person onstream, or Doovid approaching someone with a ridiculous bit, or offering to pay someone with an IOU instead of tangible ingame currency.
And this is where things get tricky -- often, this is not done with intent to be rude. It is done with tactical intent, maybe, but it also might just be someone who's figured out an interesting plot beat they can hit and wants to approach someone with respect to that beat. But everyone in a series or stream group is keeping up the appearance of doing things consistent with their character -- (most) people (allegedly) don't like seeing the exposed artifice of kayfabe built on social convention.
Can you say no to a Doovid bit? Yes, but you've just turned down the ability for your viewers to experience The Doovid Difference. Can you say "hey, stop that" to someone flirting with you in-character? Yes, but you're very abruptly breaking kayfabe in a way nobody will have fun with. Can you walk away from a mutual enemy trapped in a basement? Yes, but you'll never find out what those folks were actually planning. Can you simply not run the deadly obstacle course? Yes, but then your viewers never get to see the deadly obstacle course people put time and effort into creating. Can you not play the obviously deadly murdergame Branzy has created? Yes, but then you don't get to see the obviously deadly murdergame or figure out how he's planning to cheat you this time, the rascal.
The flip-side of this is, of course, that there are ways to set up content play opportunities that aren't forced. In more narrative-driven series, a character might have a planned ending that works regardless of when and if they die, or deliver an ultimatum in such a way that someone attempting to ignore it becomes phenomenally compelling. In more tactically-driven series, you might set up a situation where someone can feasibly make multiple alliances and it's ultimately their choice who to team up with, or offer an obviously bad "deal" to someone where turning it down provides an interesting opportunity for a growing rivalry.
Doovid, despite his earlier mention, is actually very good at leaving people opportunities to do interesting bits in denying him the ability to do a bit. Squiddo's concept of "Squiddo's Law" may seem forced in some cases, but it also provides a failsafe opt-out in that it is equally funny for the ridiculous thing to not happen to an absolutely comedic degree. Scar's "friendship points" and offhanded threats in Third Life make an equally compelling story whether you buy in or refuse to do so.
For many people, this is enough. But sometimes, there are cases where the tactically-minded rush of getting people to do things that help you "win" in one way or another outweighs any guilt over making someone do something they may not want to.
In the second Purge scenario, Forge and Legundo are allied for a time. Legundo, knowing that Sean is probably going to backstab him, pleads his case narratively -- you always do the same thing to me, think about how interesting it'd be if we actually worked together for a change. He is making a counter-bid to the usual content play Scenario people choose of backstabbing Legundo and framing it as "he's playing smart, so I need to do this before he inevitably does it to me."
Sean, predictably, betrays him anyway. There's no tactical reason to keep someone around when you know exactly what they're going to do because they've said it out loud, and the ultimate "interesting story" is about how you win the game you're playing. Legundo is known by many of the Scenario cast members as an intelligent player who plans ahead, someone who plays the game smart. And because the smart thing to do in Scenario, the winning Content Play -- is to betray your friends and allies when it becomes advantageous to do so, Legundo must be a serial betrayer in his own right.
The only winning move against a forced content play is, frequently, to set up a situation in which it is disadvantageous both practically/mechanically and narratively/comedically to force your hand into a bit. Talking these things out behind the scenes only goes so far; people are relying on instinct when they get behind the camera, and fall back on habits they have (whether or not those are good habits at all).
Frequently, these reactions can look drastic with no context: blowing up your own base and/or farms, playing a character that's rougher around the edges or canonically unattractive to most people, locking off the End, retconning one or more major plot beats, ending a series early, lying about being related to someone else.
But, as we've hopefully established, the only way out of an obvious trap is to make it more interesting to avoid that trap than it is to jump into it. And sometimes, in order to do that, you either have to pull something pretty drastic... or live with just walking away and not knowing what happens.
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