These days, Civilization videos are huge. I put 300 players on a survival island in Hardcore Minecraft. But go back just a few years and the format didn't even exist. Clearly a lot has happened in that time.
And it all starts with MagicGum. A random teenager who went to debate club in high school. But he learned a lot through it.
For one, how fascinating politics could be. But also that at their core, it's just the study of human behavior. Do you support gay marriage? No.
I really enjoyed talking to Magic for this, because he's such a deep thinker. After entering college, Magic was scrolling YouTube, when he stumbled across a clip that would change the course of his career. Do you think that it's still possible to start a channel on YouTube in 2020?
It's funny you saying that to me, because I know you know the answer to it. Um, yeah. So Magic was hooked, but he struggled to figure out what to make.
His two main interests, politics and gaming, didn't have much overlap yet on YouTube. Unless you count racist gameplay commentators. You f***ing reside in f***ing Mexico! But thinking in his brain, he realized he could just combine them himself. He started a new series on his channel and called it Trapped in Minecraft, each month covering a different aspect of world history.
Instead of just explaining it though, he theorized about what would happen if humanity was instead confined to the game. I remember thinking I was so cool for watching him because he was like kind of niche at the time. Every time he posted though, a variation of the same comment would rise to the top.
That's cool theory, but why don't you actually try it? He realized though that they had a point. He decided to make the trapped SMP. The goal was to test if his theories would actually play out.
So what I'm doing is adding different twists into the server. that drive unique player interactions. Apparently, so many people joined, he had to retroactively cut the promo out in YouTube's editor.
But, within only a few hours of the server's launch, it all started falling apart. Players quickly figured out there was no point in building since it'd just get grief, so some of them tried to be smart by building underground, but other, more annoying people just downloaded x-ray to kill the first guys. One especially aggressive player was actually Clown Pierce, who got his start on YouTube by going around and... killing people.
So to fix these issues, Magic eventually came up with two systems. First, claim blocks. This made building a lot more realistic since it wouldn't immediately get grief. And secondly, a reputation system, which tried to emulate real life decision making and reduce the constant killing. These were great, but no they weren't, they made it worse.
Na na na boo boo. Bro, get back here! Bro, why'd you stop chasing me?
Yo, my bad. Yo, they'll be fine with that. Trapping people literally became the new meta, and the reputation system wasn't much better off.
People wanted theirs to be bad as a badge of honor. I could just punch Brad Pitt. It got to a point where sometimes Magic would spend 10 hours a day just fixing little problems and bugs, which holy shit, been there.
Nobody can keep that up for long, so he came up with a new idea. He completely changed the format to an event. Since Magic had hosted a few events before, he thought there was potential. In addition to the server only being open for a few hours, he split players across biomes to see how it'd impact each group.
This would determine if his theories were correct. Offline griefing stopped completely since everyone was online the whole time, and to get people to cooperate, he threatened to jail criminals in Australia. Which somehow worked. To make the video more interesting, everyone was put in hardcore mode, and random disasters were scheduled to happen every so often. Since so much had gone wrong in the past, Magic was super, super, super nervous it would happen again.
And in the end, it went okay. There were these barrier blocks to supposedly limit players to trade routes and they were guarded by these ridiculously strong NPCs that wiped out an entire civilization, but it's fine. F*** those guys. It went great.
After a thousand hours of editing or something like that, he sent the first draft of the video to a couple of his friends. They both really liked it and thought it had huge potential, but Magic wasn't as confident. It was a pretty big departure from anything else he'd posted.
He still decided to go through with it though. And in the end... ZOO!
It did better than I think anyone could have expected! And it even hit trending and you're never gonna guess, Australia! With the amount of views this video got, Magic immediately knew other people were gonna copy it. But he also knew it wouldn't really catch on until a second person replicated it successfully. That person was Ish.
Now would be a good time to mention that I spent weeks talking to multiple YouTubers to make sure everything was right in this video. And they're all terrible people, so it was really a chore. So because these videos take so long to make, I've decided to launch a Patreon. And it gets you some cool stuff. Stuff like your name in the credits, private Patreon chats, and whatever bonus content I make.
And if you get the higher tier, you'll get access to the Skyboy Videos Discord, where you can watch my videos early and give feedback if you want to. On top of that, you'll get a director's commentary with each video I make. If you choose to support me, it genuinely does mean a lot. And there's some more info justifying why I'm doing this on the Patreon itself.
And for the record, I had this planned long before Jet and Caleb launched their stupid f***ing Patreons. And guess what, Jet? Mine doesn't break the EULA. Prior to all of this, Ish's channel didn't even focus on Minecraft at all. He just saw Magic's video and was like, This is cool, I wanna do that.
But he had several new ideas he wanted to add. First, he doubled the player count. This was because he wanted enough of them to be in totally separate groups, each confined to a different custom island.
And probably because it looked better in his title. He also decided not to force people to be on a team just because they spawned together. They could do whatever they wanted.
But... there was a problem. Where the f*** do you find 200 people?
He was just some random dude, like there's no army of fans waiting to participate. Eventually, he just decided to send invites to everyone he knew on Discord. Every corner of his friends list, from MrBeast contestants to a- GTA roleplay server.
But there was actually a massive advantage to this approach. Since he knew everyone personally, they'd actually listen if he told them not to do something. So since rules basically enforce themselves, that left room for players to make a really interesting story.
Once the video was done, Ish made the bold decision to ask Magic himself for thumbnail advice. Yo, I stole your video. Is this good? You want me to like help you steal it?
Yeah. I think you should remove the red line in the middle. Maybe Magic should have been more cautious at first, but Ish's video was much more focused on the story, while his was really about analyzing human behavior. So, with Magic's consent, Ish published his video, and once again, it did insane. The floodgates were now open.
What would happen if 100 players were split onto four separate islands? 100 Spider-Men from different dimensions will be trapped in-Being the source of so much inspiration, and copying, Magic was forced to figure out how he felt about it. I think overall copying is good because rising tide lifts all ships.
Like when Ish uploads a video, I get a boost as well because he creates pretty good content. The problem really comes when the content farms come in and make things repetitive. It makes that viewer not really want to watch more.
Among all the different YouTubers on the civilization trend however, one really stood out from these content farms. Like literally when he came onto the scene, everyone switched from copying magic to him. None other than... How f***ing long does it take this song to finish?
Yeah, I'm talking about this guy again. It's Speed Silver. Unlike Ish and Magic, Speed Silver was already very established.
Usually his videos were just him playing Minecraft with a twist, which he liked because he could design the twist in really interesting ways. But when he stumbled across these new Civilization videos, he found them much more interesting. I mean, the idea of his game design influencing entire groups of players was fascinating to him. So, he decided to try it himself.
He started by adding Proximity Chat, which allows for tons of fresh scenarios. I hear you! Are you talking about me?
Truly just really fresh scenarios. SpeedCypher also noticed those like world events in Civilization videos leave a lot to be desired. So he added some, in my opinion, much better ones.
And since he grew up on Hypixel, he realized Civilization events were actually pretty similar to one of the minigames on there. MegaWalls. I mean, it definitely wasn't made to simulate Civilization, but it was at least close enough to borrow some ideas.
When players joined the server, they were given the choice of three classes. And now that everything was planned out, he could test things for real. He got the players together to record it, but one team rocked up and practically f***ed every other civilization. Okay, in SpeedSilver's words, they approached it like a competitive tournament, and it was boring. So he decided to cast a bit wider of a net.
He tweeted to all 20,000 of his followers that he was looking for participants. And this ended up being a very good decision. Not only because his tweet did numbers, but because of one of the players in particular. Eyes. When the second recording started, IZ went on a massive power circle arc with another player, dethroned him, and sent his entire newly acquired nation on a path of war.
The final battle had now begun. Oh my god! The game will have now filled 5 desert players, and the desert begun to panic. However, AbstractZombie escaped from his boat and started chasing eyes, joining the team of 8 desert players who were trying to take him down. The plot was fantastic.
During the editing process though, he realized that having like a hundred perspectives is way more work than it seems like. But since he was so fired up, he actually promised to let his editor out of the dungeon if he finished on time. I could give you the whole spiel about it was a big swish in content and it might not work, but the video followed the same pattern as Ish and Magic before. It absolutely blew up.
With three completely separate creators getting a ton of views off of it, it was clear this concept was a golden opportunity. And after Speed Silver hopped on, it really picked up steam. TommyInnit did it by f***ing with players and also laughing a lot.
Sipover did it with a bunch of top redstoners and put a heavy focus on the actual Minecraft mechanics. I believe his is actually the most viewed. Unless you count Grox, who did it by being Grox.
It even spread to other genres entirely. Put them on a replica map of the earth to simulate civilization. Transform this space into a complete Minecraft world. But I don't think Sipover, or Ish, or MagicGum could have predicted the DM they were all about to receive.
We're planning to film a social experiment or a civilization simulator video on the MrBeast gaming channel. It's loosely based on yours and Magic's video concept, as we wanted to invite you to be one of the seven team captains. Why again did you ask me to sound dramatic? Shut the f**k up. A bunch of civilization youtubers, some kids youtubers, Poland and like...
FitMC, for some reason, would each lead one of the civilizations in MrBeast's video. For a lot of them, I imagine this felt like the culmination of their careers, including MagicGum. I mean, MrBeast inspired him to start YouTube, and now MagicGum inspired MrBeast right back. Captains, this is our final meeting before the Great War.
Is there any last words? You're all dead! They're all in our land right now, they're all in our land.
Oh, Plains is dying! Yellow's also coming in, and purple! Yellow and purple!
Plains is gonna die! Keep going, keep going, keep going! You're ready!
So much happened during those two days, most of which actually didn't make the final cut. I would know, I was there. Several people used auto-fish hacks throughout the event, and I honestly can't find it in my heart to blame them. God, I hate how I talk. This video's long deleted, by the way, but it does cover one other interesting thing.
You can't really see it very well here, but... Look. I don't know if it was a hacker, but we died to a f***ing glitch! Even if MrBeast's editors did just skip to the battles, the video was fine, I guess.
I mean, it's MrBeastGaming, it's not usually my thing. These days, the trend still gets decent views, but it's nowhere near what it once was. Since MrBeast's video, Magic's gone on somewhat of an unintentional hiatus.
He was working on some server that was really difficult and it's on hold right now, and he's been living life and learning new things. He said he's coming back soon, but after last time, I'm not trusting that and not giving a date. But between Magic's hiatus, SpeedSilver moving on to other content, and pretty much everyone else just not intending to make more than one video to begin with, it's just the only one of them left. There isn't as much innovation, and the audience is getting bored.
Before I see any comments like, what about this or that person, I think it's fair to say no one else has revolutionized things in the same way as the other guys. No one's videos are bad, but to me, a random documentary YouTuber, they kind of blend together. But I don't blame anyone, I mean most of the good ideas have already been pushed to the extreme.
Introducing Earth 2.0. Here we'll be seeing constant natural disasters, brutal winters, and violations of the Geneva Convention. Great!
Anyway, thanks so much for 100k. Oh my god! Let's go! Got two different EDM songs at the same time.
And I got my plaque too. If you didn't know, I have a Discord server which I link under every video. And if you had no way of knowing that because you're new here, remember to subscribe.
Good to be back. And I hope you have a great rest of your day.