#uhcg

I’ve been searching for an answer to this question for a while now. Is it the time you spend there, the friends you make, the builds you create? Is it the memories you cling to or the achievements you gain or the growth you experience? I don’t have an answer just yet, so today I want to rabble about a Minecraft series that attempts to answer the previous question with a different one.

“What does it mean for a world to love you?”

The world of uhcg is dangerous and unforgiving, but the love within it shapes and changes every generation that walks through it. It’s not a forgotten stepping stone in someone’s content career, or a series that is made and moved on from. Years later and the first few generations are still talking about how this world changed their lives. Open any episode from any generation and somewhere in there they will mention how much this world means to them. How special it is. Choosing a successor is a deeply personal choice. Deciding how they want to be remembered is given serious thought. Everything they do leaves a mark for a future generation to find, and uncovering someone else’s mark is impactful beyond just blocks in a game.

Yes the creators make YouTube videos and livestreams, and those are important considerations when playing in the world, but from the way every generation talks about their time there, that’s not the primary goal or experience for those who inhabit it. For the time a creator has the world, it’s their home singleplayer world. It’s the world they play on when nobody is watching, working on personal projects and creating experiences for future generations that may never be shown on camera. It’s a world that is part of a legacy that matters far beyond videos and views. This isn’t a world that can be replaced by a new ultra hardcore save when the inhabitant inevitably dies. Just like real life, “you die once when your hearts hit zero, and again when you are forgotten.” Just like in real life, it is the love you put into the world that future generations will find and cherish.

Every generation starts off in the world with big plans, and not a single one has left with every one of them accomplished. But the experience they leave with and the love they poured into the world is far more important than any build could ever be. This is a world that values bravery, perseverance, sacrifice, honor, self-discovery, and change. It’s a series that makes you think about the impact you have in your own Minecraft world, and the real world beyond.

The choices made by each generation for how to end their time in the world, whether or not that outcome came to pass, and how they handled their inevitable death, have meaning. For themselves, for their predecessors and successors, for the world itself, and for the viewers. The generations call this the will of the world, but it could just as easily be called love. Each person who passes through finds their own answer to why they love the world, and in turn, leaves that love in the world for the next person to find.