On Oct. 20, 2023, Minecraft YouTube fans around the world scrambled for an internet connection as the pilot episodes of “Secret Life” dropped into their subscription boxes. The new series is the fifth season of the “Life Series,” where creators film themselves playing a version of Minecraft described by its creator Grian as “experimental hardcore with a twist.” For the non-block enthusiasts, hardcore is a game mode where you only have one life, and once you die in that save file, you are locked out of it forever. The “experimental” part differs per season; in “Life Series,” the players start with more than one life, but the exact amount could range from a standard three-life system to a timer-based life of 24 real-life hours. In addition, there are various changes to the base game, like only allowing “red lives” (people with low lives/time) to kill other players or making it easier to craft explosives and other PvP items that spice things up. Rather than the infinitely-generated world Minecraft is known for, players are boxed into a small area by programmed world borders, forcing them to interact. Over six to eight weeks, the audience gets to watch players find allies, make enemies and try to be the last one standing. At the end of it all, we’re left with a winding and usually very complex web of improvised storylines and character relationships.
The first season of the series, titled “3rd Life,” started in April 2021 without much pomp and circumstance. It featured 14 YouTubers and was Grian’s way to “play some Minecraft (and) have some fun.” At over eight million subscribers and 13 years on YouTube, the 30-year-old is primarily known in the Minecraft community for being a builder. That being said, survival and PvP gameplay was a new turn for him. At the time, there weren’t any future plans for the series and certainly no planned sequels, but “3rd Life” became an immediate hit. Several of the first episodes released by creators now have over one million views and the series became a staple on the trending list as word spread about the new survival multiplayer (SMP) series. The reception was enough that, by the finale, Grian confirmed that they would be continuing the series with a second season.
I’ve been a fan of the series since their very first moments — I’ve watched many of the creators on this series for years, so “3rd Life” started as just another video to watch in my subscription tab. However, as the series kicked off its fifth season and I dutifully prepared to fully immerse myself once again, I found myself wondering: What exactly about this format makes it so compelling? It’s rare enough for any piece of media to result in the amount of fanart, fic and animatics that “The Life Series” has, and by TV industry standards, it’s even rarer for a show with functionally 15-ish episodes per week (between the individual viewpoints of each creator) to hit five seasons. It’s successful enough financially to create official merch and is consistently entertaining despite being fully improvised and done in exclusively Minecraft, yet it is made without the funding or manpower of a studio. So, what about Minecraft improv makes it so captivating? If you’re already on the Minecraft train with me, I hope you enjoy the ride! To everyone else, all I ask is for you to keep an open mind and hear my case for how even a Minecraft YouTube series can be genuinely amazing media.
The key ingredient is that good content is valued above all. This may seem pretty basic, but there’s quite a difference between actual stakes and stakes manufactured for the sake of a story. Namely, the former isn’t as fun because you can’t just turn them off when convenient. In writing, this is known as a Wastonian versus Doylist perspective. Based on “Sherlock Holmes,” the two perspectives describe the perception of a story from inside it (like Watson recounting the events of a mystery to Sherlock) compared to the perception of the story from the perspective of the author, Doyle. It’s the difference between, “This character was killed because he was protecting something,” and, “This character was killed because his actor’s contract ran out.” It’s also why “Life Series” works a lot better than other competition-style series — after all, the “last man standing” concept is far from a novel one. The difference is that a lot of those series are done by creators whose reputations bank on being good, competitive players. This means that the narrative Watsonian stakes are also tied to real Doylist stakes of losing, thereby affecting the reputations of the creators themselves. This creates a dynamic that may put making the best narrative choice at odds with the best strategic choice for the sake of reputation. This isn’t an issue in “Life Series” because — and I say this with infinite love and respect for these creators — they are not known for being competitively good at the game. About half of the YouTubers in each season come from a Minecraft server called “Hermitcraft,” which has a focus on the building and technical aspects of the game rather than PvP. The other creators are similarly not competitive and are more focused on building, tech or pure entertainment.
This kind of competition is a lot more entertaining when people are willing to commit to the bit. One example of this was in the previous season, “Limited Life,” where players had a single life dictated by a 24-hour timer. There was a mechanic called the “boogeyman curse” where, if a player was assigned the role for the episode, they had to kill someone or suffer time deductions, regardless of what color life they were on. When creator Smallishbeans received the curse, he had the option of getting an easy, quick kill. Instead, he and two others built a wheat farm bridge that spanned to another team’s base to launch TNT off of it. They spent the entire session doing this rather than gearing up or farming resources. Why? Because it’s funny. The YouTubers on this series are all also well-established in the Minecraft YouTube scene, which shows in their abilities to focus purely on in-narrative, Watsonian stakes. If certain rules set at the beginning turn out to hinder content, they are easily bent or changed with the group’s agreement. If allowing people extra time at the beginning or end to gather materials means that it saves time for more interesting things while filming, who cares if the rules don’t allow for perfect, even competition?
There’s still a fear within “serious” media to value video games and especially perceived kid’s games as actual media. Of course, it doesn’t help that the internet finds anything that has a large fanbase of queer teenagers cringe, which both Minecraft and “Life Series” does. It’s a shame, though, because in terms of comparing it to real-life competition series such as “Survivor,” Minecraft as a medium has a few advantages. For one, it has a lower bar for suspension of disbelief. Because Minecraft is, at the end of the day, a game about playing with blocks, audiences go in with less expectation for realism or polish. This means that less time is used on post-production and a greater focus can be put on collaborative storytelling and creative, experimental choices. It’s similar to the uncanny valley principle — establishing an environment that is completely unbound by the logic of the real world can allow for a more immersive story. There’s also a greater trust between the audience and creators compared to a full studio production show because the audience is often more able to connect with creators directly regarding the series. The players are known to interact with and even take inspiration from fan content and headcanons sent in via Twitter or Tumblr tags, and fans trust that the players deliver a good series. This was big for the most recent season, where viewers submitted “secret tasks” for the players to do each episode. The creators can rely on the audience to submit enough good ideas to sustain the series, and the audience can trust that the creators will execute those tasks to their most unique potential.
Improv-based Minecraft series also offer the opportunity for an unusual form of first-person omniscient perspective for the audience. Traditionally, this is done via an all-knowing narrator. This framing is hard to nail down and has become less popular in traditional storytelling mediums due to how easily it turns clunky and unnatural. The magic of these YouTube videos, however, is that they’re a record of the same story from every single character’s first-person limited perspective. Thus, the audience has access to the thoughts and motivations of every single character. Because of this, the story functionally is first-person and omniscient but cuts out the middleman narrator. This format isn’t something that would work for more traditional mediums of storytelling. Imagine trying to write a book series with 15 characters where each book was the same story but from a different character’s perspective. Then, imagine piecing all those fragments together as a reader. Something of that scale just doesn’t work for projects that need to be meticulously planned out. This unique outlook given to the audience opens up so many doors for interpretation and analysis. Based on whose episodes you watch and the order in which you see them, your perception of the events changes. While watching one person’s perspective, you might see someone else trying to make alliances. That person might come off as a generally cooperative and nice player through the eyes of the creator you’re watching, but you might swap to that player’s video and see that they’re making alliances to steal items or get information. In that way, you can get a completely different experience based on how much information you choose to factor in.
Sandbox games like Minecraft are at their best when used as a medium rather than a game. “Life Series” has demonstrated this for five seasons now, taking the established and well-known rules of a game and twisting them into narratives that reach both heights of absurdism and depths of heart. It’s got all the twists and turns and, dare I say, better writing than several TV shows I’ve watched. Although there’s been improvement, the internet still seems determined to call “cringe” on video games being taken more seriously than as “just a game.” Perhaps that’s just the hazing process all new media needs to go through; if so, I’m confident that the “Life Series” can persevere. This series has brought me so much joy over the past few years, and I highly encourage anyone who’s looking for a new show to try it out!
Daily Arts Writer Lin Yang can be reached at yanglinj@umich.edu.