Informative Speech Outline
Name: Ferris Warden
Topic: Minecraft
Purpose: To Inform
Thesis: Minecraft is one of the most influential games of all time, both in the
general gaming community and the streaming/youtube community,
because of how limitless the possibilities are. This reason is exactly why it
had such a resurgence in popularity in the midst of COVID-19, because it
gave people freedom and creativity in a world where we couldn’t leave our
homes.
Introduction:
I. Attention: Who here has heard of Minecraft?
II. Reveal & relate topic: Minecraft, a sandbox game at its core, is one of
those games it’s hard not to know about. It’s been around for years but
hasn’t really lost any of its charm.
III. Credibility: I think I first got into it around seven or eight years ago,
during its peak of popularity. I eventually lost interest, but a little while
back, I redownloaded Minecraft and fell back in love with it all over again
during quarantine.
IV. Thesis: Minecraft is one of the most influential games of all time, both
in the general gaming community and the streaming/youtube community,
because of how limitless the possibilities are. This reason is exactly why it
had such a resurgence in popularity in the midst of COVID-19, because it
gave people freedom and creativity in a world where we couldn’t leave our
homes.
Body:
I. Minecraft was created in 2009 by Markus “Notch” Persson— however,
we tend to separate the game from Notch nowadays due to some
unsavory and discriminatory comments of his. Minecraft is currently
owned and developed by Mojang Studios and, in case anyone here isn’t
very familiar with it, it’s best described as a sandbox game, meaning that
the player can mold the game’s world around them to play however they’d
like.
A. There are two main game-modes: survival and creative.
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1. Creative mode can be best described as legos on
steroids. You can build out of any blocks you’d like: anything
from wood and stone to emerald and diamond. In this mode,
you can fly around, break blocks instantly, and there’s no
natural way to die. This mode is ideal for building or for
simply flying around and exploring without having to worry
about dying.
B. “But Ferris,” you say, “what if I do want to worry about dying?”
Well, then, my esteemed guests, have I got the game-mode for you.
1. Survival mode spawns you in the middle of nowhere with
nothing but your bare fists and a dream. You start by
punching down trees, use that to build a crafting table, use
that to make some sticks and a wooden pickaxe, then you
work your way up from wooden tools, to stone, then iron,
then diamond, and if you’re a tryhard, eventually netherite.
2. You fight a bunch of hostile mobs along the way like
skeletons, zombies, and creepers (they explode, it’s awful),
you try not to starve by killing a bunch of cute animals for
their meat (or, if you’re cool like me, you spend way too
much time building a farm and growing crops), and at some
point you might go into the Nether dimension, aka Hell, and
fight even more monsters in pursuit of various hellish
treasures.
3. If your goal is to beat the game, you eventually go to the
End, the third dimension, which is kind of like purgatory.
There, you fight a dragon, and then credits roll. That’s only
the end of the game if you want it to be, though– there’s
loads of other stuff to do in a survival world. You could
explore dungeons for treasure, raid mansions for totems of
undying, mine in the nether for ancient debris, which can be
smelted, crafted, and enchanted into CRAZY powerful armor
and tools— really, the possibilities are endless.
C. And that’s just in vanilla Minecraft, where the world at its
most basic already has so much variety from the different biomes and
world generation to the huge list of blocks, items, and mobs that grows
with each game update. On top of all of this, loads of coders over the
years have taken it upon themselves to create mods that add even more
crazy features to an already boundless game.
Which brings us to my next topic: Minecraft in the Youtube and streaming
communities.
II. Like with many other games, Minecraft gained a sizable platform on
Youtube through content creators making “Let’s Play” videos. These
videos let viewers experience the game through the content creator. At the
beginning, the audience was mainly people who wanted to play Minecraft
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but couldn’t, but as Minecraft became more accessible with the release of
versions on X-Box, Playstation, and even on mobile devices through
Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Minecraft Youtubers had to become more
creative with their content— they had to do things their viewers had never
seen before. Enter: Modded Minecraft.
A. Loads of content creators during Minecraft’s peak of popularity
(around 2013) were known for playing modded minecraft.
1. Some youtubers were known for specializing in specific
modpacks. The Yogscast, for example, was a group of
British creators known for Tekkit, a modpack that focused on
technology and machines, letting you automate processes
you would otherwise have to do manually.
2. Other creators, like SkyDoesMinecraft, CaptainSparklez,
StampyLongNose, and DanTDM dabbled in all sorts of
mods, doing “showcases” where they would play a mod for a
video or series, show its features, and then move onto
something else.
B. But after a while, all these mods became overwhelming. Even
the original vanilla version felt too complicated after a few updates.
Youtuber JSchlatt puts it elegantly in his 2018 video, “A Tribute To
Minecraft.” (play https://youtu.be/zNZ1rq5kW4M?t=434 from 7:14–8:30)
C. So, yes, Minecraft ended up fading out of popularity after a
while. Players felt bored with the old features, and the new features and
mods made it feel like a different game. But around 2019, at the game’s
10 year anniversary, many people started playing it again out of nostalgia.
Players realized that, underneath all the new updates, the game they
loved from their childhood was still there. That comforting, atmospheric
piano was still playing.
So Minecraft started getting a little bit popular again in the gaming community in
2019. But it wasn’t until 2020, in the first few months of quarantine, that
Minecraft started hitting Youtube again by storm.
III. I’ve got a request for you all: think back to the summer of 2020. Did you
do a lot of bingewatching? I know I did. Think about the shows you watched. How
many of them were old favorites that you rewatched for comfort? Maybe you
watched The Office, or Friends, maybe you ransacked the entire Disney+
catalog. Or maybe, if you were like me and a sometimes annoyingly large
percentage of the internet, you started watching the DreamSMP.
A. The DreamSMP is a Survival Multiplayer server that was started
in May of 2020 by content creators Dream, GeorgeNotFound and Sapnap.
It started as a casual Let’s Play-esc series streamed on Twitch, a gaming-
specific live-streaming platform, but it was focused less on the gameplay
and more on the interactions between the players. More and more of their
friends were invited, rules were established, and of course, broken, drama
broke out, it was like if a reality TV show took place in Minecraft. It was
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basically just what would typically happen if you played Minecraft with a
bunch of friends, just a bit exaggerated to entertain the audience more.
B. However, around July, things started to become more story
driven, some server members taking it upon themselves to plot out
storylines. More and more of the server got involved, and pretty soon the
DreamSMP became more than just a minecraft server. It became a
scripted show full of captivating stories and characters that were so
meticulously thought out that they were entirely separate entities from the
content creators they were based on.
C. Now, I don’t have nearly enough time right now to go
over the full story of the DreamSMP thus far. I wish I did, but it would take
me… (image) so long. So very long. But I could totally do it, because the
DreamSMP is one of the BIG things my brain latched onto during
quarantine to keep me sane. It gave me structure, kept me entertained,
and made me feel passionate about something in a way I hadn’t felt since
middle school, watching the Yogscast play modded Minecraft.
D. And so many people online feel the same way I do.
DreamSMP isn’t even the only server with fanbases like this: there’s the
EpicSMP, HermitCraft, even good ol’ CaptainSparklez is back at it (though
I’m not entirely sure if he ever stopped).
Overall, Minecraft streams and videos are what kept me and a huge chunk of my
generation afloat during quarantine, because they comforted us and gave us
freedom during a time when it felt like we didn’t have any.
Conclusion:
I. I hope this presentation has given you all a clearer picture of the
incredible impact Minecraft has had on the world. From now all the way
back to it’s early days, this game has given people a platform to build what
they want to build, whether that be in a metaphorical or literal sense.
II. For a game that’s over a decade old, Minecraft is timeless, and I can’t
wait to see what the future holds for it.
References:
jschlatt. A Tribute to Minecraft. Youtube, YouTube, 6 May 2018,
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZ1rq5kW4M, 7:14–8:30.
“What Is Minecraft?” Minecraft, Mojang, 19 Nov. 2020, www.minecraft.net/en-
us/about-minecraft/.
“Timeline of The DreamSMP.” DreamTeamWiki, Wikia, Mar. 2021,
images.wikia.com/dream_team/images/timeline/50cf7fa6c2772110576827
1046e2b03b.png.
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