Game Theory: The Forgotten History of Minecraft Villagers

[Laughter] oh man oh that is a funny joke oh man that was a good one oh no it was just a funny joke hello internet welcome to game theory the show that's as relentless as an iron golem defending a village from a hostile mob and about as effective as a snow golem trying to do the same thing so last year around this time we started to do a big series of videos on minecraft lore and while we've covered way too much for me to summarize here shameless promotion to go watch all the episodes that came before the overall narrative that we've been constructing was that once there was an ancient civilization of builders who created many of the abandoned structures that we see sprinkled throughout the overworld everything from the desert temples to the forgotten mine shafts to the strongholds that house the portal rooms required to reach the end the only other remnant of that ancient race is you the player who is somehow a descendant of the builders now this isn't something that's explicitly spelled out in the games it's something that we've had to figure out through inference and well a lot of times inference is just a fancy word for educated guessing after all this channel is game theory and not game facts also doesn't have nearly as good of a ring to it but thus far the ancient builder theory has provided the most reliable and consistent explanation for many of the questions that we have about the minecraft universe and today we get to add a bit more evidence to the pile by talking about something completely new the iron golems their history and how it all plays into the wider ancient builder lore now the iron golems stick out from among the many mobs in minecraft for a good reason first off they're friendly which gotta say is a good thing considering that they're among the strongest mobs in the game beaten only by the wither and the ender dragon in terms of total hit points note however when i say that they're friendly i don't necessarily mean that they're friendly to us can i kill you ah no oh to be sure you'll probably get along fine with most iron golems if you play nice they'll attack hostile enemy mobs like zombies and illagers and well pretty much anything that is in a neutral mob however their true loyalty seems to lie with the villagers first and foremost which means that if you attack a villager you're no longer a friend in the eyes of the golem and you'd better be prepared for a fight against those iron fists however the most interesting part of the relationship between villager and golem comes down to spawn conditions namely the fact that iron golems will spawn in a village once it grows large enough specifically once the village has more than 10 villagers and 20 beds now let me be clear it doesn't seem like this is the result of the villagers creating that iron golem besides the fact that nothing we see shows villagers creating golems or even suggests that they'd be able to do it we can turn to my favorite resource the ma bistieri to confirm that the golems just kind of show up writing about the iron golems the researcher in the book tells us quote it's not exactly understood how villagers summon their iron golems but sooner or later one is sure to appear end quote again the villagers aren't building these golems they're being summoned or perhaps it would be even more accurate to say that whenever enough villagers gather iron golems just kinda show up all of this leaves us with a lot of questions where are the iron golems coming from why do they seem to be drawn to the village out of pretty much anywhere else in this game the answer to these questions can be found by examining the origins of the iron golems in minecraft and by origins i'm not just talking about their in-game origins but the origin story that led to the iron golems being added to the game in the first place you see back in 2017 the development team made a post on the official minecraft blog which included a note from jeb chief creative officer for minecraft which said the following we were thinking about how to get the villagers to defend themselves since they don't have arms the design was inspired very much by the japanese studio ghibli movie with the giant the castle in the sky it also has this flower we made it look like the villagers because obviously the villagers would create a golem which would resemble themselves end quote okay so there's a lot to address there first and perhaps most importantly the fact that villagers don't have arms okay so obviously that's not true while it is true that the vast majority of villager types keep their arms covered from view we can see certain villagers like the mason and wandering traitors either wearing gloves or with their hands fully exposed so while their arms don't move we know that they least exist though their arms just being big meat loops in front of their bodies would be a convenient explanation for why they seem incapable of building anything no matpat no that's a bad theory bad matpat bad theory all joking aside though i think what jeb means here is that the villagers don't have arms it means they don't have armaments they don't have weapons with which to defend themselves i hope so those things being just weird meaty loops on their fronts is just a weird weird thought no what i want to start with here is the studio ghibli reference jeb specifically calls out the 1986 animated film castle in the sky as a key inspiration for the golems and after watching the movie you can immediately see how in the movie there are these giant robots with distinctively long arms very similar to the robotic long arm design of the minecraft golem but the similarities are more than just visual in the movie the robot has an iconic moment where he offers a small delicate flower to a little girl which is the exact same thing that the iron golems do when they offer poppy flowers to the villagers so already you can see that we have some visual similarities some behavioral similarities but the most interesting comparisons and the ones with implications for minecraft's lore actually happen when you look at the story of the movie the movie revolves around a legendary floating castle built by a long forgotten ancient civilization and not just any ancient civilization but one that had highly advanced technology far beyond what the surface dwellers have in the movie's modern times the robots are one such advanced creation protecting the innocent creatures of the castle now mostly deactivated and only being called to action when the civilization or innocents on board are being attacked we join a young girl who comes to learn that she is a descendant of this long forgotten race as she explores the castle we learn along with her that the castle's power seems to stem from one giant magical blue crystal in the center though we're never told why the castle's abandoned early drafts of the movie said that the civilization became dependent on their technology so dependent that they became physically weak when a disease breaks out it kills most of the population and results in them having to abandon the city oh yeah and there's also a lot of mining in the movie as well as cube-shaped blocks i mean there's more to the actual plot than that but that's the bulk of what's important to today's theory and honestly a lot of that summary sounded pretty darn similar to what we've been seeing in minecraft an ancient race with advanced technologies is forced to abandon their creations when some mysterious tragedy hits this ancient civilization has some connection with magical blue crystals which in minecraft would be lapis lazuli which we've been seeing playing a more and more important role in these theories in both the movie and in minecraft we would presumably be in the shoes of a descendant of this ancient race of people and lastly we're presented with giant robots with long arms that were built as a defense mechanism but lie dormant until members of the ancient civilization return or innocent lives are put at risk and let me just focus on that last part for a minute because the way that the iron golems seem to spontaneously spawn doesn't make much sense if you assume that they're just being built every so often whenever enough villagers are gathered together but it makes a lot more sense if you assume that these iron golems were constructed ages ago and are somehow now being awakened or reactivated in the presence of the villagers if this were indeed true the golems would be a defensive measure built by the ancient race and waiting to be called action then how do we explain this going back to that jeb quote from earlier we made the iron golems look like the villagers because obviously the villagers would create a golem which would resemble themselves this implies no this outright says that the iron golems were made by the villagers and not the builders and just to be clear the villagers and builders aren't one in the same for one thing the villagers aren't capable of using weapons or defending themselves we already went through that whole arms debacle earlier this episode but we know from the fact that weapons are among the loot that you can obtain in containers in the overworld that some ancient race at some point built and used them and it wasn't the villagers so it had to be someone so how do we reconcile this apparent difference do we just say that jeb is wrong i don't think so you see it starts to make sense if we assume that the villagers and the builders were once one and the same back in ancient history at a time that the iron golems were built so i'd like to tell you a story that i think explains how the iron golems happened and how the paths of the builders diverge from the paths of the villagers a story that explains why one group continues to exist in the overworld while the other has seemingly vanished admittedly this is getting into game speculation rather than just game theory but i think it offers some ideas for all of us to chew on as it regards to the lore consider the following long long ago there was no distinction between villagers and builders as a civilization they evolved and progressed as they would expect builders to based on everything we know about steve they started with basic crafting creating tools to better interact with their environments basic weapons to deal with the mobs that they encountered and eventually progressed to the point where they could begin building homes for themselves as we've talked about in past theories they became obsessed with progress testing the limits of their ingenuity they colonized land sea desert jungle when they conquered all parts of the overworld they needed something more they started to explore the nether obsessed with progress they even experimented with giving life eventually giving rise to automatons the iron golems that we see today and the iron golems were game changers while the builder's existence had previously been pneumatic by necessity fleeing and leaving behind their houses to start new ones whenever they were pursued by a threat too powerful to take on directly the iron golems were more powerful than all other overworld mobs not only could the builders now stay in one place and build villages it was no longer necessary for them to carry weapons everywhere in order to defend themselves after all why waste the time to make a weapon and learning how to use it when you have a super strong golem to defend you with punches that can inflict way more damage than your sword ever could fighting became less necessary and so the villagers no longer taught themselves how to fight this was the start of a divide within the community certain people saw building only as a means to an end you encounter an enemy so you build a weapon to defeat it you need a place to live so you build a house as the old saying goes necessity is the mother of invention and once they had built up a sustainable life for themselves complete with golem protectors the need to continue to invent was just gone these people were content to simply live with the level of technology that they had but not everyone was content and willing to stay complacent others longed to continue striving further to continue to build and invent and discover new technologies just for the sake of discovery or for the sake of giving them the tools to protect against threats they might not even know about yet and it was here that the paths of the two groups diverged one civilization suddenly became two as some stayed behind in the villages to maintain a simple life as villagers others went out looking to explore the limits of human potential forever looking to build the next great thing over the generations the villager community complacent in their livelihood would grow to forget the secrets of building those skills would eventually be replaced with local trades farming masonry butchery baking meanwhile not content with building mere simulations of life with the robotic iron golems the builders society pressed onward pushing their limits even further conducting experiments that as we discussed in a previous theory would eventually result in the creation of the wither and it was here that their catastrophe struck much like the civilization in castle in the sky the builder society had created their own worst enemy a foe even more powerful than their most powerful iron golem protectors the builders were doomed by their hubris forced to flee to the end eventually evolving to become the endermen and the complacent villagers would continue to stagnate living on to this very day certainly but having long forgotten the building skills that they once had though they don't possess the ability to build those iron golems themselves anymore they nonetheless benefit from the foresight of their ancestors who built legions of the robots back in the day as a defense system programmed to protect them and attack any who threaten them those iron robots still walk the earth to this day following the instructions that they were programmed with all those eons ago though the people that had the drive and ingenuity to create them in the first place were eventually undone by their own pride it can be easy to look at the minecraft villagers and wonder why it is that they're able to survive despite the fact that they seem to be defenseless and incapable of basic building but that is the very thing that's allowed them to live to this day they lacked the drive and ingenuity of their forefathers but that protected them from falling victim to their own creations allowing them to survive the more grisly fate that befell the builders who weren't content with the simple life of a villager anyway like i said it is a lot of speculation a fun personal head cannon to try and connect some of these dots but regardless it's very interesting to me that jeb would outright say that the villagers built the golems despite us never seeing them build anything ever in the games the only way for that to be true is for the villagers to somehow forget the skills over the generations anyway give it a think and let me know your own personal theories and i'll keep looking i've seen some really good stuff appearing about the nether over in the game theory subreddit that i'm currently researching so more on that one soon but in the meantime remember it's all just a theory a game theory along with some game speculation thanks for supporting this channel and for supporting today's sponsor nordvpn like an iron golem protecting villagers nordvpn protects you every time you use the internet why use a vpn you ask well for one thing a vpn encrypts your online life to ensure that you stay anonymous using nord you get double data encryption for increased anonymity so imagine if this creeper where someone trying to get at your private information represented by this house over here boom private information suddenly scattered to the winds 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Channel: undefined

Views: 4,298,784

Rating: 4.9519658 out of 5

Keywords: minecraft, minecraft theory, minecraft villager, minecraft villagers, minecraft iron golem, iron golem, netherite, netherite armor, minecraft netherite, minecraft diamond armor, diamond sword, minecraft crafting, minecraft scary, minecraft lore, minecraft souls, creeper, enderman, endermen, piglins, minecraft zombie, game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory minecraft

Id: Epr-b77tGXs

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/nanitheshit]

This is nice and all, but in that case isn’t it kind of weird how if you put 4 iron blocks in the shape of a T and a pumpkin on top, it apparently creates these ultra-mega-complex automotons?

[u/TheDumbestTimeline]

Nice to know that he actually is checking the Sub.

[u/TheReal-Zetheroth]

Or how about how the atomotons attack villagers, but according to his previous theories the illagers would have split after the builders, so they wouldn't have them programmed to attack

Edit: P.S. why do Illagers become docile when their crossbow breaks

[u/Alternative-Ad-1804]

After watching this i have a theory, the reason there is no naturaly spawned wither is that it decays it's self after a timelapse; when doing so doesn't leave the nether star behind

[u/troflan]

If they add the aether that would be, well yeah.

[u/notColdReactive]

Should push the game theory community to suggest that Iron Golems be random spawns near certain structures, such as boat "corpses" near or on land. In addition, they should have at least a half-finished iron golem or two in strongholds of the overworld. On top of that, iron Golem AI should behave like bees, in the sense that, if an iron golem that randomly spawns in the overworld not near a village, encounters a nearby village, that iron golem will attach itself to that village as its protector, and patrol its area rather than to continue randomly wandering.

[u/Morgan_A_Luna]

Villagers having a different appearance would make sense if you used natural selection as an explanation. The Builders kept moving, so their bodies never really adapted to any environment. But the Villagers never moved so over the generation, their appearances changed. But it does bring up the question.

What is the Minecraft player? If the builders have already become Endermen and the villagers simply look too different, how does the Minecraft player look the way they do? And why don't they have parents?

My thoughts are maybe there was a successful experiment in resurrecting the dead, causing the player to be reborn. The rebirth process however takes centuries, maybe even thousands of years. But it succeeds. But the player has no memories from their previous life. However, if that were completely true, they wouldn't know how to build, how to mine or craft. So it's possible the player also has a lapis lazuli in their head, containing the knowledge of the Master Builders. That would explain how the player knows to gather resources and how to build with them once they obtain those resources, and why they have a mental "recipe book" despite not actually having a book in their inventory. Rather than the player being a descendant, they are actually the only successful experiment at proper resurrection, likely created at around the same time as the Wither, or just after, as a method of preserving their knowledge of building, magic and other worlds.

But that's just my mini-theory, inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

[u/kiddpancham]

I just watched the last video the matpat about minecraft and I have a doubt, he said that the villagers forgot how to build and craft things, but in the villages you can find houses of the blacksmith who has a chest full of iron things like armor axes swords etc, if he is the blacksmith and these iron things are in his house, it wouldn’t make sense if it were he who had done these things, not to mention the things that you get from exchanging with the villagers, where they got those things, did they steal? found it? maybe they really know how to build things but they just aren't as smart as us, what do you think of my argument?

[u/KaleTheFruitBat]

I haven’t read enough of the replies to know if I’m the first to say this yet(edit* turns out I’m not), but here it is. You can trade with vallagers for weapons & tools (usually enchanted) suggesting that they can still craft(and use magic) possibly just much more slowly? We also know they aren’t just finding all these weapons & tools because they have names(or titles rather) like “weapon smith” and “tool smith”