uTopple Blog

I've been a Minecraft content consumer on and off for a few years, and back in early 2021, when Grian made a series called "3rd Life" I couldn't help but remember JackSucksAtLife's "One Life" series from a few years prior. Both series had some commonalities, with them being large collaborations between many minecraft content creators, being semi-hardcore (in a hardcore Minecraft server you are banned upon dying - in these semi-hardcore world the rules are usually a bit less harsh, but still have this concept of an eventual ban after enough deaths), and the term "Life" in the series title.

So, I took a look at the history of these series, trying to determine if they were related in any meaningful way, or if the similarities were just coincidence. What I found is two separate parallel Life series, with some content creator overlap between each other but with differing premises.

There is the "Modded Life" series, which is a collection of modded Minecraft series which all seem to be descendents of the "One Life" series. And there is the "Un-Modded Life" series, a collection of (mostly) unmodded Minecraft series, the first being "3rd Life".

I've made an effort to generate a list of which content creators star in each series - this has been a bit challenging since I am not willing to watch the 100s of hours of content needed to confidently verify this information (by watching the first video for each content creator in each series). I primarily based this on the playlists in each content creator's channel and watching portions of episodes on occassion to try and glimpse the tab-menu (which woud reveal a list of all Minecraft accounts logged into the server). Some additional challenges: I didn't have a full list of content creators beginning of this task, not all the creator's have Youtube channels (or the channel name differs from the name other players call them/their Minecraft username), and that the first season for one content creator might be the second for another (meaning the numbers didn't always line-up, I tried to use dates in these cases to line up which seasons between creators were one-in-the-same).

The most noteable content creator in this list is Scott (aka Smajor1995) (aka Dangthatsalongname). Scott has been in every single life-series, both modded and unmodded. Whether this is because he is one of the organizers for these series or because he walks the line between multiple content-creator groups is unknown. In a similar, though not exact, situatuon is Joel (aka SmallishBeans) who has been in every series except the first season of One Life.

I've listed, for each content creator, the various names they go by whenever their personal name, username, and youtube channel differed. I've marked which series they appear in.

(If you see any errors, please let me know, I'd be happy to correct them provided you have evidence such as the timestamp of video with tab-screen or a playlist link)