Comparing the 2020 and 2021 Mob Votes

MineConCraft Live Earth Festival 2021 has officially been and gone. And yes, there WILL be a rant about the reveals and my thoughts on 1.19. But for now, I want to focus on the more controversial aspect of the events - the Mob Vote.

One of my very first rants on this blog was about why the 2020 mob vote was complete testicles. I pointed out how there was SO much wrong with the mob vote, even without you know who doing you know what. To summarise that rant:

1) The mobs themselves were unoriginal. They were all taken from other spin-off games.

2) They pitched two passive mobs against a hostile mob. People with different play styles are likely to vote a different style of mob. A hostile mob is likely to appeal to adventurers, whereas passive mobs are more likely to appeal to builders and people who like the scenery. Putting both in the same vote was ludicrous.

3) Almost nothing was said about the mobs we would be voting on. The videos were very vague.

4) You know who did you know what. The fact it was on Twitter gave you know who a lot more power to do you know what. This led to a lot of people requesting the votes be done on Minecraft's website.

All of these combined, but ESPECIALLY point 4, led to a HUGE amount of backlash and drama regarding the mob vote. So, how did this year's vote compare? Did it go any smoother? Did Mojang learn anything from the dumpster fire that was the mob vote of 2020?

But now that the 2021 mob vote is in the rear-view mirror... did Mojang do it right this time? Did they make right what once went wrong? Did Dream learn from his mistakes?

The 2021 Mob Vote Reviewed!

So, first off, the mob vote was, as it always has been, on Twitter. All of the previous four years it's been on Twitter, and one of the most common complaints I've seen about the mob vote is that it's on Twitter. This is to allow people who don't play Minecraft, but rather watch it, a chance to vote as well. Umm sorry... WHAT?? Mojang... you do realise people in the UK can't vote on the next US president... right? And that people in the US can't vote on the next UK prime minister...??? I'm sorry but I have to disagree staunchly here. If someone doesn't actually PLAY minecraft, why should they be allowed to vote??

So yes, the mob vote was once again on Twitter, much to my and many others' dismay. But so were the 2018 and 2019 votes, and they went relatively smoothly. So let's jump into the first point I raised about the 2020 vote, and see if 2021 did any better.

1 - Mob Originality. The 2021 mob vote absolutely wins on originality. But that's not saying much in and of itself. All they had to be this year was... not something we'd seen in spin-off games. This time around, they were all new mobs, not previously seen in any other Minecraft game. Boom. Points for originality.

2 - Equality. The 2021 vote easily trumps 2020's vote here, too. This time, there was a common theme between all the mobs. They weren't just random mobs with very different functions ripped from very different spin-off games. They were all "little helpers". The Glare helped the player identify dark spots (which you can do with your eyes), the Allay helped lazy people gather items, and the Copper Golem helped the player... umm... push... buttons. Okay, neither of these mobs are really that amazingly useful. But that's okay. In a vote like this, you WANT to keep the stakes low so that people don't get super mad or upset their favourite mob didn't win. Neither of these mobs are amazing, but the point is, they're all on the same playing field. No more passive mobs being put on the same level as hostile mobs when they are clearly not equal. Points here for this year's vote having a clear theme.

3) Vagueness. As the format this year was exactly the same as last year's, in that they released these "tiny avatar" trailers days in advance that run for under a minute each, the videos this year were just as vague as last year's. So many questions were unanswered. 

The Glare: What does it do when it "gets grumpy"? Does it attack the player? Where does this thing spawn? Does it spawn in caves?

The Allay was probably the worst offender of this. EVERYONE thought at first this was an item duper. The video does NOT say it's NOT a duper. In fact, when the trailer for the Allay dropped, Mojang had to answer a BUNCH of questions that were just NOT CLEAR IN THE VIDEO. Also... what is this thing's collecting radius? How much can it hold? Can it pick up loot that other player's dropped? Can you have multiple allays? The video was so unclear in fact that the majority of people I spoke to in the days leading up to the event didn't realise that you DIDN'T need a music block to make the allays collect items.

The Golem also neglected to mention a lot - How is it crafted? Why does it have a lightning rod on its head? How long does it take to freeze? Can its ageing be reversed with an axe?

Now, I know a lot of these more specific details are ones Mojang themselves don't know the answer. But this brings me to a problem with these votes in general. None of the contestants can be prototyped beforehand. We ONLY have these trailers to go off of. They just don't have time to prototype entities that may not be making it into the game, and these specifics can only be worked out once the mob has already won. Because of this, I think every vote has and always will suffer from the vagueness problem. This was not unique to 2020's vote.

Alrighty... let's discuss the elephant in the room once again.

4) Content Creator Meddling. In the days leading up to MineCon, Dream made a number of jokes on Twitter about how he was going to rig the vote again this year. (Technically, last year, he didn't "rig" it per se, but it's very possible he swayed or influenced the vote - "rigging" would imply he planned what he did through a complex scheme). These jokes from Dream REALLY struck a nerve with people on Discord. It's quite telling that a year later, people were still so mad with Dream. On the Discord server I was on, there was actually quite a lot of hostility against Dream. At least twice a day, the conversation devolved into Dream-bashing. It got so bad in fact, the moderators were thinking of banning the topic of Dream outright. Let's just say his jokes about rigging the vote did NOT go down well.

HOWEVER, on the actual day of the mob vote, he Tweeted that he would not tweet what he was voting this time around. He made a point this year to NOT influence the vote when it actually came to it. Good on you Dream, you learned your lesson.

The major drama of last year was that content creators influenced the outcome of the vote. And a year on, I definitely think this genuinely was the case, and not just because people were salty the Iceologer lost. This year, this huge drama was averted. In fact, there was no huge drama this year. Yes, the Copper Golem team were very vocally AGAINST the Allay, but I think ultimately because the stakes were so low, and Allay won fair and square, there wasn't really much room for a big backlash outside of the normal saltiness you'd expect. Like, "hrmph well that's a bummer, ah well time to get on with my day", rather than bitter grudges against content creators still being held a year later.

Okay, so a major drama was averted this year, and the vote went very smoothly. However, I still think these votes are, in general, very flawed and not a good thing overall. This year, I noticed two additional problems that are likely present in all other votes too, but very much so in this one:

The 2021 Mob Vote Was Better... But That's Not Saying Much...

Mob votes divide the community. On all platforms, in the days leading up to this year's mob vote, everyone was loudly and proudly stating their choice. This basically put the Minecraft community into three different factions. And as we know ALL TOO WELL, our human nature very painfully DOES NOT take kindly to members of other factions.

On the Discord server, people literally coloured their names with what mob they were voting for. And it literally became a bit of a battle of Orange names versus Blue names. There was definitely a LOT less trust between people sporting a different colour name. And this is a big problem. Humans are tribal. Tribalism was beneficial for our survival hundreds of thousands of years ago, but in modern society only serves to cause misery, prejudice, divides, racism, bigotry, hate crime, wars, religious crime, terrorism, and in extreme cases, genocide. Now, of course, a mob vote isn't going to cause unthinkably awful war crimes, but it will divide friends and pit members of the community against each other where they could've been friends. This is especially true as some people get a little competitive and start outright trashing other teams... or worse... actual fellow humans who happen to prefer the friendly Vex over the button-pushing robot (or vice versa). And in a game like Minecraft, I feel putting these rifts in the community is never a good thing.

Finally, there was a lot of evidence, particularly on the Reddit, that people were voting without watching videos! I saw various comments about how they were voting Copper Golem because it protected the player. Now, this goes beyond people voting Allay because they think it mines diamonds for them or dupes Netherite. This is straight-up ignorance and it is clear people who made these comments did not watch the videos at all. It was quite clear in the video that the Copper Golem does NOT attack other monsters. They explained quite clearly that it pushes buttons at random.

These last two problems exist across all votes, but they were particularly noticeable this year. Allay and Copper Golem both had a huge following, and the fandom was very much split right down the middle. Meanwhile, team Glare basically knew their mob was going to lose in round 1, and received bullying and toxicity from both Copper Golem and Allay teams. Oof.

Final Word

To be blunt, Mojang just need to stop these votes. Dividing the community for the sake of a tiny bit of pizzazz added to MineCon just doesn't seem worth it in my eyes. And while yes, this mob vote WAS an improvement on 2020's in that it WASN'T a total dumpster fire, I am becoming more and more against the idea of these votes with each year.

What did I vote? I didn't want to say until the very end of this rant because I didn't want to put myself in a faction right from the off, or to colour anyone's opinions or discredit my rant because I voted what you, my one reader, didn't vote. I voted Allay.