Notes

*two to six sentences long per page*

page one: (write about what minecraft is and a brief description about speedrunning)

I'm pretty sure I don't have to explain what Minecraft is. It's one of the best-selling video game of all time and its art style is easily recognizable to anyone even if you've never played at all. But if you have never heard of it, it's a sandbox/survival game made by Mojang studios.
Speedrunning is the act of completing a video game of any genre as fast as humanly possible. Whether that be through using glitches and exploits or just simply finishing the game as fast as possible without it.

page two: (write about the history of minecraft speedrunning)

The first recorded case of a Minecraft speed run came from a user named "DJS". Back then there was no end to the game because Minecraft in its early stages was just a sandbox game with no real story. People had to wait until Mojang released the official end goal to make a 100% speed run but until then players had to get creative. Back to DJS, they figured that if there was no end at the moment they would make their own "end". The goal was simply to get to the bottom of the map as fast as possible, which was called bedrock. People found this to be interesting so they decided to make their own small speedrunning categories. Such as getting a certain item as fast as possible, going to a certain place as fast as possible, etc. The fact that Minecraft was a sandbox game with infinite terrain possibilities makes it an already challenging game to speedrun on its own.

page three: (write about speedrunning bedrock and java and the difference between them)

There are two different versions of Minecraft, Bedrock Edition and Java Edition. Java is considered to be the best edition of Minecraft to play on as opposed to Bedrock. The difference between Java and Bedrock is that Java allows custom-made user maps, skins, game modes, etc. As for Bedrock, it is the complete opposite. Because Bedrock is owned by Microsoft, they have gatekeeped everything and you either have to buy it with "Minecoins". So essentially Bedrock is very limiting. Although Java is the agreed "better" one people in the community still tried to speedrun Bedrock. The main difference between Java and Bedrock is that Java has limiting attack swings you can do and there's a cooldown between each swing. With Java, you have unlimited swings.

page four: (write about Dream)

We can't talk about Minecraft speedrunning and not talk about Dreamwastaken or Dream. He is basically the face of the Minecraft speedrunning community as of the last few years. He has popularized the Minecraft speedrunning trend with his "Manhunt" videos in which his friends try and kill him whilst Dream tries to complete Minecraft as fast as possible. Dream's best record was 22 mins and at the time was the third-fastest run of Java ever recorded. He no longer holds this title.

page five: (write about scandals in mc speedrunning)

There has been many controversial but the most infamous one involves Dream. The controversy started when one of the speedrun.com moderators called him out saying that he had cheated in his latest speedrun. The user argued that Dream would have needed an instance amount of luck to complete a certain part of the speedrun. That certain part of the speedrun required that you trade an item you'll need to complete the game from one of the Piglins. According to the user Dream would have needed a 1 in 177 billion chance of getting as many successful trades as Dream did. And the user didn't come in without proof, they provided tons of proof. They came in with a 29 page document with math, graphs, pie charts, and a whole lot of probability statements making the argument that Dream had cheated or at least was immensely lucky. To this day Dream still denies ever cheating at all.

page six: (write about the popularity of mc speedrunning in the last year)

The demand for Minecraft speedrunning quickly came once the youtuber PewDiePie uploaded his first Minecraft video in a while. Before he uploaded the infamous video Minecraft was seen as a game for children and pre-teens. But once that video came up all of a sudden everyone was playing it again, every twitch streamer, youtuber, everyone was playing Minecraft again and now Minecraft was something that seemed cool to play again. So when Minecraft became popular again the speedrunning community was on top of it the moment it became trending again. People left and right were trying their best to speedrun Minecraft. With the COVID-19 pandemic it hasn't slowed down it's popularity, for all we know it probably increased it.

page seven: (write about the fastest record of speedruns in both editions)

The current speedrun world record for Minecraft: Java Edition is by Brentilda on APril 19th, 2021. They finished the entire game using different strategies and techniques in incredible 11 minutes 9 seconds and 833 milliseconds. As for the Bedrock Edition that record goes to a user named romthecrafter. They achieved this on November 21st, 2021 and finished the Bedrock version of Minecraft in 15 minutes and 16 seconds.