[MARILLA] Secrets. We all have them. Like how I secretly don’t have any secrets and have already contradicted the premise of this show. Oh well. Greetings. My name is Narrator. I tell people at parties that Minecraft was all my idea. Well, I would if I was invited to parties. And I’m Marilla. The Allay *was* all my idea, apart from the design, name and gameplay. We’ve had lots of bright ideas at Mojang Studios over the years. Ideas like “let’s not fill the Minecraft game boxes with live wasps” and “no other examples I can think of”. But this new mob, the Allay, might be our brightest idea yet. [MARILLA] Err….wait, what? Secrets of the Wisp? Treachery! They promised we could leak secrets about the Allay, not whatever the Wisp is. Revenge. Revenge. Revenge. Marilla, the Wisp was the original name of the Allay. Oh! How fun. Yes. Originally the Wisp was prototyped as part of 2020’s Nether Update. But it wasn’t meant to be. I’m sure we can all agree that was the most disappointing thing that happened in 2020. Definitely. Another name we considered during this prototyping stage was “pixie”. What a coincidence! I was originally called pixie! No you weren’t. Ok, fine. I was just trying to impress you. And it worked! The original elevator pitch for the Wisp wayyyy back during the prototyping stage was “a mob that can hold an item”. Wow! Even I can’t do that. Nor me. Why not? You have hands…..sort of. Yeah, but I just can’t be bothered. We struggled to think of what the Wisp’s purpose in Minecraft could be. But when we saw how cute it looked holding an item, well you’d have to be a heartless monster to not want that in Minecraft. Pfft. It’s not that cute. Not as cute as I am in my anime spin-off! [NARRATOR] Marilla, we signed a lot of legally binding documents stopping us from ever mentioning that again. [MARILLA] Oh fine. [MARILLA] In 2021’s Minecraft Live mob vote, the Allay won with 51%. But why do we even have a mob vote anyway?Just to hurt the other mob’s feelings? Well, whenever we add things to Minecraft or make updates, we usually look at what we think the game is lacking, and prioritise that. For example, we thought the Nether was deadly and depressing. But we thought it could be *more* deadly and depressing, so we made the Nether Update. But the thinking behind the mob votes was, well, who are we to decide what Minecraft features we should prioritize making next? Professional game designers? …But it’s still nice to get the community involved. And for the Allay, a mob we loved but hadn’t managed to implement, such a strong win helped Show us that we were working on something the community really, really wants. Should we do a poll to see if people want us to keep making this show? Definitely not. [MARILLA] If you give the Allay an item, it will leave you and return with more of that item. Yeah, I’ve pulled this scam before. [NARRATOR] And yet I’m the one in prison. Let’s look at some early concept art. This item-fetching mechanic was established from the very beginning, and has strict rules. The Allay can only fetch you dropped items, and it can’t open chests or mine resources for you. [MARILLA] We want the Allay to be helpful, but we don’t want it to play Minecraft *for* you. Otherwise you might be free to stop playing for a while, and discover there’s more to life. [NARRATOR] Yes, we can’t have that. Mining blocks is also a big no-no, because outside of a few exceptions, modifying the world is something we only want the player to do. Letting the Allay open chests would also get tricky. There’d be nothing stopping them from raiding your chests and then gifting you with your own stuff! What’s wrong with doing that? I do it all the time. Okayyyy. Let’s look at some early Allay footage. This is the mob in its Wisp days, where we experimented with having them drop the items they collect onto hoppers. [NARRATOR] We started debating how we could get them to go to a hopper. Blackmail sadly didn’t work. And that’s when the musical solution first came up. Here’s some early test footage of us making the Wisp enjoy music. Rock on, you crazy diamonds! ….I’m so incredibly old. So the musical connection developed organically as we experimented with how dropping items could work. And now we have a mob that loves music. [NARRATOR] Oh, ho, ho! A music lover, are we? Then how about I treat the Allay by playing us out with my latest musical masterpiece? [MARILLA] How about you don’t. If you’ve heard rumors that this song contains six rap solos, relax. It actually contains significantly more. And a-one and a-two and a- Video Information
This video, titled ‘The Secrets of Minecraft: The Allay’, was uploaded by Minecraft on 2022-03-29 16:00:13. It has garnered 984647 views and 59145 likes. The duration of the video is 00:05:40 or 340 seconds.
What’s bright and blue and puts our dance moves to shame? After winning the mob vote at Minecraft Live 2021, the Allay is coming to Minecraft 1.19, the Wild Update. Discover the Allay’s Nether Update origins, the name we almost went with, and the early designs that are surprisingly hideous! (OK, they’re not hideous – we’re just still bitter about the dance moves thing).
00:00 Intro 00:53 The Origins of the Allay 02:05 The Allay’s Purpose 02:19 Marilla’s ANIME SPINOFF! 02:29 The Mob Vote 03:28 Born to Dance 03:45 Concept Art 03:51 Item-fetching mechanic 04:33 Prototype footage 04:50 Music and Hoppers
The awesome painting “Skull on Fire” used with permission of and thanks to Kristoffer Zetterstrand: https://zetterstrand.com/