Speech at Telford

30th November 2013, Telford International Centre

Ladies and gentlemen, Minecrafters, and peoples of the World of Tux community: Greetings! On this most momentous occasion of the first unofficial World of Tux and Craftanium panel at the 50th Insomnia Gaming Festival, Our Imperial Majesty Emperor Adam the First, Head Admin of World of Tux and Owner of Craftanium, gives this following address.

I bought Minecraft in February 2012. That's 21 months ago. These 21 months have changed my life. Before Minecraft, the only place where I would interact with my peers was at school, and there I had very little in common with my peers. There were only a few people I would count as good friend back then. I still planned to pursue teaching as a career choice, not realising how unfit it was for my personality. Most importantly, I wasn't doing anything interesting with my life.

Let me take a moment to explain one of my main goals in life: to do as many interesting things as I possibly can while still living in comfort. Back in February 2012, I played video games in my free time, and that was about it. Minecraft was the first game where I actually had the capability and the motivation to play multiplayer, and I did so for the first time in April 2012. And so a long journey through different servers where I met many new people began. There was NoJ, my first friend who guided me through my early days on YouTube, though he has sadly departed; there was Nate, who helped me create The Crafters, which you now all know as Craftanium; then came Scooby, Looter, MegaHetch, Tux, Bex, Cakebomb and Fishkingz.

I really do owe a lot to Paulsoaresjr. Not only did he introduce me to all this with his Minecraft tutorials, it was on his forum website, Punchwood.com, where I met the wonderful Forum Wars roleplaying community, who have been a constant source of support who helped me through my depression in September 2012. It was also on Punchwood where I found a series of Minecraft modding tutorials, which, though I never followed directly due to their abrupt ending, introduced me to Java programming – more on that later.

My YouTube channel was the first interesting thing I did online, going back to before even Minecraft, but as time went on there have been many times I have come close to packing in. Even with NoJ's help early on, it has been difficult to keep the channel going at times, but then there are other times, perhaps when I hit a subscriber milestone, or I get a particularly positive comment, or I notice how well a certain video is doing, that inspire me to do more. This is all thanks to the 240-odd people who have subscribed to me. Because of all of you out there who support my channel, I am now earning money – very small amounts, but it is still there – through YouTube, and that is so unbelievably encouraging.

Now I move on to something that I am perhaps most well-known for in this community – my micronation, the Empire of Adammia. Never have many of us seen such a grand display of eccentricity as micronationalism. Admittedly, I would still have discovered the hobby without you guys, as I found while doing history homework – but I feel it deserves a mention here because it is arguably the most interesting thing that I do, and the fact that such an unconventional hobby has been accepted and even admired by members of this community where elsewhere it would be simply laughed at is amazing. Many of you have even contributed yourselves, becoming citizens, knights and dames, and in Tux's case, a colonial governor. I think without the response from this community, I wouldn't have pushed Adammia to the point where it is today.

I already mentioned how I got started with programming, but it was much more recently that I realised how much of a more viable career choice it was than teaching, thanks to Tux here... and allow me to add, he has been a tremendous help while I have been learning Java. However, my programming has become a lot more widely known lately with my current project, the Lion Game, being released for others to use for the first time. The Lion Game is probably the most fun I have had programming, and I owe much of it to our good friend Flinny, who sadly could not join us today. Flinny, I salute you – our fantastically imaginative bug-testing lion! What began as a silly idea is now evolving into a much more serious game project, and so far it has been immensely satisfying.

But overall, throughout all this time, the one thing that has impacted my life the most has been the community around me. There are many different branches of it, of course, that overlap in places, but there's Craftanium, World of Tux, and Forum Wars. Spending time with people online has allowed me to develop as a person in many ways, it has led to me developing new interests, it has been supportive in my endeavours, and through it I have made friends who mean a massive amount to me. I have heard it said that World of Tux is like a second family to many, and I understand their line of reasoning.

Like any family of course, we have our issues at times, so before I conclude this speech, I would like to point out what happened to the old home of many of us, perfectly summarised by Percy Shelley's classic poem, Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

I am sure most of you will know what I am talking about, and it is vitally important that history does not repeat itself. They stand on the brink of collapse, their server empty, the owners turning on each other in a petty fight, their last chance at revival wasted. However, our recent problems have been dealt with sensibly and this gives me hope because it shows that we are all maturing. And so, as a unified community, we move onwards towards even greater and more prosperous times for Craftanium and World of Tux. Thank you for your time, and good day.