In the gaming realm, Minecraft is a beast—outselling every other video game ever created. And with a large portion of YouTube uploads being dedicated to gaming, Minecraft holds a big sway over YouTube audiences, too.
Alex Kisiel’s channel, ish, found this out firsthand.
Kisiel has played Minecraft for a long time. His first video on the game was uploaded seven years ago. And yet, that’s not what his channel originally focused on.
If you scroll through the channel’s 39 videos, you’ll see a range of video topics: a couple on learning how to do something quickly; a couple essays responding to (at the time) current events; some videos about the times he participated in MrBeast challenges.
But it wasn’t until he began creating elaborate Minecraft narratives that his channel really took off. As of publishing, ish has uploaded four Minecraft videos based around the theme of civilization—that is, dropping people into a Minecraft world with one life to see how they build a society. And compared to the rest of his videos, these four have received millions of views more than the rest of his content.
That spike is enough to put ish’s videos on the front of YouTube, and it’s likely that your child might spot one of them. With that in mind, what can we expect from the growing channel?
Kisiel crafts interesting and fun stories in his Minecraft challenges, keeping the viewer engaged. And through his videos, he’s formed a generally friendly community of players.
Other videos show ish’s commitment to learning or teaching new things, such as practicing violin or explaining what Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is.
Some of Kisiel’s videos contain some swearing. While audible swears are censored out, it should be noted that the occasional use of the f-word can be seen typed out in chat by other players when ish plays Minecraft. More commonly, viewers will hear light words like “frick,” though God’s name is used in vain sometimes, too.
On a similar note, these Minecraft videos occasionally contain inappropriate jokes, such as a joke about bestiality or a cavity search. Also in these Minecraft videos, some players will create fake religions (such as a flower cult) or form societies based on real ones like Islam.
Kisiel knows how to tell a story, that much is apparent. The Minecraft videos for which his channel is known contain many twists, turns and otherwise interesting story arcs that will keep viewers waiting for the next one to come out. And while ish’s content is generally pretty clean, a few things may keep the channel from children.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
