Dream

YouTube

The dream started its YouTube channel on February 8, 2014.^[1]

In a video from January 2020, Dream and another YouTuber, GeorgeNotFound, connected an Arduino board to an electric dog collar which emitted an electric shock whenever a player lost health in the game Minecraft.^[2]

In December 2020, in place of their annual YouTube Rewind series, YouTube released a list of their top-trending videos and creators. On the U.S. list, YouTube ranked Dream's "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters GRAND FINALE" video as the number seven "Top Trending Video", and ranked Dream as the number two "Top Creator" and number one "Breakout Creator".^[3] A Livestream by Dream on YouTube in November 2020 with around 700,000 peak viewers was the 6th highest viewed gaming stream of all time as of January 2021.^[4] A December 2020 Polygon article stated that "2020 has been a tremendous year for Dream", describing him as "YouTube's biggest gaming channel of the moment".^[5]

Minecraft Manhunt

Dream's most well-known and most-watched series in Minecraft Manhunt. In Minecraft Manhunt one player—usually Dream—attempts to finish the game as fast as possible with only one life, while another player or team of players (the "Hunters") attempts to stop the other person from beating the game by killing them. The hunters each have infinite lives and a compass pointed towards the player's location. The hunters win the game if the player dies before beating Minecraft.^[6]

On December 26, 2019, Dream uploaded the first video in this series, titled "Beating Minecraft But My Friend Tries to Stop Me".^[7] The dream would subsequently repeat this style of video on many occasions, with him increasing the number of Hunters over time.^[6] Many of the videos have received tens of millions of views.^[8] One of his Manhunt videos was sixth in YouTube's Top Trending Videos of 2020.^[9]

Nicolas Perez, writing in Paste, described Minecraft Manhunt as "an experience that leaves me slack-jawed every time", stating that the format of Minecraft Manhunt "seems to guarantee the hunters come out on top. But more often than not, Dream pulls just enough aces out of his sleeve to narrowly beat the hunters, and eventually the game."^[6]

Dream SMP

The Dream SMP server is a private Survival Multiplayer Minecraft server owned by Dream, started on April 25, 2020. It is played on by Dream and other prominent Minecraft content creators. The server is divided into factions and includes heavy roleplay^[10] with major events being loosely scripted in advance, most other elements being improvisation, performed live on YouTube and Twitch. Cecilia D'Anastasio, writing in Wired, described the Dream SMP as a form of live theatre and as a "Machiavellian political drama", with over 1 million people tuning in to the live streams during January 2021.^[11]

Minecraft competitions

Throughout 2020, Dream was a prominent participant in Minecraft Championship, a monthly Minecraft competition organized by Noxcrew. In 2020, Dream came first in the 8th and 11th Minecraft Championships.^[12] In September 2020, during the 10th Minecraft Championship, he played for charity, raising around $3,400.^[13]

Minecraft speedrunning

In March 2020, Dream posted his first official Minecraft speedrun to his YouTube channel. It was the world record at the time in the "1.9+" category on Speedrun.com.^[14] 6 days after the upload of his first speedrun, fellow speedrunner IlluminaHD beat his record, which caused Dream to begin speedrunning Minecraft again. On March 24, Dream reclaimed the world record,^[15] which was beaten again by Illumina after 17 days.^[16] On June 10,^[17] Dream would upload his last speedrun and world record in the "1.9+" category to date, which remained the world record for 67 days.^[16] Currently, Dream is in 12th place in the category on Speedrun.com.^[18]

Speedrun cheating accusations

In early October 2020, Dream live-streamed a speedrun of Minecraft in the "1.16+" category and submitted his time to Speedrun.com. He was awarded 5th place for the record.^[5]

On December 11, 2020, following a two-month investigation, Speedrun.com's Minecraft verification team removed his run from the boards. The team published a 14-minute video to YouTube and a report analyzing six archived live streams of speedrunning sessions by Dream from around the time of the record; they concluded that the game had been modified to make the chance of obtaining certain items needed to complete the game higher than normal. The report found that the odds of obtaining the items legitimately were 1 in 7.5 trillion.^[5][19][20] Dream denied the accusations in a YouTube video and responded with a commissioned report written by an anonymous statistician, whom he claimed was an astrophysicist.^[8] Dot Esports said the report did not exonerate him, and "at most" suggested it was not impossible that he was lucky. The moderation team stood by their ruling. In a tweet, Dream indicated that he would accept their decision, without admitting fault.