Reaching the Far Lands

I love games that allow for player agency. Sandboxes that give a bunch of scope and tools to the player and set you on the way with a "go have fun" kick to the rear. My personal guilty pleasure was Skyrim. Sure, there are quests and factions to pursue, but 100s of hours in, making my own fun raiding forts and exploring, I'd still not seen the old guys on the mountain. For many, Minecraft is one of those games.

For casual and lapsed players of Minecraft, the Far Lands are a mythical (maybe not even real) biome where the procedural generation algorithm can no longer reliably create the world in front of you, and things end up being a little...strange. It's real and occurs 12,550,821 blocks away from the initial spawn point.

Well, 14 years ago, one player set out to hit the world boundary, and on October 4th, his journey concluded. 'Far Lands or Bust' debuted on March 28, 2011 on YouTube and Twitch from streamer Kurt 'Kurtjmac' Mac. Kurtjmac's journey hasn't been easy. The glitch hasn't actually existed in Minecraft for years after Mojang applied a patch for the issue, forcing the streamer to play on the old beta 1.7.3 build.

As the series began to gain traction, Kurtjmac decided to take inspiration from others (namely Zeldathon and Desert Bus for Hope) as he raised money for worthy causes (such as Child's Play, Direct Relief, PAWS, and the Equal Justice Initiative).

Despite the game's original developer, Markus 'Notch' Persson, proclaiming that making the trip would be impossible, it might have taken well over a decade, but Kurtjmac has proved everyone wrong. You can see the moment it happens on stream in full here. It's clearly a huge moment for his community, and a testament to both the human spirit and his stubbornness in sticking to a very specific goal over such a long period of time. I'm genuinely in awe.

Full story sourced from PCGamesN