May seem weird that a mapmaker has maps. But hey! I do! And I'm delighted to tell you some fun facts about all of them
[Click here] to go read about them. Or just select it on the menu
For the past year, an idea has been living rent free in my head. I felt like there was an itch I wanted to scratch, and nothing really did it for me. There are great Minecraft podcasts now, some that I even watch regularly, but nothing was quite what I “needed.”
It’s been almost five years now since I switched from listening to music to podcasts for everything. And don’t get me wrong, I still have thousands upon thousands of hours of just music on my Spotify recap, but as I grew older, I started enjoying those talk shows I despised as a kid.
This past year and a half or so, I have been looking for a Minecraft show that I could listen to without needing a lot of context on niche concepts. I love The Spawn Chunks, for example, but I don’t follow their survival series, so I tend to get a bit disconnected.
I found a lot of cool ideas that never made it past a season, or even just a few episodes, and then the idea appeared: why not? I thought to myself, “Would I be capable of making it myself?”
So I just did. I started writing hundreds of questions, discarding most of them, developing a concept to work on, and starting from scratch several times until I realized that what I had could be unique. By being a mapmaker, I have access to a lot of really interesting people. People that nobody knows, but everyone has played their maps. So I decided that I would try to give a voice to those people, not to share their projects, but to share what’s behind them: what motivates them, what it means to be them, and what has made them become... well, them.
Maybe the idea was better suited for an essay-style video, but I wanted to create something that felt natural, something that could slowly reveal itself to the listener. I want to do it. I will do it!
And then reality struck. I get stuttery when nervous, and I get nervous when I get attention (watch me struggle with words on the RMAs). So starting a show where my voice was the host voice was a terrifying idea. I am a Spaniard who learned English by watching Keralis’ building tutorials and switching the game to English to struggle a little less with researching blocks back then, so English is not my strongest suit. And the accent, oh my god, the accent. Sometimes, if I’m super chill, I can kind of do a bad British accent, but that disappears as soon as I remember I’m speaking to someone.
But light shines brighter in the dark, and so did Mickey Joe. He’s the person responsible for giving me enough courage to just do it. He made me (or at least tried to) value my accent as a unique asset rather than a problem or something to be ashamed of. He says it gives me character.
And of course I did it. It’s obvious if you’ve already seen it, but yeah, I did it. And as only felt fair, the great Mickey Joe has been the first guest ever on the show, not only for encouraging me, but also because he might have the best and most detailed resource pack I have ever seen.
I’m really proud of what I made, and I cannot wait to film more episodes. Thanks for all the great support I have received. I love you all!
Special thanks to Yuniedo, as I borrowed her microphone to record the show and have been showing her every step of the way to make sure the final product was acceptable. (And for supporting me with every idea I have.)
I got a wonderful birthday present.
The mapmaker and minecraft.wiki writer Hexakon, with the help of Nadja. Has written a page about me in the official minecraft wiki [minecraft.wiki/w/armero]
This is something I never thought it could happen, but they say that I've made "notable" contributions to the community with the RMA's event and being the Deputy Reviewer :)
But... I got removed, not surprised, I know, I have made a clickbaity title that spoils everything, but you are here reading, so what's stopping me from writing in a dramatic way? Well enough of that. Yeah, I've been removed, or rather moved out of the official page because I'm not notable enough, which is fair in my opinion.
Aaaaand... I know, I know... Well, I got added back again and I'm super happy about it. I cannot wait to make an update blogpost to tell you (the only person reading this probably) that I got removed again. But you know what? I am part of Minecraft's history now (I guess) and I couldn't be happier about it.
So, thank you a lot Hex, I appreciate the encouragement gave him Nadja and thanks to Oskar and the Minecraft Realms team and community for allowing me to be part of everything! I am so grateful I could write a blogpost about it... heh
*June 2026 update to the post, i got removed again... smh*
Since there were blocks, there was creativity. We not just inhabit it, but shape it, make it and care for it.
As a mapmaker I try to see the world as an blank canvas, and I love to draw the first ideas onto it, create chaos and express all of what's worth being told.
After the chaos, there comes the purge... Not a literal one, no. Nothing gets removed (for the most part) but just put to a side waiting to be used later or to serve as inspiration.
When a world starts to get a shape of it's own and the "inspiration pile" grows, a bunch of new doubts emerge; Is this world big enough? Will this idea get bigger than it is? Should I make several versions of it?... The trick to contain all of them, in my opinion, is to create several worlds. It may not be the best idea, and I'm sure there's better ways for me and my disk space to do it. But in the end I like to have all the options availible. In average, every project ends up having around five preliminary variations, twenty to thirty copies on different stages of progression and at least five final versions (Sorry Nadja for making you end up correcting most of the text in "PA")
Have I found "the way" of building? I don't think so, but I sure do love doing it!