A number of staff are being laid off in the process

The bizarre internet sports-sim Blaseball is coming to a close. Developer The Game Band has announced that it's ending Blaseball ahead of its new era, and l??aying off some staff in th?e process.

Posted on The Game Band's Medium page, the studio confirms Blaseball is headed to an end, rather than its planned Coronation Era. In short, Blaseball "isn't sustainable" to keep running.

"Since Blaseball’s inception, we’ve been fighting against the amount of work it takes to keep Blaseball true to itself while financially supporting the team and keeping our staff healthy," the dev team wrote. "We’ve tried countless solutions to make it work, and we’ve come to the conclusion that this fight isn’t one we can win in the long run. The cost, literally and metaphorically, is too high. So we are making the decision to end it here instead of changing Blaseball into something unrecognizable."

As part of this, The Game Band is also parting ways with "many" of its team members. The team had grown in order to start making some of its plans work for the rebooted Blaseball.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5t8DwnDE1k

Rest In Violence

I stumbled across Blaseball the way I imagine many early participants did. It was a social media hit during the early days?? of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you never got around to learning about it, Blaseball mixed a running fantasy sports sim of baseball with narrative mechanics that let players vote on differen?t decrees and rules, which would shift the game in unforeseen and interesting ways. Sometimes another base would appear, or stats would go up. And other times, players would rise from the dead.

This community participation, combined with the sparse text interface filled with wildly inventive names like "Jaylen Hotdogfingers" or the Baltimore Crabs, was a blessing in 2020. Fan art and writing instantly emerged. Teams were free to define themselves and develop their own stories, lingo, and vibe, while still welcoming new fans in. The Seattle Garages made a lot of music.

[caption id="attachment_348316" align="alignnone" width="640"] Image via The Game Band[/caption]

All the while, Blaseball evolved too. It continued to "yes, an??d" through each wild pitch the community made. The Game Band developed some incred??ible moments, like the universe ending and fighting a shelled god. All of it, inside a text-display baseball sim.

We are Blaseball

So while this is a news post about a disappointing, difficult layoff, it's also a send-off of sorts. Blaseball was, for several y??ears, a very important corner of the internet for a number of people. And it will likely remain so, long after the games have stopped.

In this industry, I tend to see a lot of live-service games come and go. Some feel like it's their time, as the natural cycle of the industry also shifts towards something new, but others stick with you for a little while. This is the latter, for me. Even during the times I wasn't avidly watching every match on a second monitor, I loved the community effort that turned Blaseball into a welcome respite.

I hope, at the least, it's remembered well for that. And that everyone who played a role in making Blaseball what it was land?s on their feet. Thanks?? for the games.

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We talk to the Blaseball team about what's in store for the new Era

It was the year 2020, and everyone was inside. The world was slowly coming to grips with a pandemic, and everyone was indoo?rs and online. Am??id it all, there was Blaseball.

Blaseball is, at its most distilled form, a sports game. Users join through the website and assign themselves to a team of choice, like the Houston Spies or Balti??more Crabs, ei?ther through regional loyalty or just digging their vibe. Each team is populated by generated players, who play out their games in A.I.-driven baseball games, like watching a bunch of CPU opponents fight in Super Smash Bros.

The teams play matches throughout the week, effect?ively simulating a season of baseball, and users b?et in-game currency on the outcomes, akin to Salty Bet matches. Those ear??nings can be used for your own purposes, or to help the team try and secure certain advantages through a bidding process.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5t8DwnDE1k

And this is where Blaseball gave wa??y to its??, let’s say, stranger side. Because the “splort�itself is just a piece of the greater puzzle. What Blaseball truly becam??e was a gr??eater work of community and collaborative fiction. 

Developer The Game Band would incorporate? bizarre rules and situations, like extra bases for one team to run or blooddrain raining down on the field. Star players would be incinerated in matches. A peanut god entombed competitors in peanut shells. Wi??ld times.

A new Era

So it’s 2022, and Blaseball is back. The Game Band is kicking off a season of Fall Ball as a build-up to the new Era. After a Great Siesta and a ??lot of time pokin?g, prodding, and examining, the team is reapproaching what Blaseball is.

I sat down with Sam Rosenthal, Joel Clark, and Stephen Bell, th??ree leads behind Blaseball and its upcoming return. And as Rosenthal describes it, the team has?? taken a chance t??o look at what they want Blaseball to be at a higher level. The first version was very “reactive,�Rosenthal says, and went well beyond expectation??s. But the cade??nce, methods, and team size were not sustainable.

The Game Band now stands at 27 employees strong, up from the “fi??ve?? or six�they started Blaseball with. And a new version of Blaseball is powering it.

“It’s kind o?f like a rethinking, a reboot, of what Blaseball was,�said Rosenthal.

//twitter.com/thegameband/status/??15853183185??45637376

The Fall Ball

Approachability an?d community are two aspects Rosenthal goes on to highlight as changes. A core focal point of Blaseball has been its commun?ity; teams�fans assemble in Discords and on social media, organizing planning sessions alongside charity efforts and gener??al outreach. The robust community aspects made Blaseball feel heaven-sent amid the pandemic. But it’s also mad??e it tough for newcomers arriving, and seeing floods of messages, in-language,? and constant games, to know where to start.

Fall Ball is helping with that. The current event is described?? by The Game band as a prologue event, showing a universe in formation. Players are, for lack of a be?tter term, being “burped�into the universe and dropped onto random teams. There’s some anticipation on who will appear in this world. And also, it provides a nice onboarding point.

Still, the core of Blaseball is its emergent narrative. No other anecdote is as effective as illustrating this than the story of Jaylen Hotdogfingers. The pitcher was effectively raised from the dead through a b??it of a loophole, and then became a necromantic terror that was beaning batters at the plate to mark them for incineration. Jaylen and so many others became tall tales, living legends of the Blaseball scene that drove the drama ?between each A.I.-driven sim session.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=diAHuUV2Meg

Emerging narrative

The Game Band calls Blaseball an emergent narrative game. “That’s not going away,�Clark tells me. And while there is impr??ovisation, the studio has also bee??n able to map out a bit more in advance thanks to the break time between the conclusion of Blaseball’s Discipline Era and now.

“We do still plan to be improvisational, and like, be able to build on these fan stories during this Era, but so much of it’s planned in advance,�said Clark. “So we have to find this balance of designing the possibility space where fans might take the emergent narrative. When we’re design??ing each se??ason, we see where it might go, where were the corners that the fans might find and take this in?�/span>

The Game Band previously had to work around edge cases like Jaylen’s necromancy on the fly, as Bell tells me. The team was always planning ahead before. But the ?big change has been having so much time to map out a whole possibility space.

“We, previously, had a small possibility space, and then we would be rushing to expand it over the course of an Era,�?said Rosen??thal. “And now we have taken the time to really think through what we want the possibility space to be, and have a better sense for where we can jump in and react, you know, based on what the fans latch onto.�/span>

Talk to me

The communication aspect is also one The Game Band has considered. The team didn’t go into too much detail on exactly what it’s planning. But it i?s thinking about aspects of how people organize and participate outside of the game, and to be more intentional with how the community can talk to one another.

Discords are still going to have a place in Blaseball, the team assures. But they’re not networks the team made, and they’ve become core parts of the experience. The team has been thinking a lot about what worked well and didn’t work well with those aspects, as it looks at ways to help people ??connect in the game.

Core parts of Blaseball will continue to remain, though. The sp?arseness, Clark says, goes a long way towards the game being improvisation??al. It’s easier to be more mysterious and adaptive when a game doesn’t need massive 3D models, after all. But Blaseball is getting “a fresh coat of paint,�to add? a bit more to the experience.

More points the team examined include making big moments clearer, so users have a better idea of when to “tune in�for something big. Season will ??feel very different as the games roll on, too. The sim is fairly new, if not totally new. That means changing some aspec?ts.

“And I’ll stay a little vague here, but it?’s really giving us more ground to cover,�said Clark. “And there’s ?just a lot more that we can play with there.�/span>

Bell mentio??ns worrying about how many more ways the team could have played with baseball. Blaseball has had catastrophic weather and incinerations. It turned a contest with a peanut god into a live RPG boss battle. Bell even jokes about an idea he pitch??ed, exponential runs, that never saw the light of day.

//twitter.com/blase?ball/status/1585316187944022017

Expanding the game

When look?ing at how to expand and add depth, Bell cites Dwarf Fortress. The idea of expandi?ng interiority, in the case of the dwarves, can add more of that depth. The team is being understandably vague, as the?? mystery and deeper lore is a core part of Blaseball that The?? Game Band is still working to retain, even as it makes the on-ramp easier.

But with the new Era of Blaseball, it doesn’t feel like The Game Band is trying to recap?ture the moment. It’s not really possible to do that anyways. Blaseball, as it was in 2020, was of its ?time. And now the team is looking at what Blaseball can be in 2022. It’s daunting, but as a Blaseball aficionado, pretty exciting.

Through a mobile app, on-boarding and helping players who only jump on for five minutes a tim?e, the doors to Blaseball doors are opening a bit mor?e. It’s this bizarre, otherw?orld “splort�that is happening in the background. Until a notification hits your phone, and chaos lets loose. This is the start of a new universe, picking up where the old one left off. The Game Band seems intent on bringing in old Blaseball fans and newcomers alike.

And as Clark jokes at the conclusion of our chat: “Weâ€??™re hoping i??t’s just as cursed.â€?/span>

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The new team is working on a multiplayer experience

A new remote-first studio has been announced today, with goals set on both the games it wants to make and its own studio culture. Gardens is a studio aiming to create multiplayer games?? that foster meaningful moments, as well as growing a studio that's transparent, sustainable, inclusive, and empowering.

Gardens' co-founders are Chris Bell, Lexie Dostal, and Stephen Bell. Chris and Stephen both worked on What Remains of Edith Finch, the Annapurna Interactive-published narrative adventure. Chris' credits also include Journey and Sky: Children of the Light. Stephen has been working on Blaseball. Dostal, meanwhile, was a co-creator of Dustforce.

Other developers on the team have worked on Spider-Man, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Fallout series, Ratchet & Clank, and The Hobbit. Garde??ns is a remote-first studio, though it is based primarily out of? Portland and Los Angeles.

"With Gardens, we wanted to create a studio that cares as much about the health, happiness, and wellbeing of its team members as we do the craftsmanship of the games we create together," said Chris Bell. "Our top priority is making sure our teammates enjoy our lives and are given the tools and resources to grow while cre?ating compelling, well-crafted, thoughtful games that cultivate novel shared experiences between pl??ayers online."

The team says it aims to create artfully-craft??ed, living environments that will foster those multiplayer interactions. Their upcoming, unnamed game will build upon shared on??line experiences, with players "crossing paths in a mysterious and magical world."

You can find the studio's open positions here on Gardens site.

This is a team of developers that certainly caught my eye. Games like Journey and Blaseball certainly put interesting spins on multiplayer ga??meplay. It'll be ?interesting to see where Gardens goes, and what its magical world has in store.

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Back into the surreal

It's time to head back out to the diamond. Developer The Game Band has announced Blaseball: Short Circuits, a series of short, temporary universes in which it will explore some new features for Blaseball's future.

Blaseball, if you're unfamiliar, is a sort of surreal fantasy sports simulation where fans back their favorite teams and watch as they play a whole season of "baseball" in a week. I use air-quotations because Blaseball is all about bending the rules; in its first eras, teams saw players get incinerated, had to navigate the vast expanse of the universe, and fought a peanut go??d.

It all rules, and this video from People Make Games sums up the appeal quite well if you want a fur??ther dive.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5t8DwnDE1k

In today's blog, The Game Band confirms that the next Blaseball era will launch in 2022, alongside its forthcom?ing mobile app. But as it works towards that goal, as well as making a more sustaina??ble schedule, ethical monetization, and an approachable onboarding process, it's testing a few things out.

That's where Blaseball: Short Circuits comes in. It's a series of short, low-stakes mini-series of "temporary universes." The idea is for each to be light on narrative and designed to test out some variations of the core Blaseball experience. The 24 teams of Blaseball will compete with new rosters in each universe,?? and at the end of each two-week period, that universe will end. (Don't worry, previous era's players are still fine...for now.?)

The Game Band says it hopes to research how fans play Blaseball, as well as welcome in new fans and just enjoy some good ol' fashioned Blaseball action. The dates are subject to change, but the first Short Circuit is set to run Nov. 1 through 14. You can follow the action on the Blaseball site.

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A mobile version is in the works, too

The Game Band, the indie outfit behind the fantasy sports sim/metafictional narrative experiment Blaseball, has secured funding to keep making more. Today, the studio announced a "significant investment" from Makers Fund, with additional inves?tments from 1Up Ventures and Matthew Ball.

The investment will be used "first and foremost" to pay the Blaseball team for all of the hard work that's been put into the developmen??t of the ever-growing community sports sim, and then to grow the team, according to founder and creative director Sam Rosenthal. 

"We&?rsquo;ve read all of your feedback and ha??ve so many ideas of our own," wrote Rosenthal in the statement today. "Now we’ll have the resources to be able to start to put some of them into action. And finally, the investment enables us to look to the future and plan out new projects without the fear of going under."

Blaseball will also remain free-to-play, and The Game Band will stay an independent studio. A subsequent tweet from the s??tudio's account also confirmed that a mobile app is in deve?lopment.

If you're unfamiliar with Blaseball, it's maybe best describ??ed as fantasy sports with an emphasis on fantasy, and with a heaping help of community participation. Players can bet (fake, not real, money) on simulated matches playing throughout the week, and spend that currency to vote for decrees and decisions that will alter the future of the league.

It might sound pretty straightforward, but even in its earliest seasons, Blaseball players were resurrecting people from the dead, watching their favorite players get incinerated, and fighting a godlike entity in the form of a massive peanut. It's a surprisingly deep community that ended up being a welcome and constant respite of mine throughout 2020. You can sign up over at the Blaseball site and play ??in your browser, and just remember: the commissioner is doing a great job.

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