I’ve become a bit obsessed with Blaseball since it’s return and my discovery of it via Defector.
The above video gets straight to the absurdity that makes it so great, covering the first 11 seasons before it came back last week. In reality, it’s just an idle text-based browser game, but wild events occur throughout the week to where some even call it a horror game. But what really makes it special is the fans. A major component of the game is voting. Voting on what happens to teams as well as rule changes to the game or even opening The Book of Forbidden Knowledge.
Ooooooooooooooooeeeehhhhwwwww
Fans not only follow their favorite teams and players, they build the lore around them as well. I’ve only dipped a toe in to the Discord here and the wiki there (it gets reeeeaaaalllllyyyy deep), but even from that very surface level attention it’s been tons of fun.
After the first couple of days of obsessively trying to learn what the hell was going on, my relationship with the game is pretty casual. I check in a couple times a day to place bets, see what major events have occurred, and then go about my day as I let the coins rack up so I can vote in the next election. For me the worst part is probably how active everything seems throughout the week, with games starting every hour at all hours of the day, and the sense that I could be missing something at any moment. But, it’s not really meant to be something you are a completionist with because it literally never stops.
It was sad when our beloved Joshua Butt was incinerated by an umpire or when our Peanutiel Duffy (formerly known as Daniel Duffy before The Shelled One turned all Dans into peanuts) was swept elsewhere off the bases by a flood (before returning three days later), but still the Chicago Firefighters endure, currently sitting in first place in the Wild High as this seasons playoffs approach!
WAFC!1
We Are From Chicago, the motto of the Firefighters because we are all from Chicago.↩︎