We Are Now Participating In The Cultural Event Of Blaseball
By Benn Ends
Source: Blaseball Discord
Blaseball is at its core, a cultural event. You could call it a sport, but it's really more of a splort. You could call it a game, but you don't do much that could be described as 'playing'. You could call it an engine for community-driven fanfiction and role play based on a shared, yet ill defined setting, but... actually that's also pretty good, call it that.
You create a Blaseball account in your browser, and pick a favorite team with little explanation of what you're getting yourself into. I picked the Chicago Firefighters based on their vague and ominous team motto: "We're From Chicago."
Source: Blaseball Wiki
In Blaseball, the 20 teams compete in weekly seasons, played hourly from Monday to Friday, with a Saturday post season. I'm not gonna explain all the rules. It's mostly just baseball, with too many birds, an anti-capitalism statistic, and so many player incinerations that the in memoriam reel simply lists 'SO SO MANY'.
If you want more specifics, you could check the heavily redacted Book Of Blaseball, which expands as new rules are discovered.
The players themselves are names with stats, faceless objects of fascination. Life is breathed into them by odd details, like that they take their coffee 'flat white'. Anything more specific is community driven. Fan art and fan fiction filling in the gaps with a loving frenzy. The internet loves a cipher.
A simple interface gives a play-by-play as the games happen. The (human) audience bets on games using virtual coins. If you run out of coins, you can always beg the Blaseball gods for more.
The shop lets you buy votes for elections, a higher max bet, peanuts. More options are added each season as Blaseball evolves.
Each season you can vote on decrees that change the rules of Blaseball. Something like making a player on every team Spicy, or a blessing to give a random player extra thumbs so they can bat better. The 'story' of Blaseball develops. New mechanics, new rules that throw game balance further into chaos.
You might be like me, play around with Blaseball a bit, giggle at the great player names or the constantly scrolling highlights text reassuring you that 'THE COMMISSIONER IS DOING A GREAT JOB', then kinda drop off. There's not much to actually *do* at first glance.
I encourage you to take that second glance.
Blaseball isn't about Blaseball the game. It's about Blaseball the *cultural* *experience*.
Follow the Blaseball Commissioner on Twitter. Follow some of the semi-office team accounts that taunt or cheer on their peers.
Most importantly, join the Blaseball Discord, and let the soaring joy of a dedicated community of (in large part) queer folk who rejected or were rejected from the cishet-ass world of Sports finally getting to engage in the parasocial bliss of saying 'we won!!' as your favorite team closes out the championship.
Let Blaseball wash over you.
Part of the fun is being part of a community that talks like if the SCP Foundation writers were all jocks.
Part of the fun is wondering, then learning, what exactly does it mean when a player becomes 'Spicy'.
Part of the fun is explaining it to people who aren't in the know.
Just make sure to join in before the Hades Tigers manage to win the championship 3 times in a row, causing them, and Blaseball, to ascend.
I mean who knows what happens after that?
Benn 'Doomgender' Ends (she/her) Artificial artist. Haunted typewriter. Author of obscure landscapes, queer kink romances, and lonely afternoons at the end of summer. Find a general directory of her projects at Doomgender.online.
Patreon: Patreon.com/DoomGender
Twitter: @BennEnds (sfw) or @Doomgender