What Is "Blaseball" And Why Is It Taking over the Internet? 

Hello from the future! Since publishing this piece, Quinns and Anni have been working on some OFFICIAL roundup videos for the latest Blaseball season. Imagine this video, but with significantly more chaos energy: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-diAHuUV2Meg.html&

I like to believe that it's impossible to get a baseball uniform in england and he only had access to an Elton John costume

It's uncanny how much the developer actually looks like a baseball

Loved the talking head animations for the developer dialogue. Especially with the attention to detail of the baseball noticing the runner as he passed.

So, basically: The devs are playing GM to a giaaaant table playing a mix of SCP community writting and Sport Fans' passion rallies.

Important to be reminded of: the "canon" is just groups of fans arbitrarily coming together to think a certain thing, but there is NO ACTUAL CANON beyond what is presented by the developers on the website itself. These are fictional characters and you are not obligated to think about them in any certain way. Enjoy the horror.

Point of clarification, the Canada Moist Talkers were the big organizers of Jaylen Hotdogfinger's resurrection. Because Necromancy sounded fun.

important note: since this video was made, the champions of the current season had to fight a god in a JRPG-esque boss battle where the god stole a bunch of players from basically every team and gave them some WILD buffs. absolutely one of the wildest things ive ever seen. y'all, get into blaseball, it's a really fun thing to be a fan of

"and that's Blaseball in a nutshell" Quinns how dare you invoke the name of the Nut after what just happened

Watching this years later (and after Blaseball has shut down) makes me so happy to have been along for at least part of this ride. I don't think the experience of the creativity and goodwill of the community can really be recreated, restarted, or retold. The best I can hope for is to find something like it again someday. And I hope my friends will listen to me next time I tell them about this weird Internet thing that's happening. :D

I was skeptical but then one of the teams listed was "Unlimited Tacos" and now I am a player for life.

You should cover the Marblelympics/Marble League; the fandom/analysis of the marble "athletes" is fantastic - there's been injury, corruption, doping scandals, all in a sport that is basically marbles rolling down various flavours of obstacle course. Also - Go Team Galactic!

Finally my childhood dreams of getting to play Calvinball came true.

Mike Townsend is not a disappointment. He's back and losing every game just like we wanted him to.

Kinda seems like an extension of Blurnsball from Futurama, where the running joke is that the rules are never properly explained.

Blaseball sounds like a blast, but I can't help but wonder... who _runs_ this circus? In-universe, I mean. What's the _owners' association_ look like? What about the almighty _Commissioner_ of Blaseball? Has anyone written or drawn anything on this?

Rewatching this post-Blaseball, remembering the good ol' days 😔💜

Ok can we take a second to appreciate how the eyes of the little baseball developer actually look up as the jogger runs past. That’s attention to detail!

The closest thing this reminds me of is, weirdly, TwitchPlaysPokemon. Because, sure, there is ostensibly something like a "game" going on in the background. But what really seems to matter is how that is filtered, interpreted, retold, and turned into fanworks by online communities. The way people have been ascribing personalities to specific Blaseball players or teams especially reminds me of... pretty much the same thing happening for TPP. People becoming fans of specific characters, that happened. Errors and bugs being turned into part of the lore, we did that. People being devastated when specific characters "died", same thing. The kayfabe is way stronger with Blaseball, obviously, and the game changes much more severely. But the interplay between this internet sensation and the fandom surrounding it is oddly similar.

Someone call Jon Bois, this game is clearly a portal...................................................to the fumble dimension

The "world building" giving me "Welcome to Nightvale" vibes

“Supernova of creativity” oh my god if only he knew

This is TRULY the internet we need from you guys. Top marks, 87 fingers. Very Unthwackable.

Blaseball has been a tremendously effective demonstration of the.... frivolity? of rooting for a sports team, or musical acts. I'm not making light of it; it's a legit human response and isn't any different than any other monte carlo-based video game. But people are dedicating extraordinary amounts of energy to, and getting *extremely* emotional about, what is a machine learning/artificial intelligence-based random number generator.

riv blaseball. we laughed, we cried, we "same as it ever was"ed. one day maybe itll return. sending love from the flowers 🌹

Rest In Vault Pitching Machine 😔

"What if a teambase's passion, ferver and ingenuity could *actually* help that team?" I felt a great disturbance in the Sports Fandoms, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced

I'm a Spies fan, but without question my favourite arc has been the Taco's Snackrifice. They were the worst team at the time by a huge margin, so they decided to just mess with the game itself rather than worry about winning the season, and fans of other teams could even join in in creating such wonderful nonsense. I felt such elation watching Taco pitchers climb up the Idol board. Incidentally, the reason they could perform the Snackrifice was because the top players on the Idol board, so long as they were not one of the three players with Peanut in their name (e.g. the Tigers' Peanutiel Duffy), were considered as displaying heretical idolatry against the evil Peanut that rules over Blaseball, and so were punished by being Shelled (i.e. put in a big peanut shell, you can't get out unless the birds free you during bird weather). This created the potential for the Tacos' shenanigans, with the help of other fans.

1:19 "Blaseball is as simple as that." 4:42 "So that is Blaseball in a nutshell!" **Looks at rest of video** Hmm...

This was a fun look at the cultural phenomenon of blaseball. The animation was great. I particularly enjoyed the way the baseball looked at the person running past it.

I had heard about this, but didn't realize just how deep the thought and lore of this game went. I... I might actually get into this sport, it seems fascinating.

A good friend of mine has been talking about this game for a little over a month now. And the more he went on, the less I got. There was mention of the necromancy and the blood-sucking pitching machine, a bunch of weird dialogue involving a squid and a sentient peanut, incoherent screaming about birds attacking the field and causing a team to have 16 outs in one inning, a black hole consuming the sun and somehow leaving one of the teams with "-1" in the wins column, and some plot to kill God which apparently actually took place in the game's simulation. Needless to say, I watched this video to try and make sense of it...which it has helped, thankfully, but only to the extent that it's possible to understand Blaseball, I assume. Which is still very little.

We are all love blaseball.

I just learned about it today. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Lol, i don't even know how Baseball works but i love Blaseball already

RIV Blaseball. Jazz Hands forever.

RIV blaseball. you were weird, you were wonderful. sending love from the sunbeams ☀️

3:52 - Oh I think the developers know what they mean by "changing your blood type to grass". The rest of the video is proof of this.

I so love how they animated the objects to have faces.

I thought that tony hawk was in the thumbnail. Im disappointed... at myself.

"This is an idle game" Less than one minute and i need to play that

I enjoy videos by Quinns as he always flips wildly between a geography teacher in triple corduroy and then... like, that cool science teacher... in a sequence baseball outfit. And I'm totally here for that.

Whenever anyone asks me "WTF is blaseball?" I'm going to send them to this video.

Anyone else rewatching this and other Blaseball YT content every few days as the grand siesta goes on?

Why did I have to watch this video... I had so many things to do this week. Now I'm rooting for an arbitrary team and discussing with the Discord what the linguistics of "ascend" imply

I do this in pes 2008, i created a team full of players completely unique and customized with different stats, animations and nationalities...I ended up creating backstories for them and It's a lot of fun seeing how they all interact

RIP Blaseball. ☹️

pitching machine was then idolized to the point of getting shelled, was drafted to the pods, and now pitches for the Seattle Garages.

As a man who discovered Shut Up & Shit Down in between the last 2 videos and has been binging it constantly, this video was a trip. Love you Quinns!

So it's a video game version of Calvinball?

when I saw him in a flashy outfit at the start, I thought blaseball stood for bling-baseball

Is very fun to me that the guy that introduced me to Blaseball is now doing the roundups. I very much appreciate his work!

This is so unbelievably funny to me like holy crap. This is just everything I think I could’ve ever wanted and more. The very name of Blaseball just made me laugh from the start so I knew this was going to be good.

Quinns I need to know if that incredible outfit was a business expense or something you just casually owned.

Ah yes, the cultural event known as Blaseball.

The fan-made lore you're describing is giving me Twitch Plays Pokemon vibes and I'm so down for that

Looks like dwarf fortress meets fantasy football, changing the sport, add adding a whole lot of acid

I can see how this is a sensation. A few minutes in and I already wanna play this game just because of how goofy it is.

R.I.P Blaseball, it was fun while it lasted.

At the start I thought "Oh interesting but not really for me" By the end I needed to head over and join.

Nooooooooo I learned about this too late 😢

so basically an ever-growing nearly uncontrollable game of fantasy baseball

Incredible animation work this episode! So many small details. Favourite you guys have put out yet 😊

I have never seen anything more up my alley, so excited to find this!

...Who's here after the Hall Stars came back to kill god at the end of S10?

"Yes, Blaseball players can die.. like formula one"

Quinns lookin' even more fabulous than usual today

That's it, I'm hooked already.

That peanut scene actually made me uncomfortable... Quinns, you are a weird man, and I love you.

Brilliant thanks to Quintin and all those involved in the production of this entertaining and informative story for their time and efforts. Cheers.

rigid unfeeling shell of the nut? the heart of it is love? hits deep man.

5:12 was such a neat touch to have the baseball look at the person running by. Awesome vid! New fan

I've been tangentially exposed to Blaseball through my Twitter feed and I'm so glad to find out that it's so much more than I could have dreamed it was.

Hoooooly heck. I remembered hearing about this game a while ago and thought "wow, this is pretty neat" but I feel like this video has immensely opened my eyes to the deeper, weirder (in a good way), and cooler sides of Blaseball, thank you for this!

You guys make the best videos, thanks for introducing me to all kinds of cool things I've never heard of

"What if Andrew Hussie made a fantasy sport?"

I'm glad that I now know about Blaseball, but also, I thought this was going to be about drag baseball based on his Dodgers outfit.

Thank you for doing this video, I had no idea this existed and I am ready to enter and enjoy this crazy world.

We need Twitch Plays Blaseball.

This is my new favorite channel. Incredible content. I love that I found out about Blaseball.

When he sais "in a nutshell" and I, knowing the shelled one, crack up.

I can't believe how creative you are in picking the topics of your videos...each video uncovers some hidden gem of the gaming community I have never heard about before.

What a fantastic video, thanks for putting in so much effort. Blaseball sounds amazing.

I am now a fan of the Hellmouth Sunbeams. Let's see what Nagomi Nava is all about.

I have a curiosity stream sub from another youtuber sponsored by them and the documentary mentioned at the end of this video (Knuckleball) was SO GOOD, I watched it a few weeks ago. Even if you don't like baseball it's an awesome story about this tiny group of pitchers who use this pitch that nobody else really understands. There's only ever about 2-3 knuckleballers in the league at any given time (out of ~400 pitchers) so they have to work hard to make sure the art doesn't die out. Plus these guys often try to learn the knuckleball when they can tell their regular pitch arsenal isn't gonna get them to the majors, so it's a really awesome underdog story as well. 10/10 would recommend.

What an informative and well produced little video!

That sequin outfit is incredible, I love it. And thanks for the intro to something so creatively surreal.

Watching a video about something I never heard of that is taking the internet. Now my youtube will be taken over by blaseball.

I don't know if the Jelle's Marble League would be a good fit for Quintin's segment, but I'd really love to see that

I want to believe that you already owned the outfit and were desperately trying to find something relevant you could wear it in a video for... Cracking vid as always Quinns (and PMG in general!)

I loved how you did the interviews. Very creative.

Sadly Blaseball ended 2 June 2023 and you cannot play it any more

I needed this! Keep seeing on twitter and seeing it sponsored by cool games made by cool people but had no idea what this was. Stuff like this is what I love

Sounds like something Jon Bois would have a field day with

Phenomenal video everyone. Absolutely lovely, informative, and wholesome!

I'm signing up now! thank you for sharing an amazing game like this

Such a shame that I didnt discover it until well after it was over

This is incredible! Thank you so much for introducing me to this incredibly weird game

What a dork, I love this

This sounds so much like what was behind TwitchPlaysPokemon being the cultural phenomenon that it was. The “unfeeling simulation” here is like the Pokémon games played on TPP, where people would get invested in the Pokémon on the team and make fan art and personalities for them, and we had lovely artwork and stories about them all. The difference here is that the people running Blaseball care about the community they’re cultivating, and have embraced the community and all that it entails, whereas TPP implemented a rule very early on called “The Upstream Clause”, where nothing the fans create is allowed to be shown on the stream in any way that could be construed as making it official. After 6 years, TPP is “still running” in the same way an old junker car that was never properly repaired is “still running”. I’ll be curious how Blaseball looks in 6 years’ time. (It’ll probably help that they have a Patreon - TPP doesn’t pay anyone working on its staff...)