Anarchy, Blaseball & Community Development
A presentation at DevOps Days PDX in in Portland, OR, USA by Fen Aldrich
ANARCHY, BLASEBALL & COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 🛠Aaron Aldrich (they/them)🛠 - 🐦@CrayZeigh 1
WTF IS BLASEBALL? 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 2
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Pick a favorite team Earn coins 🟠 🏝 Hawai’i Fridays 🔥 Chicago Fire ghters 🌮 LA Unlimited Tacos 🌞 Hellmouth Sunbeams 🦀 Baltimore Crabs 📱 New York Millennials 🔱 Atlantis Georgias 🛠 Core Mechanics 🎸 Seattle Garages 🥩 Dallas Steaks 🐌 Ohio worms 🍬 Kansas City Breath Mints 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 Buy snacks! fi 4
games every hour 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 5
outcome based on stats 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 6
“…going deeper into what makes this game an online sensation is like trying to do an autopsy on the Philly Fanatic” -Quinns (@Quinns108), People Make Games 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 7
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“I describe a lot of it as just subconscious just mostly thinking about what would be funny and just, like, letting it happen” Joel Clark, Engineer & Designer, The Game Band 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 9
beware of weather bloddrain blackhole 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 salmon jazz 10 glitter solar eclipse
R.I.V. 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 11
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FREEDOM, FANDOM, COMMUNITY 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 13
“…It was always like let’s make a game that… centers around community and plays with it and sees what comes out of it” Joel Clark, Engineer & Designer, The Game Band 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 14
R.I.V. 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 15
Rest In Violence 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 16
Interdimensional Rumor Mill 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 17
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sibr.dev 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 20
https://github.com/Society-for-Internet-Blaseball-Research 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 21
“There are fans who compile statistics, or draw fan art, or both. And some fans uncover hidden secrets in 25year-old salmon modeling software” - The Saga of Salmon Steve (salmon.sibr.dev) 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 22
Falsehoods programmers believe about blaseball sibr.dev/falsehoods 57. The home team pitcher and the away team pitcher must be different players 58. A lineup player cannot bat and be on base at the same time 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 23
“Sometimes I think the community is making a game just as much as we are” Joel Clark, Engineer & Designer, The Game Band 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 24
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WHAT IT’S NOT 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 27
“The ideal of anarchism is a society in which all individuals can do whatever they choose, except interfere with the ability of other individuals to do what they choose.”
- Donald Rooum, What is Anarchism? An Introduction. 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 28
ORGANIZING WITHOUT HIERARCHY 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 29
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THE CORE VALUES We All Lift Together: Looking Out for Each Other Down Here 1. We’re all responsible for building a safe and inclusive community 2. We’re committed to allowing everyone the space to express themselves while remaining consistent with what the Groundskeepers expect our spaces to be. 3. We are required to respect each other’s personal interpretation of Blaseball canon and recognize that no one is beholden to anyone else’s vision. 4. We expect each and every one of us to take responsibility for our own actions and the effect they have on our teammates. 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 33
“The ideal of anarchism is a society in which all individuals can do whatever they choose, except interfere with the ability of other individuals to do what they choose.”
- Donald Rooum, What is Anarchism? An Introduction. 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 34
“The ideal of anarchism is a society in which all individuals can do whatever they choose, except interfere with the ability of other individuals to do what they choose.”
- Donald Rooum, What is Anarchism? An Introduction. 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 35
THE PARADOX OF TOLERANCE 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠
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Tempcheck • Type “tempcheck” in chat • Others react: • ✅ I’m ne • ⚠ I’d like this to be toned down • 🛑 I am Not Happy with this • If anyone responds with “🛑”, change the topic fi 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 38
Everybody plays a little differently… and that’s OK 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 39
Forbidden Knowledge 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 40
Keepers & Reps syndicalism in action 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 41
TEAM STRATEGY 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠
Team Strategy polling & voting 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 43
Team Strategy documents & data 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 44
MANY TEAMS, ONE LEAGUE 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 45
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“On one level blaseball is a horror game but it’s a story, I think for us, about building a community amongst malevolent forces outside your control…”
- Steven Bell, Narrative Designer, The Game Band 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 47
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Blaseball is Elsewhere… 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠
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houstonspies.cyou/union 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 55
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THIS IS NOT A GAME only we protect us • Ubisoft • ActivisionBlizzard • Amazon • Uber, Lyft & other gig work • Google (alphabet worker’s union) • Microsoft 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 59
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Empower your community to do great things
iww.org 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 62
RESOURCES & REFERENCES • blaseball.com • the Blaseball wiki - blaseball.wiki • What is “Blaseball” and why is it taking over the Internet? youtu.be/Y5t8DwnDE1k • Society for Internet Blaseball Research (SIBR) - sibr.dev • SIBR GitHub - github.com/society-for-internet-blaseball-research • The Garages on Bandcamp - thegarages.bandcamp.com/ • What is Anarchism? An Introduction - theanarchistlibrary.org/library/donald-rooum-and-freedompress-ed-what-is-anarchism-an-introduction • The Bureau of Unity - houstonspies.cyou/union • artwork from multiple sources collected on various blaseball wiki pages • Industrial Workers of the World (iww.org) 🛠@CrayZeigh🛠 63
In any development practice there is a challenge to balance the conflicting needs of all stakeholders. And we’ve seen recent Open Source projects make development decisions that can divide the communities they built. On the other hand, there’s the recent cultural event known as Blaseball. Calling this a multiplayer web-based game does a complete disservice to the community that’s popped up around it on the Discords, the fan-created art and lore, and the sanctioned community software development constantly examining and reverse-engineering the game logic. Part fantasy sp(l)arts simulation, part cultural phenomenon, the developers of The Game Band have created a managed to create a whole study in what it means to be a fan, a community, and how to develop software in collaboration with a diverse and conflicting community. This talk will examine how The Game Band has managed all of this with radical inclusion, the principals of anarchical organization and a “yes, and” approach to development.
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