GYGO: The Game Band Plays On

Hello and welcome to Get Your Game On! I’m Maddi, and I am already melting in the wake of summer-like temperatures here on the East Coast. Naturally, I’m staying cool by hanging out inside and playing video games. I’m (very) slowly making my way through Nier: Replicant as well as a new set of nonograms in Picross S2. What have you been playing lately? Let us know on Twitter, or, if you’re a Patron at the NES tier or higher, come tell us about it in our Discord! Now, here’s some cool news from the past week.

The Game Band Scores Funding to Continue Developing Blaseball

If you paid any attention to games last year, you probably heard about Blaseball, an award-nominated absurdist baseball simulation game. Blaseball originally debuted as a side project for game studio Game Band, Inc., but it has since garnered an inspiringly passionate fanbase of thousands players. Now, founder and CEO of The Game Band Sam Rosenthal announced that The Game Band has received funding to compensate its team and to continue building Blaseball. Though the initial Medium post didn’t say exactly what the future holds for Blaseball, a TechCrunch article says fans can expect a mobile version of the game along with other improvements.

Want to know more about Blaseball? Sidequest writers have you covered. Check out Zora Gilbert’s essay, “We Really Are All Love Blaseball” as well as “The Splorts Report: The Founding and Future of the Blaseball Wiki,” an interview with two of Blaseball’s wiki admins by Emma Kostopolus.

Twitch Adds New Categories and Tags

Beginning this week, Twitch will make 350 community tags available on the platform. In a blog post, Twitch said, “[S]treamers will be able to select from over 350 new tags related to gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality, ability, mental health, and more. The list of tags include transgender, Black, disabled, veteran, and Vtuber, among many others.” Though tags were initially introduced “to help creators describe their content and to help viewers find streams they’re interested in,” creators themselves are often just as much of a draw for viewers, and identity-based tags will hopefully afford creators and communities more visibility on the platform.

Twitch also announced it will create a separate category called “Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches.” A few weeks ago, Twitch demonetized the channel of one of its most popular hot tub streamers, Amouranth. Despite swimwear being allowed under a contextual exception to Twitch’s Nudity and Attire policy, Twitch determined that “hot tub streams,” which until now were a meta-category in the “Just Chatting” category, are not brand-friendly. The new Pools, Hot Tubs and Beaches category will allow advertisers to avoid having their ads placed on these streams, but as Ana Diaz points out for Polygon, it doesn’t do anything to aid creators whose channels have been demonetized.

In other news…

Young Animal magazine announced this week that Kentaro Miura, creator of Berserk, passed away suddenly on May 6. Berserk inspired a number of video games, including Dark Souls and Dynasty Warriors. Final Fantasy XIV‘s Dark Knight class is also heavily inspired by the series, and players honored Miura by lining up to celebrate his life and mourn his passing.

For IGN, Kat Bailey investigated a flurry of departures at Blizzard.

Apple asked the court to dismiss one of Epic’s complaints as the Apple vs. Epic antitrust lawsuit continued. The final day of trial was Monday, May 24, though the verdict may not land for a few months.

Outright Games and PHL Collective announced The Addams Family: Mansion Mayhem, a new 3D platformer that will hopefully be out later this year for consoles and PC.

The Pokémon trading card game scene is still an absolute nightmare for everyone involved.