Post-Mortem: A "Mature" Sports Game

Three years ago, March 17th, 2021, I started a script called A "Mature" Sports Game.

And for three years, I revisted this idea over, and over, and over. After first playing the game and getting smashed in its career mode, after my friend parked her ass on the floor laughing at the game's cheerleaders, after I purchased a physical copy of Backbreaker for the Xbox 360. There's even a tweet of me talking about the ideas I just dropped, and one of them was this video.

So what the hell was causing this enormous roadblock?

Not what, but who.

Me.

I'll let you be the judge, but personally, the problem with this original idea that I just couldn't get past, is that the answer to my questions… is simply, no. Midway didn't accomplish much with the game's M-Rating, and there isn't much value in Football+ Violence that elevates it significantly above anything more than a brief novelty… cool story bro.

I'd been setting up a tee-ball that amounted to a pebble.

So finally, I did what I've said you should do when you get stuck like this… practicing what you preach is easier than it sounds.

Start from scratch. 

Immediately, this was clicking, instantly, the idea was far more compelling to me the instant I no longer made it just about Blitz The League, this game is merely the catalyst for the greater point of why is a Mature Sports Game interesting to me in the first place?

Looking back, it's actually kind of funny how close to the final product this entire opening is. It's clunker for sure, and there's a couple key components missing, but the core is almost one to one.

What's also amusing is how many important building blocks for this video did not receive the bulk of my attention. In the "N2" version, it features my personal summary for why the E-Rating has always bugged me, but I then dropped it in "N3" citing that it doesn't add anything to the story I'm telling, instead, focusing on this forth-wall breaking spoiler for the video's conclusion.

God I'm glad I dropped this.

It's around this point that I just said fuck it, and made a "notes" page, where I wrote paragraphs that were almost word for word what I was voicing in my head, completely detached sentences with no linearity or logical train of thought, but were the raw emotions of what I felt playing this game.

From that came the sentences about Mass Effect 2 & Rage 2, wondering aloud who is Blitz The League II for? And what films I'm envisioning through Blitz's aspirations. There's even a paragraph about characters that didn't make the cut.

Genuinely the moment when everything started to come together though was when I sat down to watch Playmakers. Prior to watching the show, there wasn't a conclusion, nothing beyond "man, this game annoys me," The quality of Playmakers, the similarity of its subjects, and the fact that places like IGN still had screenshots of when the game was marketed as "Blitz Playmakers" made the conclusion almost write itself.

It'd also be my first little hint of covering material that isn't strictly video-games, which I've been getting requests for a while, but never wanted to venture into cynically. This was a perfect opportunity to test my analysis while still making something very relevant to the game being discussed.

So… why then, after years of attempts, months of rewrites, and days of binging shows, did I kinda want the video to fail?

Years ago, Shammy after a Podcast said something that's always stuck with me. "Every time I upload, I think, this is going to be the one that makes people hate me."

We've all seen it happen to other Youtube channels.

And for some reason, that feeling was making my stomach sink. Normally, when I upload, I wake up ten minutes before it going public despite not having an alarm, just in-case there's some sort of problem, be it title, copyright, comments, whatever.

This time, I stayed up until 6am, and immediately fell asleep as the video went live, thinking "well, the end's already started." And when I woke up to see "10 out of 10th", with all Youtube stats on the homepage in the red…

I was relieved.

I wanted the video to fail, so my brain, feeding my subconscious endless nightmares with Oscar Caliber storytelling to leave me battered and hopeless, could see the reality.

That everything was fine.

It's just a Youtube video not getting as much attention.

And you know what?

I changed the title and thumbnail, and immediately, it got back to my usual stats, which considering the irrelevant nature of the game as far as public discourse goes, is quite satisfying.

By far the biggest satisfaction though was seeing people actually go and watch Playmakers, enthusiastically binging the show on their own terms, just as I had the month prior. So despite all the stress, time, and confusion working on this video, my only regret is I think I could've still phrased it even better, as this commenter did.

And I'll happily carry that over carrying this video in my head for another three years.