Thoughts
The thing that upsets me about Blaseball ceasing transmission is that so much of what makes Blaseball amazing is the fans. It's not a game,
it's a cultural event. What the The Game Band provided was so small. I can't help but feel that Joel and the other Blaseball developers just didn't get that. They didn't need to make an app or create a plot or enemies or a multi-season story arc. The best stories to come out of Blaseball weren't the ones that TGB wrote, they were the ones created by the cruel random nature of the sim, and by the passionate work of fans. The website was an inspiration and a catalyst and I don't know if the community will survive without it, but the website was not special on its own.
Blaseball didn't have a monetization strategy; didn't have a long-term plan. Blaseball spent more time on siesta that it did running games. And I can't help but feel that that was because TGB was trying to provide us with this perfect, curated experience. But they didn't need to. They could have given us an error page and the Blaseball community would have created a wiki page and lore about it.
=> https://www.blaseball.wiki/w/Bad_Gateway_(Event)
But they didn't want to just run a mediocre sim and let the fans do the work. And I guess I have to respect that.
If being a fan of the Jands taught me one thing, it's that Jazz is about the notes you don't play.