I love you, Seattle Mariners, but I think I need some space.
We see the struggle in competition, we see the growth and the atrophy, we see the joy and the heartbreak, and we take small comfort. We know that we are not alone in this universe. In a sense, it is also a struggle that comes with a large benefit our individual struggles do not: they truly do not matter in a way that affects us, unless we let it. Well, easier said than done. Sometimes, we do take small comfort. And others, we take great pain.
Perhaps it is that subconscious knowledge that we shouldn’t be truly hurt by our hobby that allows our conscious self to let our walls down, to allow ourselves to live fully in the celebrations, and the grief, that come in a victory or a loss that was never truly our own. The game result isn’t ours to have, but the experience of watching it is. As individuals, and as a community, and both as individuals and a community it is ultimately up to us to decide how we engage.
I first played No Man’s Sky about a year and a half after it first launched, which also happens to coincide roughly with the beginning of the Jerry Dipoto rebuild era. I was intrigued and fascinated by the idea of what that game could be. There was quite literally a galaxy of possibilities. As has been well documented, the game launched with far less content than had been promised, including missing several features from a now-infamous trailer. Possibilities, promises, but unmet ones. And so, I fell off from engaging with the game.
This August marked the eight year anniversary of the game’s launch, and its journey is one of the most remarkable in all of video gaming history. In an era of live service games marked by battle passes and AAA flops, overpriced DLC and microtransactions, Hello Games has taken a different approach. They have released free update after free update, little by little turning the game into the one originally promised. Fostering the young sprout of possibility into a tall sequoia of reality. Okay, the game admittedly still has room to grow, but at the very least it’s a sturdy Douglas fir.
For a long time, life prevented me from having the time to enjoy any video game of any kind in any real way, but recently things have changed that allowed me to pick up No Man’s Sky again, and I’ve been logging quite the hours on it. I certainly don’t owe Hello Games anything for the work they have put in since launch; after all, it was their own promises they failed to meet in the product they delivered. But I do appreciate the way they took responsibility, the way they kept fighting. And so, I want to reward them by doing my part and enjoying the product of that effort. Also, the game is like, way, way more fun now. Base-building, shipbuilding, diversity of planets, multiplayer functions, in just about every avenue the game has drastically improved, and at no further cost to the player than that first purchase.
So what does any of this have to do with today's 8-4 loss the Mariners were handed by the Dodgers, finalizing a three game road sweep?
I want to tell you that it is okay to wait for the Mariners to be good. I get it. These aren’t the same old Mariners. In some ways. Please, do not laugh, because I really mean it with my full chest. The Mariners made the playoffs in 2022! They almost made the playoffs in 2023! Jerry Dipoto was given a Hello Games task, and he has put in Hello Games work, for the most part. You don’t have to squint terribly hard to see how this organization could be truly great at every level right now, to see the ceiling, the possibilities.
But also, forget the could. This team isn’t great. This team is bad. Hard to watch levels of bad, at least right now. Even the jaw-dropping levels of elite we have seen from the rotation feels like it is succumbing. Logan Gilbert was absolutely handling business today through the first two plus innings despite getting lucky with how much he was living in the zone, facing the minimum in innings one and two and striking out two batters in each. And then the third inning happened. He got two outs quickly, striking out Max Muncy and getting Tommy Edman to fly out, but then Kevin Kiermaier reached on an error by Leo Rivas on a play that should have ended the inning, and the wheels began to come loose. I will spare the nitty gritty details, but Logan allowed two runs in the third, one run in the fourth, was charged with all five runs in the fifth (Logan allowed one run before loading the bases and being pulled, and then it was Trent Thornton with one pitch that Max Muncy turned into a bases clearing double that put those numbers on the scoreboard).
But, I really didn’t want to tell you all that. I take absolutely no joy in telling you the Mariners have launched a broken game. After eight years of development, that’s what this team is. Broken. I can’t even really tell you why, because some of it extends beyond belief, but that is what they are and how they are playing, with a void of energy that somehow belies even their mediocre now-once-again-.500-record. There are possibilities in this lineup. Beyond the regression, the poor luck, the bad vibes, and the injuries exists the possibility, and maybe the promise, of a better team. The offense tonight was mostly toothless, unable to truly damage the pitches they were getting. But if you squint, you will see they were consistently ahead in the count against the formidable Jack Flaherty. The team that launched the season would not have been able to perform such a task.
Maybe the Mariners turn it around. There is more than a month of play left and they are within striking distance of the Astros still at 5.0 games back of the division, and 7.5 games out of the third wild card spot. They didn’t exactly go super quietly into the night with today’s effort, after all. After the Dodgers were up 8-1, the Mariners scored one run in the sixth, eighth, and ninth inning to close some of that gap.
If you were someone who was interested in No Man’s Sky you might play the game in the current state and still find reasons to not stick around. Although improved dramatically from launch, a particular thing that still needs work is the biodiversity generated on planets as well as the behavioral AI of such creatures. And based on Hello Games’ track record so far, you would be within reason to believe it will be worked on and to choose to wait until it is. Maybe you take that approach to this year’s Mariners. Maybe you look at a team that is dramatically improved in the front office effort and the on field product from some of the bleakest of the drought years, and you still think “this is still not good enough to engage with”, and you wait until a time when you can engage and they will be better.
Or, maybe, you are looking at this team and seeing a different video game altogether. Maybe you are seeing an Anthem. If you know, you know. After eight years of work, if this is the type of effort this lineup produces, you would be forgiven for wanting a different development team to handle next year’s release. But maybe the Mariners and their fans need to remember one thing above all else. This is a game, and games are supposed to be fun. If things aren’t fun, then a change is needed. Tomorrow is an off day for the Mariners, and truth be told I am still processing how to think and feel about this year’s team. About how they solved the sometimes problem of never getting ahead early in games the first half of the season with... getting ahead early in games and blowing the lead later. Maybe they take tomorrow to process too, and I hope they figure something out to at least make the rest of the season watchable. If they do, I will be there with bells on, my starship is fueled and waiting. In the meantime, tomorrow I will just be happy to get some space.
