One of the most ambitious projects theFinal Fantasy 14community engages in year after year is about to kick off a new season. Resurrecting one of the most popularminigames from theFinal Fantasyfranchise, Blitzball roleplayers will return for the Skybound Cup this spring.
For over six years and accounting for two player-run leagues, the roleplaying community has taken to the waves to bring Blitzball to their community. Originating as Menphina Madness, a project of the Hydaelyn Blitzball Association, the roleplaying community now gathers under the standard of the Etheirys Blitzball League each spring to bring the beloved minigame to life. As nearly 100 players get ready to blitz off in scrimmages ahead of the season, Game Rant spoke with Ffon and Lakaera, two of the organizers behind the EBL, to talk about how the roleplay sport has evolved, what’s to come in the upcoming season, and the things that make Blitzball such a pillar of theFinal Fantasy 14community.The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Originating as Menphina Madness (2017-2022), blitzball began as a small project of Aegir and Iota, the founders of HBA, and evolved into something much bigger over the years. As of 2022, the HBA retired and passed the torch to EBL who now coordinates blitzball every spring.
Inside the Etheirys Blitzball League
Q: Can you introduce yourselves?
Ffon: Hello, my name is Connor, also known as Marley or Ffon. I’m the behind-the-scenes director for the Etheirys Blitzball League.
Lakaera:Hey, yeah, I’m Kaera or Lakaera. I’m one of the leads for the Etheirys Blitzball League. I also help with Cross Realm Wrestling and a few other miscellaneous projects. I’m also the network lead, as far as responsibilities go.
Q: What do you think makes Blitzball–a minigame fromFinal Fantasy 10–so popular with fans of the franchise?
Lakaera:As you know, when it comes to fandoms for different franchises, people tend to latch on to the things that really stick out. One of them was how well-developed Blitzball was inFinal Fantasy 10. You could take that game, and with a few additions, you could treat it as its own sort of independent small sports game, along the lines of a football or a basketball game.
It really helps that they put an unusual amount of care into this one little minigame that happens to also be tied to the overall story arc of the entire plot. InFinal Fantasy 10,there is the A-plot, which is going around getting all the summons to defeat Sin. One of the big B-plots, at least for the first half of the game, is Blitzball. The third area to go to is just a big Blitzball stadium, so it’s integrated really well into the plot too.
Q: What has adapting Blitzball forFinal Fantasy 14been like?
Lakaera:A lot of work because you’re effectively changing areal-time system where consistent action happens across the entire field. Occasionally, a situation will happen where they need to internally use a random number generator or statistics to essentially resolve a situation such as when you’re swimming around the Sphere and then suddenly you get blocked. Then, it moves in that little blocking sort of interface. We have to choose what to do with that.
We’ve had to effectively kind of readjust the entire concept. In that game, you’re always controlling whoever has the ball. In this case, all of our characters are playing those individual other characters that are just obstacles inFinal Fantasy 10for the most part, instead of the active player character. We have to find a way to let everyone feel like they’re a part of the team without being the main one holding the ball or letting multiple people be able to participate at once. Keep in mind,Final Fantasy 10is a single-player game too, so it made sense for the original game system to revolve around whoever had the ball.
Ffon:Which, in itself, correlated to a serious problem when it was originally decided: how do we have people have specific roles, and why are they important? Our mechanics director worked around the clock just to develop something based on feedback, something nice, brand new, and unique for everyone this season with our increased capacity.
Lakaera:Such as increasing the engagement that the goalie has. Historically, when you’re trying to do a Blitzball roll system, the goalie doesn’t really do anything except sit there and wait. Last season, we implemented the shove mechanic, but it was underutilized due to the way that it was a bit situational on how often it got used because you can only shove someone out of your zone during your turn when a certain condition is met.
We adjusted the rules further to have the goalies be able to engage by effectively being able to shove whoever they want during any turn, as well as giving them some more counterplay whenever one of the players tries to hinder their actions through our tipping system. We’ve had to look at the roles and develop them to make sure that even the ones that are considered the least engaging, the players feel like they still have input in what’s going on.
Q: Can give a brief overview of the mechanics and how the game is played?
Lakaera:Blitzball is effectively a turn-based game, where we have different locations on a field. We have five zones total on a Blitzball field: we have the two-goal zones where the goalie sits, we have an intermediate zone where each of the teams dominates, and then we have the center zone where the ball starts. The progress of the game is essentially to have the players get the ball from the center where it starts to be as close to that goal zone as possible, and then roll dice against the goalie and anyone else trying to stop them to try and score the goal.
This happens in turn-based phases, where we have the middle zone and the goal zones take their actions first. Then, we roll over to the intermediate zone that both the teams control, which we call the outer zone and the inner zones. If you look at our layout of the map, where the goal zones and the center zone are sort of lined up, while the outer zones that are intermediate for both of the teams are sort of split off to add a left and right side of the field.
We have someone running a timer macro to be able to announce to everyone that the time in a phase is starting to run out. Once the time runs out and all the actions are resolved, we have people move to the new zones that they want to move or resolve actions that they are taking. Then, the ball carriers act if the ball carrier was included in that zone. Then, finally, we move on to the next area, so we kind of have this rotation of the three inner zones taking their actions and then the four outer zones all taking directions simultaneously. It’s like clockwork that ticks and tocks back and forth until a goal is scored.
Q: I’ve got to say that mechanics sound way more complex nowadays than when it first started. What has evolving this game over the years been like?
Ffon:It’s a necessity. One of the big things that the previous organization that ran Blitzball, the Hydaelyn Blitzball Association, requested was that if we use the system they originated from, we cannot have it as it was when we took over. We had to modify it to make it mildly different from the original HBA system. That’s where we introduced the zones and the lanes. So instead of having a straight line in the center like they did, now we have two zones that are split apart to determine left and right–we have Inner, Outer Left, and Outer Right. It gave a little more responsibility for left forwards and right forwards because they’re dedicated to a specific side now, rather than just being on a single pivotal line.
Lakaera:It also adds strategy to the movement of the ball going down the lane because sometimes one side might be stronger in terms of positioning than the other. In the old system, it was a single line where it was just completely random whether you got the ball back or forth, but now players have to make the call on whether to reinforce one side or the other as well. It adds a degree of strategy over just pure random chance.
Ffon:The best way that it’s been explained was by our mechanics director: we’re making the game feel a little less like checkers and a little more like chess. It requires the captains and the players to think a little more pathologically than they would normally in the linear sort of situation where it’s more of a Grindstone Tournament versus having something to really think about.
Q : What are some of the challenges associated with running a multi-month tournament in an MMO?
Lakaera:Oh, gosh, scheduling. Scheduling for those that are running Blitzball, refereeing, announcing, or scorekeeping. In theFinal Fantasy 14roleplay community, a lot of the big roleplay events happen on a Saturday night. That’s the big night for when a lot of the big server-wide roleplay events go, so Blitzball ends up taking a lot of our roleplay free time throughout the season.
Whether that’s actually running the games, being in a game since most of the staff plays, hosting other side events, organizing festivals, or supporting events to kind of make it feel more like an actual sports league in-universe, which is a big thing that we do want to do. It’s one of the hardest parts, definitely the scheduling on that front. Another hard part is coordinating. We have about 100 players this season, don’t we?
Ffon:We couldn’t do any of what we do without our community. Card Kingdom, the trading card organization, were friends made in our Discord server. It was literally just an idea that one of them had, to take pictures and make the trading cards. They met up with someone else, and the other one went “I can make a bot for this for the server and people can draw from it with all the pictures that you make.” That’s what created the Card Kingdom Association. They’ve not only been helping us out here in EBL, but they’ve also been supporting the Cross Realm Wrestling organization with their own set of training cards.
With the Scorekeeper stuff, Stats have always been a big push from one of our leads just to have that little realistic feeling of what the players are achieving over the season. Having people to support us in that scorekeeping front honestly helps a lot because it’s a lot of pressure off of the backs of the referees, pressure off the staff. Also being able to have the morale and support from the future cheerleaders that we’re going to be having, that is 100% from people that are friends with the players in the community that are looking to just help spread the word and help spread the joy.
Help in all those areas comes from the community. We just offer these avenues for people to take them, and we let them go in at full stripe.
Q: Could you introduce me to the teams that are playing this year?
Lakaera:Let’s go through all the ABC teams first. The ABC stands forAldenard Blitzball Conference. Before, traditionally, roleplay Blitzball had been more of a double-elimination tournament or single-elimination tournament, where there are brackets. For the EBL, we actually run conferences where all the teams round robin, so all the teams get a chance to play the same number of games before the postseason. The best-performing teams go on to a playoff system afterward. The Aldenard Blitzball Conference–that’s sort of what we traditionally think of as Eorzea. The three main city-states, Ishgard, are the immediate area out there.
Originally, we had four teams. We had theUl’dah High Rollers, which is a team that sort of conceptualized around casinos. It’s a team that players on the idea that, mechanically, this game runs by rolling dice or using the random number generator. We played into that theme and combined it with the idea of the Gold Saucer casino as inspiration.
Next, we have theLimsa Lominsa Barracuda, one that’s a little bit more of a historical reference. In the lore of Limsa, the first major organization to try and organize Limsa, was the Barracudas. That’s kind of a call back to them with the Limsan team.
Next up we have theGridania Greenwrath, which is a reference to the concept of the greenwrath in the Black Shroud where Gridania is. They kind of have more of a spooky vibe. I’ve noticed that the team tends to like the theme themselves around the idea; their team logo is like a mask that has wood growing through it. They tend to kind of go for more of a cryptid-spooky angle with the way they do things.
And then we have theIshgard Sky Strikers,which play pretty straight with the general Dragoon-slash-Knight identity that Ishgard tends to have. They were the victors of the Crystal Cup last season, and the creators of this season’s Skybound Cup.
Then we have two new teams for the Aldenard Blitzball Conference. We have theAla Mhigo Liberators. A lot of the identity of Ala Mhigo, at leastas portrayed inStormblood, is around the liberation of it. We haven’t seen that team develop their culture quite yet. With the new teams, we let the captains and players lean into the theme that they’re given, and they develop the culture themselves. But that one has a pretty strong player base so far.
And then we’ve got theSharlayan Archon Aces, which is a name that references what you consider a doctorate–the highest form of education–in Sharlayan that’s an Archon. You do a major project PhD-style, and then you’re labeled an Archon in their society. We use that idea as the concept of the Sharlayan Archon Aces. As with the Ala Mhigo team, they’re brand new, so we’re still waiting to see what kind of culture the captain and the players decide to implement, but we predict that they’re probably going to go for a very sort of nerdesque or academic angle with what they have to work with.
Ffon:I have been seeing, as you say, a lot of history with them. It’s like the original idea that we have for the EBL is more of the preservation of Blitzball, and we plan to introduce this with a new NPC character called Archon Jecht. Theyshare a name with Jecht fromFinal Fantasy 10.
Last season, we had a team known as the Doma Rising Stars that were all about the secret art of the Shinobi. Since then, they have gone through a rework, and they are now introduced as theDoma Ninetales. Rhey have a little bit of that ninja ninjutsu spirit in them, but they’re focused a little more on how a nine-tailed fox acts, where it’s a little more mischievous and based more around trickery. You’ll see a lot of stuff where they’re going to be fainting a lot this season.
After them, we have theAzim Steppe Naadominators. They are the runner-ups to the Crystal Cup and the champions of theEastern Blitzball Conference. They are an entire combination of Azim Steppe culture, uniting as an entire plain to unify the different clans to represent the Steppe in Blitzball.
Stepping forward from that–no pun intended–we have theRadz-at-Han Radiance. The Radiants were a regional team that won the Thavnair Regional Championships, much like in the old days of the HBA where there was a regional championship and the Immortal Lions always seemed to win. For us, the Radiance won the five-year contract with the EBL and have been able to continue this season. Their whole thing is support and charity. Last season we had a program called the Fit Bell. It’s kind of like our spin-off of the NFL’s Play 60 where it’s focused on keeping kids in school, athletic, and keeping things moving in a community.
And then we have theGarlemald Ceruleum Knights. They are one of the rising teams from last season that was created under the petition and approval of an actual Imperial Senate community that plays on the Mateus server. It was run through an entire legal system, judge approved, all active and roleplay, and the Senate was in charge of pretty much everything along with the new Garlean Commissioner that is supporting the team now with a co-captain.
This season we have also introduced two new teams to the Eastern Blitzball Conference, and the one that people haven’t seen was with theKugane Daigoro. Now the Daigoro, in their lore, have been made more of a heel sort of team. They have a dark twisted past with hired guns and bruisers, actually being owned by a lot of the Rakuza District, Kugane’s red light district, for a while. And now they have this new mysterious owner whose motives are entirely unclear and may actually cause a problem for the EBL as a whole. We won’t really know about anything with them until later on into the season.
And then the last team that we have, which a lot of people have been really excited about, is theValnian Red Comets. Now the Red Comets are the team that is representing Dalmasca. It’s a region that is in the world of Etheirys. However, it is not visibly explorable except through the Ivalice raids. But there issuch a majorFinal Fantasy 12andTacticsfollowingin the world ofFinal Fantasy 14, we only felt it right that it needed to be included in some shape or form to give it the proper representation that people want throughFF14.
Q: Turali team next year?
Ffon:Please, look forward to it?
Lakaera:We would need to see how complex things are. If you look at our schedule right now with 12 teams, it’s absolute chaos. We’re running games on Sundays at this point. We’ll evaluate expansion once we’ve survived this season.
Ffon:If we expand–which a lot of people are just rapidly shaking their heads against–but if people want to play, we’re not going to deny them that opportunity. That being said, with the behind-the-scenes setting of it and the ever-evolving world of the EBL, the only thing that I can really say is, please look forward to it.
Blitzball’s Place in the FF14 Roleplaying Scene
Q: Do you have a favorite moment from last season?
Lakaera:I would have to say there were several moments. Last season, I was captaining the Naadominators team mentioned earlier, the Steppe team, and after our first two matches, despite giving it our all, we ended up in sudden deaths. During scrimmage matches, we tended to end up in sudden deaths often, so it came to the point where almost every official match that we played for the entire season up until the finals ended up being a sudden death shoot-off. With the exception of our match against Garlemald, anyway. I would say that probably just perpetuating that element of culture in the team and playing into that role as the team that does the sudden deaths managing to pull the finals to a sudden death. Even if the team I was running didn’t win, it felt really good to be able to finish that sort of theme for the team throughout the whole season.
I’d have to say my second most favorite moment of the entire season was probably the first game, at the end of the first game day when everything went really well. You have to keep in mind that none of us in the group had administered a Blitzball league. We were all fresh into being runners for Blitzball after the dissolution of the HBA, so at the end of the first night of our official games, I would say there was this huge wave of relief that we had managed to actually pull it off. We’ve managed to get the teams together, we’ve managed to get the team assets made, we managed to wrangle all the players in one place, we managed to get the referees going. We managed to make the game, and it just kind of all clicked. It happened. We had Blitzball running and it felt amazing.
Ffon:Piggybacking off Lakaera, I would have to say the first night for the ABC was probably one of my favorites to really reconcile because it was the exact same thing. There was a moment of relief that washed over all of us after the fact. But we couldn’t really confirm it until the first night of the Eastern Blitzball Conference. Because last season, we went every other Saturday. One Saturday would be the ABC conference and next Saturday would be an EBC. The first night that we actually got to do everything, it was Gridania versus Ishgard and Ul’dah versus Limsa Lominsa. I jumped up on the podium as the announcer for the night, and there are a lot of people that come to watch Blitzball. But I have to admit, out of every single game that I announced, no one had the same energy as that first night when people saw that Blitzball was back.
People were raving, calling for specific people, they were cheering on specific teams. It was something that I saw again, but it wasn’t as impactful. That’s the first thing. That first night is usually what drives me to keep up with the announcing and developing ways to get the roleplayers that are just spectating a little more engaged in the entire match, so they can cheer on their friends or pick a team that they really want to support. But I wouldn’t call that my favorite of all season.
My favorite would have to be the end-of-season Ballroom Blitz gala that we had. The gala is our closing event that is dedicated only to the Blitzball players and maybe a plus-one that they want to bring along. It is a moment where the captains can give final thoughts and reflect, and there’s something special about looking out across the stage to see every single Blitzball player that played this season, just listening and taking in everything, supporting everyone. It definitely brought a few tears to my eyes after the speeches closed, and the awards were given out. Because once it was over, it was over. And we were back to the drawing board planning for this season.
Lakaera:Oh, yeah. This season, we’re going to have to do a little bit of logistical investigation on how to handle the gala. Last season, our player count was around 52 and the gala was packed. This year, we’ve effectively doubled our player base. The limitations of being able to enter the housing areas are starting to become more of a concern for us, so we’re going to have to, due to just the sheer amount of players that we have, reinvestigate how to handle that, logistically speaking.
Q: Blitzball draws a crowd, right? How do you manage an operation of that size?
Lakaera:We split duties very hardcore when it comes to the way that Blitzball’s organized when you’re at least talking about the people that are officially a part of the system. We as the administrative staff don’t need to worry about players individually–like managing or handling the players–because our captains are sort of our lieutenants who make sure that the players have what they need. We reach out to our captains and say, “Make sure your team can be here.” The captain is the one who ensures that all their players are available or comes to us if anything happens. We’ve also divided up a lot of the responsibilities in terms of just general duties: we have one of our administrators in charge of the referees, we have one of our administrators in charge of managing the rules, another for managing the documents, and another for handling the announcing.
When it comes to the public, it’s difficult to try and get everyone in one place or to ensure the game is playable. There are some instances where we have the entire field laid out, but just due to the sheer number of people, sometimes the players won’t be able to appear on-screen because ofFinal Fantasy 14’s limitations. In that case, we try to make sure that the different stadiums are spread out enough to where people can spread out along the curve to watch the game so that they don’t phase out. This season, we’re investigating setting up a dedicated Twitch stream so that people who can’t show up due to lag can still watch the game or people who are just too busy to be able to show up at the moment and stay there for the night.
Ffon:We can comfortably say that we have a Twitch channel setupwith the Etheirys Sports Network. The series has been set up. The only thing that’s left now is for them to just pop in to practice and get ready for match one on March 9.
Q: Could you tell me about Blitzball’s charity work?
Lakaera:With Blitzball, historically, the previous organization had a large portion of why they centered on charity. During our first season, running as EBL, we didn’t have a dedicated charity because we were building from the ground up on a timer to get the league functional and running it out the door before, effectively, late January or early February. Blitzball inFinal Fantasy 14usually takes place in the spring season, so we didn’t have time to arrange all the charity work by then.
But this season, we’ve gone really big into charity as one of our branches of the EBL. We actually brought onboard aFinal Fantasy 14charity expert, Kasia Lhea, who helped to found the fundraising effort alongside the HBA to help us with that effort, and they make sure to handle all the announcements to coordinate everything. This season, we are supportingExtra Life, which is sort of a children’s hospital charity. It’s supported both through direct donations to the organization, or you’re able to buy merchandise for the teams which we just finished finalizing this month: hoodies, cups, and different miscellaneous simple things with the team logos or team theming. We don’t make a dime off any of it. All the proceeds after the initial costs of actually creating the product go straight to charity, and it’s linked directly to the charity through this through the shopfront. We don’t handle any of the money at all.
Q: How did you choose Extra Life as the charity you’re supporting?
Lakaera:Mostly through just figuring out what would be a good, wide-angle charity that could do the most good in the community on something that the entire community could agree on. Because you have hundreds of people donating either directly or through merch to this organization, we wanted to pick one that’s really well-known. That’s known to kind of jive well with gaming-style charities. We just had to look at it and say, “Okay, this seems like the right one for us this season.”
Charity elements have become a big thing inFinal Fantasy 14roleplaying events.
Lakaera:Yeah, the food festivalA Feast Reborn donates to Action Against Hungerand the Great Ishgardian Frostfaire is a Christmas event that donates to Toys for Tots.
Q: What do you think it is about theFF14roleplaying communities that make them so invested in charity?
Ffon:I think it’s a lot of personal background for people. This is by far the most invested community that I’ve seen about connecting with people, sharing stories, sharing their experiences, and helping people grow because of it. It’s not something that I’ve really seen in any other communities. I’m sure they have it. I’m not knocking on other games, saying that they don’t, but it’s definitely a lot more visible here across multiple spans of different roleplay communities. If they’re on Crystal or if they’re just a private group staying on one server like Mateus, or over on Primal, maybe even over in the Light datacenter in Europe–that support is everywhere andplayers look after each other. That’s just the biggest heartwarming thing that I’ve realized, that made me want to stay in this community, is just how much people want to have your back and verify you’re okay. I have not seen any real bad blood spilled across this community. Sure, there is some of that out there.
Lakaera:There’s always going to be naysayers.
Ffon:But it’s not what most of the community is about.
Q: Do you think an official Blitzball minigame is ever coming to FF14? I know players have clamored for it.
Ffon:No.
Lakaera:I don’t. I would say that, given the theme of the upcomingDawntrailexpansion leaning intoa few aesthetic themes fromFinal Fantasy 10, including a beast tribe that originates from theFinal Fantasy 10Spira setting, this is probably the best chance we’re going to get. And since it hasn’t been announced as anything within theDawntrailfanfests, I am skeptical that we would really be getting it in the future.
Ffon:Piggybacking off of that, I say no, but I want to make it very clear. I would love to have it. However, from the technical standpoint of playing a single-player minigame, to make it as people want to see it, if it does get incorporated, I don’t think it is going to be in the way that people think it’s going to be incorporated.
Lakaera:It’s unlikely to be a thing where we’re all solidly on teams, and we all act as individual players within the sphere. That’s unlikely.
Ffon:That’s where I’m looking at it as well, just because what goes into programming that sort of style of a game takes a lot of time. If that’s something that Square Enix is developing and keeping for the later reveal of Gold Saucer content that they’ve been talking about in the keynotes, awesome, but I’m not going to hold my breath over it.
Q: If Blitzball did get implemented as an official minigame, would it in any way affect what you do?
Ffon:It might, it might not. We won’t know until we get it.
Lakaera:It would really depend on the implementation. If it’s a single-player minigame then no, they’d have to do a lot to make it like a full-fledged system that really involves players.
Another thing to keep in mind that’s really important about the EBL versus just Blitzball as a concept is that we’re a community and a culture. Like people talk about their games once they’re done, people hold special moments during the season, and they meme about them or reference them going forward as a part of their character for a long time. So I think even if there was an official Blitzball implementation, unless it satisfied the needs of people being able to create team communities and engage the way that we’ve managed to, I don’t think it’s going to just completely replace what we’re doing right now.
Q: Is there anything else about Blitzball orFinal Fantasy 14that either of you would like to add?
Ffon:I would say that the biggest thing that makes Blitzball Blitzball is the people that keep coming back for more: people who see it, whether you engage or just want to watch, or just want to support your friends. So, in a preemptive way for people who are going to be coming to these events or are curious about it, thank you for your interest. Thank you for seeing us in the different avenues that we advertise everything.
Lakaera:One comment I would like to make is that the majority of the players and our organization are set on the Crystal datacenter, particularly around the Balmung server. But I would like to encourage anyone who is on, say,Primal or Dynamis or any of the other datacentersto stop by and check it out. Because datacenter travel is a thing now.
If anyone is unaware of what we’re doing here on Crystal, it’s only a two-minute wait! Hit the buttons to be able to transfer over here. We do have some players from other datacenters as well, which is something new that in the past just wasn’t feasibly possible without someone creating like a low-level alt and having to slog through the grind. Even if you aren’t in the roleplay community or on the Crystal datacenter, I would still encourage folks to come check it out.
Final Fantasy 14 (2010)
WHERE TO PLAY
Begin your adventure in FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm RebornCreate your very own Warrior of Light and embark upon a quest to deliver the land from an eternity of Darkness.Take to the skies in FINAL FANTASY XIV: HeavenswardTake your first steps in the reclusive nation of Ishgard, locked in a seemingly never-ending struggle with dragons.Rekindle the fires of hope in FINAL FANTASY XIV: StormbloodJourney to the East and rise up against the might of the Garlean Empire.Become the darkness in FINAL FANTASY XIV: ShadowbringersTravel to a world where light ushers all unto oblivion. But hope is not yet lost, for where there is light there is shadow.Journey to the very stars above in FINAL FANTASY XIV: EndwalkerA great calamity has been building - a second advent of the Final Days. The Warrior of Light must journey ever higher and stand firm as hope’s last bastion.Set forth for new horizons in FINAL FANTASY XIV: DawntrailBlue seas, clear skies, and boundless possibilities await! Explore uncharted territories with familiar faces as hope’s light dawns once more.
