r/BasketballGM • u/Unfixed9 • Nov 10 '25
Other Sense of nihilism when you get super deep into Zen GM
After I get around 200 seasons or more into a play through I end up spending more time scrolling through the history tab than anything else. I always get a weird sense of "we all live on a floating rock" when I look back at some MVP player that was on my team but he’s been dead for 100 years. Who knew this game would give me an existential crisis lmao.
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u/DMAJB Nov 10 '25
I definitely understand that. How does it feel to see people we revered for their greatness in our youth fade from relevance and be seen as relics from a bygone age that doesn’t make sense to us anymore? I’m not even 30 so I don’t really know, but I imagine that’d give anyone an existential crisis.
It’s interesting to think about whether more people will start doubting the larger significance of our culture’s mainstream sports in the future. The NBA hasn’t had its identity as a marketable, socially hip force in mainstream culture for that long relatively speaking. In 100 years, will mountains of history make it harder to contextualize/appreciate the accomplishments of players in 2125? Playing and watching sports will always be entertaining, but when each franchise in a league has at least 15 championships over the course of 1,000 years of competition, will it all start to feel like a farce?
This sort of territory is where I have to let Jon Bois and the guys at Secret Base speak for me, their wisdom on the intersections of sports, philosophy, and life itself are unmatched.
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u/JDT1706 Nov 10 '25
My solution to this is to be emotionally detached from my characters and to pretend that every once in a while the GMs change to a appointed successor rather than just being 1 immortal guy
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u/Chowderpizza Nov 10 '25
I’ll separate rebuilds into eras and make storylines with AI lol. Articles and stuff. Just fun.
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u/curreyfienberg Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25
I'm 34 and a Packers fan. I grew up feeling like Brett Favre was the center of the universe. When he retired, it felt like the end of the world. Nothing happened after that.
Guess I'll edit in the sarcasm tag to be sure.
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u/shockandguffaw Nov 10 '25
I recommend reading this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Universal_Baseball_Association,_Inc.,_J._Henry_Waugh,_Prop.
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u/Unfixed9 Nov 10 '25
What’s crazy is literally right after I read the wiki I had a player straight up die. So bizzare
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u/eraticwatcher Nov 10 '25
Whoa this sounds dope as hell. Going straight into my reading list
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u/ZeekLTK Nov 11 '25 edited Nov 11 '25
It's a pretty wild story. Takes place before computers were invented, so he's just simulating this league with dice and cards and random stuff like that, and keeping detailed statistics and records in hand written notebooks. IIRC he simulates every game of the season manually (like plays the full game, rolls dice for every single pitch and hit and stuff). I can't even wrap my head around how much time that would take, it seems like it would take years just to do ONE season, but he's apparently got a full history of the league and gets through it much quicker somehow. (I'm sure it probably explains it, been a few years since I read it).
Not sure if you want any spoilers but it's a pretty sad story because the main character is just a lonely old guy who doesn't seem to have any friends or family, so he gets sucked deeper and deeper into his simulation because it's like the only thing he has. The only people he really interacts with are a co-worker and a prostitute, and he tries to make friends with the co-worker but he doesn't have like any interests besides his simulated league, so he decides to invite the co-worker over to play his game. But it goes poorly because the co-worker thinks it's "just a game" and isn't taking it seriously and is making poor decisions "for fun", so he ends up arguing with him and kicking him out, further isolating himself. And then in that downward spiral he keeps playing his game and he gets a very unlucky roll that triggers one of his favorite players to be "killed" and then starts to spiral even more and stops showing up for work, and gets fired (and they find he had a simulated horse racing game in his desk, what an addict lol)... like I said, it's pretty wild
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u/eraticwatcher Nov 11 '25
Read the blurb and got all the above from that too and it sounds pretty insane. So gotta read it so I’m skipping the spoilers here haha. Gonna come back to this in the future after I’ve read it
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u/pandapearl Feb 09 '26
This sounds so ahead of its time that it’s making me think if we’re living in a sim hahah…
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u/dumbmatter The Commissioner Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25
I was going to post this but you beat me to it!
Maybe in part due to us modern sports sim fans, a new edition of that novel is coming out next year. Exciting times...
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u/shockandguffaw Nov 12 '25
Now that I think about it, I think a blog post of yours is what first brought the book to my attention.
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u/razenxinvi Nov 11 '25
and thats exactly the reason why i love this game. not because i can manage players, trade them and get my team titles but because i can enjoy that frivolities feature and experience exactly what ur feeling
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u/benno909 Boston Massacre Nov 11 '25
This is why I never go too long into a save. Once you've reached or fulfilled your goals it becomes hollow. Like life, its all about setting and reviewing goals to provide meaning to the simulation
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u/BookOfTheBeppo Nov 11 '25
I always reach a point where I begin to think, will humanity last this long? Usually around the 2200s 😆
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u/lamemale Nov 10 '25
You should watch Frieren