Spooky season? Nah. It’s time for some (inside) baseball.
We are once again reprising the theme week that, in many ways, put us on the map. For the uninitiated, Inside Baseball Week is our annual excuse to explore topics so niche and weeds-y that no other video game website would touch them: deep dives into the industry’s least-plumbed depths, interviews with people whose jobs you’ve never even considered the existence of, detailed breakdowns of minute decisions like when to delay a game or lay people off, transparent and sometimes unflattering examinations of games journalism, and this time around, poop (ask Riley).
Inside Baseball Week is our only recurring theme week (so far), and historically, we’ve run it in the spring—you know, when regular baseball happens. But a) I recently learned that baseball season actually stretches into the fall, and b) more pertinently, we decided to try out some new ideas this year, with Woke Week taking up our spring slot and Hater Week in the summer. We hope you appreciated both, because we thought they ruled, and we couldn’t have pulled them off without you.
That said, you can’t beat the classics, and Inside Baseball represents such a rich vein of possible topics that we’ll probably keep doing it until we retire to the great dugout in the sky. So this week, expect stories like the ones described above, as well as looks at the moment-to-moment realities of running a live service game, what it’s like to work for Hasan Piker, life after games media, shitty AI agent pitches we’ve been receiving, and so much more. We’ve also got Inside Baseball-themed podcast episodes coming your way, and maybe even a piece or two that actually suits the autumnal season we didn’t really plan around even though Halloween is literally happening this weekend (Oh Well).
That not enough for you? Well, we’re kicking off another subscription drive in which you can unlock even more cool stuff from us by joining our community for a nominal fee—or encouraging your friends to do so. And truly, there’s never been a better time than the present, because we’re running a very generous sale: 25% off the price of both an annual ‘Reader’ subscription and our annual ‘Member’ subscription. Wow!
It’s kind of wild to reflect on how far we’ve come since the first Inside Baseball Week. We’ve brought on freelancers, a columnist, and regular contributors. We’ve expanded our reach to additional platforms. We’ve launched (and revived) podcasts. We’ve built an entire new version of the website. We’ve hosted a party and a live show. We’ve made real, grown-up business deals. Aftermath is functionally unrecognizable compared to what it was during our first Inside Baseball week in 2024—in a good way!—and it’s all thanks to subscribers’ generosity.
But we can go further. Much further. So let’s knock this week out of the park and watch our little website soar.
Welcome to Inside Baseball Week for 2026, our annual excuse to explore topics so niche and weeds-y that no other video game website would touch them: deep dives into the industry’s least-plumbed depths, detailed breakdowns of minute decisions like when to delay a game or lay people off, transparent and sometimes unflattering examinations of games journalism, and this time around, poop.
