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«Burned!»
Every year since 2008, the Swedish industry organization Dataspelsbranschen has organized a grand tournament of «brännboll,» a European bat-and-ball game.
And at the end of May, it was time again; this year, about 500 players — from videogame studios and publishers that are members of Dataspelsbranschen — gathered in a park in Stockholm for an day (and night, as it would turn out!) of brännboll and socializing.
«We just wanted something fun in the Spring,» said Per Strömbäck, director of operations at Dataspelsbranchen, about how it all started.
Brännboll is a game similar to the game rounders, or even baseball — except that you the batter pitches the ball to themselves. The name comes from the act of catching a player between two bases at the end of a batting round, called «burning» (which translates to «bränna» in Swedish).
Attendance has varied, but the last couple of years hundreds of people working in videogames across the country have shown up to participate. Some even practice beforehand and get team shirts for the occasion. What’s great about brännboll is that everyone can participate and have fun on their own terms.
«There is something for everyone. You can be competitive and yell expletives when you miss, but if you’re not great at batting, you can still score by walking the bases. It’s a very inclusive sport that way,» Strömbäck noted.
After a long and hard-fought contest against Ubisoft, Mojang—the studio behind Minecraft—took home this year’s trophy.
A big part of the event is the socializing: there is always food and drinks for those not playing, and it’s an excellent time to get together with friends and colleagues from the industry.
Usually, the winner from the previous year has the honor of paying for the whole shindig the next year. This year, however, for the first time, an additional sponsor came on board: Lawyer.se. Fielding a stretcher, the Lawyer.se team was ready for any unfortunate injuries, but luckily, no such occurred.
«Lawyer is good at breaking new ground and finding ways to get exposure,» Strömbäck said.
