Amazonian Breaks Into Arena HQ and Politely Fixes Brawl
Renton, WA — “Hello everybody and welcome to a special episode of Brawl Stars–I’m Amy the Amazonian and today I’m playing with the Brawl format itself!”
This sentence is what I and many other Twitch viewers heard when YouTuber and Twitch streamer Amy the Amazonian (she/her/they/them) logged on and began streaming just a few days ago. Instead of their usual polished greenscreen setup, Amazonian was broadcasting from what appeared to be the background of a typical office cubicle, with their famous cat Scraps walking back and forth along the desk upon which the camera was placed.
The streamer then went on to explain that today, she is implementing the changes proposed in her recent Brawl Management Notes document herself, for the good of all. “The Arena employees themselves are tired and doing the best they can while Wizards of the Coast tries to stop them from unionizing,” Amazonian said, fingers flying in what I as a former game developer can only assume is a long and complicated C# script in Unity. “I figured I’d just hop in and fix this for everyone, since I play Brawl so often and have a pretty good idea of what the format needs right now, since a Ranked Brawl is coming!”
Many in Amazonian’s chat had strong reactions to the decision, both positive and negative, though among the first and most startled reaction were among those concerned with how they had even entered Arena HQ to begin with.
“‘Breaking and entering is a crime?'” Amazonian began, reading a chat message. “What’s the matter? I love crime! I was just playing my Nicol Bolas crimes deck! It’ll be fine!” They then ran their hand along their cat’s back, gave her a treat, and continued typing furiously, occasionally checking an open laptop for reference.
All in all, the stream took about four hours, the Arena client went down for maintenance for twenty or so minutes, and then relaunched with the new-and-improved Brawl format. As their public and very thorough Brawl notes document suggested, Amazonian largely targeted several of the too-high-power problem cards that prevent a lot of lower-power commanders and strategies from shining. Common strong pieces, like fast mana, free interaction, and even the game’s most infamous and powerful tutors, all of which were completely legal in Brawl, have now been banned. But there is also a new “banned as Commander” list, which was especially welcome considering the fact that all Planeswalkers are viable commanders in Brawl. Thanks to Amazonian, cards like Oko, Thief of Crowns, and even the infamous Nadu, Winged Wisdom, are now banned-as-Commander, but still playable in a deck’s 99.
As it should be. Imagine it–until now, players could queue up with one of the most hated planeswalkers of all time, Oko, functionally in their starting hand every single game! Thank goodness the humble Brawl community will no longer be endlessly plagued by some of the most obnoxious design mistakes ever printed.
This is only the tip of the iceberg of Amazonian’s implemented changes, though they very helpfully put out a lengthy and detailed patch notes explaining all of their tweaks, readable in the Arena client. The community has largely rejoiced that such care and effort was put into their beloved format.
We spoke to Arena employees about the streamer’s highly successful entry into their offices to implement changes that they have had either a lack of time or a lack of permission from Wizards of the Coast to implement.
“It was amazing, but also kind of terrifying,” said one Arena employee, staying late as part of the exact sort of mandatory crunch period that the pro-union employees are fighting against. “I was at my desk, desperately programming in a lot of the upcoming Marvel cards–there’s so freaking many, and they’re almost all legendary, which means more animations, more assets, more time–when I just… saw them there, streaming from my former coworker’s desk. Chris Cocks fired a ton of us last Christmas Eve to make a shareholder line go up, so there’s plenty of empty desks. I took the ten free seconds I had at eight PM that night that I normally use to text my partner and family that I once again won’t be home for dinner to watch them code. They were like a one-person army!”
“It was truly a sight to behold,” said another anonymous Arena employee. “Nobody actually invited her in, I don’t think? Even our security is understaffed. But she refilled the coffee pot for us and helped me fix a bug that I’d been chasing for a few days. She even voted to unionize, which I didn’t think was even possible, considering she’s not on the rosters or anything, but honestly, we’ll take all the help we can get.”
“I asked them what AI they were using,” said a third employee. “They just kinda blinked at me and said they weren’t. All of it came from a deep love of Brawl and the game as a whole And I just… I was transported back to a few years ago, when I was writing code myself instead of arguing with Claude, when I was reading my coworkers’ comments or asking them about their implementation and getting helpful answers, when I usually clocked out at 7 PM at the latest, and… I-I’m sorry, I need a minute.”
After I gave that employee some tissues from my purse and gently patted them on the back, offering snacks and water in the same way one would comfort a frightened animal, they gave me one final statement.
“Any of us could have done this,” they said, munching on a little cookie. “But we’re all so exhausted and overworked and forced to use expensive and unreliable AI tools that might work, but definitely don’t create code that’s easily human-readable. Seeing someone who still has joy, a passion for the game, and a decent work-life balance… i-it’s just very moving. We all miss when our days were like that. D-don’t tell Hasbro I said any of this, okay?”
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks, known to be an avid opponent of joy, laughter, smiles, and the very concept of work-life balance, had this to say about the streamer’s visit:
“I don’t know who this ‘Amazonian’ woman is, and I’m very upset that she’s made a small part of one of our games more fun. Our Pinkerton squad at Hasbro is locked and loaded and ready to burn down the entire Amazon rainforest if it means catching this dangerous criminal.”
He then gestured to a squad of Terminator-like robots with flamethrowers, each of which costs more money to operate per day than any Arena employee makes in a year.
We finally reached out to Amy for their thoughts on Cocks’ statements, and the streamer only gave us a devious little smirk. “They’ll never catch me–I’m the only content creator who actually likes Universes Beyond,” they proclaimed. “Starscream! Take us away!”
The actual real Transformer, Starscream, then burst through the wall, transformed into a jet with Amy in the pilot seat, and blasted off into the horizon.
