Welcome to Play by Play Studios

My name is Scott Probst, and I'm the CEO & Founder of Play by Play Studios. I grew up on games, and I've spent 20 years of my professional life working in the games industry. In 2021, with some old friends from my days at Electronic Arts, we founded Play by Play Studios and we created the company to combine our collective passion for two things - gaming and sports.

Personally, both games and sports have played massive roles in my life - they helped shape who I am today. I remember back in the early days of gaming playing with my brother and our friends, having a blast together. Back in the 90’s my best friend “T” and I used to play Madden like it was going out of business. We were both football nuts, and also running backs, and we’d play “All Run” Madden where no matter what you could only run the ball. Good times.

In a way, both sports and games have built similar things for me in my life - opportunities to connect with people, to build friendships, to compete, to enjoy our time together, to get better, and most importantly - to have fun.

That idea of “fun” is pretty much the basis for Play by Play Studios. As the years have gone by the gaming industry has grown exponentially, and in many cases the business has taken precedence over the fun of a particular experience - that sucks. I’ve found this myself in many sports games today where I feel like I have to grind hundreds of hours to be good, I have to pay hundreds of dollars (on top of the $70 I already spent for the game itself) to have an ok time, and I have to go out on random quests to do things that don’t really have anything to do with the fun of the game or the sport.

So that’s how we set out on our journey. Let’s take our lifelong love for gaming, for sport and combine these two things like it should be done - for fun. We’re not gonna worry about overly complex menus, GM modes, micromanagement of rosters, opening packs or playing a game that feels like I’m watching a broadcast (I’d rather just watch that game on TV). We’re gonna double down on fun and get you into the game, and we’re gonna do it with style. And with that premise, I’d like to introduce our first game… The Run: Got Next.

The Run is a 3v3 PvP character driven street basketball experience built to be played together and remembered forever. Our aim is to deliver a game that you will love from the jump, where you’ll spend your time as it should be spent - on the court. Each of our handcrafted characters will be awesome out of the gate, and every one of them comes with their own play styles, character specific moves and their very own strengths and weaknesses.

We’re a small team and our aim is to deliver a very highly crafted experience, at a reasonable price. In terms of platforms, we’ve focused a lot of our energy on delivering across PC (Steam), PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. We want to provide an awesome experience on every platform, and we also know that some sports games tend to ignore the PC - we’re not doing that. We playtest twice a week on PC, and it’s as important to us as the Consoles.

At Play by Play, our aim is to create sports games that just don’t exist today. Games that celebrate the spirit and culture of sport. Games that bend the rules, but don’t break them. All in the name of fun. If we’re successful, we believe we’ll be able to build a community that brings more gamers into sports and more sports fans into games.

Check out our Steam page to learn more about The Run: Got Next, take a look at our teaser trailer and join our community on Discord. We’re just getting started here and we look forward to sharing more over the coming months.

See you on the court.

SP