Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

by Jason Schreier

New York Times bestselling author and the gaming industry's preeminent investigative journalist Jason Schreier examines three decades of ups and downs at Blizzard Entertainment leading up to a hostile corporate takeover and a sexual misconduct scandal that put the legendary developer in a world of (Warcraft) trouble.

For video game fans, the name Blizzard Entertainment was once synonymous with perfection. The renowned company celebrated the joy of gaming over all else, and every product it released was an instant classic: StarCraft, Diablo, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and World of Warcraft, which forever changed the video game landscape. What was once two UCLA students' simple mission — to make games they wanted to play — launched an empire with thousands of employees, millions of fans, and billions of dollars.

But when Blizzard cancelled a buzzy project in 2013, it gave Bobby Kotick, the infamous CEO of corporate parent Activision, the excuse he needed to start cracking down on Blizzard's proud autonomy. Led by executives from McKinsey and Procter & Gamble, Activision began invading Blizzard from the inside, driving away throngs of key employees in a push for predictability over creativity. Glitchy products, PR disasters, and mass layoffs followed, marring the company’s once pristine image. In 2021, the state of California filed a staggering lawsuit against the company for sexual misconduct and discrimination, leading to a widespread reckoning and a $69 billion acquisition that sent shockwaves through the industry.

Based on firsthand interviews with more than 300 current and former employees, PLAY NICE chronicles the creativity, frustration, beauty, and betrayal across the epic 33-year saga of Blizzard Entertainment — and explores the delight and despair of what it really means to "bleed Blizzard blue." Full of colorful personalities and dramatic twists, PLAY NICE is The Social Network for the video game industry.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, Video Games, Business, History, Gaming, Games

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 8, 2024

Reviews

[Olive Fellows (abookolive) · Rating 3.25 out of 5]

I'm of two minds about this history of the video game company Blizzard. I think Schreier's reporting is very thorough and he nicely handled the task of condensing the huge story of this massively influential business into something understandable, even for more casual gamers (referring to myself here).

HOWEVER. I felt like this book lacks....soul? Heart? Something. A human side. The voices of gamers, venting their frustration. Schreier frequently alludes to public outcry in response to choices Blizzard would make, but besides learning about some individuals clapping back at BlizzCon, we don't really get a sense of where the customers and general public opinion stood during each step of this journey. And so I couldn't help but feel I was only getting a slice of the story.

[Panda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Audiobook (9 hours 16 minutes) narrated by Ray Chase

Narration is very good.
The Audio is also very good, without distortion or erroneous noise. There is an entire paragraph not so subtly dropped into chapter 11, I'm pretty sure there was just the one sloppy edit I didn't note another and I was so distracted with other things I forgot if there were others, so I guess it was all good. lol!

Jason Schreier wrote a generally good overview of the company. His timeline seemed a bit off here and there with at least one point that seems pretty off, I wish I had this in print to go back and look and see if he is jumping around a bit and just not telling the story straight down the timeline. I did go back and check and the timeline was fine. He does jump around a little bit, which if you know the details may give you pause, but it is generally accurate.

There's also some things that seem glaringly missing. Although the industry has grown very large, there was a lot of noise surrounding certain elements that should have been mentioned.

Due to the nature of the book, I don't think we can say that there are actual spoilers, as it's the history of the company. If you don't know what happened and you legitimately want the book to be a surprise, you should probably stop reading now as I don't plan to hold back. I have some feelings and some words.

Jason Schreier did a fantastic job of giving little special details of the games when Blizzard was coming up, like using the name Kerrigan from Nancy Kerrigan, the ice skater, for a character in StarCraft, a game that they claim they built after being turned down by Lucas Arts in building a Star Wars game; or the Leroy Jenkins/Pals for Life viral video in World of Warcraft. He did not do the same for the fall. He completely glossed over some contentious issues that I personally thought were important. While I don't expect for everything to be included, I expect the same attention to detail when things were starting to shake.

Some of the things I would have liked to see are:
Blue notes - I believe it was Chris Metzen that introduced blue notes, or maybe ghostcrawler who introduced them. At the time Blizzard was going through changes and gamers were concerned, some freaking out, that their favorite parts of the game they were playing would change or be removed. Blizzard had a policy that they did not talk with the gamers, didn't explain themselves. They made the games, they made the decisions. One, or both, of theses guys (someone reading my review help my out my ADHD makes my names flipflop sometimes!) convinced the powers that be to try out what would be knows as blue notes , which are notes with a Blizzard blue background that talk about up and coming changes so gamers know what to expect. This was a game changer!
The community started to look forward to the notes. We felt important and that our thoughts and concerns mattered. Sure, it doesn't make everything awesome, but having open lines of communication in games that some of us have played for years, yeah... they built a bridge and we met in the middle.

SWTOR, Rift, and to a lesser extent, Wildstar - Schreier mentioned games that Blizzard blew out of the water, but not games of concern. When Rift came out it was a huge concern that it would actually be a possible WoW killer. World of Warcraft had become the matrix that other mmo's were trying to reach and everything was going to be the next WoW killer, in conversation, but Rift was perhaps the first game that actually had potential. Rift pulled a lot of players out of WoW, making it difficult for mid-tier guilds to get their raids going, and people were worried, but while Rift had a good hook, they didn't know how to retain their players and it was only a few months before everyone was back playing WoW.
SWTOR, Star Wars of The Old Republic, is a game that the players were watching for a long time. A lot of people called it WoW with light sabers. Some of the most hard core, long time players left for SWTOR. The timing was bad for Blizzard. SWTOR finally released at the end of Cata, right before the Mists of Pandaria (MoP) expansion dropped. The fact that the last raid of Cataclysm was less than desirable and MoP was being called Kung-Fu Panda, not in a good way, was bad for Blizzard. I was on the oldest realm of the server and we lost some old school guilds to SWTOR, that even after EA managed to mess with a good thing, they didn't come back to WoW.
Blizzard made a lot of changes, introducing a lot of quality of life changes to a lot of gamers, but they overcompensated for the casual crowd.
Wildstar released with the intention of being hard core for hard core players and that sounded good to a lot of people who were frustrated with the over casualization that was happening in Blizzard's mmo, but Wildstar was buggy and Blizzard heard the players and made changes.
While there is a lot more to Blizzard than WoW, WoW was their gold star game for a long minute, plus Schreier mentioned them being turned down by Lucas Arts. It seems significant that when Bioware was given the go ahead to make SWTOR, the first Star Wars MMO, and it impacted Blizzards MMO, that, at the very least, of the three games SWTOR should get a mention!

Ion Hazzikostas - Unless I missed something, I never heard them mention Ion. There's a lot of moving parts at Blizzard and Schreier mentioned most of the heavy hitters. Ion belongs in that conversation and leaving him out was a huge oversight. Maybe they can pencil him in somewhere?

Cube Crawls, breast milk, the Cosby suite - Again, if you are going to give sweet details that are going to pull at the heart strings giving us the warm fuzzies of the early days, you need to give some of the harsher, harder details of the reality of the mess that Blizzard became. Simply saying cube crawls and not mentioning what it meant is a huge cop out. Seriously? Yes, grown men were drinking on the job, physically crawling under the cubicles and desks of work associates, including women, sexually harassing, and being drunken assholes. Some of the male employees were taking and drinking women's pumped breast milk that they had pumped, labeled and refrigerated in what should have been a safe and secure place until they could take it home to their infants. Arguing that the Cosby suite, complete with a huge photograph of Bill Cosby and an assortment of alcohol and other things was actually the Crosby suite and that the charges for Cosby came out after the fact, wasn't cute considering that women, both employees and fans, were invited to the suite, fed free alcohol and harassed. I don't want to get into the lawsuit, but it's all public record, including Cosby's picture. I think there's also a Kotaku article or 12

Overall, I would say this is a strong 4 stars. Despite some of the things I felt were lacking, this novel seemed decently well researched, with some good details and points that will interest Blizzard fans, gamers, devs, and business nerds of various interests, including financials and marketing.

World of Warcraft alone is coming up on it's 20th anniversary, with another 10 years added on to that for the inception of the first Warcraft game, Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and another three before Warcraft was a thing, so Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment is an ambitious undertaking of 33 years with several titles under it's belt, acquisitions, separations, being acquisitioned.

Let's Go!

I was excited to finish this one, mull it over, and discuss it with my long time gamer friends. It's possible that I may update this in the future as more people in my friend group read it, if there's anything notable discussed that they don't mind me adding to my review.

GG (Good Game, for my non-gamer friends and readers)


Edit: I failed to add that I learned about this book through Bellular News, in this video:
https://youtu.be/O-CglyonjPU?si=29k0L...
I have not gone back and watched the video since I read the book but I went back to his channel and it looks like he is going through the book, or at least parts of it, in detail. I have been a long time fan of Bellular's on point and thorough gaming reporting, so if the book interests you, you may want to check out what Bellular has to say.

[Rach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greetings! You've likely arrived at this page for one of 3* reasons:

1) you read Jason's other book(s). Great news! This is also an interesting, approachable look at one of the Western world's most famous video game companies. Highly recommend. 
2) you love video games in general / Blizzard games specifically. Great news! Jason is one of the best nonfiction writers in the video game space - like the This American Life of video games. You're going to learn so much, and if you have a particular attachment to Blizzard or any specific Blizzard properties, I guarantee you’ll enjoy it.
3) you worked for Blizzard. Uh oh! Babe this is gonna be so crazy for you??

This is wholly and entirely the story of Blizzard, which like most companies, is long, complicated, occasionally boring, and goes through periods of exciting innovation and terribly preventable tragedy. Basically, all corporate bios are Jurassic Park: as it turns out, money and success ruins everything good.

Grounded in hundreds of interviews, it is remarkable how even-keel the narrative manages to be. Jason reports on some folks who do objectively (and subjectively) terrible things as three dimensional people. (Can you believe the guy that essentially invented microtransactions also used to pay for employees' vacations?)

I will say, I think he's treated industry women well in his previous two works, and he didn't treat them poorly in this one. But the chapter on assault and harassment felt detached - akin to the documentarian recording antelope getting eaten. I understand his desire to be balanced and avoid being salacious, which is why it didn't lose a star for me, but his particular detraction against an infamous Kotaku article comes across as odd. Jason’s points about when the suite got its name seemed like such a small point to argue in the face of rampant, blatant sexual harassment.
Personally, I was a little disappointed. In the beginning of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels Jason makes note of the fact almost everyone in the book is a man by saying, essentially, "We need to talk about the gender inequality issues in the video games industry, but that's another book entirely." I thought for sure this book, tackling "frat boy" Blizzard, would be that book. Alas.

I’ve listened to all three of Jason’s books on audiobook, and they have the same narrator: Ray Chase. Chase does a phenomenal job capturing the humor and irony, and makes the books that much better.

I was familiar with Blizzard properties and have played a few, but feel no particular attachment to any. That said, I still enjoyed the book and the stories within. I’m sure if I loved Warcraft or Overwatch etc, I would have loved it even more.

All in all, I think this book is easier to follow than Press Reset (which is complicated due to its own nature), but his best is still Blood, Sweat, and Pixels.

Thank you Grand Central Publishing via NetGalley, I deeply appreciate early access to this title. Happy publishing week, Play Nice!



uh-oh! a secret 4th audience!
*4) If you’re one of my 5 friends on GR, a girlie in the publishing industry, I do think it’s worth reading one of Jason’s books. Book publishing and video game publishing often feel like parallel tracks with some incredibly drastic deviations. It gives a sense of surrealism, to see all the similarities - from emotional/cultural in working in a ‘dream job’ industry, to logistical as the internal teams essentially operate like imprints - but the differences….. good Lord. Even in Blizzard’s early heyday, the team members were still having fistfights in the office and chucking keyboards at each other. The demographic split is almost an exact mirror - 80/20 men/women in video games, 80/20 women/men in publishing - and it feels like there’s more here I want to say, but I can’t particularly put my finger on it.

//////
a variety of pre-pub mumbles:

can video game journalists have superfans (yes) (us)

updated july 2024:

hey netgalley if you read this I'm free thursday night and would love to read play nice. please please grant me this book and then on thursday night I will read it when I'm free. xoxoxo. rach.

updated sept 2024:

i got an arc!!!! I GOT AN ARC!!!!! I GOT AN ARC!!!!! grand central publishing if you're reading these words, know that I would kiss your feet if possible

[Valuxiea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really wish this had more teeth. Schreier is as always an excellent writer and journalist, but while the content is often damning, the tone is not as harsh as it should be.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a WoW nerd, so this was super interesting, in general. I'd known that Kotek was a giant butthead, trying to push profits over players, but to see all of that unfold...yikes.

The part that knocked this down for me is that the sexual abuse allegations were fairly glossed over, going so far as to make an argument about the "Cosby Suite" being a reference to a sweater (!?!!?), made me rankle a little. A woman is *dead* because of those "allegations". Dozens more have come forward to talk about the toxic, misogynist, bro-culture that Blizzard became before California brought down the banhammer.

But sure. It's a sweater reference. I believe you, Chadwick.

There's no real revelations in here that you couldn't really get from following the company, but the compilation of it all, along a single timeline, was interesting enough. This WoW nerd's satisfied, if not, y'know, wowed.

(Sorry, had to. I'll see myself out.)

[Karolina Kat · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

While this is undoubtedly Schreier's best book, it is not without flaws.

His writing is fantastic, as always, and provides a great overall profile of my once-upon-a-time favourite studio. However, I am not overly enthusiastic about how detached he seemed from the recent scandal and sexual discrimination & harassment lawsuit. It felt as if more space and empathy were given to two male employees affected by a misinformed article than to the tens (if not more) women affected by the company’s abusive and discriminatory culture through the decades.

It seems that I am not alone in being at odds with how Schreier handled that part of Blizzard’s history. Nevertheless, it is still a very enjoyable read, which I devoured in practically two days.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Serviceable history of Blizzard, but bone dry, with nothing particularly revealing and no real insight beyond surface-level reporting, like a very long Wikipedia entry. I am a nerd and read a lot of long Wikipedia entries, so this was fine for me, at least.

(ps the book someone should actually write is a deep dive into the making of WoW and why those first few months felt so magical. I have played endless games before and since and still nothing has ever really replicated the feeling of awe I had when first flying into Ironforge on the back of a griffin 🥹)

[Sebastian Gebski · Rating 4 out of 5]

What should you know about this book?

1. The author - JS - is one of the most renowned gaming journalists ever; in general, no one can accuse him of not knowing the things around
2. This is a story of Blizzard Entertainment pretty much from the inception until 2024 - it feels pretty complete, BUT if you've been with Blizzard games since the beginning (in my case: Lost Vikings, then Warcraft I), you've probably know already 95% of the drama described here
3. The author has (most likely on purpose) skipped many details as those would be interesting only to the narrow group of oldtimers/dedicated gamers, e.g., what bad design decisions have caused the popularity decline in WoW.
4. The only really new facts for me were how the deal with Vivendi originated, some details regarding the Activision-Blizzard deal, more details on sexual misconduct, and who was involved.

As you can see, based on these few points, it's not perfectly clear who this book is for. Die-hard fans? Probably not. People who have recently discovered some Blizzard games and never heard about the former glory? Possibly, but not likely. Gaming history passionates who will read anything related to the industry, especially its biggest names? Most likely.

Solid writing, doesn't get boring, even if you can easily predict what will happen next ;)

P.S. Does Schreier attempt to speculate on the future - can Blizzard regain its former status or not? No, he doesn't. Good for him, I believe.

[Read By Kyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wait, two companies merged and then both companies got significantly worse? I, for one, am very shocked.

This book just makes me very sad. Blizzard as a company sucks so much and I would very much like them to not suck so bad, both for the people who work there but also for me, who wants more StarCraft

[Eric · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author just doesn’t seem equipped to write a book. This reads like a Wikipedia article and lacks any depth or insight. There might be some original reporting in there but I couldn’t point it out.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Business studies. Exposé on Blizzard Entertainment, the video game developer and publisher 1991 – 2023 from the: corporate, personal, gaming artistry perspective.


Blizzard’s iconic game characters.

My audiobook copy was about nine and a quarter hours in duration. A dead tree copy would be 384 pages. It had a US 2024 copyright.

Jason Schreier is an American video game journalist. He is the author of three books on video gaming and the video gaming industry. In the dim past, I had read the author’s Blood, Sweat, and Pixels .

Ray Chase was the narrator. He is an experienced voice actor and narrator.

This book was an intermediate-level business history of a video gaming company. Having some knowledge of and experience with video games, along with business organization management would be helpful in reading it.

”Company culture is the backbone of any successful organization.” -- Gary Vaynerchuk

TL;DR

This book was a history of the 30+ starting years of the video gaming industry through the lens of Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard was one of the industry’s most successful game developers and studios.

The book chronicles the Blizzard organization’s development from: a Startup, founded by two recent college grads in 1991 that loved video games and coding software; to a Sustainable organization with iconic, video game products such as: Warcraft (1994) , Diablo (1997) , Starcraft (1998) , Overwatch (2016) , and their sequels; to the Mature organization it became under sequential ownerships by: Davidson & Associates (Blizzard’s original parent company), Vivendi SE (2007) , Activision (2013) and finally Microsoft (2022) . For most of its life Blizzard operated under the umbrella of a parent company. The relationship was many times contentious. This history was very much one of a rise, fall, and disappearance.

It was a long strange trip. Blizzard made great games. Gamers wanted to work there. It attracted the best talent in the industry. For many years, working at Blizzard was a way of life, not just employment. IRL revolved around the company.

Originally video games were cheap to bring to market. One or two guys or gals and a couple of PCs were all it took. As the industry developed, bringing a game to market became a significant project. Multi-discipline teams, worked several years, on a software development effort. This and other changes did not come easily to Blizzard. In places there was greatness at Blizzard, as an industry was created for entertainment combining art and technology. In others it was ugly as the insular company culture: formed, reformed, and changed again over time. The productization of Blizzards Intellectual Property (its keystone games), ruined the original "Gamer’s Culture" of the company. It’s not that that culture was admirable, but it was very creative. At Blizzard, lives were changed. Many folks became rich and successful, and others didn’t.

Schreier’s story was a journo’s narrative history. The book describes a lot about Gaming Kulture and gaming history. It also opens-up the sausage making of producing a successful video game. Also, a video game company is not a software company, its an entertainment company. It requires management with uncommon skills to be successful. Schreier covers a lot of ground, in a somewhat balanced manner. He drops a lot of names, with quotes from interviews. This book’s about: video gaming, video gamers, the folks who craft video games, and how corporations make money selling the confluence of: technology, art, and entertainment.

The Review

I put this book in my TBR after reading a newspaper review. In a past life, Blizzard Entertainment was a client of a firm I worked for. We worked for them on their Battle.net platform. (Its mentioned in the book.) I’m also a Lapsed Gamer. I wanted to see what happened to Blizzard and get the backstory on games I remember fondly.

I’ve listened to books narrated by Ray Chase in the past. His narration for this type of non-fiction was very good. I was surprised to find that he had also narrated both of Schreier’s previous books.

Schreier’s prose was good. Although, being an audiobook, I can’t comment on the hardcopy's production values. The narrative displays his journo background. I remember reading his gaming-related articles on-line, before he started covering the industry for Bloomberg . His gamer chops were there in the narrative, along with his years on the business-end of the beat. In places, particularly in the anecdotes, his sense of humor pokes through. For example, his description of the Leeroy Jenkins gaming meme was epic.

The paper version of this book includes a Notes section unavailable with the audiobook. These would have been interesting to peruse.

The organization of the book was chronological. It starts in the late 1980’s with Blizzard’s high school-aged, original founders finding computers and developing a love for computer games. It ends in 2024 after the Microsoft acquisition, the restructuring, and layoff’s that marked the complete assimilation of Activision Blizzard. The narrative was chock-full of quotes from Blizzard employees through that period. C-Level managers from that period were more circumspect than the rank and file. The narrative also includes corroborated anecdotes: famous, infamous and previously unknown relating to Blizzard. These will be interesting to gamers.

Blizzard became great by leveraging the Second Mover Advantage. They would identify the current blockbuster video game. Analyze it, as toward what made it so good. Then they would create a similar, but better game using its best features and with new features, backstory, and art. Crucial to Blizzard was its reputation, for high-quality, play ready games. Blizzard did not ship buggy games.

As Blizzard grew, and became wealthier, they outright acquired other game studios with potential blockbuster IP. For example, the Diablo game franchise was the product of a separate firm that became a quasi-independent, development studio within Blizzard. The relationship between the two studios could be bumpy. However, the operation of the company was still under the control of “gamers”.

Eventually, as Schreier described it, Blizzard became “a multi-poled tent”, with its: Candy Crush, Call of Duty, Overwatch, Warcraft, Diablo, and Hearthstone. games and their sequels providing a fat, if somewhat erratic revenue stream. However, by this time the early days of video gaming were over. Blizzard was the largest company in the industry, and its old second mover strategy was failing. Game development became a: harder, very expensive, multi-year, labor intensive effort-- similar to a NASA space mission. In addition, as it passed from corporate owner-to-owner, non-gamer, professional managers were brought in by the new owners. Many times, they were brought in ahead and above of internally developed talent i.e. gamers.

This was what killed the golden egg laying Blizzard goose, at least creatively and artistically. New game development was very iffy. It took expensive time and labor. It was also uncertain of success. Corporate managers wanted revenue linearity. This led to a stifling of new development and a concentration on turning the core IP (games) into franchises with scheduled new releases. Blizzard’s reputation for quality fell by the wayside with the mandate for a steady, release cadence of content for its cash cows. Games shipped to schedule, irrespective if they were buggy or not.

As Blizzard became a larger and more valuable property, it moved up the corporate business food chain. Its original gamer, frat boy culture couldn’t be tolerated by a publicly traded company. For both better and worse, it changed, becoming more mainstream. However, the change was mismanaged. There was a lot of conflict between the corporate managers and the rank-and-file talent. It was a nerdy/corporate culture war. Remuneration of the talent was a key issue. This eventually resulted in litigation with the State of California involving abuse of employees and discrimination, with a lot of pending financial trouble for the company, then owned by Activision. (The Activision/Blizzard stock tanked.)

As an exit strategy, Activision sold Blizzard to Microsoft after extensive anti-trust negotiations were cleared. (A video entertainment monopoly was feared by regulators.) It was for the largest sum in video game history. The company that was Blizzard, disappeared within the corporate, Microsoft monolith.

Throughout this book, Schreier had a lot of balls in the air: business, personnel, and games (technology and artistic). There were a lot of names. Too many in my mind. Everyone who provided a quote, received a thumbnail biography. I lost track of who was a “suit”, and who were the coder/artists, especially over the years as coder/artists became “suits”.

A minor problem I had, was anchoring the chronology in the real world. I remember a few NEWS articles on the events that went public about Blizzard. However, events in the real world either faded or disappeared in the background of this book’s company-centric history. The real world was barely noted. For example, the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 was only mentioned in passing for its effect on Blizzard’s late-term culture collapse. That was primarily regarding the reaction to the “return-to-work” mandate. Real life did not intrude on the narrative.

Finally, from the title, “Future of Blizzard Entertainment” received short shrift. Greater professional speculation on that future within MS would have been appreciated.

Summary

If you’re a gamer, you’re going to like this book. It’s about your people.

If you’re a student of organizational behavior, you’re going to like this book. Its about: employee behavior, job performances, and eventual failures in organizational effectiveness.

Working at Blizzard was a labor-of-love for folks into gaming. As video gaming for entertainment exploded, Blizzard was a way for folks to get rich. Blizzard became more corporate. Making money off of games became more important than making games. Only some of the Blizzard gamers got rich, many didn’t. The dream of working for the best gaming company in the world died, when they stopped creating the best games.

Schreier did a good job on the history of Blizzard and its demise. However, a more prescriptive story that that was less about almost every employee, and more about the place of the company in video gaming culture, its enthusiasts, and explicitly how to fail and succeed in the craft of making video would have been a better book than the descriptive one written.

[Wordsworn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot better at the start than I did by the end of it.

It felt like a long book, and the way it's written makes the timeline confusing. It'll talk about how something happened in one chapter, going through the whole story of that particular game's development, then in the next chapter, it'll talk about something else, a different game or person, and then halfway through the chapter, you'll realize that you've gone somewhat backwards in time.

...Also, honestly, as a woman who loves video games and who has played them since she was a small child, and who has experienced some of the ever-present gamer sexism firsthand over the years...to me, it didn't always feel like the right amount of condemnation or at least concern had been placed on the mentions of sexual harassment or gender pay/promotion inequality. Obviously it's pointing out that these things aren't good, but it still feels like the "it's just a boys' club" culture of early-days Blizzard is viewed as a "golden era," or at least something that might have been worth preserving. If anything, reading this book made me glad that I never really fell in love with WoW or Overwatch the same way that I fell in love with various other games and franchises; if the designers and creators of a game (or book or tv series or whatever) don't respect women, it can and will show in your finished product, and I don't want to give any of my hard-earned cash to a company that is upfront about how they're just going to "choose from a different catalogue" when they create more female characters. <- (IYKYK)

[Hungry Rye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as worker centered as I wanted it to be. Also far too long. Most of the stuff that I wanted to learn about didn’t get mentioned till the last 10-15% of the book.

[Chad Kosch · Rating 4 out of 5]

So... this is about what I expected it to be; if I am being honest. A look at a company, highlighting the good, the bad and the ugly. But also an honest view of how (like all businesses) go through changes through the decade's.

If I were to sum this up with no spoilers I'd say It's a look at how creatives start, businessmen destroy, and how morality is important. Overall a solid read. 4 Stars."

[Gancu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Upadnij jako legenda albo żyj tak długo aż staniesz się kapitalistyczną korporacją.....

Zawsze miałem Blizzard w sercu. Tak, to ja. Posiadałem każdą grę, którą wypuścili do 2016 roku, i patrzyłem z nadzieją, że każda nowa produkcja to będzie kolejna perełka. I wtedy, boom! Przychodzi ten książkowy cios, który przypomniał mi, że Blizzard to teraz coś jak Excalibur, tylko trochę pokryte rdzą i leżące na ziemi obok jakiegoś korpo-czarodzieja, który je odrzucił, bo to nie przynosiło dostatecznie dużych zysków.

Ale zanim ta książka przerobiła mnie na zbolałego fana, Jason Schreier zabiera nas na wstępie do czasów, kiedy Blizzard faktycznie miał jakąś tożsamość. I wiecie co? Czułem się jak typowy nostalgiowy gracz w tym rozdziale. Uśmiech na twarzy i smutek w sercu. Ach, „Warcraft III”! Pamiętam, jak z kolegą robiliśmy to w sieci LAN, i myślałem, że to będzie trwało wiecznie. Tak, te czasy minęły. Teraz mamy tylko wypłatę Koticka i wrażenie, że każda decyzja w Blizzardzie to wynik kalkulacji Excela.

Każda historia ma swojego villana, a oto Bobby Kotick”

Nie wiem, czy to moje prywatne żale, ale cały fragment Upadek trafia mnie prosto w serce. Blizzard był dla mnie czymś więcej niż firmą to było miejsce, w którym rodziły się legendy. „Diablo II”, „Warcraft III” „WoW” czy „Overwatch”. Kiedy ten cały proces twórczy był jeszcze magiczny, a nie nastawiony na to, jak sprzedać skórki do postaci, to... był to najpiękniejszy czas. A potem... Zaczynają się te mroczne dni.

Słuchajcie, jeżeli Bobby Kotick miałby swoją własną historię, to byłby to taki klasyczny film o złym szefie, który zamiast złych planów próbuje jeszcze zarobić na tych złych planach. Wiecie, typowy „villan”, który wchodzi na scenę, patrzy na wszystkich bohaterów i mówi: „Hej, a może byśmy z tego wszystkiego zrobili po prostu kasę?”. I to nie jest nawet taśmowo napisany tekst. To jest to, co zrobił z Blizzardem. Jeżeli mam być szczery, to zanim przeczytałem tę książkę, Bobby Kotick był dla mnie tylko nazwiskiem na liście „ci goście, którzy zniszczyli mój ulubiony rozwój gier”. W książce jednak przeistoczył się w postać z prawdziwego koszmaru. Ten człowiek to zrealizowana definicja korporacyjnego zła. Jak to powiedział Schreier: Kotick miał „dar” do psucia rzeczy. Tak, dar.

Cała ta historia o Koticku to jak wejście na scenę czarnego charakteru w najlepszym wydaniu. On nie robi niczego z ukrycia. Nie, nie. On wchodzi, zdejmuje płaszcz, siada na stołku i zaczyna liczyć pieniądze na oczach wszystkich. To człowiek, który potrafił zamienić najbardziej twórczą firmę na świecie w korporacyjny mechanizm, gdzie zysk jest zawsze priorytetem, a pasja... cóż, pasja jest tylko dodatkową opcją w umowie. Pamiętam, jak Schreier opisał, jak Kotick chwalił się swoimi zdolnościami w prowadzeniu „biznesu”. No cóż, dla niego biznes to tylko sposób na wyciąganie z graczy kolejnych dolarów, a nie troska o ich doświadczenie. Cały rozdział to była dla mnie jedna wielka lekcja o tym, jak Kotick przejął kontrolę nad Blizzardem i jak początkowo zrujnował wszystko, co było w tej firmie magiczne.

Jest coś w tym wszystkim po prostu przerażającego: Kotick nie tylko zmienił Blizzard w maszynkę do robienia pieniędzy, ale jeszcze na dodatek wykorzystywał każdą możliwą okazję, żeby skupić się na minimalizacji kosztów, niezależnie od tego, jak bardzo cierpiała na tym jakość produktów. I to było dla mnie najgorsze: nie chodziło o to, żeby zrobić grę, która stanie się częścią historii. Chodziło tylko o to, żeby wycisnąć jak najwięcej z każdego tytułu. Nie było już miejsca na „serce w grze”, były tylko kolejne „operacje finansowe”.

A więc tak, Kotick to nie tylko villan on był tym, który popchnął Blizzard na drogę, która teraz prowadzi prosto do niepewnego miejsca. I tak naprawdę wszystko to zaczęło się od tego gościa, który przyszedł z teczką i wyciągnął marzenia graczy prosto z ich kieszeni. Dzięki, Bobby, naprawdę dziękuję za to, co zrobiłeś z moim ukochanym Blizzardem.

Jeff Kaplan Ostatni Sprawiedliwy

No i tu się zaczyna cała zabawa. Jeśli ktoś miałby powiedzieć, kto w tej całej korpo-zawierusze w Blizzardzie starał się jeszcze trzymać resztki godności i ducha tej firmy, to byłby to Jeff Kaplan. Mówię wam, to była postać, która mogła prowadzić wycieczki po Blizzardzie, opowiadając o tym, jak robi się gry dla graczy, nie dla shareholderów. Ale co on dostał? Kopa w tyłek, bo nie chciał przystać na tą całą wyścigową machinę. Jeżeli kiedyś będzie książka „Ostatni Sprawiedliwy Blizzardu” to całą stronę poświęcę temu facetowi. Jeff miał w sobie coś, co nie występuje w większości dzisiejszych korporacyjnych liderów: serce. I tak, w tej książce czułem się, jakbym czytał historię rycerza, który zginął, bo nie chciał walczyć z wiatrem zmian. I nie wiem, czy to smutne, czy raczej podniosłe, ale w końcu… po prostu się poddał. Ostatni sprawiedliwy był też pierwszym sprawiedliwym gdyż to on zaczął dopiero dbać o komfort pracy pracownic blizzarda. Kiedy przeczytałem o jego odejściu, poczułem w sobie wielki żal, bo to był moment, kiedy mogłem poczuć, że Blizzard naprawdę stracił ostatnią część siebie, która jeszcze mogła coś zmienić.

Smutna konkluzja

„Play Nice or Don’t” to książka, która zostaje z tobą na dłużej. Kiedy kończysz ją czytać, nie czujesz się szczęśliwy. Czujesz smutek. Bo to nie jest opowieść o rozwoju firmy, o sukcesie. To opowieść o tym, jak coś, co kiedyś było czymś absolutnie wyjątkowym, może zostać zniszczone przez korporacyjne kalkulacje. To nie jest tylko książka o Blizzardzie, to książka o marzeniach, które są tak łatwe do zniszczenia, gdy ktoś tylko spojrzy na nie przez pryzmat pieniędzy. Jason Schreier zrobił świetną robotę, pokazując nie tylko brutalną prawdę, ale i pozostawiając nadzieję na to, że może jednak nie wszystko stracone.

[Hrvoje Peradin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trojka zato kaj je ovo "suhoparan" novinarski tekst. Zapravo je priča o korporaciji i korporativnom svijetu. Radnim ljudima je to poznato i iz prve ruke - ali ovdje je ekstra, jer je na američki način. Osim toga je uvijek inspirativno čut spomen igara koje su mi obilježile djetinjstvo (Lost Vikings, Warcraft II, Diablo i Starcraft konkretno; preskočilo me WoW-ovsko ludilo; Hearthstone mi je bio fora).

Nije beletristika, ali jedna poanta koja bi se dala izvuć je da se dobri proizvodi rade s dušom i iz ljubavi, a ne iz financijskih pobuda. Ostatak je korporativno iskorištavanje te tuđe ljubavi prema materiji, grajnd, šarene laže i izrabljivanje. Fujto. Doduše, fuj i neke druge stvari iz knjige.

S kulturološke strane je zanimljiv i dio o WoW-u, da parafraziram knjigu "Azeroth je u nekom trenutku imao više stanovnika od Hrvatske". Može se reć da takve stvari prerastu platformu i kompaniju, i postanu kulturni fenomen. Naravno, ništa ne traje zauvijek, mijenjaju se vremena, poslovni modeli, ljudi koji koriste platformu, i koji je vode.

Ugl, Blizzard i njegov prljavi veš (kamion istog), plus neke zanimljivosti i nostalgične crtice ko se sjeća.

[Nathalie ✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

In conclusion: the gaming industry is totally f*cked. It is a mess and it is a wonder how good games even get made. That being said, this was very interesting, though I haven't played a single Blizzard game in my life so my investment wasn't super high. Do love these Jason Schreier/Ray Chase as a narrator combo books.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've never been much of a videogamer, but I still found this history of the video game company Blizzard Entertainment absolutely fascinating - and if you were ever a Worlds of Warcraft player, I bet you'll love it even more!

[Mangirdas Beniušis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Labai laiku pasitaikęs skaitinys apie visiems žaidimų fanams žinomos kompanijos istoriją. Jei gyvenime žaidėt nors vieną Blizzard žaidimą, rekomenduoju paskaityti, kad geriau suprastumėt, kaip tas žaidimas atsidūrė jūsų kompiuteryje. Net jei ir nežaidėt, visvien rekomenduojų, kaip labai neblogą vienos didžiausių žaidimų kompanijų dokumentiką. Čia labai geras case study, kaip gražių svajonių vedama kūrėjų kompanija per eilę metų transformuojasi į milžinišką korpą. Apie gražias svajones, ne tokią gražią realybę, žvaigždžių ligas, nuolatinį menedžerių karą su kūrėjais ir apie dar daug visko, kas slepiasi žaidimų studijos kasdienybėje.

Skaitydamas radau labai daug paralelių su savo paties laikotarpiu žaidimų industrijoje. Tiek gerų, verčiančių šyptelėti su nostalgija, tiek tokių, kurios vertė nepatogiai muistytis. Žodžiu, rekomenduoju.

[Aidan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schreier's best yet.

[Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't the story I was expecting. It read like a long history of video games. I guess I was expecting something more like Bad Blood, which told a fascinating story about a start up, it's dysfunction and ultimate collapse. This book was more about the video games that Blizzard and other related companies worked on. It went into great details about these games - how they were conceived, the challenges of making them, the pros and cons, etc... I think readers who are interested in gaming will enjoy this much more than I did.

There was mention of the sex scandals and harassment but it was just a very small part of the overall story. Mostly is was which person left which gaming company to start up their own company, which games they created, and how the various companies were either absorbed by Blizzard or how Blizzard was absorbed by other companies.

I thought there was just too much uninteresting information and too many names so that I lost track of who was who and eventually didn't care.

[Steve Holm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a lot of fun, especially for a former Blizzard fan. If you want to know more about how Blizzard came to be, how it rose to be one of the most loved game companies of all time and how Bobby Kotick ruined it, this is a book for you.

Blizzard games played a very important part of my childhood and early youth, so it pains me today to see a company barely a shell of its former self. Schreier takes us on a journey starting all the way back in the 90s, with just two guys and a dream. His writing style is easy to read and does a really good job at making it feel like a story rather than just a summary of events.

Reading this gave me that good old nostalgic feeling from the old days when Blizzard was at its peak, but also a deep sadness for what has transpired at the company for the past 10 years. Can it be redeemed by the new owners Microsoft? Time will tell.

This book left me wanting more and I will look out for whatever Schreier does next.

[Flavia (teapothat) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I didn't really want to know how this sausage was made. It made me a bit sad to see the progression from a passionate company that did it for the gamers to a 'provide value for shareholders' company. But I guess ultimately no one escapes the capitalist game.

I also did expect a bit more about the bro culture and mysoginy that ended up in the news, but this was quite short. And almost excused.

The book itself appeared well researched. However thr jumping around the time-line made it a bit confusing at times. So not the easiest read. Maybe if I had the print version it would have been better.

[Thai · Rating 2 out of 5]

I learned nothing new.

[kavreb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this has been an exercise in nostalgia and the quiet dread of all things in life slowly going bad.

I try to not be too cynical, even if cynicism runs heavy in my blood, but stories of the “good old times” always have a sad ending. Such is the way of life - everything has an end, both good and bad, but it’s the good we miss, even if the good wasn’t really that good and what we have now might be so much better in other ways. And yet it is sad to read about the rise of something that sounds great, just for it to come tumbling down in what seems like the inevitable desolation of the dominant contemporary economic system (yeah, we’re complaining about capitalism again - but with a book so concerned with the slow erosion of artistry in the name of profit and greed, what else could it be? In this day and age?) So I try not to be too cynical, but buddy, it is difficult.

Especially so when we’re speaking of a company whose games - and pardon me if I sound cliché - we’re personally so formative. I still remember booting up Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, its evocative menu screen, its striking cinematics, and the way its story kept surprising my teenage mind. Here’s Arthas, the human knight, sent to save them all, the hero in shining armour, but oh no! The things he’s willing to do! The betrayals! The sacrifice of his dwarf friend! The end! And then - here’s Thrall, one of the hated orcs (it was a long time before I became aware of the larger racial problems with orcs in fiction, I’m sorry), but he’s sensitive, he’s caring, he’s peaceful - and he is called by a mysterious prophet with an enigmatic call “Seek me out!” that reverberated through my life for years.

I fell for the game, head over heels. I played it and replayed it. Even went back and played the previous, more simplistic entries (finished the first, even if it was ancient by that time, and even liked the second (okay, I enjoyed the first one too)). I figure it was around that time, or perhaps years later, when I found out that the weird funny puzzley 2D game I had played at a my mom’s friend’s house with her step-son in my younger childhood every new year’s eve (which seemed to be the only time we visited) was actually The Lost Vikings, developed by this very same company - more dear memories to attribute.

Diablo 2 followed, and although I wasn’t quite as drawn to it, I played more than I would these days of a game I’m not a big fan of, and quite enough for it to carve itself into my memories and my very being. I spent a year listening to a friend telling me about World of Warcraft, which I couldn’t play because of lack of money and a lacking PC; when I finally got to it, I only managed 4 months; I have some cherished memories, and yet it disappointed (never was a big fan of MMORPGs). Diablo 3 came in its own time, played through it with friends (who made fun of my female barbarian in ways which looking back were sexist as hell) and dabbled alone, but after the always-online requirement killed my single-life character, I was done with the game. Then, when I thought I was done with Blizzard itself (I gave way too much of my life to Valve’s Dota 2 while Blizzard’s own MOBA efforts floundered unnoticed), there came Overwatch, touched the same part in me that had loved Team Fortress 2, and I was back again to generate even more cherished memories.

But what’s the point of all this blabber about my nostalgia? For me to bask in it, perhaps, but for anybody else? Ultimately, my stories are what I said at first - clichés. It seems like most people who worked at Blizzard after a certain point did so because of the very same stories. So just imagine what it must feel like to know:

Blizzard always kinda sucked, and corporatisation just made it suck in new and even worse ways.

At least the old Blizzard cared about releasing good games, as Schreier makes clear in this book, but it was also a deeply exploitative place that underpaid its employees because “they should be happy enough to work at Blizzard” (funny how that didn’t extend to the leaders). They also worked at stingy offices with broken furniture and old computers that they fought over because, after all, shouldn’t you just be so happy to be here? There’s a nerf gun, buddy, get at them!

And if that wasn’t enough, here’s also a buttload of sexism, abuse, and fratboy culture - the California vs Activision-Blizzard court case might have screwed many things up when making its case against Blizzard, but the general vibe of the case was horribly true - everybody was exploited, but women the most, both when it came to their careers (the glass ceiling was more like cement) and as objects of male lust; Schreier has interviewed enough people that there are female voices that say they enjoyed their time at the company, but it even those tend to remark that the culture did have its problems (and some, heartbroken at being let go at first, were later glad they’d gotten out).

And if that wasn’t enough either, well, becoming one of the most successful gaming companies in a system where you have to keep earning more and more every year will destroy you because in this kind of system there is no understanding of how reality actually works, and most of all art and the creative pursuits. This system cannot understand that games can be different from each other, make money differently, or that they can peak and then slowly disappear, and that’s fine as others take their place. No, the numbers must keep going up, and if they don’t, fucking get your shit together or we’ll fire you and find a new person to do it for us.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that the latest teaser from Blizzard promising a new fascinating game failed to rouse my interest. Sure, the nostalgia in the teaser touched me (so many great (and not-so-great) games!), and yet we’ve known for years that these things don’t last, and Schreier’s book is just a nail in the coffin of our understanding.

Of course things can change, after all Schreier’s whole previous book was about rebirth in the videogame industry, but perhaps just as with games, so do companies have peaks and witherings until they’re replaced by new ones. Phoenixes exist (Activision itself was one), but not every one is. Some just continue existing and only occasionally luck into releasing something good (like, EA can release the occasional good game, but it would not be good because it’s a game from EA - that would be incidental; apparently so is it with Blizzard now).

Schreier moves through Blizzard’s story with perhaps a bit too much speed - I would have enjoyed spending more time digging into its history, or heard more about what happened with the various important people who left the company at various times (one must resort to private searches, but Wikipedia is not nearly as interested in the less-famous makers of videogames as Schreier).

But it might also be my favourite book from Schreier. Partly because it’s hitting my nostalgia so heavily, partly because it’s putting a considerable part of my life into perspective, partly because through the story of Blizzard the book becomes the story of the dangers of corporatisation and the folly of demanding bigger profits every year (though this is not the first time Schreier’s book book has glared at it); honestly, it becomes a story about capitalism itself, and the difficulties of the creative spirit to survive in a system that values financial gains over everything else. It’s also caustically critical of too much testosterone and booze running a company, even if Schreier can’t help but have some aspect of him wonder whether that was part of what made it the good times.

But that’s perhaps more because he’s a busy interviewer - many of the people he interviewed yearn for those good old days, but Schreier also gives voice to the people who wonder whether there were indeed any good old days. They used to make better games, sure, but they made them in conditions that were in many ways horrific and burnt through people’s lives (though I agree with others that Schreier should probably have given even more space and attention to the victims).

Perhaps this is Schreier’s best book because it examines a single issue in considerable depth, looking at it from different sides, giving nuance to things many of us probably never had, and analysing through the simple act of viewing and commenting what exactly went so wrong, and whether there is any hope.

Which of course there is, as Schreier, ever the optimist, chooses to fulfill his final sentence with; just maybe not for Blizzard.

But who knows. Phoenixes do exist, and things do change. Either way, this is a great book about a niche topic that might yet touch many more people than one might presume.

Because this is not just videogames, this is the world we live in - our lives are driven by the need for money while our souls yearn for something greater. This here is a story of a company built to satisfy the second but which fell prey to the first. It ain’t the only one of its kind.

Here’s to memories; but here’s too for better futures.

And may Schreier keep writing these books which I cannot help devouring.

[Michelle Curie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s no way you play video games and haven’t heard of Blizzard, the studio behind games such as World of Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch. Once unquestionably idolised, it’s a studio that has fallen from grace in recent years.



Play Nice is a retelling of Blizzard Entertainment’s founding moments, development, and rise to the top of the industry, but also a closer look at what has changed in recent years and why many fans have taken their development with a pinch of salt.

I’d read Jason Schreier’s shopping list. Honestly, if he were to write an entire book about the guy who changed light bulbs at Naughty Dog, I’d probably preorder it. With Blood, Sweat, and Pixels being my all-time favourite book about the video game industry, I felt excited about this release. And I don’t even care about Blizzard that much – while I have played some World of Warcraft Classic and am familiar with their other franchises, their games don’t spark the kind of excitement and nostalgia in me that they do in people who have been dedicated fans for years, if not decades.

It’s one of those success stories that is engaging to read. I love these kinds of stories – nerdy guys with big dreams (Steve Jobs, anyone?) who set out to change the world with enthusiasm and passion. The story of Blizzard neatly fills this mould, as it started out with three UCLA students who were all just obsessed with the same stuff. Schreier does an outstanding job at introducing the characters to us as well as telling their stories in a fashion that’s informative, precise, and still full of anecdotes and fun facts.

One of these fun facts, for example, was that Andy Weir, the man we all came to love for penning The Martian, worked for Blizzard as an engineer at one point but left after he was bullied and generally disregarded. Kind of crazy! Another one for you: there was a raid boss in WoW that could infect players with a contagious virus. Years later, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would “contact Blizzard for their data on how people behaved during the in-game pandemic – after all, World of Warcraft was a more useful case study than any mathematical model.”

The reasons for Blizzard’s downfall, if you will, are shockingly unsurprising, but no less tragic. I did enjoy reading about the rise more than about the fall, for obvious reasons! While the first half of the book is filled with excitement and growth, the second is a bit of a downer. Turns out money does ruin things! I’m not entirely sure how much you can spoil a non-fiction book, but I’m not going into too much detail on these points. The book dives into all the sexual misconduct allegations, mismanagement, and conflicts of interest that have been a topic in recent years.

It’s well-researched and well-told. One of the things I admire about Schreier’s writing so much is how thorough his research always seems. He is able to back everything up with quotes, creating a diverse and clear narrative that feels vivid and easy to follow. Clearly, he has spoken with hundreds of people who were willing to let him in on what happened behind the scenes. We also learn more about how a studio operates in general and how success will inevitably lead to the need to succeed more in this world we’re living in.

I think you will need to be either interested in video games in general or Blizzard specifically to really enjoy this book, but if either is your thing, this is a good book.

[CatReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Play Nice, journalist Jason Schreier takes a deep dive into Blizzard Entertainment, a video game developer that I had never heard of until I picked up this book (my motivation for reading this was my love of business schadenfreude tales). From my outsider's perspective, the rise and fall of Blizzard seemed quite similar to other books I've read about the rise and fall of tech businesses -- i.e., a prolonged rowdy startup phase where work-life balance is nonexistent that promotes its own unhealthy internal culture, then financial reckonings leading to corporatization, then growing pains as not every new release is successful, innovative, or relevant in a rapidly changing market, then the inevitable unearthings of past skeletons in light of sociocultural movements that lead to more reckonings. Not much differed from the standard narrative arc here. Schreier writes engagingly and conducted extensive interviews with current and former Blizzard Entertainment employees for the book, so I think this book will land well for fans of the company or its games.

Further reading: corporate schadenfreude in the tech sector
Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork by Reeves Wiedemann
Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber by Susan Fowler
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon by Michael Lewis
Cryptomania: Hype, Hope, and the Fall of FTX's Billion-Dollar Fintech Empire by Andrew Chow
Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac

My statistics:
Book 24 for 2025
Book 1950 cumulatively

[Simon Mee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Framing is everything.

The Company

. At previous companies, he might have been instructed to skip it for more important bug reports, but Blizzard was different. “They said, ‘No, write that up,” Johnson said. "There was not a bug that was too small.”

While I didn’t love Schreier’s approach in Blood, Sweat and Pixels, his books are easy reads, so I thought I would try something lighter than Gothic tribal warfare.

Certain criticisms as to the style of Blood, Sweat and Pixels apply here. Play Nice reads like a stretched-out chapter of the Blood, Sweat and Pixels - broad but not overly deep. Schreier does not hold Blizzard as a representative company of the industry and the writing still quite surface level in detail, with Schreier having his preferred sources versus those that are merely talked about. Perhaps getting all perspectives was an impossible task, but it does have a “once over lightly” feel to it. Schreier also seems overly enamoured with the idea that certain businesses may have a culture that changes over time, and that long-serving staff may have some deep connection to it. While I agree this may be to some extent true, I feel it is overstated – in most industries, and surely the gaming one based on the narrative of Blizzard, people come and go, with their own independent lives, no matter how apparently embedded they may be in a particular business at the time. Culture in a workplace also comes off as ephemeral, probably because of such staff changes.

Despite this, the chronic mismanagement issues are handled better than in Blood, Sweat and Pixels. The failures are often multi-layered, such as poor resource allocation, lack of direction from the team heads, pressure from higher up in the hierarchy for cash flow. Schreier gave me a better feel for why they kept happening this time round. There actually are not that many distinct games being produced (i.e. limited learning opportunities), staff turnover is high, and technology changes. As a result, the lessons from each project have limited pass through from generation to generation.

The Industry

Kaplan’s team needed to simultaneously: 1) help out with features and art for the Overwatch League, 2) develop the sequel, and 3) create new heroes and updates for Overwatch, which had almost accidentally turned into a live-service game over the previous two years.

I have a slightly warped perspective, in that I don’t care about Blizzard.

More accurately, the issues with Blizzard seem “normal” to me based on the idea of a free market of creative destruction. The company’s history should give limited (if any) rewards to its future, particularly as its structure changed. A certain number of companies will fail over a long enough timespan, and variations in the rate of failure can be attributed to wider economic factors. Blizzard managed to land some early hits while small and leveraged some further hits while larger, but it has no inherent magic formula that makes it likely to do better long-term. The mantra of "it's done when it's done" seems to have applied in very context specific situations, which themselves form a very small sample. Blizzard's eight core values also do not really map onto how the business was run (or even subsections, which Schreier points out has their own cultures anyway).

My view is that the rise, fall and future narrative does not read as particularly unique: A firm makes money early on, then its owners try to extract cash from an increasingly bloated set up. Costs of production increase and management structures become more complicated, the pressure/reward system to become uncoupled from each other and there are difficulties as to accountability, delays and project cancellations.

Accordingly I believe that you should read Play Nice as not being about Blizzard and its special culture. Schreier notes that employees who had felt particular loyalty to the company came to realise that once they left, it wasn’t actually a big deal:

But it also sometimes took leaving the company for people to realize that “bleeding Blizzard blue” wasn’t making them all that happy.

I instead treat the book as a case study for the performance of the industry as a whole, and Blizzard does serve as an excellent representation of that. Where I criticised Blood and Pixels as being too broad, Play Nice gives you a coherent story about how the forces of capitalism impact a business over time. This isn’t “Capitalism is bad”, rather that capitalism can be indifferent to any particular firm. Blizzard is “special” because it survived and got big. It was the outlier that flipped heads several times in a row, so we get a longer story than a company like Westwood, flipping tails a little too often.

Play Nice also demonstrates the industry’s difficulty of ensuring smooth and growing (investors love growing) cash flows over time, with Blizzard being a great case study for methods such as sequels, regular expansions, micro-transactions, and gaming leagues to generate revenue. Again, Blizzard and its owners are not uniquely placed to make the right call, so rather than see it as a moral failure of a particular company, it’s a story of seeing what works and what doesn’t (e.g. don’t piss-off your gigantic Korean market by trying to charge them to stream games – less Blizzard being “bad”, more an insight as to when and how you can monetize people watching your games).

Play Nice leaves me with the suspicion that the gaming industry functions on a constant turnover of successes and failures. Being in the business a long time does not make you better, but brands and companies continue to exist as they can trade on their history for funding, with the tradeoff being that their embedded decision mechanics:

The bigger the company grew, the more slowly it moved, and the Blizzard brand was too revered, pressuring everyone at the company to embrace perfectionism. “I think the Blizzard process keeps them from advancing too quickly,” said one developer. “They have layers and layers of cultural due diligence, so every single decision winds up recalculated multiple times.”

I criticised Schreier for not deliberately making the links between Blizzard and the wider video gaming experience but he does such a good job with his narrative that I am comfortable extrapolating – i.e. it seems plausible other companies are similarly affected based on public information (e.g. see Bioware’s Mass Effect: Andromeda or Creative Assembly’s Hyenas). I like Schreier’s writing style and he (possibly inadvertently) applies it in the right direction here. This is worth a read to get a feel for the pressures on a business in the gaming industry along with the issues in handling them.*

* While it does not fit with my framing of how I approached the book, Schreier does cover off the sexual harassment scandals. My impression is that there needs to be a more detailed book on that element, so I would just say I am neutral on its treatment in Play Nice.

[Jonathan Succo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Play Nice is an engaging, exciting, troubling, and fascinating history of one of the big AAA game studios. Though I myself have only dabbled in Blizzard games (a bit of StarCraft in the early days, some Diablo III and IV), there is no denying Blizzard’s impact on the gaming landscape. Jason Schreier is known for his premier investigative journalism in the gaming community and this book makes it clear that he has earned every bit of that recognition. His writing is clear and factual and avoids the whiff of “turn-me-into-a-movie” embellishments that easily worm their way into this kind of book. Blizzard, in many ways, is indicative of the overall trajectory of gaming. In the early days, teams were small and it was entirely possible to make a game in a year, two if you really took your time. But now, AAA budgets have ballooned and a five year development timetable seems like a best case scenario. It’s not that there weren’t problems and financial sharks in the water before, it’s just that you weren’t bleeding out in the water for as long and projects that were creative risks could be finished before too many sharks showed up. Now the Bobby Koticks of the world will eat you up before you get out of the concept stage (unless you are a franchise or live service). What this means is that game production, like all endeavors subject to capitalism, has become an ouroboros of studios swelling to unsustainable size, corporate greed milking them dry, and creative talent jumping ship and starting a new studio in hopes of getting a game out the door before the process repeats itself. But for as bleak as the trajectory of game studios and gaming overall looks, I can’t help but love video games and this book reminds me why. The excitement of a new game announcement or new game release never gets old, even as my time to actually play games is greatly diminished. I’ll always be fascinated by how games are made and the people who make them. If you love video games, like really love them for all that they are and all that they can be, read this book.

[Mindaugas Mozūras · Rating 3 out of 5]

We make great games.

I found "Play Nice" to be ok as a book about Blizzard Entertainment. But to be fair, I think that I'm not the target audience. I'm well familiar with the story, having played many of their games in my childhood. Thus, this book did not go deep enough to entertain me truly. I enjoyed consuming it, but I wish it were twice as long and more extensive on everything that happened at Blizzard.