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- Read-gamer: a new book by the author "Blood, Sweat and Pixels" is published in the Russian Federation
Read-gamer: a new book by the author "Blood, Sweat and Pixels" is published in the Russian Federation
Shortly after its worldwide release, the third work by Jason Schreier, the most famous gaming journalist, will appear in Russia. In the original version — Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. In Russian, it's called "We need more gold. The rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment." The main audience is gamers, geeks, fans of high—profile corporate dramas, and all of them will not be disappointed. Because the book tells about the 33 years of activity of the scandalous Blizzard company, which gave the world "Warcraft" and "Diablo". Izvestia studied the book before it went to print.
What the book "We Need More Gold" is about
Jason Schreier, a former Kotaku and Wired columnist and now an editor at Bloomberg News, has always specialized in corporate reporting and investigations. Among his targets were such giants as Bethesda, Bungie and Electronic Arts. There were also reports about the controversial company Blizzard Entertainment. At some point, there was so much information about the latter that Schreyer decided to pack it into a full-fledged book format. He has experience — he previously published two books where he analyzed work in the gaming industry and the price paid for creating hit projects like Diablo 3 or Destiny.
His first book is "Blood, Sweat and Pixels. The Flip Side of the Video Game Industry" was released in 2017 and immediately became a bestseller in the United States and an Amazon bestseller. The press service of the Litres digital electronic and audio book service told Izvestia that over the past 12 months, Blood, Sweat and Pixels has become the most popular book in the entertainment category. Moreover, it is in terms of revenue in all monetization models and all formats — e-books, audiobooks, subscription, subscription, piece sale. The book has received an expanded and revised second edition in the Russian Federation, as well as additional editions.
Over the entire time, more than 15,000 copies have been sold on the Chitai Gorod network. Schreyer's second work, "Press Reset", also entered the top sales on the game dev topic. In total, more than 28,000 copies of Schreyer's books were sold in the book network, the press service of the book network told Izvestia. Jason Schreier's books were also included in the top ten books about video games in the Yandex Books catalog according to Kinopoisk media.
"Press Reset. How the gaming industry ruins careers and gives you a second Chance" was released in 2021. In it, the author highlighted aspects of the work of the game development studios Irrational Games, 2K Marin, Visceral. In his third and last book to date, "We Need More Gold," Schreyer combined the ideas of the first two and even expanded some chapters from his main hit - he again talked about Diablo 3 against the background of a full—fledged documented chronicle of Blizzard's history.
The author has divided the book into three semantic parts, all of which are also included in the subtitle of the publication — rise, fall and future. The author consistently reports on how Blizzard became the most coveted job in the gaming industry, then plunged into the quagmire of numerous scandals and eventually lost the lion's share of its fan base. The final part of the book is devoted to the current period of the company's work after the merger with Activision and the transition under the control of Microsoft. Thanks to the comments of the scientific editor, the most up-to-date information for the beginning of 2025 has been added to the text.
So, one of the chapters tells about the cancellation of the Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans adventure game — Blizzard created it together with Animation Magic animation studio, the lion's share of which was located in St. Petersburg. After the game was closed, the Russian branch of Animation Magic also soon closed, and its American offices in Maryland and Massachusetts finally closed their doors in 2001. The chapter "Runaways" is devoted to how corporations offended by the cancellation of Warcraft Adventures created their own studio, but it collapsed in less than a year. The author does not draw conclusions for the reader, but hints that many of Blizzard's decisions, strange at first glance, turned out to be prophetic.
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans
An impressive fragment is devoted to another scandal with the cancellation of the Titan game after seven years of development. Blizzard spent about $80 million and several years building a prototype that was killed in one day. At the same time, the corporate savvy of creative director Rob Pardo subsequently allowed Overwatch to be created on the remains of Titan, an iconic first—person shooter with which Blizzard broke into a new genre for itself. Jeff Kaplan, a game designer who quickly became famous on YouTube due to his appeals to players, was put in charge of the project.
What is Blizzard known for?
Blizzard Entertainment, known among Russian—speaking fans as "Metelitsa", was founded 34 years ago by two enthusiasts with no entrepreneurial experience. It was then called Silicon & Synapse, Inc. Founding fathers Allen Adam and Mike Morheim came up with a formulation that would symbolize the kinship of technology and the human brain: silicon and synapse. Since then, the studio has grown into one of the world's largest gaming companies, creating several truly iconic projects: the Diablo, Warcraft, StarCraft and Overwatch series. The World of Warcraft multiplayer project had 12 million regular subscribers in 2010 at the peak of its popularity, and today there are about 7-8 million of them.
The narrative repeatedly talks about the desire of one of the founders to make the Blizzard brand so strong that people would buy boxes labeled Blizzard, in which the authors simply put a scattering of stones. And at some point, the company almost succeeded. Schreyer gathered several hundred speakers, interviewed them, and based on their memories built a real chronicle. However, in terms of composition, this is more of a collection of articles, where each chapter is devoted either to a specific game or to a major personality like Bobby Kotick or Chris Metzen, who played key roles in the company's business processes.
An illustration from the game "Warcraft III: Reforged"
A special emphasis is placed on the financial aspects of Blizzard's work, so even among enthusiasts and geeks, many are learning for the first time about such functionaries as Armin Zerza, who invented new monetization methods for the company. One of the key principles of Blizzard's philosophy at all times has been to release games only when they are actually ready. Schreyer also adopted this approach, making the most detailed account of all the problems that had been hushed up in the company for years. The book was translated into Russian without an excessive amount of gaming slang, so the entry threshold to the topic is not too high.
Alexander Kuzmenko, the author of the book's abstract, video game historian, and editor-in-chief of Igromania magazine from 2003 to 2010, believes that internal dictatorship and gaming fascism have always been hidden behind the chic facade of the dream company.
— The fact that this book is being published now is wonderful. This will finally open the eyes of all those idealists who still think that the gaming industry is such butterflies that light up in their stomachs, that these are such cute unicorns that pee exclusively with rainbows. No, absolutely not. It's a disgusting, pathetic, creepy place where absolutely terrible things happen. They destroy and ruin the destinies of so many people. Using the example of people who worked at Blizzard for 8, 9, 12 years, whom I know very well and who were fired one day after the salary reduction, I can say that this studio does not appreciate those people who produce the most beautiful things. Genius and guile, unfortunately, go hand in hand. And Blizzard is an excellent representative of just such an approach in the video game industry," Alexander Kuzmenko is convinced.
A team of well-known game journalists, including Ilya Komarov, Mikhail Bocharov, Pavel Ruchkin, and others, worked on the domestic translation. It is fair to put the book on a par with such works as "Kojima the Genius" and "Lords of DOOM. How two guys created a cult shooter and rocked the video game industry," and those, like the book about Blizzard, were released by Bombora Publishing. "We need more gold" is the case when business literature can be both exciting and useful. Because we live in an era of the triumph of illusions, and anyone who debunks them in a reasoned and harsh manner deserves every thanks.
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