Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

Lots of grinding and crunching stories that makes you question the ethical side of gaming.

A great account of how some of the most popular games (did not) get made.

5/5
I couldn't put this one down! As someone who loves video games, it's fascinating to read about how video games are made both big and small in scale and how grueling, top heavy, and unsustainable the gaming industry currently is. It's super entertaining and engaging to read about each game Schreier covers here and although I've only played one of the games he's written in depth about (Stardew Valley), it's all the more interesting. For anyone who is remotely interested in video games, how they are made, and a look into the actual humans behind them, then this is a must read. I loved it and can't wait to read his next one (“Press Reset”) and his new one about Blizzard that comes out this Fall (which sounds like it's gonna be a real juicy one).

An astonishing and eye opening look into the vast world of one of my favorite pastimes and hobbies. Jason Schreier knocks it out of the park with this exposé on the largest and smallest gaming studios. 

Did not finish. It was okay, but I got up to chapter 7 (of 10) and realized that each successive story was barely different from every story that preceded it (“Stardew Valley” was the only outlier).

The book is more like a collection of unrelated articles, which makes sense since the author was a journalist for Kotaku at the time.

A great book for anyone interested in learning more about the video game industry and the antics revolving around it

I've been in a gaming rut for a while and this gave me new passion for the art and effort people put into their games.

Off to play!

Fun little read into the grind of the game development world. This definitely wouldn't' be a 5 star if I hadn't have played most of the games in the book though.

Cool read. I was familiar with almost all of the games profiled, which was nice, and I liked reading more about the development process. That being said, the chapters got a little “samey” – each one was its own self-contained story, but the stories were often pretty similar.

The book tells the story about ten different video games and the hurdles they managed to (or not to) overcome during development, all the way to release. I especially liked the stories of Stardew Valley and Star Wars 1313.

It seems like every game's success story boils down to excessive crunch time, which is a bit sad. The stories are interesting (even if you're not familiar with the game being talked about), but man I do not want to work in the video game industry.

Excellent book

If you were wondering what's it like to be a software engineer this suns it up nicely. Sweet yourself on fire and get to work.

This was a very good look into game development. Listening to podcasts and reading articles during the development of all these games gave me some insight into the surface level of what happened but Schreier definitely dives deep and gives context. It is a hard look into a difficult art form and career. Highly recommend to anyone who has a passing interest into video games.

Inspiring and sobering for all creative types, really.

I'm no gamer and still found this book incredibly interesting. A great insight into the game industry and its crazy work practices. They are def not sustainable so I'm very interested how the industry will evolve.

This is an easy book to like. Schreier is a good writer and his access to key figures in the industry is exciting for a behind the scenes on big moments in gaming. Indeed, the first couple chapters he covers are interesting as broad surveys into the perils of game development such as scope creep, marketing and the crunch.

But the longer you go on, the more you get the sense that his attempts to cover the crunch and similar dysfunctions of project and business management in the industry are more an apologia for insiders with survivor bias than a critique of toxic work environments.

In that respect, I found myself getting more irritated as the case studies went on, since every developer's inevitable deadline push and 100hr work week just felt banal and awful rather than a triumph of creative passion. I'm not in game development (thank goodness!) and it's largely because the norms that go relatively unchallenged in this book work really well for select game devs with credibility and power, whereas the common employee is treated like garbage and told that this is for the great good. I doubt this was Schreier's intent, but the sum total of the book reads more like an attempt to spin complete management dysfunction as normal operating parameters.

Must read. Some great stories and a lot of reality checks if you have been in the industry for a while.

Executive Summary: I think this book can appeal to both software developers and fans of video games alike, but it's definitely targeted more at the latter than the former.

Full Review
This book was previewed with an excerpt from the chapter on Diablo 3 (which incidentally is the ONLY game in this book that I've actually played/plan to play).

When I was younger I wanted to make video games. Somewhere along the way however I felt like I'd rather spend my time PLAYING games instead of making them. This book helps to illustrate why. I work 40 hours/week as a software developer. There have been days or weeks where I had to stay late, or when things went sideways and I was fighting a fire. But nothing like the “crunch” described in every single story in this book.

It's a wonder games get made at all. These people must really love making games. Personally, I'll stick to writing business apps for my day jobs and keeping video games something I consume.

I've read some better/more in-depth books about video games, but this made for a decent sampler with a variety of stories. It was a quick read, with each game getting a single chapter of about 20-30 pages each.

Each story in here is unique enough to be interesting, but they do all share a theme of things running over budget, behind schedule and requiring insane hours/overtime to finish at all. You get some stories of indie games, and huge big budget games and a few in between.

The tone is definitely more for fans of games, and not (potential) developers. Anything even slightly technical seems to be explained in a footnote that I often skipped, but I imagine will be useful to most readers. I didn't find that to be the detriment of the book however, as despite also being a software developer, I'm a fan of video games.

Of all of these stories, the Stardew Valley one was probably the most interesting. I had mostly picked this up to read the rest of the Diablo 3 story (so good job on that marketing Kotaku!), but I liked reading about all of these games.

I think if you're a fan of any of these games, or just a big fan of videogames in general, this is a pretty good read.