This has been a book on my radar since it came out, but I had been delaying it because Blizzard at the end of the day, wasn’t a huge part of my life. But reading through the book was a fascinating journey through the history of the industry, the company, and a little bit, some revisiting of my history.
To start, Jason Shreier does a fantastic job in this book. Comprised of 300 plus interviews from former blizzard and industry players, he weaves a great story about what happened, and what happens behind the scenes vs in public.
I am someone who’s always been on the periphery of the gaming that Blizzard put out. Growing up, we didn’t have a PC that could game, or any consoles, but even I remember when WoW came out, and later events that were in my main feed as I moved more towards the Blizzard niche. Seeing the boxes at Best Buy. The infamous south park episode. My science teacher playing during Science Olympiad. Then Hearthstone, the game that if you were at all a card/tcg player, turned into a black hole of influence (and still is, to this day). Ben Brode Leaving Hearthstone. The Diablo Immortal announcement that became a meme. Blitzchung. Overwatch/OW league. The California case. Selling to Microsoft. All of these (save the personal anecdotes) are talked about in the book, and the behind the scenes of it all is incredible.
For example, WoW fundementally changed Blizzard. The company had developed so many hits because they weren’t supporting live service games (a term not even in existence when WoW came around). But then WoW, with it’s massive revenue, changes that, and WoW becomes a black hole of talent for Blizzard.
Hearthstone was a game that, because of when it came out, almost never came out because the bean counters at Activision didn’t think it would be successful or make money (a notion that any modern tcg player would be confused by; hearthstone in many ways created, and established, every part of the digital card game design and experience. Every other DCG is just a clone but different of Hearthstone).
blitzhung onwards was at a point where the company had been poisoned by MBA bean counters, and everything was profit and exploiting the customer driven.
In many ways, the book portrays the latter years of blizzard through the early years, when game development teams were small, and the difficulty of turning your small company of friends into a business. Roosterteeth had a similar trajectory but instead of being bought by Microsoft after their scandal years, they closed.
Random thoughts I had during the book:
- There are two kinds of executives in this book. The ones who worked their way up through Blizzard, and the ones who came from other industries and had MBAs. I gotta say, this book did not make the latter seem competent. The book goes a little into the compensation problems Blizzard had, but it’s not even just Blizzard. The stuff executives brought in do, is just downright insane considering how much they get paid. Armin Zerza is just a massive wadhole thoughout his tenure and is given millions for it. Some random HR executive comes in, implements Jack “Capitalist Pig” Welch’s stack rankings and leaves, and that policy destroys morale for the next 5 years. People with no video game development knowledge come in and try to implement things that work in consumer goods, into video games.
- Jason Schreier kinda glosses over the Overwatch league stuff (he’s said he cut it for length) but some of the backstory of that is insane. Kotik thinking that it would be a multi billion franchise even despite all the failures of MLG in the 2000s, and with what we know about the economics of esports now (lol FaZe clan)
- Man, Blizzard basically survived off of reputation and hiring people for half their true cost.
It’s hard to summarize a book that covers 33 years of history in a single post. But this was a fantastic read.