Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry

by Jason Schreier

Paperback, 2021

Status

Available

Call number

338.4

Publication

Grand Central Publishing (2021), 320 pages

Description

"The business of videogames is both a prestige industry and a very opaque one. Based on dozens of firsthand interviews and covering the development of landmark games including Bioshock: Infinite, Epic Mickey, Dead Space, and more, and through the studios' shocking closures, this book will tell the stories of how real people are affected by game studio shutdowns -- and how and if they recover. Jason Schreier has made a name for himself as gaming's preeminent investigative journalist. In Press reset, through countless of insider interviews that cover hostile takeovers, abusive bosses, corporate drama, bounced checks, and that one time the Boston Red Sox's Curt Schilling decided he was going to lead a game studio that would take out World of Warcraft, Schreier covers not only why video games are so hard to make, he explores why it's so hard to make a living making games in the first place"--… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member hskey
Thoroughly enjoyed, though it's unsurprising since I really enjoy Jason Schreier's work and followed him for years.

I pushed for our company book club to read this book and it feels very relevant, since we're a games studio and I can't help but get a twinge of fear, anger and optimism when I read
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about various industry folk succeeding, failing and picking up the pieces to move on and keep pursuing their career.

I also enjoyed how Schreier came up with tangible ideas at the end of the book on how to resolve the tumultuous nature of the video games industry, really interesting stuff. You can tell he did his homework, every chapter is littered with primary sources and interesting history of companies, how they formed and executive decisions. Heartbreaking, funny and surprising.

I knew a lot of the stories already, but it was refreshing to hear the full story and the people behind it. Excellent, and am very keen to try Blood, Sweat and Pixels next.
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LibraryThing member Kavinay
Honestly, Schreier is too kind. Any professional developer looking at his case studies sees the sort of epic failure of management that would render even a genius into pariah in most competent industries. Game dev culture is built on a house of cards where the incompetence of leaders normalizes the
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inevitable crunch that results. Such a waste.
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Language

Original language

English

Physical description

320 p.; 8.25 inches

ISBN

1538735490 / 9781538735497
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