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Jason Schreier: Play Nice (Hardcover, Grand Central Publishing) 4 stars

New York Times bestselling author and the gaming industry's preeminent investigative journalist Jason Schreier examines …

Nothing too new

4 stars

A pretty good history of Blizzard Entertainment. There's not too much new here, but it's well written and arranged.

I was expecting more of the book to be spent on the more recent revelations around discrimination and sexual harassment. Understandably it's woven throughout, but it's less of a book exposing that and more of a general tell-all.

There's a decent number of other stories around game design also being told here, which were interesting but I guess need to be taken with a pinch of salt and awareness of the benefit of hindsight.

Repeated themes include leadership detached from their product, short sighted capitalisation and milking of franchises, and a loss of the spirit of making good games for good games sake. Seems to align with my "outside fan"'s perspective.

Probably wouldn't recommend this unless you're a fan, as I don't think it does a great job of selling the magic of the original games.