For decades, Blizzard Entertainment has charmed households with its iconic characters and vibrant multiplayer action. Its parent company, Activision Blizzard, employs 17,000 people and has a market cap of nearly $75 billion. Yet despite its size and mass appeal, Blizzard, quite paradoxically, is also one of gaming’s biggest black boxes.
That changes today with Grand Central Publishing’s release of Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. The latest book from investigative reporter Jason Schreier, Play Nice details the origins of the studio that created World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo. It also sheds light on the bro culture, crunch, sexism, and corporate turmoil that made Blizzard—for better or worse—Blizzard.
At 384 pages, Play Nice is Schreier’s biggest and most ambitious book to date. It chronicles the long, often dreary, history of Blizzard while weaving in quotes and storylines from 300+ past and current employees. If you’re familiar with Schreier’s prior works, then you know what tales to expect: derailed projects, meddlesome executives, poor labor conditions, and countless side characters. And, of course, there’s Schreier’s humorous insights that tie it all together.
It’s a sharp, well-written exposé that stands admirably next to its predecessors. Though it stumbles under the weight of its bloated cast—and creates some bizarre tension in its refuting of a certain Kotaku piece—Play Nice is as thorough an investigation as we’ll see into the world of Orcs, Necromancers, and Zerg.
“It’s Time for a Little Blood.”
Play Nice tells the story of Blizzard’s three co-founders: Allen Adham, Michael Morhaime, and Frank Pearce, three UCLA friends who decided to band together in the hopes of making it big in the video game industry.
In 1991, around the same time that John Carmack and John Romero founded id Software, Adham, Morhaime, and Pearce founded Silicon & Synapse: a lean, mean studio that would help companies port their games to other platforms. After a few successful ports, Silicon & Synapse began designing its own games, culminating in the release of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. The game put the founders on the map, setting off a whirlwind of events including acquisitions, mergers, and the creation of acclaimed franchises such as StarCraft and World of Warcraft.
Where the history of id Software (beautifully captured in David Kushner’s Masters of Doom) is one of technical wizards, rockstar game launches, and lavish sports cars, the story of Blizzard is far less glitz and glam. Despite cultivating capable talent, Blizzard’s ascension is attributed far more to the company’s player-first commitment and “it’s ready when it’s ready” development culture. Quality assurance was a company-wide phenomenon that could take weeks, if not months, in pursuit of perfection. Deadlines were frequently missed, and crunch ran rampant. Even as Blizzard saw success, hired more talent, and brought in millions, its talent was vastly underpaid and overworked.
“This Is Our Town, Scrub.”
As has become his trademark, Schreier explores the complex egos and emotions of game development in excruciating detail. Expect stories of creative disagreement, sudden ousts and exoduses, disappointing bonuses, and plenty of sleeping at the office. If you’ve read 2021’s Press Reset or Blood, Sweat, and Pixels before it, you’re likely familiar with the format. Still, Play Nice finds ways to deviate—most notably, by eschewing shorter vignettes in favor of a broader, overarching narrative.
At first, I was skeptical. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels was a particularly enjoyable read because it focused on such a diverse slate of games and developers. Press Reset, likewise, shifted perspective between an array of different studios, including Ken Levine’s Irrational Games and Curt Schilling’s ill-fated 38 Studios. There was no question that Play Nice would offer depth, but would it offer enough breadth to hold readers’ interest?
After reading nearly 400 pages, my answer was an emphatic “yes.” Between Blizzard’s various owners, development teams, and IP, each chapter sports a unique vibe—from the rise of StarCraft in South Korea to the surprising origin story of Diablo. Even long-time Activision owner and CEO Bobby Kotick—a man understandably maligned across the industry—is given an intimate, almost sympathetic look. But my favorite, bar none, would have to be chapter 17, which details the miraculous development of Hearthstone from a physical WoW tie-in to a billion-dollar digital card game.
Though Play Nice juggles a variety of names, many of whom are fleeting, it also celebrates some of Blizzard’s biggest heroes, including wholesome Hearthstone designer Ben Brode and visionary Overwatch lead Jeff Kaplan. Allen Adham and Michael Morhaime may have been the progenitors of Blizzard, but it’s a collection of hundreds of individual people—folks who slaved away, often at the cost of their families—to whom gamers everywhere owe a sincere debt.
“The Light Has Betrayed Me.”
Play Nice features a staggering number of first-hand accounts and interviews. Though it’s clear Schreier put in the research and kept the receipts—as he always does—the unfortunate by-product is a book that gets bogged down by a never-ending string of names, references, and callbacks. In my advanced reader copy (which may have since changed), Schreier awkwardly name drops things like Destiny and Battle.net before formally explaining them later. For a reader with even a cursory knowledge of gaming history, this isn’t a huge deal; still, it breaks up the flow now and again.
More egregious is a chapter late in the book, in which Schreier details the myriad instances when women at Blizzard were pursued, harassed, underestimated, and passed over in favor of their male counterparts. Today, Activision Blizzard’s history of rampant misogyny and sexism is common knowledge, but a decade ago, the news was only coming to light. So while Schreier’s accounts are shocking, they’re hardly surprising.
What is shocking, however, is a brief passage in which Schreier challenges reporting from a 2013 Kotaku story by Ethan Gach, which detailed the now-infamous “Cosby Suite” where many Blizzard developers gathered, reinforcing a frat boy culture where women were frequently prayed upon. At the time, Gach reported that the Cosby Suite was coined in direct reference to Cosby’s (now-substantiated) rape allegations. Schreier refutes those claims, writing that the room received its moniker months before Cosby’s allegations became widely known.
Another passage details a text message sent by longtime Blizzard developer David Kosak to a team group chat: “I am gathering the hot chixx for the Coz.” According to Schreier, the message was misinterpreted by the media—Kosak was referring to his wife and another woman, whom the two had been dining with during BlizzCon 2013. Still, as I read this segment (and reread, several times), I couldn’t find the implied vindication. So what if it’s his wife? In what world is corralling women, much less parading them in a male group chat, acceptable behavior?
A footnote in Play Nice mentions that Schreier reached out to Gach (the two were colleagues at Kotaku) about whether he regrets anything in his report. Gach said he stood by his article. If I were him, I would too. Even after rereading the Kotaku reporting, Schreier’s account—at least without additional context—just doesn’t hold water, posing more questions than it answers. It’s a noticeable blemish on an otherwise noteworthy read.
“Job’s Done.”
Despite an enormous cast, Schreier tells a cohesive narrative about personal ambitions—and the trials and tribulations of bringing those dreams to life. Some developers, like Jeremy Masker, who flipped an entry-level customer support job for World of Warcraft into a producer role for Diablo III, managed to thrive. Others, like Adham, who burned out before the company truly took flight, or the countless women who faced discrimination and unwanted advances, saw the ugliest sides of the business.
If anything, Play Nice is further evidence that something in this industry needs to change, and soon. Otherwise, crunch, mistreatment, pay gaps, and other inequities will just continue to fester. As fans of our favorite pastime, we all—gamers and developers alike—deserve better.
Score: 8.5/10
Other interesting tidbits from Play Nice (mild spoilers of some book chapters):
- Turns out, the idea for the name “Blizzard” came from the dictionary.
- Acclaimed writer Andy Weir (The Martian) spent a short stint at Blizzard, only to get fired for not fitting the culture. Blizzard’s loss!
- StarCraft’s Sarah Kerrigan was named after the real-life figure skater Nancy Kerrigan.
- Before Bobby Kotick started shoving microtransactions into games, he was paying for employee vacations and doing other surprisingly generous things.
- The CDC once contacted Blizzard asking to analyze WoW data after a pathogen ravaged Azeroth due to a nasty programming bug. (Perhaps Fauci’s a Paladin main?)
- Project Titan, a Marvel- and Sims-inspired MMORPG (yes, you read that right), was in development for seven years before being canned. It cost $70 million—a number that makes today’s ballooning development costs look small.
- Titan would eventually morph into Overwatch. Before Kaplan left Blizzard, he mentioned plans for Overwatch to evolve from PvP to PvE, then eventually to its own MMO. Will it still happen? Only Blizzard (and perhaps Schreier) knows.
- When Ben Brode was planning his escape to Second Dinner—the studio that would develop the excellent Marvel Snap—he and his Blizzard partner Hamilton Chu would disguise their talks with the code phrase “Dungeon Run monetization.” As someone who poured thousands of hours into Hearthstone, then hundreds more into Snap, I will forever appreciate Brode’s humor.
Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment, written by Jason Schreier and published by Grand Central Publishing, releases today.
Disclaimer: A review copy was provided by the publisher.
