Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made ― A National Bestselling Exposé of Development Hell

An incredibly in depth and interesting look into the development process of some of the most popular video games out there, which didn't fail to keep me hooked to each page, I highly recommend Blood Sweat and Pixels. With each chapter focusing on the story of a particular game, the book is perfect reading I'm bite size chunks, ie whilst commuting, or in one sitting. The stories behind the games are entertaining, enlightening and surprisingly emotional, and while a cynical mind may say they could have been an article on a video games website, the long form format offers the author a chance to go deeper into each development story, and it's an opportunity which has clearly payed off, interviews and painstaking research intricately woven together to forming a compelling narrative. I couldn't put this book down, and am already planning on gifting it to friends and family so they can experience it for themselves. I look forward with great interest as to what is next for Schreier, with stories like that behind the troubled development and release of Mass Effect Andromeda the perfect fodder for a sequel. Tl;Dr - if you like games, read this book. If you don't play or like games but know someone who does, buy it for them, and read it before giving it to them. You won't regret it.

Making video games is hard work, whether you're a solo operator developing an indie game inspired by a Nintendo classic or an experienced team of 200 working with a budge in nine figures. In this book, video game journalist Jason Schreier investigates the making of ten different video games: Pillars of Eternity, Uncharted 4, Stardew Valley, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, Halo Wars, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Shovel Knight, Destiny, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Star Wars: 1313. Most people know that the making of video games is a difficult, long-winded and expensive process. But just how long-winded and expensive that task is remains mind-boggling. This book explores some of those stories. A single cancelled contract almost destroyed veteran video game studio Obsidian Entertainment, until they launched a successful Kickstarter for an old-skool RPG called Pillars of Eternity that was a big commercial hit and saved the company. Naughty Dog Studios had already delivered three critically-acclaimed Uncharted games and were a well-oiled machine, but still almost crashed into ruin whilst making the fourth game in the series. Blizzard Entertainment had been a 20-year veteran of game development with almost 100 million games sold but still managed to release Diablo III in a chaotic and divisive state, forcing them to save the game with an expansion pack that revamped a lot of how the game worked. Star Wars: 1313 was a game that looked absolutely amazing and was playing very well when it was abruptly cancelled when Disney took over LucasArts in 2012, flushing several years, tens of millions of dollars and thousands of hours of work down the toilet. Schreier recounts the story of each game in a well-researched, intelligent manner based on interviews with the people involved and, in some cases, spending time embedded at the studio in question. Arguably the most fascinating chapter is on the development of Stardew Valley, a rare modern game created by just one person (Eric Barone), showing the insane work required to bring what is apparently a very simple game idea to the masses. The most explosive is certainly about the development of Destiny, an online game created by Bungie Studios to escape the treadmill of developing Halo games until the end of time, but that was easier said then done and by the end of development most of those who had been pushing for abandoning Halo had left the company, leaving a lot of anger and bitterness behind (which is an ongoing story, through the problematic release of Destiny's expansion and sequel). The most frustrating story is that of 1313, a genuinely exciting-sounding game that was killed in its infancy. If there are any negatives to the book, it's probably the lack of depth. The book can only give about 25 pages to each project, and often the chapter ends just as the story gets interesting and we're moving onto the next game. There could also be better context: the Diablo III chapter focuses on the expansion, but we learn nothing about the ten-year development of Diablo III itself and why the game ended up being released in such a chaotic state. The Witcher III chapter also lowballs the game's reportedly hellish crunch period, which led to many people leaving the company (also it also resulted in arguably the greatest video game of the last twenty years). You occasionally feel that Schreier pulls his punches - at least a little - to retain future access to the companies involved. That said, if you play video games but have no idea how they're made or the workload involved, this book (****) will be revelatory. Well-written, informative and entertaining, it marks a good beginner's guide to the crazy world of making video games.

I'm not saying that I enjoy the suffering of my idols, but I certainly seem to enjoy the way in which Schreier phrases it.

Phenomenal insight into the gaming industry and the ever-changing factors that can impact any company and their colleagues. One of my favourite gaming books I have read, definitely worth buying and reading!

I'm only halfway through but this isn't a book hinging on it's ending so I'm comfortable writing a review (if Paltrow's head is in a box in the final chapter, it will be a bonus). The book is well written, full of nifty details about the industry that feel refreshing and eye opening rather than depressing. The kindle version I purchased is great as it lets you jump straight to the linear notes (via a blue star) then jump straight back to your page. Some people prefer the tactile nature of a hardback but this linear note hot-swapping is a godsend for this type of book. I look forward to reading the rest and finding out who this pesky Keyser Soze really is.

This is my first book based on games and it was definitely a great introduction to the gaming industry. Each chapter is based on a different game and how the developer sought to deliver it to he public without getting too heavy on politics or specific knowledge of the games in question. One lesson I have learnt from this book is how many developers over promise and under deliver and it’s a shoddy practice that needs calling out a lot more. The interviews with staff and team members are insightful but for each chapter I wanted a little more meat on the bones of it all. This might be a bit of a stretch given game companies don’t really want to talk about their struggles publicly, however the author has certainly received some good sources for the material. A good book and would happily recommend to anyone interested in games.

Wow, this book is brilliant. I bought this book as I thought it would be an interesting read on how games get made and that I could slowly work my way through, once I started reading it, it gripped me and instead of slowly reading it I actually stopped playing video games just so I could read more. The book tells of the hardships that we , as gamers, tend to forget about when game devs make these games and especially when it comes to "crunch" time. I found it especially interesting and not surprising when the chapters revolved around games that were published by EA. A lot of positive and "you made it" scenarios with the games from indie games too. All in all, this book is fantastic (took me bout 3 days to read) and I'm hoping for a sequel

I was looking forward to this book, being both a regular reader of Kotaku and an all-round videogame junkie. There are some interesting chapters - Destiny and Uncharted 4 each had chaotic development circumstances, which is always fascinating - and there's a lot of readable circumstantial detail about what decisions have to be made in fashioning games. But frustratingly the reportage rarely goes beyond point-by-point insider descriptions of each game's management problems, in a clearly written but bloodless 'As Told To' style. The news that project management is hard just isn't news. My main frustration is that in the entire book, not one individual stands out in three dimensions. Instead, people are sketched in with a couple of adjectives - 'charismatic', 'decisive', 'indecisive'. In fact every project in the book, whether small or huge in scale, appears to have been conceived and built by hard working and ambitious people with good intentions. Is it really endemic to the nature of video games, that they are in fact impersonal enterprises in which the personality and character of their creators is irrelevant? The fact that almost the entire focus of the book is the ins and outs of team management, corporate interests, and technology, suggests that this is the case. I personally don't believe it. The book Dogfight, about the struggles behind the technology at Google and Apple, made a great job of personalising the fight to bring technology to life. Schreier's approach to the conflicts he comes across is to simply gloss over it. The 'material' is there (people are fired, creative arguments are had) but he keeps his hands far away from the messy business of peoples' desires, motivations and feelings. There's a story about the composer of Destiny tweeting his righteous anger at a publisher for not using his music in a trade show commercial. The monumental pettiness of it is completely lost on the reporter, who reprints each tweet word for word with the date and time of day as though they were evidence in an epic struggle, instead of acknowledging them as the frustrations of a man whose vanity was wounded. This seeming lack of psychological insight into any of his charges may have many reasons - he was likely unwilling to offend people who had given him their confidences. But fatally it makes the book one-dimensional, and does a disservice to his subjects. They all seem exactly the same. In the end, the book confirms that making games is actually like most creative endeavours; highly intense to the people doing it, and extraordinarily dull to the casual observer. There are a lot of useful descriptions here of process and management style, but there's little or nothing about the individuals and the creative work involved. Creative work is ALL on the inside. It's up to a writer to dramatise it, not report it, so I hope Schreier goes further next time with his subjects, as I still believe they're worthy of a gutsy analysis.

It is a book with words.

Siendo uno de mis más grandes hobbies, tenía mucha curiosidad por leer este libro, especialmente al ser escrito por Jason Schreier, del cual he leído y seguido varias de sus notas informativas en el medio de comunicación "Kotaku", me agrada la manera en que informa, y me pareció suficiente para darle comprar a este libro. Cuenta con 10 historias que lo que tienen en común son prácticas que te hacen cuestionar porque hay tanta gente dedicándose a este medio. Los desarrolladores de videojuegos viven un torbellino eterno de estrés y trabajo, horas extras y poco tiempo de familia, cambios repentinos y acciones legales en contra de su voluntad. Es una industria terrible, y este libro es la mejor prueba de ello. Ganarás mucho respeto hacia los grupos que crean todos esos videojuegos que tanto amas. Ya que en verdad hubo mucho sacrificio, lágrimas y sangre detrás de cada uno.

Effectively makes it clear that working in a video game studio is not worth it due to the crunch culture that will permeate it and delays and disappointments will take place. Teaches you about how much effort creating a video game takes and the success or failure that can happen as a result of that. I think virtually everybody agrees that the best section of this book is about Stardew Valley as that game is great and it is created by a single person and is the best example of individual success through massive effort. It's relatable, realistic, inspirational and nerve-wracking. As a whole the book is very inspiring, intriguing and insightful.

Il mercato dei videogiochi è sempre più vasto e diffuso, arrivando a competere con il cinema. Ma dietro la creazione di un capolavoro ci sono spesso migliaia di persone che non vedranno mai un riconoscimento per il loro lavoro. Blood, Sweat & Pixels ci racconta queste storie di anonimi sviluppatori che hanno dato tutto, hanno lavorato ininterrottamente anche a discapito della salute fisica per rispettare i tempi di consegna e garantire il nostro svago.

"Oh, Jason," he said. "It's a miracle that any game is made." Finally, a book that captures the complexity of game development that anyone can pick up and enjoy. Jason Schreier of Kotaku spent two years traveling around the world to score in depth interviews with the industry's most renowned gaming studios. Drawing from sources speaking both on and off the record, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels provides a rare glimpse into the pain and passion that go into bringing a modern video game to market. In ten absorbing chapters Schreier covers the downright grueling development process behind such hits as Blizzard's Diablo III, Naughty Dog's Uncharted 4, CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3 and, of course, Bungie's Destiny. Speaking of Destiny, it was Schreier's crucial 2015 exposé that laid the groundwork for this wonderful little book. (Portions of his chapter on Destiny are taken directly from that article.) As fans of the blockbuster series will remember, that Kotaku piece brought Destiny's murky origin story to light. Importantly, it provided the necessary background for understanding how the company that gave us Halo could have produced — at least at launch — such a lackluster title. Subpar development tools, a strained relationship with publisher Activision, and the complete reboot of the story (following the departure of lead writer Joe Staten) a year out from release had much to do with it. As a source tells Schreier, “A lot of the problems that came up in Destiny 1...are results of having an unwavering schedule and unwieldy tools." What we learned then from Scheier's keen reporting, and what comes across clear as day in his first book, is that making games is incredibly hard and almost impossibly demanding. Harder, perhaps, than any other creative medium. Thanks to their interactive nature and sheer potentiality, games are capable of delivering the boundless, memorable experiences we've come to love. But it's those same elements that make them such a chore to create, even for seasoned veterans. One of the designers at Obsidian (of Fallout: New Vegas fame) he interviews puts it this way: "making games is sort of like shooting movies, if you had to build an entirely new camera every time you started." Indeed, the tools and technologies used to develop the latest games are constantly in flux, as is the creative vision of the producers and directors at the top. A change in either area can prove hugely disruptive to the overall process — a process that hinges on pushing a marketable product out the door by an agreed upon deadline. It's that constant give and take between concept and technology, between developer and publisher, that defines the medium. Internal conflicts can also run a project off course. Artists and programmers might spend months, years even, sketching and coding characters, environments, quests, set pieces and combat mechanics, only to see it all thrown out as a result of higher-ups taking the game in an entirely different direction. When Naughty Dog replaced Uncharted 4's creative director Amy Hennig in 2014 — roughly two years into the game's development — the story was more or less scrapped. That meant that cut scenes, animation, and thousands of lines of recorded voicework on which the studio had already spent millions of dollars got the axe, too. For an artist emotionally invested in their work, this can be heartbreaking and demotivating. In other cases, such as the abortive Star Wars 1313, a decision by the publisher can bring it all crashing down. As Scheier recounts in the closing chapter, LucasArts, formerly a subsidiary of Lucasfilm, began work on a new action-adventure Star Wars game in 2010. The game debuted at E3 in 2012 to wide critical acclaim. Shortly afterward, the company was acquired by Disney. By 2013, Disney had shuttered the studio and canceled every one of its projects. For all the work the dedicated crew at LucasArts poured into their pet project, Star Wars 1313 was never meant to be. Given the many technical hitches, logistical nightmares, corporate pressures, and unforeseen obstacles that threaten success, it's no small wonder that any games are shipped at all. As Schreier points out, there's hardly a game on the market today that doesn't run up against insane crunch periods and dramatic setbacks over the course of its development. Whether it's a small team working on a 2D side-scroller à la Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight or a massive effort spread across hundreds of staff in the case of BioWare's Dragon Age, producing a quality game in today's highly competitive environment is by any measure a herculean effort. Virtually every insider consulted for the book talks about how taxing the job can be on one's physical health and personal relationships. Burnout is common. And even with working around the clock for months on end — often sans overtime pay, as it's not required in the US — games rarely come out on time. Delays and cancellations are a feature, not a bug. To be sure, any successful career in game development is built on passion and an enthusiasm for creating unique playable spaces, but it's one that comes with significant costs that only the truly dedicated may be equipped to endure. Closing Thoughts Leave it to Jason Schreier to shatter any utopic notions about game development. Behind the glossy visuals and destructible environments we take for granted on screen lies a hellish landscape of Sisyphean creative challenges and brutal working hours. As the title suggests, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels constantly reminds us that game production is as much about self-sacrifice as it is about crafting quality interactive experiences. And if these breezy oral histories are any indication, it's a principle that holds true whether you're a bootstrapped indie developer beholden to Kickstarter donors or a lowly cog in the big-budget corporate machine. Schreier is a most welcome guide, bringing more casual readers up to speed on esoteric conversations ranging from rendering paths and game engines to bug testing and content iteration times. It's a testament to his talents that the book never seems to flag, even when exploring games I didn't particularly care about. While I wish Schreier had ventured more deeply into the ethics of crunch culture, his penchant for meticulous, well researched investigative journalism is on full display here. If you have even a passing interest in gaming be sure to pick this one up. I came away with a better understanding of the personal sacrifices and creative compromises that appear to go hand in hand with making video games, and a newfound perspective on increasingly commonplace monetization strategies like paid downloadable content (PDLC) and microtransaction (MTX) systems. Above all, it left me with a more profound appreciation for my most cherished hobby.