Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

This is a very good, concise and to the point history of Blizzard. It’s nice to hear the whole story from start to finish.If you’re a die hard fan and have been following Blizzard since the early 2000s, most of the content in the “Future” section isn’t particularly new. There are a few quotes from ex employees, but nothing you haven’t seen on Twitter/X. I found the “Rise” section more interesting as it helped contextualise how and why Blizzard stumbled in the later years.I was disappointed to see nothing about how Shadowlands broke the trust of the Warcraft community, a particular issue around the “old guard” digging their heels in. This was a good opportunity to cover Blizzard’s change in attitude with Dragonflight, but was completely glossed over.All in all a fun listen/read, and I don’t regret buying. Jason is a great investigative journalist. As long as you don’t expect anything revelatory, you’ll have a good time with this.

Absolutely fascinating, provides so much context to blizzard and their recent decisions

As a lifelong gamer and evangelist for Blizzard that once seriously aspired to work there, I went cover to cover over the first day with this book in my hands.It's tempting to describe the story in terms of its "heroes" and "villains" (and there certainly are some of the latter) but the overall takeaway is a kind of penetrating sadness about the demise of something that was undeniably special, that started and was tried to be kept aloft by people with their hearts in the right place. Activision's meddling is well documented and plays a central and devastating role in the turmoil chronicled here, but the overall growing pains of the industry are not ignored either. What happened to Blizzard happened to gaming overall too. There are lessons here for anyone in creative / entertainment careers and particularly for the investor class, but history (and current events) tells us that those people especially will miss or dismiss them.It's probably unrealistic to expect a return of the intangibles that elevated Blizzard far above its peers. The world and the business has changed. Some of it absolutely necessary, some of it painfully and regrettably.

Well written, Jason Schreier proves again his interest and knowledge of the games industry, this is not only for enthusiasts but also for anyone who likes a good read!

I am an avid player of Blizzard’s games. It is awesome to join the dots of events and comments of people during the years when things were good and bad. Thank you author.My only quip was - felt like the author even though he had interviewed 350+ former staff of the company, I wished he could have interviewed some of the more recent names eg Jeff Keplan (I assume it isn’t possible eg NDA or whatever) some parts felt more a broad stroke of events and not enough juicy details - I am greedy probably …

The book offers incredible detail and insight on the rise and fall of Blizzard. I have been texting experts to my gamer group chat for days.The book is also easy to read. The authors writing style has improved a lot compared to his previous book - Press Reset.The only issue for me was that despite the title, there is little analysis of what the future holds for Blizzard. We learn about the present, the recently cancelled games, the plans to support the current ones, and that’s it. Maybe the author meant that Blizzard has no future.