Book review: Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment by Jason Schrier

2026-02-25 BOOK-REVIEW

I imagine everyone will come to this book with a different perspective, depending on their relationship with Blizzard Entertainment. For my part, I was a fan of their work though most of my teen years, from downloading (cough cough) Warcraft 1 from my dad's work PC, to buying StarCraft II on release. After that, none of their releases appealed to me much, and I lost interest. This book helped me understand why that happened, and besides that, it was a fun chance to revisit some old memories, and hear the back-stories behind them.

I do love hearing about the early days of game studios in the 90s; it seems like a very different era, that forged a very different breed of game developer. Reading the story of Blizzard's origins reminds me of id Software's story—a group of men in their early 20s getting together and, out of sheer passion & dedication, willing some of the greatest games ever into existence. Like with id, Blizzard started off doing contract work, but that was just a stepping-stone to the dream of building their own games, which they then did with great aplomb.

Schrier structures the book in a very clean, easy-to-read format, with each chapter having a clear focus in terms of a specific event, or game, or aspect of the company's culture. We get lots of anecdotes and tit-bits of information throughout, such as the origin of the company's name, and various glimpses into the chaos of running a video-game start-up studio. We meet many people whose names I was familiar with from seeing them in game credits and manuals all those years ago. I finally got answers to many questions I'd wondered about as a teenager, such as what the relationship with Blizzard North was, what the heck happened to StarCraft: Ghost (yes, I'm still pissed off about that, 20 years later), or how the legendary World of Warcraft South Park episode came to be.

More broadly, the book is divided into parts, which serve as the acts in this tragedy (yes, of course it's a tragedy, though with some hope for redemption). We get the impression that the company as a whole changed with the success of World of Warcraft, and the growth it brought. Shortly after that, with one of the most memorable lines in the book, we enter Part II with the introduction of the villain of the story. Bobby Kotick comes across as every bit the ruthless corporate tyrant we imagine him as, and the foreboding is thick as we see him build up his gaming empire, and then eventually annex Blizzard to it.

As something of a corporate animal myself, it was interesting to note the similarities between Blizzard's corporate culture and that of companies I've worked for, as well as the stark differences. It was also interesting to note how some of the more infamously odious aspects of Blizzard's corporate culture had their roots from before the merge with Activision, such as the "boys' club" environment. One thing that comes across throughout, though, is the passion of the developers, and their love for the games they made.

While reading the book, I did start to feel like the neatness of its structure leads to some details being lost in the cracks. More and more people cycle in and out of the story, you get less of a feel for some of the individual personalities. I found myself wondering if Bobby Kotick really is as one-dimensional a person as he comes across, or if Mike Morhaime or Chris Metzen changed at all during their years at the company. We move from event to event in the timeline without any strong through-lines—for example, the difficulties of being a woman at Blizzard are largely relegated to two distinct chapters, and then come up again when the lawsuit hits. It left me feeling hungry for more detail, though such detail would probably have required a book three times as long.

Overall, though, this is a great book to read if you've followed ~~Silicon & Synapse's~~ ~~Chaos Studios'~~ ~~Blizzard's~~ Activision Blizzard's (* a Microsoft subsidiary) history at all in the news, and enjoyed their games. This book serves both as a trip down memory lane, and a peek behind the curtain. It tickled my nostalgia for their older games, and even managed to get me curious about their newer ones. Schrier does an impressive job of condensing such a long and eventful story into such a digestible format. And, as the gaming industry continues to be rocked by mergers, acquisitions, and studio closures, it seems more relevant than ever. Blizzard's story is, of course, not over yet, and after reading this book you'll be well-equipped to follow it further into the uncertain future.