Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made

Jason Schreier

Sep 2017 · Sold by HarperCollins

About this ebook

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“The stories in this book make for a fascinating and remarkably complete pantheon of just about every common despair and every joy related to game development.” — Rami Ismail, cofounder of Vlambeer and developer of Nuclear Throne

Developing video games—hero's journey or fool's errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today's hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it's nothing short of miraculous.

Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it's RPG studio Bioware's challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone's single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man's vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—even as it nearly ripped their studio apart.

Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell—and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable.

Ratings and reviews

While the writing is mostly good and stories are interesting, it won't please hardcore (or even just core) gamers as it could. Author explains even the most basic things like what game engines do. Also quite big chunk of the stories are pretty wide known if you are into gaming news. So if you are not familiar with industry, the book is very good. If you are core or hardcore, the book can be too obvious sometimes but still good.

This book is exactly 'OK'. Each chapter has plenty of good information/research/journalism, but the writing is usually not very compelling. In retrospect, it's hard to remember which story points are associated with which games, studios, and individuals.

Jason has used his talent to get the important and impressive information from developers, studio heads, and all the people in between and wrote a book that is completely engrossing. If at any point you wondered about the scenes behind the curtain behind the mirrors in video games, look no further than here.

About the author

Jason Schreier is the news editor at Kotaku, a leading website covering the industry and culture of video games. He has also covered the video game world for Wired, and has contributed to a wide range of outlets including The New York Times, Edge, Paste, Kill Screen, and The Onion News Network. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is his first book.