Review: Play Nice

 Play Nice is Jason Schreier's corporate history of Blizzard Entertainment. Written in a breathless manner that befits its subject, the book is fast paced and covers Blizzard from its origins as a 2 person startup to a corporation that was sold first to Davidson & Associates, then to Vivendi, then to Activision, and finally the sale to Microsoft.

For those of us who got their careers in Silicon Valley, this book is a reminder that the entertainment industry, particularly video game companies outside Silicon Valley, doesn't believe in sharing the wealth. Other than the two founders, the initial employees at Blizzard never got stock options or any other form of equity, so when Blizzard was first sold, only its founders got wealthy. This story repeated itself until the sale to Activision, whereupon some staff (not all) got some sort of profit sharing bonuses, but even that was computed in an opaque fashion. It's no wonder that game industry veterans are frequently so bitter.

The book does mention people I actually met (e.g., Pat Wyatt, one of the early engineers at Blizzard). Wyatt was actually as good a programmer as his reputation, though Warcraft (and later Diablo) had its share of bad code. Nevertheless, I remember Wyatt walking me through Warcraft's two player code over the phone and talking me through inserting an IP layer into it --- it was a very productive session.

The book does cover the various sexual harassment scandals that ultimately caused the Blizzard sale. It places it in context, noting that many various events could also be attributed to Blizzard's fast and loose culture and very young staff. It also covered the go-go years at Blizzard, when it could seemingly do no wrong, from Warcraft II to Starcraft to World of Warcraft, it seemed as though Blizzard's every product was a big success.

To the extent that the book has villains, its mostly corporate managers who had no passion for video games and themselves could never sit down and play video games or take it seriously as a hobby. The book attributes Blizzard's success to its own employees being enthusiastic games who would provide feedback and polish the product rather than release it early to make a fast buck. Taking down Diablo III's auction house, for instance, was also an unusual move for a company to actively delete a way of monetizing the product in favor of making the game actually better for players.

Of course, such dedication to product quality is very hard in a world where "enshittification" is the rule. Whether Blizzard continues to make good games after its acquisition by Microsoft is very much in doubt. I enjoyed the book and found it entertaining. Well worth your time.