Honestly, Schreier is too kind. Any professional developer looking at his case studies sees the sort of epic failure of management that would render even a genius into pariah in most competent industries. Game dev culture is built on a house of cards where the incompetence of leaders normalizes the inevitable crunch that results. Such a waste. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyed, though it's unsurprising since I really enjoy Jason Schreier's work and followed him for years.

I pushed for our company book club to read this book and it feels very relevant, since we're a games studio and I can't help but get a twinge of fear, anger and optimism when I read about various industry folk succeeding, failing and picking up the pieces to move on and keep pursuing their career.

I also enjoyed how Schreier came up with tangible ideas at the end of the book on how to resolve the tumultuous nature of the video games industry, really interesting stuff. You can tell he did his homework, every chapter is littered with primary sources and interesting history of companies, how they formed and executive decisions. Heartbreaking, funny and surprising.

I knew a lot of the stories already, but it was refreshing to hear the full story and the people behind it. Excellent, and am very keen to try Blood, Sweat and Pixels next. ( )