Playing Nice, with Jason Schreier

Journalist and author of Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment Jason Schreier sits for an interview on Blizzard’s many transformations, diversity scores, and what ultimately happened to Starcraft Ghost and Project Titan.

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SHOW NOTES:

Happy Rosh Hashanah!

1: Was there something about Blizzard in particular that made you want to write a book? (03:21)

2: Did you actually interview more than three hundred people for this book over three years? (06:19)

3: Was there anyone you couldn’t get an interview with? (07:45)

4: What was your personal investment in Blizzard before writing this book? (08:22)

5: How would you describe Blizzard’s brand identity? (11:03)

6: When did the “mergers and acquisitions” era of the video game industry really begin? (12:31)

7: Is the “loremaster” a real thing? (16:14)

8: What was the deal with “diversity scores?” (18:42)

9: How involved was Bobby Kotick in development? (20:55)

10: How did Titan become Overwatch? (26:10)

11: If you had to pick an Overwatch character to be the new CEO of Blizzard, who would be best and who would be worst? (27:15)

12: EvanArnett asks, in the early 2000s, World of Warcraft was the game most associated with gaming addiction. What was Blizzard’s stance on that? (27:58)

13: Yeso asks, do you still stand by your EPIC/5 review for Final Fantasy XIII on rpgamer.com? (31:01)

14: Aleph asks, what is the Day the Clown Cried of Video Games? (32:22)

15: Is there a book about games you’d really like to read, but have no interest in writing yourself? (34:44)