I bought this book when it came out in 2017. Ironically, I didn’t get around to reading it until a camping trip this past weekend! It seems silly to go out into the woods to read about video games. However, I’m glad I did have the time and space to finally sit down with a fun read instead of a “should” read. In the end, we only have so much time on earth, so why not do what makes us happy? For me maybe that’s hiking and video games. Anyway…
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is video game journalist Jason Schreier’s look at the culture of making video games. It’s a wonderful time capsule of gaming in the 2010s.
Schreier was already a gaming culture veteran when he wrote the book, and his status served the book well. Because he already had relationships with dozens of people in the industry, he was able to secure on-the-record interviews with lots of big names from big games. He divides the book up by 10 big games, and gives us a “vertical slice” of what it was like to make them. My favorites were games I was already familiar with, such as the one-man show that was Stardew Valley or the Polish-made Witcher 3. While I wasn’t as familiar with some of the big games such as Destiny and Diablo III, I am in the world enough to remember what a disaster those games were. It’s fascinating to go behind-the-scenes and see why they were such disasters, and the lengths that game makers had to go to fix them on the fly.
The obvious way to fix them was to “crunch” – a common term in the gaming world (and beyond). Crunching is when you work insane hours for a long time to try to meet deadlines. It’s a common part of the game-making culture, and you can find plenty of gigs’ worth of material on the internet about the downside of crunching. Post-covid, I think all of us are more aware of how work is slowly killing us and our relationships, now. Even though I was familiar with the issue of crunching, I hadn’t thought about game makers crunching to make bad games, then crunching for another year-plus to try and fix them after launch. It was a bummer, frankly, to find out how worn down people get to make something that is supposed to be fun.
I did enjoy the indie triumph stories of Stardew Valley and Shovel Knight, although it was sad to read about the level of sacrifice the game makers and their loved ones went through to make them.
If this books sounds interesting to you, I suggest pairing it with Walt Williams’ Significant Zero and Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives for more of an insider’s perspective.