Blizzard is currently facing criticism after Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier published his "Play Nice" book that details various issues within the video game company.
Some of these controversies include misconduct and harassment of workers. Schreier's book was recently published in the United Kingdom and North America. It detailed Blizzard's entire history through interviews with hundreds of the studio's staff, both past and present.
Blizzard in the Play Nice Book
Ahead of the book's publication, Schreier discussed in an interview how Play Nice handles some of its most difficult topics. He also talked about whether or not some of the changes have helped Blizzard's employees in the long run.
The Bloomberg reporter said that his initial plan was that he would just cover the modern Blizzard history. Schreier noted that the pitch for Play Nice was that it would be about the corporate takeover of the video game studio, according to Eurogamer.
Schreier noted that as his book started to expand and as he started talking to people, he started to add more to the content, for several reasons. The first is that he started interviewing individuals who worked at Blizzard in the 1990s.
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This was during the early days of the studio and Schreier realized that there were so many fascinating stories and anecdotes. The reporter found out that there was a lot of interesting material that readers would most likely appreciate knowing about.
He said that the book took him roughly three years to complete, including reporting and writing.
The majority of his time was taken up by the reporting aspect. Schreier said that Bloomberg was generous enough to give him three months of book leave to sit and write Play Nice, Forbes said.
The Video Game Studio's History
It was revealed that Schreier spoke to more than 350 people in order to gain materials that he could use to put in the book. He said that the entire process was very time-consuming.
The book detailed how Allen Adham and Mike Morhaime founded Blizzard in 1991 using what little seed money they got from their families. They also made use of some college-level programming knowledge and were helped by a handful of artists and engineers.
In less than a decade, the studio's games were critical and commercial hits and sold millions of copies after winning the hearts of many gamers worldwide.
None of these popular titles resulted in a new genre but included the original Warcraft and Starcraft games, according to The Atlantic.
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