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Maybe someday
47
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
54/100Critics
40/100Scholars
Author:
Jason Schreier
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Date:
May 11, 2021
The business of videogames is both a prestige industry and an opaque one. Based on dozens of first-hand interviews that cover the development of landmark games--Bioshock Infinite, Epic Mickey, Dead Space, and more--on to the shocking closures of the studios that made them, Press Reset tells the stories of how real people are affected by game studio shutdowns, and how they recover, move on, or escape the industry entirely. Schreier's insider interviews cover hostile takeovers, abusive bosses, corporate drama, bounced checks, and that one time the Boston Red Sox's Curt Schilling decided he was going to lead a game studio that would take out World of Warcraft. Along the way, he asks pressing questions about why, when the video game industry is more successful than ever, it's become so hard to make a stable living making video games--and whether the business of making games can change before it's too late.
What The Reviewers Say
... in Press Reset [Schreier] draws a broader portrait of the volatile videogame industry. He follows the employees at a number of companies as they navigate the highs and lows of a rewarding yet frequently chaotic line of work.
Through first-rate reporting and dozens of first-hand interviews, Schreier walks us through the process of making games through the eyes of the people who make them. We also get to explore the business side of things, watching as executives insert themselves into the process regardless of whether they actually know anything about video games.
Schreier’s first book, Blood, Sweat and Pixels, was a sort of collection of those types of stories, the tales behind how big games came to life, or almost didn’t. His second book, Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry, is a little more harrowing. In Press Reset, Schreier is focusing mainly on the failures, though maddeningly, the failures that can often come with success.
An entire book could be written about the saga of 38 Studios. In Press Reset, the video game industry journalist Jason Schreier covers it in a few dozen pages.
