Jason Schreier

Something that I do in my reporting and in my books and that was important for this book specifically is I don't recreate dialogue or scenes or like... add any layer of fiction to the story, which I think a lot of nonfiction narrative books do, but I think would really detract from the truth of a story like this.

Yeah, so let me answer both of those questions, both that and kind of the origin story of this book. So I started working on this book in the beginning of 2021, like in February or March of 2021, which was a couple years before the publication of my second book, Press Reset. Yeah.

Yeah, so let me answer both of those questions, both that and kind of the origin story of this book. So I started working on this book in the beginning of 2021, like in February or March of 2021, which was a couple years before the publication of my second book, Press Reset. Yeah.

And the seeds for this book were really planted in 2018, which is when I started to report on Kotaku about the Activision takeover at Blizzard and how Blizzard had once been this proudly, fiercely autonomous company. And even after the Activision-Blizzard merger in 2007, they still remained so until, like...

And the seeds for this book were really planted in 2018, which is when I started to report on Kotaku about the Activision takeover at Blizzard and how Blizzard had once been this proudly, fiercely autonomous company. And even after the Activision-Blizzard merger in 2007, they still remained so until, like...

Titan was canceled, and then Activision started to play a greater role in operations of Blizzard, eventually leading to Mike Morhaime's departure. And that was kind of the seeds of me thinking, oh, okay, there's a story here. This is a corporate takeover story. This is a company that was one of the most fascinating, one of the most beloved game companies out there, and it's kind of...

Titan was canceled, and then Activision started to play a greater role in operations of Blizzard, eventually leading to Mike Morhaime's departure. And that was kind of the seeds of me thinking, oh, okay, there's a story here. This is a corporate takeover story. This is a company that was one of the most fascinating, one of the most beloved game companies out there, and it's kind of...

a lot of that spirit is being lost because Activision runs things in a very different way. And so that was the origin story.

a lot of that spirit is being lost because Activision runs things in a very different way. And so that was the origin story.

And then it wasn't until five or six months after I started working on it that the lawsuits happened and Blizzard went through reckonings that eventually, like reckonings of sexual discrimination and harassment that eventually led to the Microsoft acquisition and all of the drama that happened in between. So all of that

And then it wasn't until five or six months after I started working on it that the lawsuits happened and Blizzard went through reckonings that eventually, like reckonings of sexual discrimination and harassment that eventually led to the Microsoft acquisition and all of the drama that happened in between. So all of that

drama was after I had already started to think about writing the book, started to work on the book. So that's the kind of origin story. And then as far as the scope of the project, I had actually started out thinking... that it was mostly going to be about those later years.

drama was after I had already started to think about writing the book, started to work on the book. So that's the kind of origin story. And then as far as the scope of the project, I had actually started out thinking... that it was mostly going to be about those later years.

To your point, I actually thought that that was kind of the original vision of the book, that it would mostly focus on the Activision takeover and how it kind of led to a lot of Blizzard's decline in a lot of ways. And then as I started reaching out to people who were there in the early days and just hearing their stories, I was like, well, two things happened.

To your point, I actually thought that that was kind of the original vision of the book, that it would mostly focus on the Activision takeover and how it kind of led to a lot of Blizzard's decline in a lot of ways. And then as I started reaching out to people who were there in the early days and just hearing their stories, I was like, well, two things happened.

One, I was like, this is super fascinating. And it would be a shame not to be able to go in depth on this rich history of Blizzard because there's so many wild anecdotes there. many of which had never been reported before. And there's just a lot of great history here that I feel like we should be getting into in this book.

One, I was like, this is super fascinating. And it would be a shame not to be able to go in depth on this rich history of Blizzard because there's so many wild anecdotes there. many of which had never been reported before. And there's just a lot of great history here that I feel like we should be getting into in this book.

And second of all was it is impossible to understand all of the issues that Blizzard would face later on without starting from the very beginning and kind of looking at the seeds of those issues. And that is true both in a business and in a cultural sense.

And second of all was it is impossible to understand all of the issues that Blizzard would face later on without starting from the very beginning and kind of looking at the seeds of those issues. And that is true both in a business and in a cultural sense.

In the business sense, you can't understand the Activision takeover and why that happened and why it matters and why it affected Mike Morhaime so much without going all the way back and looking at the revolving door of corporate parents and how Blizzard dealt with them