3. Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made

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Developing video games—hero's journey or fool's errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today's hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it's nothing short of miraculous.

Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it's RPG studio Bioware's challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone's single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man's vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings—even as it nearly ripped their studio apart.

Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell—and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable.

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    Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made Reviews

  • Tim O'Hearn

    I picked this book up for one reason: to learn why Diablo 3 was such a letdown. I vaguely remembered a well-known developer posting "F*** that loser" on Facebook in reference to a past contributor cri...

  • Erik

    Dear Goodreads Father, forgive me, for I have sinned: I love video games as much as I love books. It's true, I put them on an equal level. I know it is blasphemy, but I cannot help this corruption of ...

  • Mike Horowitz

    As much as it hopes to show the "realities" of game development, Jason Schreier's book only succeeds at casually shrugging off crunch, "death marches" and glaringly evident worker exploitation. The st...

  • Thom

    Ten separate articles about the making of 10 particular video games, with no connecting materials or conclusions drawn. May be of interest to players of those games, but fails to live up to the cover ...

  • Rob

    Executive Summary: I think this book can appeal to both software developers and fans of video games alike, but it's definitely targeted more at the latter than the former. Full Review This book was ...

  • Maurcio Linhares

    So you think your job as a software engineer sucks? Think again, you could be working on games!Nightmarish environments with total and complete lack of management, direction, tooling or even a common ...

  • Nenia ? I yeet my books back and forth ? Campbell

    On sale for $2.99 today! As a gamer who's played or wants to play several of the games mentioned in here, I am PUMPED...

  • Jesse Billet

    This is a very well written book that I think Jason spent a lot of time on. Time that leaves me a quite a bit confused. However, I want to address some very strange misconceptions that people seem to ...

  • Daniel Bastian

    "Oh, Jason," he said. "It's a miracle that any game is made."Finally, a book that captures the complexity of game development that anyone can pick up and enjoy. Jason Schreier of Kotaku spent two year...

  • Kyle Muntz

    Reading this book was a surprisingly personal experience for me. It covers the development of a wide selection of AAA and indie games--and, since I've developed two indie games, getting a glimpse of t...