Table of Contents for Jason Schreier:

1. Twitter Experience
2. Impressions of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels.
3. Concluding Review of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels.

I’m unable to do a full review yet; I just finished Chapter 6 – the chapter on Dragon Age: Inquisition – and I’m currently away. But in my spare time, I’ve been reading Kindle books and I recalled this book I had bought a few years ago but never got the chance to read. After having a very negative experience with the author online, I decided to try to change my perspective a bit by reading his book, I couldn’t help but notice a pattern in his book as I read through it though. I want to be clear that I try to be impartial as possible, although perhaps this could be motivated reasoning on my part, but I find it odd that this journalist hardly ever interviews female game developers while simultaneously decrying how they’re so scant in the gaming industry. He makes strides to meet with Ensemble developers and can convince them to talk about their NDAs, but seemingly makes no strides for Female game developers who were stated to have been forced out by Naughty Dog. In fact, the reason this journalist blocked me was because I questioned why he hadn’t spoken with a female narrative writer and game developer, Mary Kirby, who worked for Bioware for 17 years on her side of the story of being laid off and his decision was to simply block me. This was a few days after he accused White and Hispanic Twitter critics of being “chuds” when they gave him feedback.

Half-way reading this book… it is odd that he would only interview just one female developer in passing for the chapter on Uncharted 4 and none for Dragon Age Inquisition. Schreier made the most minimal efforts to contact female game developers like Amy Hennig, who were apparently wronged, and insinuated in his book of Amy Hennig’s incompetence while bringing up the NDA she was forced to accept whereby she’s forbidden to discuss her reasons for leaving by Naughty Dog, and yet, constantly gives Neil Druckmann flattering praises that are often contradictory; speaking of his creative talent and innovation during a crunch despite the fact that Schreier himself noted that Druckmann had scrapped Hennig’s ideas completely which was what led to that crunch. It’s odd that he ignores this elephant-sized logical error in the chapter on Uncharted 4. In the chapter on Halo Wars, he makes hefty amounts of time disclosing NDA-level secrets from a wide swathe of fired Ensemble employees and even one who was kept on by Microsoft; seemingly displaying far more effort with finding the most salient facts when men who style themselves as fratboys are the ones being wronged.

The final oddity is that… when he does interview women, such as the wife of the developer of Stardew Valley, he seemingly only focuses on aspects reminiscent of serving the patriarchal social norms and values that he ostensibly decries as harming women in the game industry — while never interviewing any woman who has been harmed by the ignorant CEOs of the gaming industry. When a woman is loyally serving her husband or a male developer speaks of being out of a job despite a child coming along the way with a pregnant wife at home; Schreier makes extensive effort getting their thoughts and opinions. However, when it is female game developers, often single and older women, being negatively impacted… he deliberately ignores it, even when I questioned him about this myself. He evidently has this attitude with others too: