Table of Contents for Jason Schreier:

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

As I’ve now finished this book during the interim periods of travel, I feel blindsided by the omissions brought up in the earlier post. Schreier had two opportunities to speak with Amy Hennig and apart from one line about a throwaway call, never attempted to contact her at Visceral for the chapter pertaining to the Star Wars 1313 debacle and how the LucasArts staff were shocked to learn that they weren’t there to present the game in a last-ditch effort to save its development but to give resumes for the abrupt closing of LucasArts. Even his description of George Lucas compared to Amy Hennig is strange when comparing their management styles. During his chapter on Uncharted 4, he had written that anonymous people from Naughty Dog had debated on the reasons for Hennig’s exit and floated the idea of her supposed incompetence without any verifiable source for this allegation. It seemed like a low-bar of specious rumors instead of fact-finding research. However, when describing George Lucas’s decision-making skills; he phrases Lucas’s inability to make decisions – verified via multiple named sources in LucasArts gaming development teams throughout multiple years – as an inability of a visionary to translate his vision into a game. This phrasing is an odd one given that Schreier explained that George Lucas himself demanded the story be changed in the production stage from an original character that was planned to Boba Fett and refused to accept any criticism or feedback on how it would delay the game or how the LucasArts game developers hadn’t had plans for making jetpacks as part of the gameplay mechanic during that point in the production stage, and then Lucas proceeded to go into total silence towards his own game development team before selling the company to Disney without ever informing his own game development crew. Schreier weirdly attempts to portray this in some machismo terminology of George Lucas being a solitary visionary that cares deeply about cinematic Hollywood storytelling despite having surrounded himself with assistants who informed the game development team that they were never allowed to say no to George Lucas – that is, Lucas clearly and deliberately surrounded himself with yes-men; Schreier tries to portray it as the incapability of Hollywood visions and video games, but this is in major contradiction to the cinematic storytelling of his interviews with Naughty Dog developers, Neil Druckmann, short descriptions of Amy Hennig’s vision for the first three Uncharted games by anonymous Naughty Dog employees, and Druckmann’s less important sidekick, Bruce Straley who acts as Druckmann’s obedient yes-man. During chapter two, the Uncharted 4 chapter, he emphatically made clear via numerous interviews with the Naughty Dog staff that it was completely possible – even if difficult – to make popular cinematic games with Druckmann’s triumph in achieving it with the first game in The Last of Us duology. Yet, this glaring contradiction in arguments when comparing LucasArts and Naughty Dog by Schreier is never once brought up; it is bizarre that he would have lengthy quotes from Druckmann, Druckmann’s sidekick, and anonymous Naughty Dog developers with their clear explanations of Naughty Dog’s use of interactive cinematics in gaming; but then talk about how it is some sort of insurmountable gulf of Hollywood vision and the coding involved in gaming mechanics when trying to defend the incompetent management style of George Lucas. Lucas is synonymously the one screwing up and selling off Star Wars 1313’s development but also a blameless victim due to his visionary talent, despite being the one who forced the LucasArts development team to delay it further, sold the company to Disney without informing them beforehand, and then never bothered acknowledging or taking culpability for his business decisions that led to the closing of the LucasArts gaming studio. What makes this even dumber is that Schreier acknowledges the history of LucasArts Presidents constantly shutting down projects and laying off staff throughout the years, but somehow George Lucas – despite owning approximately 98 percent of the company before selling it to Disney, according to Schreier – is always the blameless victim of the people around him. It is never Lucas’s fault and Lucas never bears culpability for his actions that ruin those game developers below him financially.

If I had any doubts about the incompetent management at gaming companies, this book put it to rest. Gone are the days of American Management consultant and Business managerial theorist, Peter Drucker, and his explanations that if lower-tier employees failed then it is the fault of you as a manager; Drucker made it painfully clear in his early arguments that you as a manager are the failure, not your employees and you need to take responsibility by first accepting “I have failed.” and move forward from there to learn from your mistakes. Instead, these are the days of idolizing incompetent frauds like Jack “Neutron” Welch; where employees are never told anything, big decisions are informed last-minute, and managers have no stomach for meeting with their staff to give them honest, hard truths about why changes are made. It’s merely total silence, confusion, and then collapse and Schreier’s book provides copious evidence from the management of multiple gaming studios.

Chapter 5 on Halo Wars and Chapter 10 on Star Wars 1313 are prime examples of this exceptionally American style of corporate incompetence. My views from reading Chapter five of this book, although it may be painful for the Microsoft employees who provided generous compensation packages, is that it was entirely the fault of Microsoft that Ensemble studios was shut down. Ensemble had provided a new IP in development, code named Phoenix, and offered it as a thrilling new experience for players — yet, instead of trusting Ensemble with the process of making a new IP to shore-up support for the Microsoft brand to challenge Sony’s dominance, they ignorantly demanded it be changed from a fantasy setting to the Halo Sci-fi setting – Schreier claims it was due to seeking short-term stock increases; Microsoft didn’t give instructions on how to undergo such a monumental task of this order — and if they didn’t understand the depth and breadth of what was asked of their own employees when ignorantly giving out such orders then it speaks further to managerial incompetence — and worst of all, Microsoft never bothered to inform their then-owned Bungie Studios of what the intentions were or what collaboration efforts would be needed since it was the worldbuilding of Bungie studios that was asked to be used. The incompetent, stocks gambling-addicted senior management at Microsoft were genuinely too stupid to understand that worldbuilding and storytelling is very much a real aspect of game design. Everything from the pedantic details of the sort of ships and suits that Halo characters have to the unique powers and abilities that the Halo warfighters and their Alien enemies utilize to challenge each other. I know nothing about Halo, but even I understood that much. The reason Ensemble studios decided to make three developed games and got wrangled with each other was a consequence of Microsoft’s incompetent directives and then Microsoft only saw it as a problem of their development team and not their own failures at understanding their gaming market, their gaming audience, and how IPs are understood by their own gaming consumers. The incompetence of Microsoft senior staff was indisputably the driving force for Ensemble’s collapse. Microsoft was genuinely too stupid to even inform Bungie of what they wanted for Halo Wars and what the terms of collaboration needed to be when it was Microsoft’s own directive that forced this change on the Ensemble and Bungie studios. Microsoft was more respectable with the compensation packages and informing Ensemble of the shutdown than how Disney proceeded with shutting down LucasArts, but it’s faint praise to say that the clean-up crew does a better job than another company’s clean-up crew when Senior staff constantly face no accountability for incompetent business decisions that they’re genuinely too unintelligent to understand the harmful ramifications therein or the long-term consequences thereof.

Chapter ten’s more broad and far less focused explanation of Disney’s handling of Star Wars 1313 shows that the process is often even worse, but the fact that Disney senior staff and George Lucas were even more incompetent and incapable of being effective business leaders shouldn’t be an argument for normalizing this sort of botched practice. The main issue is the complete lack of effective communication from senior staff and no middle-managers or software communication system to effectively communicate problems between the two parties of senior management staff and Game developers. Downsizing and layoffs can be painful, but it seems that Disney and George Lucas prefer to insulate and act “above” such decisions despite being the driving factors for them and then systematically ignore every shred of accountability when the decisions happen and ruin lives of their own studios. Now, it can be tough to inform lower-level co-workers that they need to be terminated, but if you don’t have the ability to provide any communication, look them in the eyes, and explain why… then are you really a business manager, or are you little more than a petulant child that wants to create a playpen to escape the reality of throwing the hammer at others and it hurting them because of your deliberate actions? Are you an adult that faces accountability or a stock addicted junkie seeking the next thrill of quarterly profit increases?

In conclusion, while there is some good and interesting information in this book, I’m afraid that this supposed journalist really is lacking in treating women equally for a fuller and more accurate perspective on game development. He adds specious allegations without verifying them when bringing up supposed incompetence of female game developers, but makes excuse after excuse for male game developers. For example, it’s odd that he’d talk about Druckmann removing all of the recordings, voice work, and cinematic designs for Amy Hennig’s work on Uncharted 4 during the midway point of development and then a few pages later have a quote of Neil Druckmann praising himself for starting the story of Uncharted 4 unusually early despite the complete contradiction in what Druckmann’s actions had done for delaying the development of Uncharted 4; which was what led to the crunch that he later discussed. Schreier provides no critical awareness of his own contradictory claims or Druckmann’s self-contradictory actions and words. Schreier himself seems peculiarly oblivious to the glaring elephant in the room. There is only one female game developer interviewed by Schreier in the entirety of his book and it is a visual artist who is quoted in passing without any meaningful introduction or explanation of who they are. There are a few scant quotes from a writer who was hired to write a game’s story, Carrie Patel; Schreier provides no meaningful depth on her creative process, unlike the numerous male story writers that he quotes. The only brief mention is her lack of experience with video game stories with no context or substance of what is meant by that. Jason Schreier seems eager to quote and discuss lengthy interviews with laid off male developers who discuss their pregnant wives, but he maintains absolute silence of laid off female game developers. What of Female game developers who discover they’re pregnant shortly before being laid off? What of female writers and artists who make worldbuilding decisions for their games? Nothing at all exists and he seems to have no interest outside of some vague sense of ritualistic pabulum about the lack of female game developers without any meaningful effort to contact and interview the ones mentioned in passing. It should be a statistical impossibility that he wasn’t able to interview any female game developers at length. In fact, he had numerous opportunities to do so, but his most lengthy interview is with the wife of Stardew Valley’s creator, Amber Hageman Barone, and he seems keen on exploiting the interview for what appears to be an implicit support for patriarchal gender norms and values with an obedient wife serving her husband faithfully. By contrast, he never spends any time or bothers interviewing any female game developers that would be helming gaming projects or exploring the unique social challenges that they face. His interviews mostly speak of the times between 2012 – 2015, the time when women were unfortunately facing shunning and discrimination throughout gaming studios. It would have been a prime opportunity to get such perspectives of the approximately 10 – 15 percent that existed at the time, but they remain conspicuously absent and this seems to be a deliberate decision on Jason Schreier’s part; he certainly didn’t lack in opportunities to meet with them or add a chapter featuring one in his book, but chose deliberately not to do it and added women serving in traditional gender roles to compensate. As this book lacks in major, glaring ways and Schreier displays numerous bouts of his own lack of critical thinking abilities when assessing the information that he receives, I’ll provide this book a very generous 2 / 5. It seems more like a book on what not to do in game development, but lacks in both breadth and depth by giving empty pabulums to the challenges of female game developers with a deliberate choice to ignore them and committed refusal to add their perspectives in his book. I honestly don’t understand how the way he chose to formulate this book isn’t the same tired 1970s and earlier tropes of misogyny via omission.

12/14/2024 Update: Minor spelling corrections and clarifications added regarding Peter Drucker.