About this episode
Jason Schreier joins us on a deep dive about the history, making, and almost undoing of Blizzard as chronicled in his new book Play Nice. Advertise on The Nextlander Podcast at Audioboom , or support us on Patreon ! CHAPTERS (00:00:00) NOTE: Some timecodes may be inaccurate for versions other than the ad-free Patreon version due to dynamic ad insertions. Please use caution if skipping around to avoid spoilers. Thanks for listening. (00:00:10) Intro (00:00:53) Welcome Jason Schreier (00:02:27) How do book sales work? (00:08:05) The book tour (00:11:08) The Games Industry: Bleakness AND Hope? (00:16:42) Let's talk about Blizzard's early years (00:43:41) Moving to middle Blizzard (01:00:53) Project Titan (01:08:07) Overwatch saves the day (01:12:12) Overwatch League (01:19:49) The first of the PR disasters (01:24:32) Reckonings at Blizzard (01:27:02) Overwatch 2 (01:33:26) Briefly mentioning some other Blizzard games during this time (01:34:56) The end of Activision Blizzard (01:49:11) Any tips for navigating news? (01:52:04) Microsoft enters the picture (02:03:12) Some other news that is actually related (02:03:18) 343 rebrands to Halo Studios (02:07:55) Is Tencent going to buy Ubisoft? (02:13:03) What is the next book? (02:18:33) Thanks again to Jason for joining us (02:20:22) Wrapping up and thanks (02:20:57) Mysterious Benefactor Shoutouts (02:22:04) Nextlander content updates (02:23:21) See ya!