“Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment” is Coming from Jason Schreier on October 8, 2024

After releasing Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made in 2017 and Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry in 2021, investigative journalist Jason Schreier is getting ready to publish his next deep dive into the development side of video games.

Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment will explore Blizzard’s founding and its early years creating classics like Warcraft, Diablo, and StarCraft. But it’ll also tackle the company’s more recent woes as corporate intrigue surrounded its Irvine campus in the wake of its merger with Activision, as well as an examination of the sexual misconduct and discrimination lawsuits levied against the company, and Blizzard’s eventual acquisition by Microsoft in 2023.

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Bite-Sized Game History: Diablo’s Satanic Panic, Background Weirdos in The Simpsons, and the World’s First Glimpse at The Sims

Sometimes, a game’s secrets are buried so deep that they take decades to find. But as long as you know where to look, other secrets are sitting out for all the world to see and just waiting for an eager player to discover them.

Let’s examine three games from the latter group in this edition of Bite-Sized Game History.

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