170: Behind the Blizzard

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!