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The Nextlander Podcast 170: Behind the Blizzard (Patreon)

Published:
2024-10-10 00:06:10
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

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.

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!

Files

Comments

Kevin Martin

I LOVE THE NEXTLANDER PODCAST!

swiftdraw

I got a feeling this one os going to depress me. When it came to RTS’s in the mid to late 90’s, I was much more of a Westwood guy, with a big helping of Total Annihilation on the side. While I found Warcraft interesting and came to respect and enjoy Starcraft, they were never my style of game. Hell, my favorite game from Blizzard was Rock n Roll Racing for SNES. But I really appreciate the fandom around most of their games (WoW addicts got a little weird) and how they handled most of their business prior to going to Activision. So, while this will probably be a very educational episode, I got a feeling my nostalgia is going to get knocked and hearing of their downfall is going to be a bit sad.

neuroflare

It's been fun hearing Jason making the rounds, caught him on local terrestrial a couple days ago

Casey Neal

Didn't know we were just gonna get a full 2 hour synopsis of the book.

Godzookie

Yeah, wish the schedule email had mentioned it was going to be a full podcast dedicated to selling this book. My data cap is insane and I had one podcast set to auto download, not anymore.

Mike

To be fair they probably weighed: Culmination of three years of reporting and writing about 30+ years of history VERSUS What has 2/3 of the gang been playing the last week

Lucky

Great insight! Would love to see more podcast episodes like this with a different theme from what we are used to.

Brad Arnold

Yeah, but Jason has been on a thousand podcasts in the last couple weeks promoting this book. I get why. Don’t blame him for it. But I’m literally here for “What has the gang been playing the last week”

Cats Akimbo

Just wanted to chime in and say I really appreciate Vinny encouraging guests to get nerdy and talk about the details of the stuff they're passionate about, this week with Jason and recently with Patrick. It's great hearing different banter with folks you have good conversational chemistry with

Alex Hedlund

I love the podcast was little different this week because of the Book release! Jason's book is going to be a big deal and was awesome you guys were able to have him for 2 hrs! Definitely gonna go buy a copy after you guys talked

csl316

Warcraft to Starcraft to Bobkraft.

Dan TenSpeed

This is the most negative I've felt about ANY podcast since I first started listening to this crew back in the Ryan Davis days. Jason Schreier is *literally* doing PR work for Blizzard here. His criticism of Blizzard's sexual misconduct is limited to "they're just guilty of what every other company does", while repeatedly saying how much harm was done by incorrect reporting on a some relatively small details. Here's one major thing he totally ignores: A female employee of Blizzard fucking killed herself after a supervisor pressured her into a sexual relationship and showed off pictures of her genitals at a company party. How does Jason Schreier completely ignore a woman driven to suicide even as he harps on how Blizzard was victimized by the media? The fact that he's scheduled to interview the CEO of Blizzard proves that this book -- as interesting as it may be -- is simply PR for the company when it clearly deserves more scrutiny instead. To the awesome folks at Nextlander, PLEASE do better in the future.

swiftdraw

Not as bad as I thought. Most of the worst stuff was kind of already known with Jason adding a bit of context. I didn’t get the feeling Jason was doing PR for Blizzard as stated after my original post, but I am curious what his take is in the book. I do find it kind of funny that Amazon had “Mastering Roblox” as the next recommended book on “Play Nice” page. And while RTS’s will probably never reach genre primacy again, games like Tempest Rising gives me hopes it will still endure.

Andy Finney

This was a great listen. Cheers gang.

Brian Murphy

I liked this podcast. Blizzard has done a lot of really bad stuff. I don't think Vinny, Alex, or Jason were forgiving any of that bad behavior. There is just a limited amount of time to cover so many topics. Jason was just saying the damage of misreporting inaccurate info on Blizzard harmed innocent people. And people using that misinforming to defend their own bad behavior, (like "Ubisoft is bad but not Blizzard bad"). Jason was not defending the bad behavior that happens at Blizzard and other companies. He clearly reports in a way to shed light on these issues. He isn't a PR stooge for these big companies.

Yandren

"I want to be able to sell a box of rocks with our name on it" so the problems have been there from the beginning. Grew up with Blizzard as my favorite and seeing people continue to support them despite all this... Well, maybe this book will make a few more people realize it's just a company name, not the same people who made the good stuff.

Jeremy Tschetter

I appreciate this one. It's nice to switch up the format now and then, and this episode provided a lot of good insight and nuance on some real issues.