Play Nice Quotes

“As Pardo’s responsibilities grew and his time became stretched between projects, he became known for what many of his subordinates called seagull management: He would swoop down, poop on ideas, and then fly away.”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“But as the old saying goes, nine women can’t make a baby in a month.”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“What had once been a creative, fulfilling job began to feel like working on an assembly line. Stack ranking only exacerbated the problem, forcing developers to eye one another with suspicion and QA testers to battle over who found the most bugs. “It was very damaging internally to the culture,” said one executive. “It created a real dog-eat-dog environment.” Nobody wanted to be last in the game of corporate musical chairs. Compensation was enough of an issue already.”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“The industry’s rapid growth had drawn interest from suited businessmen with expertise in spreadsheets and selling boxes, but not in the products themselves. In contrast, Adham and crew didn’t need focus groups or market research to discern if a game was good—they could just make games they wanted to play.”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“Brode”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“vociferous”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“office managers in both locations who were often described as the company’s den mothers.”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“planning isn’t supposed to be a prison, it’s supposed to be an enabler”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“These Vegas trips became a company tradition for game launch celebrations and staff bachelor parties. Some of Blizzard’s developers considered themselves straight-edge and preferred to stick to the arcades and slot machines, while others were big partiers, unwinding from the stressful development of Diablo and StarCraft with tequila shots and lap dances. When the female employees tagged along, many of the male staffers tried to make them feel welcome. “We looked out for each other,” said Jeffrey Vaughn, who worked in tech support. “It may have been a boys’ club, but at least when I was there, I wouldn’t have called it hostile.”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“It was true that the world didn’t have as many female programmers. In 1984, 37 percent of computer science majors were women, but by 1995, that percentage had plunged to nearly 25 percent. An NPR report found that this decline corresponded with the rise of personal computers, which were marketed largely to boys, as well as a glut of films propagating male geek culture, such as Revenge of the Nerds. “A colleague called us unicorns,” said Leigh Bauserman, an engineer who worked on Barbie Fashion Designer.”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment

“Not all of Blizzard’s employees took to the intense office culture, such as Andy Weir, a programmer who hated being dropped into the pressure cooker. The day before he left on a weekend trip for which he’d provided weeks of notice, his bosses criticized him for taking off, then demanded that he leave them with a phone number. “Over the course of the weekend they probably called me twenty times,” Weir said. “And I was not an important engineer.” During the game’s final stretch, when everyone was expected to test out the game during their spare time, Weir complained to a colleague that he was sick of doing extra QA work and not getting paid for it. Weir became the target of endless bullying around the office. Colleagues would dismiss him, ignore him, and deride his ideas. “So many people were shitty to me, I have to assume I brought it on myself in some way,” Weir said. He was criticized for delivering inadequate code that broke the game’s launcher, which made things more difficult for everybody. He’d fume: How could he live up to expectations when nobody was mentoring or teaching him? There were no structures in place to help younger employees learn how to fix bugs or write better code. “We were so busy running as fast as we could, there was no culture of mentorship or training,” said Wyatt. Less than a year into the job, Weir was fired for his poor performance. “This was a dream job for me, working at Blizzard,” Weir said. “I was absolutely crushed.” But Andy Weir wound up doing just fine. Two decades later, he published a novel called The Martian, the film adaptation of which would star Matt Damon and earn more than $630 million worldwide.”
― Jason Schreier, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment