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  • Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

  • The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made
  • By: Jason Schreier
  • Narrated by: Ray Chase
  • Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (217 ratings)

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Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

By: Jason Schreier
Narrated by: Ray Chase
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Publisher's Summary

Developing video games - hero's journey or fool's errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today's hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier takes listeners on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-size monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean - it's nothing short of miraculous.

Taking some of the most popular, best-selling recent games, Schreier immerses listeners in the hellfire of the development process, whether it's RPG studio Bioware's challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone's single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man's vision into a multimillion-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand-new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings - even as it nearly ripped their studio apart.

Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell - and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable.

©2017 Jason Schreier (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

Average Customer Ratings
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Amazing

Loved every minute, super interesting and well written. Great narration and great stories! Thank you!!!

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    4 out of 5 stars
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A Dive Into a Swim

Rewarding and intriguing. Schreier makes the smart choice of speaking more generally (or at least with fewer granular examples per story) as the chapter progress, but I still wish I could go in and hear even more about the heartache and decision making. From a casual and educational standpoint this book is an absolute gem. Enjoy the rises -- and the falls.

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For gamers

Some of the stories are very interesting and make for very good stories, at the same time other stories aren’t that great but if you’re a gamer then u will love this.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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my new favourite non fiction book

I never knew a book about game development would be so great. I was hooked on every story. Thank you for writing this book and I will be looking forward to reading the next one.

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Good insight into the industry

Well written and broken up into studios/games that helped to showcase unique and common challenges and setbacks in the world of game development.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Extremely well written developer stories

This was an extremely well written book containing about 10 stories regarding the turbulent development of popular video games. Jason's writing is extremely engaging and easy to listen to and you can see why he's one of the gaming industry's best journalists.

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A definitive truth behind the games we love.

Blood, Sweat and Pixels is the forefront of investigative journalism in the video game industry, like every industry on Earth Blood, Sweat and Pixels shows that this industry is far from innocent and it too has its dark moments. Jason Schreier does an amazing job explaining his witness to some of the more significant behind the scenes stories in the industry, from personal accounts of the Devs behind the games they're making to creative direction that challenges the studios and the money making boards behind the decisions that often lead to a worse game than visioned.

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Great Look at the Gaming Industry

Jason Schreier provides some of the best games journalism and this book is no exception. As gamers we sometimes undervalue the effort that goes into game development and this book shines a light on what happens to get them across the finish line. Both for indie games and triple A titles.

A must read for Gamers.

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    3 out of 5 stars
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Bland

What should be fascinating stories of the greatest art form of our age are instead a series of rushed, simplistic stories, devoid of compelling narrative.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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well written

This is a well written book but it glorifies "crunch", or overworking, a bit too much. I feel that in this sense Jason Schreier is not critical enough of overworking and seems to portray it too positively, as if it is inevitable. Other than that, these are a collection of great stories of the develop of great games big and small from Witcher 3 to Stardew Valley. Highly recommended

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