The best chapters in “Blood, Sweat and Pixels” are the ones about smaller teams because they come off as both personal and authentic. I am not accusing Jason Schreier or the developers of those chapters of romanticizing the truth, but as a critical reader and experienced developer, that is the impression I got after reading certain chapters and will be the focal point of Why You Should/Shouldn’t Read It. That being said, some chapters come off as completely authentic while others come off as borderline marketing martial for the studio or lead developers. The voices are generally the most senior developers on the projects for example the Uncharted 4 chapter is told by Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann. Some studios have multiple voices while others may have only one or two. The stories are told by the developers at each studio. There are games that never saw the light of day (Star Wars 1313) and games that remain black marks on their respective franchises (Dragon Age: Inquisition). Reading the list of games above, it ranges from solo projects over the course of 5 years (Stardew Valley) to a game that put an entire country on the gamedev map (The Witcher 3). Since each chapter is a self-contained story of a game’s development, there isn’t an overarching story or narrative to tie one chapter to another. Pillars of Eternity by Obsidian Entertainment Like mentioned above, there are 10 in total: Jason Schreier has stated that he wanted to answer the age old question: Why is it so damn hard to make video games? OverviewĮach chapter of “Blood, Sweat and Pixels” covers a different game’s development. The overall content of the book is lifting the veil behind game development at different scales (solo-dev, small team and high end AAA) to show how grueling game development is. “Blood, Sweat and Pixels”, or its much longer full title “Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made”, is a book that covers the development of 10 different video games each chapter featuring a different game.

Blood sweat and pixel