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- Does 'Play Nice' give 'calm down' vibes?
Does 'Play Nice' give 'calm down' vibes?
OR the prophesy that the someone who might get hurt is you
Kerry Waananen
30 Oct • Time to end: 17 minutes
Welcome back to HYBRID THEORY — the newsletter that I’m still figuring out but I’m just going to keep hitting send while I do it*~
Some things I’m currently waffling on that’d I’d love your feedback on:
I think I’m going to send a semi-weekly (for now) edition focused on a few top stories and then a link farm at the bottom like this one - Y/N?
At least once a month I want to dive into a deeper, tangental story like I’ve done with this one - Y/N?
Is there anything in particular you want to read my take on, please let me know.
OK, that’s really all it for now. Enjoy & tell a friend to subscribe!
Image: IGN
I assume that a large portion of the video game industry (along with myself) has spent the last month with Jason Schreier of Bloomberg’s newest book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment.
The past few weeks, Jason’s been on a prolific media tour promoting the book (NYT, The Verge, WaPo, Forbes, EuroGamer, etc) proving Blizzard’s demons may work hard but he works harder. If you’re plugged into the games industry on social, you’ve seen the book’s cover on the timeline or heard him on a podcast (or two) or seen him mentioned in a newsletter (or two).
His work on the book lives up to something I once read on the internet years ago, which I’m paraphrasing but essentially suggests: “It used to be that all you needed for great marketing was to write a great book.” I finished Play Nice at the start of the month and I can’t stop thinking about it.
I bonded with my high school hockey pals as much in World of Warcraft as I did on the ice. We’ve all since hung up our skates, but many still log into the ‘World’ regularly. I was keen to read the inside story about the legendary company that had led much of the games industry by example (both good and bad).
Below I’m going to go into some of the transmedia-ification concepts of the book and there will be light spoilers, so please read at your own discretion.