‘Play Nice’ Author Talks Biggest Revelations From Activision Blizzard Tell-All Book: Bobby Kotick vs. Mike Morhaime, Strip Club Excursions and Prosecutor Chris Christie
variety.comJennifer Maas TV Business Writer Towards the beginning of video game journalist Jason Schreier’s new book, “Play Nice: The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment,” it’s revealed that “The Martian” and “Project Hail Mary” author Andy Weir once worked at and was subsequently fired from Blizzard during the making of “Warcraft II.” “So many people were shitty to me, I have to assume I brought it on myself in some way,” Weir says, explaining how he took a pre-planned trip during the final stretch of game programming in 1995 and was bullied for hid choice and soon fired for his poor performance as a programmer at the then-Mike Morhaime and Allen Adham-run game publisher.
And that’s just the tip of the Blizzard-history iceberg revealed in Schreier’s book, which hit shelves Tuesday, as it details the company from its founding through its merger with Activision to its most recently acquisition by Microsoft. “I really was pleased with is just how many little details and astonishing stories came out of the reporting process.
There’s a lot of stuff in here that is previously unreported,” Schreier, who covers the gaming industry at Bloomberg, told Variety. “In the 1990s, Blizzard had to deal with a parent company that was investigated by the SEC for massive fraud, and whose CEO went to jail, and was prosecuted by Chris Christie, of all people.
Then there is also the culture and the strip clubs and the hotel bans and the fist fights, like all those crazy times in the ’90s, ranging from that to the really wild stories about games like ‘Hearthstone’ and ‘Heroes of the Storm’ and the ways Blizzard did and did not create cultural phenomenons.
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