My next book is about the rise and fall of Blizzard Entertainment

My next book is PLAY NICE: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, coming October 8 to bookstores everywhere.

You can preorder it right here. (Allow me to recommend you do so at your local indie bookstore!)

Blizzard Entertainment is the video game company behind StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, Overwatch, and World of Warcraft. Any company would kill to have just one of those franchises — Blizzard developed five. For many years, it was one of the most beloved video game companies on the planet. When you picked up a new game and saw that frosted blue logo, you knew you were getting something special.

Yet over the last few years, the Irvine, CA-based video game developer has faced a series of PR debacles, a hostile corporate takeover, and a sexual discrimination lawsuit that eventually led to a staggering $69 billion acquisition.

What made Blizzard so special? How did it come crashing down? What made Activision CEO Bobby Kotick decide to start interfering with Blizzard’s magic, and was it really all that magical for the women who worked there?

PLAY NICE chronicles the history of Blizzard Entertainment as it transformed from a UCLA student’s ambitious dream into an international empire generating billions of dollars of revenue per year, facing all sorts of corporate shenanigans and cultural mishaps along the way. It’s based on interviews with more than 350 people and will tackle the creative struggles and boardroom drama that have made up Blizzard over the last three decades.

You can preorder the book right here. Preorders have a massive impact on store placement, bestseller lists, the number of copies that are printed, and all sorts of other factors that help make it so I can keep writing more books, so please do preorder.

For now, I’m back to editing and factchecking, but you’ll hear much more about the book later this year as we prepare to get it out into the world. Did I mention that you can preorder now?