Ep. 357 - Playing Nice, with Jason Schreier

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Ep. 357 - Playing Nice, with Jason Schreier

Journalist and author of Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment Jason Schreier sits for an interview on Blizzard’s many transformations, diversity scores, and what ultimately happened to Starcraft Ghost and Project Titan. Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Jason Schreier. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.

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SHOW NOTES:

Happy Rosh Hashanah!

1: Was there something about Blizzard in particular that made you want to write a book? (03:21)

2: Did you actually interview more than three hundred people for this book over three years? (06:19)

3: Was there anyone you couldn’t get an interview with? (07:45)

4: What was your personal investment in Blizzard before writing this book? (08:22)

5: How would you describe Blizzard’s brand identity? (11:03)

6: When did the “mergers and acquisitions” era of the video game industry really begin? (12:31)

7: Is the “loremaster” a real thing? (16:14)

8: What was the deal with “diversity scores?” (18:42)

9: How involved was Bobby Kotick in development? (20:55)

10: How did Titan become Overwatch? (26:10)

11: If you had to pick an Overwatch character to be the new CEO of Blizzard, who would be best and who would be worst? (27:15)

12: EvanArnett asks, in the early 2000s, World of Warcraft was the game most associated with gaming addiction. What was Blizzard’s stance on that? (27:58)

13: Yeso asks, do you still stand by your EPIC/5 review for Final Fantasy XIII on rpgamer.com? (31:01)

14: Aleph asks, what is the Day the Clown Cried of Video Games? (32:22)

15: Is there a book about games you’d really like to read, but have no interest in writing yourself? (34:44)

16: What should readers take away from Play Nice? (37:17)

LIGHTNING ROUND: Rapid Fire Blizzard Trivia (38:23)

Recommendations and Outro (42:11):

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24 hours in advance??

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Commenting before listening, but it seems the panel is shrinking.

Next week: Jaffe monologue?

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And the week after it’s a 24h Kurt Feldman music stream.

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#BringBackChillBeats

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I haven’t listened yet, but seeing the answer to question 15, I’ll recommend a GREAT book by Ken Horowitz called From Pinballs to Pixels: An Arcade History of Williams-Bally-Midway.

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no hosts, no masters, pure feldman

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I did indeed listen that far in to the episode @Jaffe , and liked it. Good guest, and good questions!

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Very cool episode with a very interesting guest and great questions, nice start to the morning with coffee this one.

Based on the trend with guests, looking forward to next weeks episode - @Jaffe on @Jaffe

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If the Insert Credit podcast iterates on itself any further, it will be a Yakuza game

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Good episode. Blizzard is a company I should know more about considering how much I’ve played their games: Warcraft 1-3, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch. (I have never played an iteration of Starcraft.) I’ll probably end up reading Schreier’s book too, in part thanks to this podcast.

Like Jaffe, I had a WoW moment - in my case, when I got to the Burning Crusades content - when I realized that my life after max level would be this game, and I stopped. A couple of years later, I was pondering going back. I realized a hacker had stolen my account (including a couple of expansions) without me knowing. The only sign was a single email that filters had not so helpfully buried. Thus I retired permanently from MMOs.

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I should mention that I’m very excited at the prospect of an hour-long Jaffe 1-man show.

Maybe ease into it by having the other Alex Jaffe on.

Or have Jason Schreier back for an all-Jewish-talk episode.

What’s the most Jewish game?

Outside of BJ Blaskowitz, is there a prominent Jewish character?

Is Mario Jew-coded?

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Whenever i listen to a special episode it feels like catching a shiny pokemon.

Loved the episode, Jaffe and Jason are great

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…i just had the thought: it’d be fun if some time in the ic-adjacent dirtbag zone server, a group streamed themselves partaking in that episode…

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What did I say about listening to Pre-2020 episodes

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Make sure to tell you about it every time?

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I did not say this

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No, but you repeatedly said “bonk meat”, so this is what you get.

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kind of inappropriate if you ask me

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Re: The opening chat about holidays. My school district growing up had Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah off, but none of the other districts in our neighboring towns did, and growing up I’ve never met someone else who grew up with that norm (who didn’t go to my schools growing up, obvs). It was surprising to hear Jason mention having those days off as of it were a universal norm, which maybe speaks to him having grown up in one of those particular places where it’s the norm.

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