HOLIDAY CLOSURE: We will be out of the office on December 25 and back on December 26. You can place orders as usual.

The Porchlight Business Book Awards longlist is here!

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made

By Jason Schreier

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "The stories in this book make for a fascinating and remarkably complete pantheon of just about every common despair and every joy related to game development. " -- Rami Ismail, cofounder of Vlambeer and developer of Nuclear Throne Developing video games--hero's journey or fool's errand.

READ FULL DESCRIPTION

Quantity Price Discount
List Price $18.99  
1 - 24 $16.14 15%
25 - 99 $11.77 38%
100 - 249 $11.39 40%
250 - 499 $11.01 42%
500 + $10.82 43%

Quick Quote

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit

Non-returnable discount pricing

$18.99


Book Information

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Publish Date: 09/05/2017
Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780062651235
ISBN-10: 0062651234
Language: English

Full Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"The stories in this book make for a fascinating and remarkably complete pantheon of just about every common despair and every joy related to game development." -- Rami Ismail, cofounder of Vlambeer and developer of Nuclear Throne

Developing video games--hero's journey or fool's errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today's hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean--it's nothing short of miraculous.

Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it's RPG studio Bioware's challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition; indie developer Eric Barone's single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man's vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny, a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings--even as it nearly ripped their studio apart.

Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell--and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable.

About the Author

Jason Schreier is the author of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels and a reporter at Bloomberg News , where he covers the video game industry. Previously, he spent eight years at Kotaku , one of the biggest video game websites in the world.

Learn More

We have updated our privacy policy. Click here to read our full policy.