Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

Jason Schreier's reporting takes readers inside game studios, where the work of building a game, with its crunch, burnout and last-minute saves, can be more harrowing than the game itself. The book follows several recent hits: Bioware racing an impossible schedule and technical failures to finish Dragon Age: Inquisition, Eric Barone growing Stardew Valley single-handedly into a multi-million-dollar franchise, and Bungie breaking away from Microsoft to create Destiny, a project that nearly tore the studio apart. Uncharted 4 and Halo Wars are also examined. Schreier looks at artistic challenges, technical limits, market demands and corporate interference, and finds that finishing any game comes close to a miracle, whether the team numbers 600 or one.

Anoop Anthony, CTO and co-founder of Sapaad, who spent around three years making video games, called it a journalistic masterpiece and said, from that experience, that making games is among the hardest jobs there is.