Press Reset

Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry

Contributors

By Jason Schreier

Formats and Prices

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$11.99

Price

$15.99 CAD

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around May 11, 2021. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

From the bestselling author of Blood, Sweat, and Pixels comes the next definitive, behind-the-scenes account of the video game industry: how some of the past decade's most renowned studios fell apart—and the stories, both triumphant and tragic, of what happened next.

Jason Schreier's groundbreaking reporting has earned him a place among the preeminent investigative journalists covering the world of video games. In his eagerly anticipated, deeply researched new book, Schreier trains his investigative eye on the volatility of the video game industry and the resilience of the people who work in it.

The business of videogames is both a prestige industry and an opaque one. Based on dozens of first-hand interviews that cover the development of landmark games—Bioshock Infinite, Epic Mickey, Dead Space, and more—on to the shocking closures of the studios that made them, Press Reset tells the stories of how real people are affected by game studio shutdowns, and how they recover, move on, or escape the industry entirely.

Schreier's insider interviews cover hostile takeovers, abusive bosses, corporate drama, bounced checks, and that one time the Boston Red Sox's Curt Schilling decided he was going to lead a game studio that would take out World of Warcraft. Along the way, he asks pressing questions about why, when the video game industry is more successful than ever, it's become so hard to make a stable living making video games—and whether the business of making games can change before it's too late.

Genre:

  • PRAISE FOR PRESS RESET:
  • “This standout book will appeal to readers of Kotaku, Polygon, and IGN, as well as viewers of NoClip’s YouTube documentaries. Beyond gamers, this well-researched account will also interest labor advocates.”
    Library Journal
  • “An informed, well-balanced report on the video game industry’s passions and pitfalls.”
    Kirkus
  • “Jason Schreier’s Press Reset attempts—through oral histories and carefully indexed original reporting—to fish a thesis out of the tales of ego, bad luck, and rampant profit-seeking that killed off the teams behind some of the most popular and successful video games of all time…Schreier’s clear prose highlights human costs.”
    AV Club (5 New Books to Read in May)
  • “Brilliant [as a] detective’s massive corkboard, covered in names and pieces of string… Entertaining, educational, and breezy. Highly recommended.”
    Ars Technica
  • “Often bleak but also intriguing, hopeful, and sometimes darkly funny.”
    The Verge
  • PRAISE FOR Jason Schreier: 
  • “Schreier covers the notoriously secretive gaming industry [and] knows it well.”
    GQ
  • “Jason Schreier is a huge fan of video games, and his enthusiasm is contagious.”
    Booklist
  • “My only complaint about Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is that there wasn't more to read.”
    Forbes

On Sale
May 11, 2021
Page Count
304 pages
ISBN-13
9781538735480

Jason Schreier

About the Author

Jason Schreier is the New York Times bestselling author of Press Reset and Blood, Sweat, and Pixels and a reporter at Bloomberg News, where he covers the video game industry. He lives in Westchester, New York with his wife and two children.

Learn more about this author