It doesn’t matter whether you care for (or have even played) the particular titles under discussion here – each chapter offers a unique perspective and/or rare glimpse about the obstacles games are frequently forced to push through. Isometric RPGs not your thing? Blood, Sweat, and Pixels’ chapter covering Pillars of Eternity provides much food for thought about the different set of responsibilities that come when choosing to crowdfund your game. Couldn’t care for Hack and slashers? Diablo III’s journey to winning back its devout series fans is still a page-turning read. Schreier does an excellent job diversifying the type of games featured in the book while still revealing worthwhile aspects of an inherently secretive industry. Perhaps it’s how solo indie developers struggle to market a product they’ve spent years working on the forced redundancies which arise following investment collapse or how the massive team at Naughty Dog turned around the bulk of Uncharted 4 in little more than a year and a half. It soon becomes clear that almost all video games (of any scale and ambition) experience some form of problematic development cycle, each for their own respective reasons. If the book has one major success, it’s that it provides plenty of much-needed context for anyone that’s ever been curious as to why games release in varying states of completion. That is – as evidenced in the book’s final chapter concerning Star Wars 1313’s downfall – if they are eventually lucky enough see the light of day at all. By way of 10 longform-style case studies each focusing on a specific game, Schreier’s book earns its title, explaining why it’s easy for developers to burn out so soon after release.

This is the overarching conceit which runs through Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, a new book penned by Kotaku US’ news editor Jason Schreier. The book hopes to peel back the curtain a little on some of the more complex and lesser known aspects of game development. If you’ve ever found yourself pondering about how a video game finds its way from inception to creation, the likely answer is a miracle.

Blood sweat pixels