Jason Schreier probably doesn't see it as his job to convince people that they shouldn't work in videogames, but his work does serve as a pretty good argument for that point. As a reporter, first at Kotaku and then at Bloomberg, Schreier has specialized in stories exposing the dark side of the staggeringly wealthy videogame industry. He's reported extensively on the practice of "crunch" (extended periods of long hours while working on a game) and other troubling labor practices. Gaming journalism has mostly been dominated by previews of the next big game and reviews of the next big game once it hits shelves. Schreier has carved out a niche for himself as a reporter who does actual, factual reporting of the sort that sparks real conversation and even results in real change within the industry.
Schreier's journalism has always been marked by an unapologetic moral urgency, an admirable call for attention to issues and people long ignored by credulous coverage of the industry. He brings that same approach and philosophy to Press Reset, his second book about the videogame industry.
But while Schreier uses the book to make a compelling moral argument, he falters at the basic task of crafting a similarly compelling narrative. It's a book that makes its point on about page 20, only to continue making that same point for another 280 pages.
The core problem with Schreier's narrative is repetition (it's hell, if you remember your Stephen King). Press Reset is broken down into nine chapters, eight of which tell the story of the death of a particular studio or studios (the ninth is the stereotypical "solutions" chapter that every non-fiction book must finish on). The problem is that Schreier isn't really telling eight different stories -- he's telling the same story eight times, with only the names and some of the peripheral details changing from chapter to chapter.
The reader will pick up on the pattern immediately. Idealistic, videogame-loving people join a studio or start one from scratch with an eye toward making the game of their dreams. They crunch themselves half to death to make it happen, only to be undermined by poor business decisions, creative mistakes, the excesses of their own ambitions or some combination thereof. Sometimes the resulting game is great (BioShock Infinite). Sometimes it's terrible (The Bureau: XCOM Declassified). Regardless, a lot of good people lose their jobs and have to move across the country to find work at another studio, only to repeat that same process again once the new studio shuts down.
It's not exactly Schreier's fault that the videogame industry keeps living out these same cycles time and again, and the fact that it can't stop the capitalistic equivalent of Reapers from devouring the lives and idealism of good people is a point worth emphasizing. But it feels like a story that could be told more effectively with a longform piece of journalism and not a 300-page book that struggles to find a new angle with each chapter.
There is an amusingly Marvel Cinematic Universe quality to Schreier's book in the way that companies and characters profiled early on turn up later in cameo roles (Warren Spector, the creative force behind beloved roleplaying game Deus Ex and the subject of Press Reset's first chapter, is something like the Nick Fury of Schreier's narrative). But it doesn't take long before the reader's eyes start glazing over at the exhaustive accounts of rank-and-file industry employees flying back and forth across the country to join different studios.
A failure common to boring stories, whether they're fictional or true to life, is a boring cast of characters, and Press Reset suffers from exactly that problem. This isn't meant as a criticism of the employees Schreier centers in the book, who universally come off as admirable, sympathetic, hard-working men and women who deeply love videogames and constantly find themselves victimized by much wealthier and much more famous executives. But the harsh reality is that every industry is stocked with admirable, sympathetic, hard-working men and women, and most of those people wouldn't make for particularly interesting or compelling protagonists either.
Schreier has a massive cast of characters, but few of them are particularly well-drawn, and Schreier mostly fails to elicit interest in them beyond the usual sympathy decent people feel upon seeing other decent people lose their jobs. You will be hard pressed to remember any of these people once you finish their chapters, and the overall effect is a blur of names and job titles and short-lived company affiliations that resembles nothing so much as half-heartedly reviewing a set of resumes for a role you don't particularly care about filling.
The irony is that the two most interesting characters in the book are probably Curt Schilling and Ken Levine, neither of whom are meant to be protagonists. Levine was the creative director for BioShock and BioShock Infinite, two stone cold classic games, while Schilling is the star pitcher turned failed videogame executive turned right-wing Twitter troll.
Schreier deserves credit for his nuanced portraits of these two men. That's especially true when it comes to Schilling -- Schreier, an unabashedly left-wing journalist, passes on the opportunity to demonize the already self-demonizing Schilling, and instead tells the story of a charismatic, enthusiastic, earnest videogame fan whose optimism and self-regard is both understandable and, ultimately, fatal.
The problem here is two-fold. First, Schilling and Levine are already famous -- Schilling in a broader sense, to be sure, but Levine is a well-known figure to the kind of people who buy books about the economy of the videogame industry. Schreier's portrayals of Levine and Schilling are interesting, but ultimately don't break any new ground.
Second, the fact that the two most famous figures in the book are also the two most interesting characters threatens to undermine Schreier's message. Press Reset tries to focus on the men and women who make the industry work without getting a fraction of the money or attention showered on the Ken Levines of the world. Schreier several times pushes back against an auteur-driven view of videogames, and makes clear that neither of the classic BioShock games sprung fully formed from Levine's magic forehead. And yet, even after reading Press Reset, the rank-and-file employees and their struggles fade into the background, because Schreier never succeeds in rendering them as individuals.
Schreier writes like a great reporter, which is to say clearly, but with no particular grace or distinction. When combined with Press Reset's deficiencies in narrative structure and character, the end result is a book that's meaningful, important and not even a little interesting to read.
And maybe that's OK. There are surely plenty of readers who will appreciate the importance of Schreier's message without too much concern for the book's failure to tell a compelling story. But it's worth acknowledging that important stories can still be interesting, finding an interesting way to tell an important story is at the heart of the author's responsibilities.
