In athletics, referees protect players and ensure fair play. But there is no “referee” in the video game industry to ensure people “play nice” — which is where investigative journalists like Jason Schrier come in.
Stanford’s Silicon Valley Talks hosted Schrier, a Bloomberg investigative journalist who spotlights the video game industry. He promoted his new book, “Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment,” at the talk last Monday.
Blizzard Entertainment, founded in 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, has made billion-dollar video game franchises such as “World of Warcraft,” “Diablo” and “Overwatch.” The company underwent a major merger with Activision Games in 2008, creating Activision Blizzard, which was then purchased by Microsoft in 2023.
Schrier spoke to the company’s trajectory — past, present and future. The journalist narrated the story of Blizzard’s many corporate parents and the mergers they subjected the company to.
He also touched on the entrance and exit of Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of Activision, and a large part of the reason as to why Blizzard’s founders left the company, according to Schrier’s research.
“It was the classic battle of creativity versus business,” Schrier said. “All of us can relate to [this story] in some way — both the business side and the culture side.”
On the business side, Schrier highlighted the unusual and spotty pattern of economic growth over the decades. On the culture side, Schrier focused on the sexual harassment and workplace misconduct allegations.
Many of Blizzard’s executives were married to or dating employees, creating a power imbalance, as described in Schrier’s book. He said the dynamics between superiors and employees created an “if the boss can do it, why can’t I” mentality among supervisors interested in asking out employees.
Schrier highlighted the value of diversity in companies and reflected Blizzard’s gender imbalance, in an interview with The Daily.
“Being inclusive from the beginning is really important,” Schrier said, suggesting inclusivity could have prevented the problems that riddled Blizzard over the years.
Schrier said that during Blizzard’s founding in the ‘90’s, the company was about 10% women, with the first woman having been hired as the company’s secretary.
This gender imbalance became more difficult to fix over the years. Blizzard highly prioritized tenure and time with the company when offering promotions. This made promotions for female employees scarce, as most were later additions to the company.
Ryan Morgado, assistant director of career coaching and education at the School of Engineering and Doerr School of Sustainability, attended the talk as an avid fan of Schrier’s podcasts and books.
“I thought it was incredibly insightful to get confirmation or new information about how the company operated from the eyes of someone outside of the industry,” Morgado said.
Community members tackled various topics in their questions, asking Schrier for specifics on how Blizzard had worked toward ending harassment, the company’s future and how it responded to going to court by the State of California.
“The themings [of the talk] definitely matched what was discussed in the book, but it was especially cool to hear community questions,” Morgado said.
Henry Lowood, curator of Hohbach Hall exhibits in Green Library and the head of the Silicon Valley Archives, said he enjoyed Schrier’s talk and admired the journalist’s dedication to reporting.
“I think he’s a great writer, especially as a journalist — he has a lot that people in the academic world can get from his books,” Lowood said. “I’m still in awe of doing 350 interviews for a book.”