ReadItDaddy's Chapter Book of the Week - Week Ending 17th May 2019: "Blood, Sweat and Pixels" by Jason Schreier (Harper Paperbacks)

When I was a kid, I wanted more than anything to become a videogames programmer. Back in the heady days where I'd stick a cold pint of milk behind the wobbly RAM pack of my ZX81, noodling around with daft games where a Letter A shaped spaceship would fire exclamation marks at a bunch of incoming letter X shaped invaders, I really thought it could be possible to enter the world of videogames, make huge sums of money, drive a Ferrari and become infamous through my creations.

After 30 years of a career in IT which has involved precisly next-to-no games programming whatsoever, and certainly after reading "Blood, Sweat and Pixels" by Jason Schreier, I'm almost glad I never stuck to my guns with that career choice, because this book really does show you what it takes to enter the make-or-break world of games development, and also how often games that seem so brilliant and amazing quite often nearly destroyed the folk working on them.

Jason digs into his journalist props writing for games sites such as Kotaku (my own favourite outlet for games news, the US site I should point out) and comes up with a fascinating look under the hood of the industry, and at some of the games we've come to take for granted - as well as one or two that didn't make the cut.

From The Witcher 3's mind-blowingly expansive and amazing fantasy world, to Uncharted's astonishingly cinematic adventuring. From the simple enjoyment of creating and maintaining your own farm in the adorable Stardew Valley (a favourite of both of ours) to the sadly scuttled Star Wars 1313, there are highs and lows throughout this book, and of course copious mentions of the dreaded modern essential in any successful studio - game crunch (where developers end up working ridiculously long hours with very little reward just to get those games we love out the door).

I've been a fan of videogames since I first saw a white oblong bashing a white square around on a black TV screen at the old Picketts Lock sports centre in Edmonton, London (the very first videogame I can remember seeing) but of course the world has marched on and changed dramatically since the early 70s, to the point where games studios are made up of many talented individuals, almost to the point where end-game credits last longer than some of the games themselves.

We were both particularly charmed by the chapter on Stardew Valley though. The whole thing was done by just one person (whose other half deserves a medal for not stoving his head in with a computer keyboard for taking 5 years to make his dream game, while supporting him!) with one heck of a payday at the end of it.

All in all, it's really well written and annotated, and a really thoroughly enjoyable read if you're interested in videogame history.

"Blood, Sweat and Pixels" by Jason Schreier is out now, published by Harper Paperbacks (self purchased, not supplied for review).