My chat with Jason Schreier, who just wrote the book on Blizzard

The "Play Nice" author and I covered a ton. And I got him to play a brief game.

That’s me! And Jason. Photo: Lofty Pigeon Books

Reporter Jason Schreier worked for me at Kotaku, covers gaming superbly for Bloomberg and just released the book “Play Nice: The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment.” At a launch event for his book earlier this week, he ended our 30-minute chat with flattery.

“You know Stephen is good at his job, because I was just on, like, 40 podcasts this week, and those were all completely unique questions,” he told a packed audience at independent Brooklyn bookstore Lofty Pigeon Books.

I’ll take it.

Among other things, we had just discussed…

• Blizzard’s secrets for making great games

• Covering Blizzard’s scandals

• The chapter that got away

• How to write books and get people to talk

• A new reason to hate Barnes & Noble

• Jason’s adventures in Hollywood

• World of Warcraft on consoles

• And something we definitely never said to him while he worked at Kotaku.

This one’s long, but it’s a Q&A (lightly edited for clarity). If necessary, you can skim for the best stuff. (Control/Command F for ‘Jon Lovitz’).