Review of Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry
Christian Haines, Managing Editor
Ken Levine may or may not be a genius, but the myth of his genius has certainly wrecked lives. In Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry, games journalist Jason Schreier describes the fall of Irrational Games, the studio responsible for the acclaimed Bioshock series.
Promo art from Bioshock Infinite (2013).
Irrational Games fell apart not because it failed to make a good game but because of the poor workplace conditions from which the celebrated Bioshock Infinite emerged. The story of that game’s development is one of repeated resets, as lead designer Levine would frequently toss out large segments of the game in pursuit of his vision. Levine: “We try things, and are incredibly open to failing, and learning from that and moving on.” He adds: “[Y]ou can’t care about sunk cost.” In this case, the sunk cost included thousands of labor hours, as Irrational’s coders, artists, and writers crunched – worked extended overtime, sometimes seven days a week – to release a game that lived up to Levine’s demanding expectations.
How were Irrational’s developers rewarded for their efforts? Their studio was shut down. Why? Because Levine, too, was exhausted, and he decided to start a smaller studio with a more manageable development process. “It wasn’t clear what ultimately drove the decision … but it was clear that the executives had no interest in Irrational continuing without its boss. Irrational was a collection of smart, talented people, sure, but it was also the Ken Levine studio.” There’s a version of this story in which Schreier focuses on Levine, showing the inner turmoil of a genius struggling to revolutionize games. Thankfully, that’s not the story Schreier tells. Instead, he focuses on how a figure like Levine is really a symptom of larger problems in the games industry. Levine’s alleged genius functions as an alibi for work conditions in which comfort and stability are mere fantasies. Believing in the magic of Levine makes it easy to forget the human costs of making games.
Schreier’s first book, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, told the story of how games like Uncharted 4 and The Witcher 3 came together despite difficult development processes. Schreier revealed how poor scheduling, false starts, wonky game engines, and workplace drama make game development a grueling process. But, with only a few exceptions, the stories in that book are triumphs, the developers still holding on to “an unshakeable belief that for all the turbulence, for all the crunch, for all the unadulterated bullshit developers often have to go through, making video games is worth it.” Press Reset is a darker book, a book that asks whether or not making games is worth the pain. The book begins with the premise that in the video game industry, failure is the rule, success the exception, and precarious employment the reality. As Schreier puts it in the introduction: “This is a book about what happens when video game studios shut down. More specifically, it’s about what happens to humans when video game studios shut down.”
The humans in this book are developers of every stripe. They are quality assurance (QA) testers, designers, artists, coders, and producers. Some have been in the industry for years, building up notable reputations (Levine, for example, but also Warren Spector of Deus Ex fame), while others are relative newcomers trying to make their mark. What they all have in common is having lived through a studio shutdown. In fact, many of them have survived several studio shutdowns. One of the book’s sadder refrains are developers explaining that they would never consider buying a house. After all, buying a house means you expect to put down roots in a place, whereas working in games means moving from one city to another when things go bust.
Promo art for Dead Space 2 (2011).
One of the stories Schreier tells is of Zach Mumbach, who worked his way up from amateur modder to QA tester at EA, rising up the ranks to eventually become a producer at Visceral, the beloved EA studio behind the Dead Space series. Although Dead Space met a great deal of critical acclaim and fans of horror and science fiction couldn’t get enough, the series never managed to sell enough copies to please EA’s executives: Dead Space 2 sold more than Dead Space, and Dead Space 3 sold more than Dead Space 2, but “[f]rom EA’s point of view, if Dead Space wasn’t growing exponentially, then it must be niche, and if it was niche, then EA wanted nothing to do with it, even if it was profitable.” Visceral’s last chance for survival was a Star Wars game, code-named Ragtag, directed by Amy Hennig (of Uncharted fame). The production process for that game became turbulent. Rather than simply cancel the game, EA closed the entire studio and Mumbach lost his job.
Three months later, Mumbach began working for Crystal Dynamics as an executive producer on their Avengers game. It was a good job and he was excited about the game, but he was also burnt out. Schreier writes: “Mumbach started feeling grumpy and depressed, like his body was being yanked in multiple directions at the same time. He felt like he couldn’t fully commit to the work, nor could he be completely devoted to his family. Every day at the office, he’d ask himself just what he was doing there.” A month after starting at Crystal Dynamics, Mumbach decided to quit. He spent some time away from games, working for an architectural firm, but the siren of game design brought him back. This time he avoided the big-budget production cycles of AAA games, joining his friend and former Visceral colleague Ben Wander in developing an indie game: Airborne Kingdom (released on the Epic Game Store, December 2020).
Screenshot from Airborne Kingdom (2020).
This story, the burnt-out AAA developer going indie, recurs in Press Reset. It’s arguably the most positive version of pressing reset in the book. Schreier recounts a number of instances in which developers from closed studios band together to create their own games, sometimes self-publishing, other times securing an indie-friendly publisher like Devolver. These tales aren’t unadulterated successes, however. More often than not they involve their own struggles. Developing an indie game is hard. Developing an indie game, releasing it to success, and then developing another successful one is even harder.
Schreier concludes his book by offering a critical vision of hope – critical, because it’s the kind of hope that comes from taking on systemic problems instead of ignoring them. In Chapter 9: “Human Costs, Human Solutions,” Schreier examines a number of different models of game development that might be more “sustainable” than the AAA grind. One of these models involve networks of developers working from home. Another involves an expanded reliance on outsourcing the components of games to other studios, like combat systems or visual assets, rather than developing complete games. To be honest, this chapter is the book’s weakest, not least because many of these models work much better on a case-by-case basis than as a general solution. On the other hand, Press Reset’s stories serve as an excellent argument for unions. As Schreier notes, unions may not be a cure all, but in giving developers a say in their working conditions, they would likely increase job stability and ameliorate many of the most pernicious aspects of making games, like crunch or forced overtime.
Campaign art for Game Workers Unite.
Whatever the solution might be, I think Schreier is right to say that it has to involve a fundamental shift in how games get made. It means valuing people not just above the profits but even above the gameplay experience. That’s the final possibility of what pressing reset means: “Change the game dramatically. Band together with your colleagues to crack it open, fix the glitches and tear out all the unfair parts. Build an organized system in which your successes and failures are determined by your own choices rather than circumstances beyond your control. What would such a game look like?”
