Grind, Ship, Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
This is a book of narrative, not of analysis. Diablo, Destiny, orcs, trolls, studios, founders, launches. A studio has an idea. Nobody believes in it. The team works absurdly hard, burns cash, gets the software into shape, nearly runs out of money, then ships and succeeds. 10 games, 10 arcs, no conclusions.
That arc is not false. It is just overused.
Essentially each chapter is the hero’s journey of video games, told in such a way as to be consumable to those of us more used to playing games from the lens of a consumer. The result is readable, but narrow. He gives the stories their drama, yet the harder and more revealing questions often sit off to the side. He treats the structural hardship of running a studio almost as an afterthought. That leaves the book tilted toward survival stories and away from the graveyard that gives those stories meaning.
At times it reads like a blog turned into a book, so the whole feels more assembled than argued.
This is the first of a trilogy, so maybe the later books add depth or widen the frame. On its own, this volume is not incompetent, but thinner than the subject deserves.