---
product_id: 48506782
title: "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made ― A National Bestselling Exposé of Development Hell"
price: "152.34 DT"
currency: TND
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.tn/products/48506782-blood-sweat-and-pixels-the-triumphant-turbulent-stories-behind-how
store_origin: TN
region: Tunisia
---

# Deep dive into AAA & indie game dev Top 20 in multiple categories 4.5-star rating from 5,217 reviews Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made ― A National Bestselling Exposé of Development Hell

**Price:** 152.34 DT
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Summary

> 🎮 Unlock the untold saga behind your favorite games — don’t just play, understand!

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made ― A National Bestselling Exposé of Development Hell
- **How much does it cost?** 152.34 DT with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.tn](https://www.desertcart.tn/products/48506782-blood-sweat-and-pixels-the-triumphant-turbulent-stories-behind-how)

## Best For

- Customers looking for quality international products

## Why This Product

- Free international shipping included
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## Key Features

- • **Crunch Time Chronicles:** Experience the relentless pressure and last-minute saves that define game launches.
- • **Kickstarter to Comeback:** See how crowdfunding and post-launch reinventions saved studios and reshaped games.
- • **Inside the Game Dev Trenches:** Uncover the raw, unfiltered stories behind blockbuster and indie game creation.
- • **A Must-Read for Managers & Creators:** Ranked top 20 in Video Game Art and Managers’ Guides, perfect for industry pros.
- • **From Solo Vision to Multi-Million Success:** Follow the epic journey of Stardew Valley’s single developer turning passion into profit.

## Overview

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a national bestselling exposé by Jason Schreier that reveals the turbulent, heroic, and often chaotic process behind video game development. Featuring stories from AAA studios and indie developers alike, it offers an insider’s look at the technical challenges, creative struggles, and marketplace battles that shape the games you love. Highly rated and ranked in top categories, this book is essential for anyone fascinated by the art and business of game creation.

## Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER “The stories in this book make for a fascinating and remarkably complete pantheon of just about every common despair and every joy related to game development.” — Rami Ismail, cofounder of Vlambeer and developer of Nuclear Throne Developing video games—hero's journey or fool's errand? The creative and technical logistics that go into building today's hottest games can be more harrowing and complex than the games themselves, often seeming like an endless maze or a bottomless abyss. In Blood, Sweat, and Pixels, Jason Schreier takes readers on a fascinating odyssey behind the scenes of video game development, where the creator may be a team of 600 overworked underdogs or a solitary geek genius. Exploring the artistic challenges, technical impossibilities, marketplace demands, and Donkey Kong-sized monkey wrenches thrown into the works by corporate, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels reveals how bringing any game to completion is more than Sisyphean—it's nothing short of miraculous. Taking some of the most popular, bestselling recent games, Schreier immerses readers in the hellfire of the development process, whether it's RPG studio Bioware's challenge to beat an impossible schedule and overcome countless technical nightmares to build Dragon Age: Inquisition ; indie developer Eric Barone's single-handed efforts to grow country-life RPG Stardew Valley from one man's vision into a multi-million-dollar franchise; or Bungie spinning out from their corporate overlords at Microsoft to create Destiny , a brand new universe that they hoped would become as iconic as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings —even as it nearly ripped their studio apart. Documenting the round-the-clock crunches, buggy-eyed burnout, and last-minute saves, Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is a journey through development hell—and ultimately a tribute to the dedicated diehards and unsung heroes of the video game industry who scale mountains of obstacles in their quests to create the best games imaginable. Go behind the screens for an inside look at how some of the most popular and acclaimed games of our time were made: AAA Studios Under Pressure: Discover how Naughty Dog rebooted Uncharted 4 , how BioWare overcame countless technical nightmares on Dragon Age: Inquisition , and why Bungie struggled to launch Destiny . The Solo Developer: Follow the five-year, single-handed effort of Eric Barone to create Stardew Valley , the indie farming RPG that became a multi-million-dollar phenomenon. The Kickstarter Revolution: Learn how a successful crowdfunding campaign for Pillars of Eternity saved developer Obsidian Entertainment from the brink of collapse. Post-Launch Redemption: Witness the turbulent launches and subsequent reinventions of games like Diablo III and The Witcher 3 , proving that for some games, shipping is just the beginning.

Review: Incredibly detailed and both very informative and interesting - An incredibly in depth and interesting look into the development process of some of the most popular video games out there, which didn't fail to keep me hooked to each page, I highly recommend Blood Sweat and Pixels. With each chapter focusing on the story of a particular game, the book is perfect reading I'm bite size chunks, ie whilst commuting, or in one sitting. The stories behind the games are entertaining, enlightening and surprisingly emotional, and while a cynical mind may say they could have been an article on a video games website, the long form format offers the author a chance to go deeper into each development story, and it's an opportunity which has clearly payed off, interviews and painstaking research intricately woven together to forming a compelling narrative. I couldn't put this book down, and am already planning on gifting it to friends and family so they can experience it for themselves. I look forward with great interest as to what is next for Schreier, with stories like that behind the troubled development and release of Mass Effect Andromeda the perfect fodder for a sequel. Tl;Dr - if you like games, read this book. If you don't play or like games but know someone who does, buy it for them, and read it before giving it to them. You won't regret it.
Review: A well-written beginner's guide to the crazy world of video game development - Making video games is hard work, whether you're a solo operator developing an indie game inspired by a Nintendo classic or an experienced team of 200 working with a budge in nine figures. In this book, video game journalist Jason Schreier investigates the making of ten different video games: Pillars of Eternity, Uncharted 4, Stardew Valley, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, Halo Wars, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Shovel Knight, Destiny, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Star Wars: 1313. Most people know that the making of video games is a difficult, long-winded and expensive process. But just how long-winded and expensive that task is remains mind-boggling. This book explores some of those stories. A single cancelled contract almost destroyed veteran video game studio Obsidian Entertainment, until they launched a successful Kickstarter for an old-skool RPG called Pillars of Eternity that was a big commercial hit and saved the company. Naughty Dog Studios had already delivered three critically-acclaimed Uncharted games and were a well-oiled machine, but still almost crashed into ruin whilst making the fourth game in the series. Blizzard Entertainment had been a 20-year veteran of game development with almost 100 million games sold but still managed to release Diablo III in a chaotic and divisive state, forcing them to save the game with an expansion pack that revamped a lot of how the game worked. Star Wars: 1313 was a game that looked absolutely amazing and was playing very well when it was abruptly cancelled when Disney took over LucasArts in 2012, flushing several years, tens of millions of dollars and thousands of hours of work down the toilet. Schreier recounts the story of each game in a well-researched, intelligent manner based on interviews with the people involved and, in some cases, spending time embedded at the studio in question. Arguably the most fascinating chapter is on the development of Stardew Valley, a rare modern game created by just one person (Eric Barone), showing the insane work required to bring what is apparently a very simple game idea to the masses. The most explosive is certainly about the development of Destiny, an online game created by Bungie Studios to escape the treadmill of developing Halo games until the end of time, but that was easier said then done and by the end of development most of those who had been pushing for abandoning Halo had left the company, leaving a lot of anger and bitterness behind (which is an ongoing story, through the problematic release of Destiny's expansion and sequel). The most frustrating story is that of 1313, a genuinely exciting-sounding game that was killed in its infancy. If there are any negatives to the book, it's probably the lack of depth. The book can only give about 25 pages to each project, and often the chapter ends just as the story gets interesting and we're moving onto the next game. There could also be better context: the Diablo III chapter focuses on the expansion, but we learn nothing about the ten-year development of Diablo III itself and why the game ended up being released in such a chaotic state. The Witcher III chapter also lowballs the game's reportedly hellish crunch period, which led to many people leaving the company (also it also resulted in arguably the greatest video game of the last twenty years). You occasionally feel that Schreier pulls his punches - at least a little - to retain future access to the companies involved. That said, if you play video games but have no idea how they're made or the workload involved, this book (****) will be revelatory. Well-written, informative and entertaining, it marks a good beginner's guide to the crazy world of making video games.

## Features

- New Store Stock

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | 24,530 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) 12 in Video Game Art 15 in Digital Art 19 in Managers' Guides to Computing |
| Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,249 Reviews |

## Images

![Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made ― A National Bestselling Exposé of Development Hell - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81KFnMWdq7L.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Incredibly detailed and both very informative and interesting
*by M***T on 8 September 2017*

An incredibly in depth and interesting look into the development process of some of the most popular video games out there, which didn't fail to keep me hooked to each page, I highly recommend Blood Sweat and Pixels. With each chapter focusing on the story of a particular game, the book is perfect reading I'm bite size chunks, ie whilst commuting, or in one sitting. The stories behind the games are entertaining, enlightening and surprisingly emotional, and while a cynical mind may say they could have been an article on a video games website, the long form format offers the author a chance to go deeper into each development story, and it's an opportunity which has clearly payed off, interviews and painstaking research intricately woven together to forming a compelling narrative. I couldn't put this book down, and am already planning on gifting it to friends and family so they can experience it for themselves. I look forward with great interest as to what is next for Schreier, with stories like that behind the troubled development and release of Mass Effect Andromeda the perfect fodder for a sequel. Tl;Dr - if you like games, read this book. If you don't play or like games but know someone who does, buy it for them, and read it before giving it to them. You won't regret it.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ A well-written beginner's guide to the crazy world of video game development
*by A***D on 11 March 2018*

Making video games is hard work, whether you're a solo operator developing an indie game inspired by a Nintendo classic or an experienced team of 200 working with a budge in nine figures. In this book, video game journalist Jason Schreier investigates the making of ten different video games: Pillars of Eternity, Uncharted 4, Stardew Valley, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, Halo Wars, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Shovel Knight, Destiny, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Star Wars: 1313. Most people know that the making of video games is a difficult, long-winded and expensive process. But just how long-winded and expensive that task is remains mind-boggling. This book explores some of those stories. A single cancelled contract almost destroyed veteran video game studio Obsidian Entertainment, until they launched a successful Kickstarter for an old-skool RPG called Pillars of Eternity that was a big commercial hit and saved the company. Naughty Dog Studios had already delivered three critically-acclaimed Uncharted games and were a well-oiled machine, but still almost crashed into ruin whilst making the fourth game in the series. Blizzard Entertainment had been a 20-year veteran of game development with almost 100 million games sold but still managed to release Diablo III in a chaotic and divisive state, forcing them to save the game with an expansion pack that revamped a lot of how the game worked. Star Wars: 1313 was a game that looked absolutely amazing and was playing very well when it was abruptly cancelled when Disney took over LucasArts in 2012, flushing several years, tens of millions of dollars and thousands of hours of work down the toilet. Schreier recounts the story of each game in a well-researched, intelligent manner based on interviews with the people involved and, in some cases, spending time embedded at the studio in question. Arguably the most fascinating chapter is on the development of Stardew Valley, a rare modern game created by just one person (Eric Barone), showing the insane work required to bring what is apparently a very simple game idea to the masses. The most explosive is certainly about the development of Destiny, an online game created by Bungie Studios to escape the treadmill of developing Halo games until the end of time, but that was easier said then done and by the end of development most of those who had been pushing for abandoning Halo had left the company, leaving a lot of anger and bitterness behind (which is an ongoing story, through the problematic release of Destiny's expansion and sequel). The most frustrating story is that of 1313, a genuinely exciting-sounding game that was killed in its infancy. If there are any negatives to the book, it's probably the lack of depth. The book can only give about 25 pages to each project, and often the chapter ends just as the story gets interesting and we're moving onto the next game. There could also be better context: the Diablo III chapter focuses on the expansion, but we learn nothing about the ten-year development of Diablo III itself and why the game ended up being released in such a chaotic state. The Witcher III chapter also lowballs the game's reportedly hellish crunch period, which led to many people leaving the company (also it also resulted in arguably the greatest video game of the last twenty years). You occasionally feel that Schreier pulls his punches - at least a little - to retain future access to the companies involved. That said, if you play video games but have no idea how they're made or the workload involved, this book (****) will be revelatory. Well-written, informative and entertaining, it marks a good beginner's guide to the crazy world of making video games.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Excellent read and recommended for all video game enjoyers
*by D***N on 11 August 2026*

I'm not saying that I enjoy the suffering of my idols, but I certainly seem to enjoy the way in which Schreier phrases it.

## Frequently Bought Together

- Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made
- Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry
- Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment

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