---
title: "What can creators learn from Play Nice?"
description: "Jason Schreier's Play Nice in 15 frameworks with steps, and the two Tom Sharman lessons it backs."
canonical: https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/
updated: 2026-11-03
---

# Play Nice

> Jason Schreier's Play Nice in 15 frameworks with steps, and the two Tom Sharman lessons it backs.

The frameworks here are Jason Schreier's, from Play Nice. Claude read the book in Tom's Brain and linked it to his lessons.

## How Tom uses this

- [Move the people you have before you hire](https://tomsharman.com/lessons/move-the-people-you-have-before-you-hire/index.md): Blizzard promoted testers and customer service staff into artist and quest designer roles through a map editor test instead of hiring outsiders. (pp. 88, 91 and 92)
- [A brand that compounds has a mission and an enemy](https://tomsharman.com/lessons/a-brand-that-compounds-has-a-mission-and-an-enemy/index.md): Blizzard's player first mission, its free Battle.net and its habit of beating a named rival like EverQuest built brand equity that outlasted any single launch. (pp. 57, 83 and 208)

- Author: Jason Schreier
- Pages: 316
- ISBN: 9781538725429
- Chapters: 11
- Frameworks: 15
- Categories: Hiring and teams, Sales and negotiation, Lead generation, Life and thinking, Content and packaging, Personal brand, Leadership, Offers and pricing
- Book 36 of 46 on the bookshelf: https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/index.md

## What it argues

Schreier argues that Blizzard rose because a small group of players made polished games, shipped them when ready, and were shielded from a string of corporate owners by founders who promised hits in return for autonomy. World of Warcraft then turned a product studio into a company of thousands whose money attracted Activision, whose chief Bobby Kotick prized predictability, annual franchises and finance led control. Over the decade after 2013 the player first culture lost out to quotas, monetisation targets, stack ranking and pay below market, while the Titan failure removed the trust that had protected autonomy. A long record of crunch, a boys' club and weak HR then surfaced in the 2021 California lawsuit, which cost Kotick's lieutenants their jobs and helped drive the sale to Microsoft. The book closes on a company still making acclaimed games but with its founders gone, 1,900 more staff laid off and its identity unsettled.

## Worth keeping

- Adham's donut theory: aim at the hardcore hole for evangelism and the midcore ring for volume, with games easy to learn and difficult to master (p. 31 to p. 32).
- Cancelling around half of projects, and missing Christmas 1996 with Diablo, protected the brand and still produced a hit (p. 43, p. 45).
- Making Battle.net free bought brand equity with players over short term income (p. 57).
- Hearthstone shows a tiny team told to stay small, plus a forced detour, can beat a large funded effort (p. 155 to p. 157).
- Annualising Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero raised revenue while the creative capacity of each franchise fell (p. 184).
- Overwatch worked because the team could say no and had a clear vision and short timeline, unlike Titan's open cheque (p. 190, p. 173).
- The player sentiment bank account: leaving money on the table to protect trust, and what discounting does to value (p. 208, p. 210).
- Stack ranking and metric inflation erode creative cultures, and underpaid support staff leave for double pay (p. 254 to p. 257).
- Teams accept cancellations when treated like adults, as the Ares case shows (p. 236).
- The Overwatch League failed because the model served the publisher, the game was hard to watch and the pandemic removed live events (p. 216 to p. 218, p. 285 to p. 287).

## The questions it answers

### What makes a format repeatable, as opposed to a hit that happened once?

Blizzard repeated the Warcraft template in StarCraft and Diablo, but annualised franchises like Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero declined as sequels shipped every year, so the repeatable part is a polished format with room to iterate (p. 184).

### How do you build a personal brand that generates inbound rather than requiring outbound?

Jeff Kaplan's video updates and Ben Brode's laughing public presence turned developers into faces that pulled players in without paid reach (p. 192, p. 159).

### Which of my stories travel, and which only feel like they should?

The staged Leeroy Jenkins video and the Overwatch animated shorts both spread widely because they carried character and a clear emotional story, not because they were promotions (p. 107, p. 193).

### What is the smallest team that can produce at the volume I am used to?

Hearthstone was capped at fifteen developers and Overwatch resisted growing past about 150, while Titan and Call of Duty style headcounts slowed delivery (p. 155, p. 218, p. 172).

## The frameworks

1. [Management by chaos](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/management-by-chaos/index.md): How the early team settled game design without managers or process.
2. [Donut theory](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/donut-theory/index.md): Adham's whiteboard model for sizing a game's audience.
3. [Guided museum quest design](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/guided-museum-quest-design/index.md): How World of Warcraft improved on EverQuest's open ended structure.
4. [Promote testers by test](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/promote-testers-by-test/index.md): How Team 2 turned QA staff into artists.
5. [Reboot decision](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/reboot-decision/index.md): The three options StarCraft's team weighed after its demo was derided as purple Warcraft.
6. [Blizzard's eight core values](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/blizzards-eight-core-values/index.md): The company's 2008 statement of what it stood for, carved into plaques around the orc statue.
7. [StarCraft II thirds rule](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/starcraft-ii-thirds-rule/index.md): Design mantra adapted from Sid Meier for making a sequel to a game players call perfect.
8. [Hearthstone prototype method](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/hearthstone-prototype-method/index.md): How Team 5 turned a card game rebuild into something simpler and faster.
9. [Two track repair plan](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/two-track-repair-plan/index.md): How Team 3 rescued Diablo III after launch.
10. [SPEED](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/speed/index.md): Kotick's acronym for what a predictable public company needs.
11. [Long-range planning](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/long-range-planning/index.md): Process Blizzard expanded in 2013 to satisfy Activision.
12. [Overwatch rescue pitch](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/overwatch-rescue-pitch/index.md): How a cancelled Titan team turned its wreckage into Overwatch.
13. [Overwatch League franchise pricing](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/overwatch-league-franchise-pricing/index.md): Kotick's reasoning for pricing city teams at $20 million.
14. [Franchise general manager structure](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/franchise-general-manager-structure/index.md): Blizzard's 2020s reorganisation modelled on Call of Duty.
15. [Blizzard's five new values](https://tomsharman.com/bookshelf/play-nice/blizzards-five-new-values/index.md): The replacement for the eight values, announced after more than a year of employee work.

## Working with Tom on this

Tom builds and runs content teams inside creator and founder businesses, as a fractional Head of Content. [Fractional Head of Content, UK](https://tomsharman.com/fractional-head-of-content-uk/)