Control Freak

Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games

Hardcover - USA - 1st edition.

Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games is the autobiography of Cliff Bleszinski published in November 2022.

Personal

Own?	No.
Read?	Audiobook read by Kurt Kanazawa.
Finished	2024-12-15

I read this book to learn more about the video game industry.

Overall:

The book gives a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a AAA video game designer for two major franchises: Unreal and Gears of War.
Leaving in several harrowing moments like his father's untimely death, sexual abuse, alcoholism, and infidelity was important to making the book worth reading.
It was nice to read that Bleszinski had a progressive view on Gamergate and the 2016 election, denouncing bullies and dangerous conservative men.

Since the book wasn't written by a professional, it reads a little amateurish. Bleszinski could have hired a professional author to polish it a bit more.
As with most memoirs, the book includes a lot of dialogue that is suspect because it's decades old, yet still quoted verbatim. There are also lots of minor details added that couldn't possibly be remembered. At one point, he writes that the cafe barista had chipped nail polish.
While there is plenty of interesting stuff in the book, there is also a lot of dull stuff as well that could have been left out. I also would have like to have heard more about the design process of games rather than descriptions of them.
Frequently applying the hero's journey to himself felt a bit self-serving.
Bleszinski's description of the early history of video games is a bit off. For example, he says the video game crash of 1983 affected the whole planet, but it was really isolated to the console market of North America.
The glossary seemed very generalized and unnecessary considering the target audience.
The audiobook reader is a bit amateur and mispronounces several words and industry terms.