The Dream Architects

July 1, 2020
A rags-to-riches story from the international video game industry. Polfeldt, the managing director of Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment, shows how far optimism and perseverance can take you in the gaming industry. But if the author's experience is the industry norm, then being a game developer is nowhere near as fun as it seems. Polfeldt is an art school-trained illustrator who got a job at a small Stockholm game-design company at the height of the tech startup craze two decades ago. It was a time when, as the author admits, anyone with a pulse could get a job in tech. (He was hired as a game designer after revealing in the interview that he lacked experience.) As we learn, the tech industry is a notoriously fickle environment where employees get fired as arbitrarily as they get hired. After years of futilely working for small startups staffed by a revolving cast of bitter, socially inept tech nerds, Polfeldt's company, Massive Entertainment, got their big break with a game called "World in Conflict." Eventually, Massive was bought by Ubisoft, the company responsible for the globally popular Assassin's Creed game series. Later, Polfeldt's team designed a series of David Lynch-inspired "chapters" for "Assassin's Creed: Revelations" in which the central hero walks around in a coma. "Most people hated it," admits Polfeldt--though, in the bizarre gaming universe, it somehow led to more lucrative projects. The author is a fluid writer, but his lively prose style can't hide the decided lack of dramatic interest throughout. Gaming insiders may (or may not) find his effusive descriptions of office politics and the production process fascinating, but it's difficult to imagine a general audience warming to the narrative, the tensest moment of which comes when Polfeldt nearly drowns while diving in Corsica. A well-written but plodding memoir that doesn't live up to the visionary promise of its title.

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June 29, 2020
Art erupts from the crassest of commerce in this rollicking memoir by a video-game studio chief. Polfeldt recounts his path from being a dreamy Swedish art-school grad to head of game developer Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment subsidiary, maker of mega-seller The Division, in which special-ops fighters battle bad guys in a plague-ridden Manhattan. He paints the industry as Hollywood without the movie stars (his meeting with James Cameron to explore an Avatar-based game is a study in unspoken power-plays), but still full of temperamental creatives—software engineers, artists, scriptwriters—whose egos need massaging and executives who put profits ahead of quality. (“veryone knows it's great, but no one wants to pay for it,” says one suit of a gorgeous but mediocre-selling war game.) Amid the money-grubbing and high-pressure coding crises Polfeldt recounts miracles of immersive visual art and epic storytelling his team managed to pull off (such as jumping in at the last minute to help finish an Assassin’s Creed game called Revelations). Polfeldt delivers insightful commentary on gaming tech, as well as piquant character sketches. (“He was a smoker, the kind who smokes with no guilt, as if to signal I am killing myself and I like it,” he writes of a “closer” sent to crack the whip on a project.) The result is an entertaining and nuanced look at the human side of digital media.

August 1, 2020
Readers expecting a history of gaming will be pleased to discover this entertaining autobiography from a celebrated pioneer instrumental in the development of Assassin's Creed, The Division, Avatar, and other popular games. Born in the late '60s, Polfeldt grew up in Sweden wearing black and hanging out with his fellow weirdos, got his master's degree in painting, accidentally wandered into a job at a web agency, met some programmers?and then his real life began. Dividing his story into two parts, 1998-2008 and 2008-2016, Polfeldt shares insights about his creative process, collaborations, business dealings, marketing pitches, celebrity anecdotes, triumphs, tragedies, and personal adventures that parallel the development of video gaming from kid stuff to a multimillion-dollar entertainment industry. A great storyteller, Polfeldt comes across as truthful and self-effacing, provides ample context and juicy details, and occasionally wanders into entertaining sidebars. His culminating chapter poetically sums up his life thus far as an artist, emphasizing his never-ending search for magic and excitement. Polfeldt is a dreamer indeed, and gamers are lucky to be invited into his creative worlds.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2020

This detailed and witty autobiography chronicles the experiences of Polfeldt, who is the current managing director of Massive Entertainment, a video game studio that has produced some of the world's most influential video games, including Tom Clancy's The Division. The author is working with movie director James Cameron on a series of video games that will be released together with the upcoming sequels to Avatar. Polfeldt grew up and currently lives in Sweden. He relates how, as a child, he had an interest in art, particularly painting, and describes himself as one of the "geeks who liked to draw in class." Although he eventually obtained a master's degree in the subject, he realized he didn't want to spend his life selling his own art. In his telling, he soon discovered that his talent for drawing could be used in the creation of computer games, and with the help of his people skills and unusual business savvy, he rose to his current position. VERDICT Because of the current relative lack of stories by video gamers, this book will not only appeal to gaming enthusiasts, but will make an excellent addition to an academic library's business section. Recommended as well for large public libraries.--Steve Dixon, State Univ. of New York, Delhi

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