THE DREAM ARCHITECTS

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.