It has been revealed that Cliff Bleszinski, the design director of Epic Games between 1992 to 2012, said after he left Epic Games in 2012 that he thought he was done with the games industry and development. All was revealed in an interview with Destructoid:
“It was a combination of gamers feeling jaded, as well as working with some very talented people who were also very jaded. I could pitch the most amazing idea to anybody back when I was at Epic toward the end, and they’d be like ‘I don’t buy it.’ I don’t mean to slag anyone, but people get jaded in this business.”
Epic Games were responsible for some of the best video game series we’ve seen for many years including the Unreal Tournament series and the Gears of War series, both highly regarded as games that set trends and broke boundaries for the time of their releases.
After leaving Epic Games and staying away from the industry for a few years, he announced the end of his retirement and started a new development studio, Boss Key Productions. Boss Key have just announced their first game, LawBreakers, a free-to-play arena shooter that is due out in 2016. Cliff also had to defend the “free-to-play” model of his new game.
“We’re still playing around with the monetization model. We want it to be positive. A lot of core gamers hear free-to-play and it’s like feeding a child asparagus. There is a bad reputation to it and I get it.”
He then went on to say:
“And we’re not ready to rule out the idea that maybe if you give us $20 bucks and you can have early access and then when the game launches you get a special pack that other people pay $20 bucks for. How you do free-to-play is unique for each product, and we want do to do it in a good way that makes gamers happy. We’re open to unique ideas for how we get this game to market.”
