ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with gaming industry icon Cliff Bleszinski about his career over the years. Bleszinski discussed the creation and fall of LawBreakers, befriending Hideo Kojima, and more.
Tyler Treese: You had such an incredible career in video games and you started so young. When you first got to Epic MegaGames back then, Jazz Jackrabbit was one of the first big games you were involved in. Where do you view that game’s place in history? I still see him brought up once in a while, and it’s a very fun part of that mascot era in the ’90s that we saw.
Cliff Bleszinski: Yeah, and we’ll always have Bubsy too. [Laughs]. And remember Gex, voiced by Dana Gould? Why do I remember that? That’s why I can’t sleep. [Laughs]. The thing is, with my restaurants, I’m a partner in the Raleigh Beer Garden, which has 390 beers on tap — world record … that’s right, I said it! The thing is, my business partner’s this large, charismatic Irishman. Back in the day when we used to go really hard, he approached me with this idea like, “Raleigh needs a beer garden.”
And the thing is finding an emerging market and riding it up. Arjan [Brussee], who’s my partner on Jazz Jackrabbit and Tim Sweeney, we all were realizing character action platform games were so big — Sonic Mario, etc. But there wasn’t really anything like that on the PC. Commander Keen did quite well for its software, but there really was kind of a giant gaping hole there. And it was our job to fill that hole, and that just sounded vaguely sexual and I apologize for that.
Well, you definitely filled the hole. You worked on the Unreal franchise and Unreal Tournament became this huge behemoth for multiplayer, but I feel like a lot of people don’t know how great the first Unreal was. Do you feel like that’s just waiting to be remastered and experienced by old and new fans alike?
Well, there’s a whole Twitter conversation about this where Nightdive Studios was offering to remaster the first Unreal. I reposted it, blah, blah, blah. Nightdive emailed Tim Sweeney and Tim Sweeney has longer distance plans for Unreal, which I’m not going to disclose because that’s his business and his IP, but the thing is, when Tencent bought out my shares at Epic and I realized I had enough money to not have to argue with programmers about creative decisions anymore and I was happily engaged to my now wonderful wife — well, she’s always been wonderful, but anyway, the last thing I said as I did my departing speech at Epic was, “Please remaster the first Unreal.” It’s one of those things … Gears of War was about order versus chaos.
And the thing is, the first Unreal was chaos that had come together. We had all these different texture sets, all these environments and everything created by a myriad of different designers and artists and things like that. We had to come up with an idea of how to make this all cohesive. And it was like, “Okay, this is the Bermuda Triangle of the galaxy. It’s got such a big gravitational pull that ships crash on it all the time. That’s why we have all these random-ass aliens in it.” So the thing is though, if you go back the game, it really had this sense of magic. The level I did, Vortex Rikers and then eventually the Rrajigar Mines where you had the introduction of the Skaarj alien where the hallway basically shuts down and the lights go “juh-junk,” which was inspired by the movie Event Horizon, for the record.
That’s the thing I also learned from being a pop culture addict for years and reading every issue of Entertainment Weekly for 20 years: don’t show the monster until you absolutely have to. That’s why Jaws worked. Bruce, the shark, was broken. What’s scarier is up here, not necessarily what’s in your face. Stephen King famously said, “When the lightning crashes and the door opens and you see a 20 foot bug, you feel relieved, because you’re expecting a 40 foot bug.” I always called it “Monster Foreplay.” You just tease a little bit of it here, a little bit of there. It’s the first Alien, right? Then, when the reveal happens, sometimes it’s disappointing, sometimes it’s terrifying. But pacing, timing, cadence — that’s so much of entertainment from what I’ve learned over the years.
I was curious — you mentioned Gears of War. Do you have any involvement in the upcoming movie as a producer or anything?
Absolutely not. Nobody’s reached out to me and it’s weird. Gears 4 and 5 were really, really good games. My wife still plays them on her stream — twitch.tv/l337lauren. But the thing is, they kind of lacked a little bit of the heart that the originals had, in my opinion — 1, 2, and 3. But that’s the thing … I’ve been open to consulting and that one of the things I do miss about the video game industry, and I am doing consulting on other projects right now, is getting a build and just firing it up and typing up notes and feeling the changes in it. That was one of the things I was very, very good at.
Just from a PR standpoint, if Microsoft would do something and just have me play a build, give some feedback, and then do a press release, I’m on stage for a press conference, the internet would explode. Gears is a big franchise, but mark my words, you look at Minecraft and Fortnite — those are exponentially bigger. I think Microsoft is just doubling down on Game Pass, which is the ultimate games-as-a-service service.
What’s been interesting is we’ve been seeing Dave Bautista very much campaigning for the role. He hasn’t been contacted either. Do you think he would make a good Marcus Fenix? I think he has really shown lately that he has that range and the vulnerability for the character.
Yeah. Marcus is like Bruce Willis in Die Hard — everything he touches seems to turn to crap. I used to say back in the day, I didn’t want like a pro wrestler to play Marcus. But Bautista has emerged from the pro wrestling circuit and has shown his range in Blade Runner 2049 and Knock At the Cabin and Guardians of the Galaxy and whatnot. He literally did that cosplay — he’s wearing the armor that he posted on social media, and he has my full support as … people consider me to be “the father of Gears.” I would love for nothing more than to consider consulting on the movie.
Gears is ultimately about the horrors of war. It’s about sadness and the first Gears emerged from the fall of my first marriage, which you can read about in my book, Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games. [Laughs]. Which I conveniently have a copy of right here.
A great point you make and something that I feel has been overlooked when people speak to the legacy of Gears is the depth to the story. There’s a lot of heavy themes tackled and it gets very emotional. As a teenager, the very first game I cried during was Gears 2 with Dom’s wife. Now I cry at everything. Do you feel like that got overlooked? Everybody kind of gets distracted by the awesome guns and chainsaws, but there’s so much depth to the world and the story.
Well, it was a thinly-veiled metaphor for the Bush administration’s war for oil, right? Literally, the opening shot is those emulsion pumps, right? That’s the thing is, at the time, I wanted to make sure it had heart. I wanted to try and move people, right? You get the visceral chainsawing a person in half and curb stomping them and things like that. Yeah, that’s fine, that’s cool, but the thing was that I wanted to move people. I’m getting that post-Gears validation. Once in a while, after I have a mimosa, I’ll go on YouTube and I’ll look up the Maria death scene or Dom’s death scene and things like that. Almost all the comments are like, “This broke me. Oh my God, I cried so hard. I had to put the controller down after this.”
And much like Vincent van Gogh, it’s that late stage validation. I believe that, sadly enough, a lot of good art comes from torment and sadness in one’s life. The whole story of how Scrapper came about was losing my Australian shepherd. I stop by my shrine of him behind me and say hi to him once a week and I still miss him. Finding my Pomsky lady and finding puppy love again … it’s one of those things that, out of the death of my Aussie, came this inspiration. I think, as a creative, when I had my own studio — Boss Key Productions — we made that game LawBreakers, which was really, really solid, and then Radical Heights, which was kind of half of a game, but it was really, really fun. LawBreakers was cool, but I was really happy at the time. It was a multiplayer shooter. But I think there’s something to be said about suffering and art. Cutting off your ear as you’re painting.[Laughs].
You mentioned that Scrapper came from a very sad place with your dog.
Well, my wife and I are actually making a separate IP that’s called Effigy. It’s a story. You ever see the old Farrah Fawcett movie, the Burning Bed?
I haven’t.
She’s basically abused by her alcoholic husband. Then eventually, one time, he gets drunk and she lights his bed on fire and kills him. It’s a revenge story., and Effigy is basically that for the cosplay generation, where you have this girl who lives in suburban Pittsburgh: purple hair, glasses, does cosplay. One day she finds these three mannequins that are for sale to put on her cosplay on to mount in her basement, and that’s the only place the husband will allow her to have her creative space. He gets really, really abusive and eventually it goes off the fricking rails in a good way. We have the treatment and we’re considering, “Do we shop that around as a script or a comic?”
And we’ll see. But that’s the thing is, the last tattoo that I got is Harold and the Purple Crayon saying “Create.” And since I’m a lefty, it points to my left hand. The weirdest thing is, partnering with my wife and the whole cosplay abuse project … I believe, as a dude, if you’re going to do something like that, you need to have a woman’s perspective. 100%. One of the things I’ve been doing with it is using AI art to generate some samples for the pitch deck, and AI art’s getting really, really weird, but I’m not going to go off the, the rails with that one — I just like creating worlds. When I was at Boss Key, we made some solid stuff, but we had a chance to work in the Aliens franchise. That’s one of the very, very few existing IPs that I would ever consider working on — that and Firefly. Pitching that to my team was a complicated meeting. Then Disney bought Fox and then everything got effed. So it was what it was, but live and let learn.
You mentioned Lawbreakers. Over the past couple months, you were telling fans to stay tuned. It looked like somebody was potentially trying to revive it. I don’t think you have anything to say regarding that, but is there anything you’d like to say to the fans of LawBreakers? The game burned brightly and wasn’t out for long, but there was a really solid, fun core and people still think fondly of that, despite it not blowing up into a huge success story. So what would you tell that community that still has the fond memories of LawBreakers?
I really, really appreciate the support from the bottom of my heart. We worked our butts off in that game and I believe we made a really, really cool game. At the end of the day, we just got curb stomped by Blizzard. The hero shooter genre was flooded at the time. The marketing for it … when it was on, Nexon did a great job. When it was off, it was off. My polarizing personality didn’t necessarily help with it. My friend has his own studio and he’s considering doing a revival, but Nexon’s being really, really weird about the rights and everything. I mean, they spent $40 million on it, which is a lot of money. But for a AAA video game, it’s really not that much.
Call of Duty probably costs $200 billion to make these days, and then don’t get into the marketing costs. When that studio failed and LawBreakers … we were watching the numbers steadily decline, it broke my heart, because my Australian Shepherd back there couldn’t walk anymore and he was declining. A lot of the internet thought it was just hilarious that cocky game designer guy’s studio is failing. And it’s like, “Dude, I tried. At the end of the day, I woke up and I made something, you know?” And that’s when I get defiant on the internet. It’s far easier to criticize than create. Sometimes when people criticize me, I’m like, “What the hell have you ever done in your life?”
I had an 80 person studio that I owned. The people who support me, like my community — 90% of them are absolutely wonderful. That’s why I engage on Twitter — it’ll always be Twitter to me. Troll culture has gotten exponentially worse. I’m proud of what we did, and I always will be. I didn’t take a salary for two years when the studio was open and just worked my butt off on it. The team’s great. I’m still friends and in touch with many of them. Making video games is hard. That’s why I’m happy to consult right now, because I never want to be a CEO or lead designer anytime soon because, as Danny Glover said — can I swear?
Of course.
As Danny Glover famously said in Lethal Weapon, “I’m too old for this shit.”
Speaking of LawBreakers’ release, you had such a loyal audience on Xbox. Do you feel like that coming out on PlayStation and not having that Xbox release at the same time kind of hurt?
Yeah, I publicly said that that was a mistake. Arjan Brussee, my COO and the guy I made Jazz Jack Rabbit with and then eventually founded the studio with, he looked at the numbers and saw that the install base for the PlayStation at the time was exponentially bigger than the Xbox at the time. But my fanbase from the Gears franchise felt betrayed.
I’ve apologized numerous times on social media for that, and that could have been a major factor. At the end of the day, we were a small studio and we only had enough resources to do … it’s a miracle we pulled off making the game on PC and having it run on a potato, and then also to do it on PlayStation. So to do it on Xbox … we just didn’t have the resources, but we should have prioritized the Xbox. And I’ve apologized profusely for that, and I’ll continue to apologize, but, you know, hindsight’s 20/20. It is what it is.
You mentioned trolls and them going for you. You’re not afraid to share your confidence, but you’ve also been very upfront and open about any failures or any lessons learned. In your book, you have to get very honest. A lot of professionals shy away from being that transparent with their thoughts. What has led to you being so open and honest? I think it makes you such a fascinating figure to follow.
Well, I mean, when in doubt, be yourself. You look at creatives or celebrities — and I consider myself a D-list celebrity in a D-list town — it’s the PR people, the handlers, the managers, and the agents that filter the statements. I mean, even Will Smith had Wild Wild West, right? I’d like to believe that my batting average in regards to things that I’ve worked on creatively is pretty solid. I usually say, “Nine times out of 10, I believe I know a good thing when I see it.” I just … I can’t not be me, you know? Especially after a couple cocktails.
Transparency, especially in this age of social media and everything, I believe, is super essential. To some extent on Twitter, I’m playing an exact kind of exaggerated version of myself, you know? But you look at wrestling or anything like that — you’re kind of rock stars. You’re kind of playing a bit of a persona, but also, at the end of the day, you want to be able to sit down and have an interview and just talk about your personal life if you’re comfortable with it, and be yourself. And that was the thing about my memoir, Control Freak — it’s on Audible, also.
There’s been many books written about video games, and they, but a lot of them read like stereo instructions. I wanted to make this deeply personal so a person who doesn’t play video games or has children that enjoy games or whatever could identify with my hero’s journey — thanks Joseph Campbell — and see what I went through to be where I am at this point in my life. It’s similar to The Social Network where if you’re not even on Facebook, you can appreciate the drama that goes on there. If you watch Moneyball and don’t even know who Billy Beane is, you can appreciate what they went through in order to build up the Oakland A’s and eventually lead the Red Sox to their first World Series in years, right? So a good story is a good story, no matter what. At the end of the day, like I said, we just want to catch some feels.
One project that I saw you pop up in that I was very surprised at and liked was the Atari 50 game that Digital Eclipse put out. How cool is it to see them really putting in the work for preservation and preserving the context of where these games are placed in the history? How did you kind of get involved in that project and what are your kind of thoughts on games preservation? With online-only experiences, digital-only games, and marketplaces, there’s a whole conversation to be had there.
A friend of mine wrote me into that, because the first time I realized I wanted to make video games was when I was six years old. My friends had the Atari 2600, and I saw Space Invaders, and I was like, “You can move stuff on your TV.” Atari had such a huge impact and they did such a brilliant job with that, where you could play the games but also see the behind-the-scenes and in all the interviews, the people who worked on them. But I think video game preservation is a huge issue in the industry right now, because I think games -as-a-service … I understand why we’re doing it right now as an industry, but also, to some extent, I think it’s a bit of a mistake.
It’s kind of nickel-and-diming the customers, but also, you don’t have a cartridge. You don’t have a CD. You don’t have physical media anymore. So it’s the same thing. Like when you rent a movie on Amazon Prime, do you own this? They could revoke that at any given moment. That’s the thing — there’s the video Game History Museum in Dallas — I think it’s in Dallas. I met up with those guys at one point. But I think that’s really a major issue for the industry in showing off the evolution and also the behind-the-scenes and the hard work of the developers that busted their butts to make these products — that’s also a crucial part of the story. But yeah, it really is a concern of mine. And I totally get where you’re coming from.
You’ve talked about networking and the people you’ve become friends with — I had to ask you, because you’ve been open and shared photos of you drinking with Hideo Kojima, how did that friendship take place over the years?
We were on a panel, I think, at E3 at one point, and he was showing off a trailer from one of his new Metal Gear games. Kojima is so film-oriented, right? He’s great. But the thing is, he’s so deep in his cutscenes, like 45-minute cut scenes. Like, dude, just go make a movie already, buddy! The thing we were on, this panel, he showed off a cutscene and I showed up with a live demonstration of Gears, and we wound up sitting next to each other. My Japanese is terrible, his English is uneven, but we wound up just getting this kind of bond. He was the one, as my studio was crumbling … I took my in-laws, uh, to Japan a while back.
LawBreakers had come out, the numbers were dwindling, and I went out for dinner and drinks with him, and Death Stranding had not shipped yet. And he looks at me and says, “You did something I haven’t done yet. You shipped a game with your own studio.” And that encouraged me to keep going as much as possible. As much as Boss Key failed, I’m still proud of what we did, but he’s a unique character.
Do you feel like there’s a common bond or some sort of connection between creatives? No matter what area you’re specializing in, there’s still that spark and that ability to create from nothing and to entertain others, to bring joy to others like that has to be some kind of commonality that brings you all together.
Yeah. People feel the vibe, and it’s like, once people know that people have done something with their life and they’re hopefully not dying five miles from where they were born, right? I’m friends with Bryan Burk. He was J.J. Abrams go-to producer for decades — Star Wars, Star Trek, Alias, etc. And the thing is, we were working on a project together, which is kind of in limbo right now. Spoiler: it was the Dragon one. He told me one time on Zoom, looked me in the eyes and said, “Sometimes you just will things into existence.” And I think there’s something in the ether in that people who are creatives or do interesting stuff somehow find a way of finding each other.
I’m friends with Alison Haislip, the actress. One time I’m in Los Angeles, she brings me to drinks with Zach Levi, who’s done some weird stuff online lately. Then there’s this beautiful red-haired girl just sitting there, Scottish. And she’s like, “Oh, you should see this.” Takes out her phone. “Oh, here’s this upcoming role that I’m doing with James Gunn.” I’m like, “I know James Gunn. Okay.” She’s showing me early images of hers Nebula. She’s like, “Yeah, they had to shave my head, and James made me bick it every day and I was crying when it happened.” My wife’s like, “But you look like you have a full head of hair.”
And she’s like, “They made a wig of my own hair.” And she pulls it up a little bit. You couldn’t tell, right? But she came to town for a GalaxyCon, and we had lunch together and got the celebrity photo out. She’s just super cool, smart, and sweet. Apart from creatives finding each other is that knowing that I make IP that one day, I could hopefully cast them. I was able to cast Ice-T in Gears of War as well as doing a trailer for LawBreakers, and it’s one of those things like infiltrating the hip-hop world, infiltrating Broadway and infiltrating the comic books publishing world.
I got a text from my agent a while back from UTA but Simon and Schuster’s my publisher, he’s like, “Oh, we represent Terry Crews also. He’s here and he is a fan of your work.” And so now I’m texting Terry Crews and being like, “Terry, if this becomes animated, you could totally play Tank — the kind of pit bull mix in the comic.” Already thinking about potential casting, if this becomes an animated series. I just like knowing cool people — you seem pretty cool too, for the record.
[Laughs]. Thank you. My last question for you, just to follow up on something you said earlier, is that your days of being a studio lead or a lead creative on like a game are done. You were talking about the Alien franchise and how that didn’t come to be. If a dream project like that came about, would you still have part of you that wants to work on something like an Alien game? Maybe not in the creative director role, but maybe in some different type of position?
Dude, I am down to consult on anything. I recently had a phone call with Snoop Dogg’s people, and they want to make a video game. And I’m like, “Okay.” I’ve been a lifelong fan of Snoop. Also, he’s partnering with Tupac’s estate and I literally have a key chain of Tupac on my manbag right over there. Kid Cudi, also, is considering making a video game. I’m like, “Okay.” And I’m infiltrating hip-hop, I guess. [Laughs.] I am okay with doing things on my own terms.
That’s the thing I tell people about video games. You look at people like Tim Schafer and Randy Pitchford and Vince Zampella — they’re still out there crushing it. I’ve seen so many game developers that do the whole Obama thing. When Obama first went into office, he had brown hair, and then when he left, full white, right? Sometimes that’s actually stress that does that to you. And I got a few grays here, and I’m trying to keep this brown, you know what I’m saying?
