Cliff Bleszinski Says He’s Done With Disc-Based Titles

The former design director and lead game designer for Epic Games let the world know he's done with disc-based gaming and that he doesn't want Gears of War to be his legacy.

Gamers should recognize Cliff Bleszinski as the lead designer from the Gears of War trilogy and for Epic Games' Unreal series. His history at Epic Games indicated that he was one of the people most responsible for the Unreal Engine, which has been outsourced to countless games and other development studios throughout the years. In 2012, Bleszinski shocked the gaming world by announcing his departure from Epic Games.

Gamasutra has released an interview made with Cliff Bleszinski in which he chimed in about his opinions of the current state of the gaming industry, his opinions of previous events and his future plans.

"I'm worried if I'll be miserable enough to make something compelling again." Cliff said to Gamasutra. This statement was made in reference to the fact that Bleszinski was in the midst of divorce while working on the original Gears of War title (the name 'Marcus Fenix' was meant to coincide with the changes Cliff was making to his own life at the time).

Bleszinski said that he originally pitched Gears of War as 'Band of Brothers' mixed with a war against monsters. While the first title of the series did not convey many forms of emotional attachment to its characters (especially Carmine), Gears of War 2 and 3 did. On the first Gears of War title, Bleszinski jested "yet somehow we landed on 'Predator'... the characters being all 'buff and manly', I'd never planned on that."

Cliff Bleszinski claimed that he left Epic Game for multiple reasons, indicating that he sold much of the stock that he owned within the company and that he was uninspired to continue making games with a studio that changed so much over the years.

"PC is where I'm going to wind up. That's where the community is," Bleszinski stated. "I'll never make another disc-based game for the rest of my career, and they're trying to woo buyers from Target and Walmart?"

This was made in reference to the surplus of retailer-specific pre-order bonuses which has captivated the market, which isolates gamers and forces them into going to a certain store in order to buy a game at that location simply due to the piece of downloadable pre-order content the retailer has negotiated to offer with the game's publisher company.

What do you think of Cliff's claims? Is he on the right path, or is his reasoning way off?