Cliff Bleszinski has “hope” he may one day return to game development
The former developer feels inspired by the success of smaller games
It sounds like Gears of War director Cliff Bleszinksi would like to return to game development at some point in the future.
In a recent post yesterday to his Facebook page, Bleszinski writes that he's been "working through the Boss Key part of my memoir and it's been pretty rough, facing all of the mistakes I made over the 3+ years I had that studio." Boss Key Studios was the Bleszinski led development studio which shut down in May 2018 after the commercial failures of LawBreakers and Radical Heights.
Bleszinski goes on to reflect on the failure of the studio, writing that "we should have started with a small, indie game FIRST before trying to make the shooter we ultimately did." He goes on to say that "the marketing from our publisher was lackluster, and that's putting it lightly. Putting it on PS4 instead of [Xbox One] was a mistake when I already had a core base of fans on Xbox."
"In the meantime I am finding myself actually having a slight itch to scratch to maybe poke around and see about making a little game," Bleszinski continues. "I have some ideas kicking around, so we'll see.
But it appears Bleszinski is feeling pretty inspired by the success of smaller games. "I've found myself madly in love with smaller games these days, and the success of Fall Guys and Among Us give me hope that not everything needs to be insane AAA that requires crazy crunch that ruins families and mental health on a 100m budget," he writes.
"Games like these give me hope that I may one day dip my toe back into the biz, ever so slowly and cautiously."
This all comes after some pretty heated comments from Bleszinski about game development in the wake of Boss Key's closure. After saying that he would "NEVER" be making another game ever again in 2018, it would seem as though smaller games might be tempting Bleskinski back into the fold.
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Hirun Cryer is a freelance reporter and writer with Gamesradar+ based out of U.K. After earning a degree in American History specializing in journalism, cinema, literature, and history, he stepped into the games writing world, with a focus on shooters, indie games, and RPGs, and has since been the recipient of the MCV 30 Under 30 award for 2021. In his spare time he freelances with other outlets around the industry, practices Japanese, and enjoys contemporary manga and anime.