Cliff Bleszinski

"Level Designers are the ones that are responsible for taking all of the content that the rest of the team produces and meld it into a cohesive, fast, enjoyable experience. They're 1 part architect, 1 part artist, 1 part game designer, and 1 part beta tester!"

– Interview with Tolstiy's Place^[4]

Cliff Bleszinski (formerly known as Cliffy B or CliffB, formerly known as Grand Master Ice Shaft) is a retired game developer known for his stint as a lead level designer and later game designer for Epic Games, playing a key role in the development of both the Unreal and Gears of War franchises.^[5] He was also the founder of his own studio, Boss Key Productions.

Bio[]

Clifford Bleszinski was born in 1975 and lived in Andover, Massachusetts before moving to La Verne, California at the age of 15. During his time in La Verne, he released his first title, named The Palace of Deceit: Dragon's Plight (1991), an adventure title he started at the age of 15, through his self-owned company Game Syndicate Productions.^[6]^[7]^[8] Programmed in Visual Basic, its second version came out when he was 16.^[8]

He then sent his next game, Dare to Dream (1993), to Tim Sweeney, CEO of the then-named Epic MegaGames.^[2]^[9] Despite the game not achieving sales expectations, Bleszinski then went on to work on Jazz Jackrabbit, a platformer co-developed by demoscene coder Arjan Brussee.^[9]^[10] The title, which was released in 1994, became Epic's biggest selling game at the time, earning him enough money to get his first apartment and car.^[9]^[11]

He has been with the company since, working as the lead designer for several franchises such as Jazz Jackrabbit and especially Unreal and Gears of War. Cliff became less involved with Unreal's later installments (such as Unreal II, UT2004 and UT3) and instead worked as the lead designer for the Gears of War franchise.

In addition to his work on the Unreal series, Bleszinski served as creative consultant on Rune^[12], and as lead designer on the first three installments of the Gears of War franchise.^[13] Gears of War evolved out of the development of what was going to be a game called Unreal Warfare.^[14] As Bleszinski explained in a speech at GDC 2007 entitled "Designing Gears of War: Iteration Wins", the game started out as another first-person shooter in the Unreal universe.^[15] Over time, however, influenced by the cover mechanic in Namco's 2003 game Kill Switch and the third-person Resident Evil 4, Unreal Warfare evolved into the game known as Gears of War.^[16]

On April 12, 2010, he appeared on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where he showed the debut trailer for Gears of War 3 and cited Space Invaders as the game that initially inspired him.^[17]^[18]

After 20 years, Cliff announced his departure from Epic Games on October 3, 2012, saying he had been making video games since he was a teen and wanted to take a break.^[19]^[20] Prior to exiting the company, though, he pitched a remaster of Unreal, citing the game as containing "a lot of magic".^[21] According to a 2015 interview, his original intention was to retire permanently:

"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'"

– Cliff Bleszinski^[22]

On June 30, 2014, Cliff announced on Twitter that he was "coming out of retirement to make video games again" and would be unveiling his next project in the next week.^[23] The new game, a free-to-play, PC-focused arena shooter code-named BlueStreak, would be published by Nexon and developed by his new studio, Boss Key Productions, which he co-founded with Brussee the same year.^[24]^[25] A year later, Bleszinski revealed that the arena shooter would be called LawBreakers.^[26]. Eventually, members of Boss Key went on to work for Epic Games, something that didn't sit well with him.^[27] After the failure of LawBreakers and the closure of Boss Key productions, he retired from the gaming industry.^[28]

Cliff Bleszinski was offered an opportunity to work on the Silent Hill franchise by Hideo Kojima, vice president of Konami Digital Entertainment. "I was flattered but declined", he wrote on Twitter.^[29] In May 2016, he joined the board of advisers for Fig, a mixed crowd-funding/investment platform for video games.^[30]

Involvement with the Unreal series[]

Around the time of Jazz Jackrabbit, he teamed up with Sweeney and James Schmalz of Digital Extremes in order to create what would be known as Unreal. The first demo came in 1995, the completed game in 1998,^[31], the expansion-turned-standalone Unreal Tournament came in 1999, and the rest is history.^[32]

Cliff was the lead level designer on Unreal and contributed to Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali, Unreal Tournament, Unreal II: The Awakening, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Unreal Tournament 2004. During a time, he also maintained a space on PlanetUnreal called CliffyB's Ownage, dedicated to third-party map recommendations from him. This feature eventually made it into Unreal Tournament 2004 itself, which has an "Ownage" section in the Community menu.

List of contributions[]

Unreal[]

Fusion Mappack:

Unreal: Special Edition:

DmCreek

Additionally he made the cut maps Morose, Soledad and DmSolaris.

Unreal Tournament[]

Epic Bonus Pack:

DM-HealPod][ (with Alan 'Talisman' Willard)
DM-Mojo][
DM-Shrapnel][

Bonus Pack 4 (Christmas 2000):

DOM-Bullet

Rocket Arena: UT maps:

RA-CliffyB

Console-exclusive maps:

It's worth noting that the console maps Dust, Gearbox, Girder, Google and Paladin are all based off the arenas from the Rocket Arena: UT map RA-CliffyB. Additionally he made the cut maps CTF-Doria and DOM-Cathode.

Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali[]

Foundry Tarydium Plant Bounds of Foundry

Unreal Championship[]

CTF-Chrome DM-Asbestos DM-Curse3 (with Chris Perna)

Unreal Tournament 2003[]

CTF-Chrome
DM-Asbestos
DM-Curse3 (with Chris Perna)

Epic Bonus Pack maps:

DM-Icetomb (with Chris Perna)
DM-IronDeity (with Chris Perna)

Unreal Tournament 2004[]

CTF-Chrome DM-Asbestos DM-Curse4 (with Chris Perna)	DM-Icetomb (with Chris Perna) DM-IronDeity (with Chris Perna)

Other[]

While every map in Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict and Unreal Tournament 3 is credited to Epic Games as a whole, some of his creations did appear in these games: DM-Tempest and CTF-Gauntlet were remade for UC2 as DM-Tempest and CTF-Gauntlet][, while UT3 shipped a version of DM-Turbine as DM-Turbine in the Titan Pack. And his map DmElsinore was intended to be remade for UC2 as DM-Elsinore][.

Trivia[]

The nickname "CliffyB" was originally a derogatory name given to him by "some jock kid" when he was a shy teenager; he then took it and developed a tougher persona around it.^[2] However, in an interview with MTV in 2008, he expressed a desire to retire the moniker, saying it's "time to grow up a bit".^[33]
Early on his career, Cliff used the nickname "Grand Master Ice Shaft", later on, he changed his nickname to "Dude Huge". This nickname can be seen as the author name in some of the Unreal Beta maps.
His favorite map in Unreal Tournament 2003 was between DM-Antalus and BR-Skyline, and his favorite mutator was Quad Jump:

"I'd have to say it is a tossup between BR-Skyline and DM-Antalus. The ways that skilled players move around in Antalus is nothing short of jaw dropping! (...) Quadjump baby! Once you try it, you'll never go back. "

– Cliff Bleszinski^[34]

One of his favorite mods in 2004 was Robostorm.^[35] Other mods of his liking were Clone Bandits, Air Buccaneers and Alien Swarm.^[36]
He once said that he would have loved to see the original Unreal adapted as a movie.^[37]

"I'd love to see some of the mythos behind the first Unreal envisioned as a sci-fi epic. Tough prison gal crashes on Na Pali along with other nastier convicts. She's heralded as the savior of the Nali, etc... and she just wants to get out of dodge. Then there's the Skaarj to deal with..."

– Cliff Bleszinski

One of the criticisms Cliff had regarding 2004 was the huge variety, which in his eyes is counterproductive.^[36]

"I wish we actually had, like, less variety. I know that sounds funny, but it like, you know, there’s so many game types, there’s so many mutators, and there’s so many different ways to play that it’s like…there’s a certain beauty to like a consistent experience. I mean, you go to McDonalds in Texas, you go to a McDonalds in Tokyo, your cheeseburger’s going to be the same damn thing. And that’s part of the reason why you have McDonalds everywhere is because people, to a certain degree, they like to know what they’re going to get. And that’s partially what helps Counter-Strike be so huge. You know, you play Counter-Strike in Seoul, you play Counter-Strike in Sunnyvale and it’s pretty much Counter-Strike. It’s the same thing. It’s not low-grav one minute and, you know, a different game type completely the next. There’s a little variety in there, but it’s consistent. That’s something I hope we can find a balance of in the future, you know, as far as having that consistency, but still allowing that sense of variety that the gamers expect. There’s no way, you know, if we do Unreal Tournament 2005, or whatever it is, we can just keep adding game types. I mean, we gotta start consolidating at some point."

– Cliff Bleszinski

Around the early days of Unreal Tournament, he confessed he liked its arch-rival Quake III Arena, praising the character work from Paul Steed and Kenneth Scott. On consoles, he preferred the "games one can play with their friends" such as Mario Party 2, Chu Chu Rocket and Soul Calibur, while also calling Parappa the Rapper, UmJammer Lammy, and Bust a Groove his "guilty pleasures".^[38] In an interview he also said that Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 had some "very, very impressive work", lauding its architecture.^[39]
He praised a 3dsMax recreation of NyLeve's Falls and the fan recreation Unreal Redux in a now-deleted tweet.