Cliff Bleszinski pushes dynamic, less-scripted games

Cliff Bleszinski left Epic Games in October, and since then he's had a lot of time to think about what will come next. The Gears of War designer said he will start a new studio eventually, and when he does, he may be looking more to Minecraft as a design inspiration.

One of the last projects Bleszinski touched at Epic Games was Fortnite, an upcoming base building survival game. He told VentureBeat he would like to keep moving in the direction of more dynamic, player-driven games.

"Your game should yield lots of awesome YouTube videos," he said. "Moving forward, the type of game I want to build would not be this super-linear Gears or Uncharted type of campaign game. It would be something that’s much more free-flowing in regards to the number of systems that work together to create new and emergent gameplay."

But where and with whom will he make it?

"The thing is, I would want to get back to the triple-A space eventually, but the last thing I would want to do--and no offense meant to Curt Schilling [of 38 Studios] and John Romero [of Ion Storm]--is to do what those guys did," Bleszinski said. 'Let’s throw 300 bodies at it! Sure, we’ll just make it work!' That’s the equivalent of taking a garage band and having them play Wembley Stadium on day one."

Bleszinski said he would consider starting off with a small staff and taking an indie approach, though he admitted the glamour and reach of triple-A development was a strong pull.