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.

"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.

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and was formerly a staff writer at GamesRadar.