Cliff Bleszinski, the creator of the Gears of War franchise, has been in the business of making video games for a long time now. Despite only being 41, he has more than 20 years of professional game-making under his belt. His next game will be his most important release to date.
Bleszinski left developer Epic Games in 2012, claiming he was retiring. That would obviously not come to pass, as he founded his own company, Boss Key Productions, in 2014. Since then, he’s been hard at work on Boss Key’s first game, LawBreakers.
LawBreakers is a first-person shooter, with players joining teams to take on opponents. Players also pick specific roles for their characters, with each character having a wildly different play style. Take this, and add gravity manipulation and a bunch of big guns, and you’re starting to figure out what LawBreakers is like.
Bleszinski sat down with iDigitalTimes at a press event to talk about the recent changes made to LawBreakers, what the release plan looks like and why Steam was chosen as an exclusive platform.
“I said I wanted to make the Quentin Tarantino version of these characters,” Bleszinski said when talking about a recent shift in art direction. “At the time, the team asked ‘are we really that? Are we too cartoon-y?’ For me, it’s to differentiate yourself from the Overwatches and the Battleborns,” he said.
Gaming is all about trends, and the popular one right now is making class-based shooters. Games like Overwatch, Battleborn and Gigantic are all releasing soon. Designing these games with cartoonish graphics and colors has also become popular. LawBreakers wants to use this trend to help them stand out from the crowd.
“Those games look great, but that’s kind of it’s own art style,” Bleszinski said. “We did a test where we took screenshots of those games and ours and put them in the middle of the office. It was clear there was a trend among these games to look a certain way and that we are standing out looking like a slightly more realistic, more mature type of game.”
This drive to be different impacts everything from gameplay decisions to how LawBreakers will be sold. One goal is to make multiple game modes that are somewhat similar to what players know and expect, but with changes to keep them feeling fresh. Bleszinski and Boss Key didn’t reveal specific plans for what was coming, simply because they didn’t have any finalized plans.
Another way LawBreakers stands apart from the competition is that it will neither be a free-to-play game or a fully-priced game. “A lot of these games that came out were great, but you’re like ‘really? This is worth $60? I have Skyrim over here,’” Bleszinski said. “I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus, but let’s just say a lot of these multiplayer-only games that came out on consoles probably shouldn’t have been $60 from the get-go.”
Bleszinski felt many gamers were getting burned out by this, especially since that wasn’t the end of spending for many games. “Then layer microtrans[actions] on top of that. Gamers are kind of like ‘come on, man,’” he said.
It’s one thing to be different, but you still have to make money somehow. Boss Key doesn’t have a full idea on what the release price or plan looks like yet, but it’s confirmed LawBreakers will cost money to buy, will not be full-priced, and will not be pay-to-win.
“All we were thinking about was ‘how do we monetize? How do we monetize? How do we monetize? Do we want to rotate characters? Do we want an energy bar?’” Bleszinski said. “It’s really really easy to start getting sleazy in that space, and we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to focus on making the best damn game possible.”
So how will Boss Key make money off of LawBreakers and continue to support it well after release?
“There will be some microtrans[actions] in the game,” Bleszinski confirmed. “Let’s just say we’re big fans of how Counter-Strike: GO does it. When it comes to new DLC and maps, we want everyone to be on the same page. When we come out with a new role [character type], everyone gets it. If we come out with new maps, it’s just part of the update.”
Releasing a new game that is trying to be different from the competition is risky, but Bleszinski and Boss Key’s COO, Arjan Brussee, are looking to partners to help grow their game. “We’re starting with Steam because it’s a very mature platform,” Brussee said. “I think there’s a lot of players that turn to Steam to make games easier to buy and easier to find. You can play with your friends much easier.”
When considering whether LawBreakers should use its own service, Brussee thought it would result in too many hassles.
“Instead of using a new, fledgling platform where you have to make new accounts and put your credit card info in, there’s all this kind of friction that we don’t like,” he said. “There was interest from Valve to work with us, because they are seeing many big titles no longer on their platform. Overwatch isn’t on Steam, and Uplay is doing their own thing, and Activision is doing their own thing, and EA is doing their own thing. Steam wants bigger titles on their platform. If it helps us be successful, I’m happy with it.”
“It’s kind of a no-brainer if you think about it,” Bleszinski added.
At the end of the day, LawBreakers is Bleszinski’s vision, and something he really wants to see released. “Everyone always knows I can say ‘do it, because I fuckin’ said so,’” Bleszinski said of his authority over the project. “I like to think of it more like a parenting thing, where you convince a person it’s the right thing to do and why this would be interesting,” he said.
“I sat everyone down when the studio was founded and I said ‘Look, this is my baby. If you don’t like it, there’s the fucking door.’ That was a little harsh, but it became the company’s teenager and then the community’s adult.”
LawBreakers will be releasing exclusively on Steam. Development is still in the pre-alpha stage, so it will be a few more months at least until we know more about when the release will be.
So what do you think? Are you interested in playing the latest game from Cliff Bleszinski? Do you think LawBreakers is doing enough to stand out from the competition? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
