Leigh Alexander captured a candid interview with Cliff Bleszinski in her usual lovely style over at Gamasutra. It’s a worthwhile read, and full of brilliant points about where the video game industry is headed. Bleszinski, personally, sees himself moving towards the PC for his next game. As Alexander said, “Starting his own studio is the direction in which he’s leaning, and he wants to benefit from a modern online environment that allows development teams to have closer relationships with their players and welcome them into the iterative process.”
Bleszinski himself had this to say:
“PC is where I’m going to wind up. That’s where the community is… The trend will always be the core. If I start a studio, I want a community manager there day one. I want weekly video or podcasts; I want task lists available on the subreddit. When my wife and I play Rust, before we play, we check the subreddit. Whenever you get a little bored with a game, someone issues an update. I feel like a game developer again, where I get to check out the build list.”
Something else struck me in the interview as well. Bleszinski also told Alexander: “The whole ‘old guard,’ where you get a Game Informer cover and an E3 reveal, is dead. I’ll never make another disc-based game for the rest of my career, and [at E3] they’re trying to woo buyers from Target and Walmart?” This fits with Ken Levine’s statement about focusing on digital games made by smaller teams.
This “old guard” is going to reshape the face of the industry. It truly is an evolutionary time in video game development.
