The first details on the next game from former Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski have been revealed.

Bleszinski has founded Boss Key Productions to bring "AAA quality" to free-to-play games, and an arena shooter currently codenamed BlueStreak will be the studio's debut title on PC.

Boss Key is partnering with free-to-play behemoth Nexon, and the company received both a minority stake in Boss Key and worldwide publishing rights to BlueStreak.

OK, But Who Is Cliff Bleszinski Again?

One of the premier modern shooter developers. He was the lead designer on Gears of War at Epic Games, the North Carolina-based studio he worked at for 20 years. You might also know him from designing the Jazz Jackrabbit series of platformers, which were also created at Epic.

Didn't He Retire?

Kind of. Bleszinski started game development as a teenager. Epic Games was everything he ever knew. After shipping Gears of War 3 and finishing out that the story started in Gears of War 1, he wanted a break.

"I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager, and outside of my sabbatical last year, I have been going non-stop," said Bleszinski in a blog post from October 2012. "I literally grew up in this business, as Mike likes to say. And now that I’m grown up, it’s time for a much needed break."

Isn't Gears of War Still Around?

Yep. Microsoft is developing a new Gears of War game at Black Tusk Studios in Vancouver.

That's Not Epic Games!

You're right. Microsoft purchased the rights to Gears of War earlier this year. While Gears of War was always considered an Xbox exclusive, that's because Microsoft partnered with Epic Games and made the series its own. Epic Games always owned the rights to Gears of War, and it was totally possible a new Gears of War game could have ended up on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

What About Jazz Jackrabbit?

Epic Games still owns the rights to Jazz Jackrabbit, but Bleszinski did start Boss Key with Arjan Brussee, who co-created Jazz Jackrabbit with Bleszinski before he founded Guerrilla Games.

Do We Know Anything Else About BlueStreak?

Not really. But Bleszinski is promising more details tomorrow, according to his Twitter account:

Isn't It Weird He's Making a F2P Shooter While Epic Revives Unreal Tournament as a "Free" Shooter?

Yes.

F2P FPS and Nexon. No thanks.

OI GUVNAH MY NAME IS CLIFFY B

Not a MOBA is my favourite genre.

so that wasn't a joke tweet?

Sounds...interesting. The term F2P doesn't immediately get my blood pumping, but I'll be interested to see more on it in the future.

This is a really weird structure for a news article. Like Patrick kept interrupting himself while he was trying to write.

First thought that came into my mind.

I'm hyped!

Man oh man....he really hyped everyone up for this? Nexon has a realllllllll bad F2P business model, so Cliff's really got to bring it if he wants to draw an audience

Just trying some stuff out. I really like the approach Vox has taken with some of its stories -- finding a way to communicate everything really early, and then trying to contextualize extraneous information using headers that prepare the reader for the information that's ahead.

This reads out like Klepek is just a bit tipsy. Still entertaining article and informative for news that is basically "hey remember that guy on who says a lot of shit on Twitter and who was on MS press conferences a lot back in the last gen days? Yeah he's making a game. It will be okay, I guess."

MoBAs are really the only free to play games I like. Or have been willing to grind out items/chars or what ever. Havent seen a F2P that was actully worth blowing cash on.

[deleted]

I really, really don't like f2p

It will be interesting to see how this pans out purely because Cliffy grew into a big corporate apologist towards the end of his time at Epic and is very anti-consumer. Will he have the sense to rein in his worse impulses or will this be the Pay2Win game that CEOs dream of?

I like the FAQ approach to this article. It gave a chance to elaborate a bit, otherwise it would've just been a paragraph, maybe two.

A Nexon F2P shooter sounds not appealing. I wonder how much of Cliff the Internet Cynic and not Cliff the Game Designer is behind this.

I don't think its that weird that he's making a F2P shooter as Epic are making a F2P Unreal. Just two separate parties that come from the same place who are both perceptive about where the industry is at right now.

Anyway I hope it all works out well for him. Cliff says some stuff I cant jive with sometimes but his games have given me countless hours of fun, would love to see him pull another cracker out of his bag o' tricks.

Kinda excited to see what this turns out to be. Will be interesting to see if Cliff can out Unreal Epic or if it goes in a completely different direction. If we are lucky maybe they will also be making f2p article formatting middleware.

It seems like every studio that makes F2P games says they're going to bring "AAA quality" to F2P.

Also seems like a lot of old designers are getting caught up in the interesting new business models but not the interesting new game ideas. Lots of famous film directors have a brilliant first half of their careers and a mediocre second half. I wonder if we'll start seeing a lot more of that in video games. Not that this game won't be great, "arena shooter" just sounds... old.

I really like the style of this article, Patrick.

I'll just leave this right here.

Right on, dude. It's awesome you're new formats. I didn't mean "weird" as a negative thing so I hope you didn't take any offense.

I do think that this structure works better for longer articles, though. To me, having so many headers with not a lot of text following serves to sort of break up the flow of the piece, rather than guide the reader through it as ideally intended. Just something to consider.

Thanks for the great work as always!

Is that an actual FAQ or do you think your audience is that stupid?

So this really is f2p...I now have 0 hype for this but all the luck to him. Kind of bummed Nexon is involved, honestly...

Not a big fan of Nexon, and most of cliffs stuff in general, but nevertheless its interetsting to see what he's up to these days.

Nexon? Ugh. They're one of the companies with the most terrible F2P policies. We'll see how this goes.

This project couldn't sound any less interesting to me. Unless, of course, they manage to get Martin Lawrence's likeness, then I'm totally on board.

It's a cool format but might be more effective with more complex or more involved stories.

Also, I'm looking forward to seeing what this game turns out to be. I don't know that even a AAA approach to F2P would solve the inherent issues in that model unless you're only paying for shallow, cosmetic stuff that doesn't fundamentally change the core gameplay, in which case I could just live without it and keep playing for free.

@mushymushrooms said:

First thought that came into my mind.

Tanglo los gatos los pantolones

I've played what are considered the best F2P games (Team Fortress 2, Dota 2, Paths of Exile, Hearthstone) and I think they're all fine (except Hearthstone, that game is addictive trash). I can't speak as highly of the rest.

Hopefully this game is fine.

Pretty much my exact thoughts. He's been saying for a while that he thinks F2P has been done poorly in the past, so I guess put up or shut up Cliff.

I enjoyed the structure but in future, I'd like a picture of Alex Navarro (with his best, put-off look) next to the questions--regardless of whether he actually contributed any content to the article.

While reading the article, I automatically imagined Alex's voice asking the questions and it made me smile.

@jasonr86 I think Patrick is stealing your schtick.

Damn it, on the morning show Alex thought Cliffy B would do something other than a shooter, and I thought he might be right, well crap. Arena shooter yay! Where's Jazz Jackrabbit damn it!

Well honestly, I don't think I want Jazz Jackrabbit, I mean they were okay games, nothing mind blowing though.

INTRODUCING HYPER-MOBA

@darthorange:

I'm a fucking trend setter.

Free to play AND Nexon? Ugh, I am decidedly less interested.

Do we know where the studios is based? Cliff has commented several times about wanting to base one in North Carolina.

No, there should be portraits of whoever is 'speaking' which reflect the tone. Basically it should be that old True Meaning Of Life website except with Giant Bomb personalities.

Nexon? Nope nope nope nope

I'LL RIP YOUR LIPS OFF AND KISS MY ASS WITH THEM SHITS

You had my interest at Cliffy B., but lost me at F2P. The only F2P game I can stand right now is HAWKEN because, dude, MECHS.

Almost can't believe there was all that build-up, time away from the industry, etc. just for another arena shooter.

So according to this article, I don't know who Cliffy B is, but I know that he retired?

No no no no.... This is codename: BlueStreak, not BrownStreak.

I don't think he could have done a series of moves that would have made me more skeptical than he just managed