Cliff Bleszinski Clarifies Comments About Making A New Game, Which Is Not Battle Royale

Cliff Bleszinski tweeted recently that he had an idea for a new video game, and naturally this led to a lot of speculation and intrigue about what the Gears of War creator might do next, especially after he initially said he would probably never make another game.

Bleszinski has now clarified his comments, saying his new game would be “small” and developed “remotely.” It sounds like it would be very different from the productions he’s worked on in the past, including Gears of War and LawBreakers, both of which were made with relatively large development teams and published by big companies.

“I have some ideas gestating, but if I did something it’d be small and most likely done remotely. Indie stuff,” Bleszinski tweeted.

In other tweets, Bleszinski confirmed that he doesn’t want to make a battle royale game, though the ideas he have “won’t get out of my head.”

“I thought I was truly done. But then, stupid brain shows up. UGH,” he said.

Currently, Bleszinski is focused on signing a deal for his memoir, which he has positioned as “Kitchen Confidential” for the gaming industry. Kitchen Confidential was the late Anthony Bourdain’s breakout writing about what happens behind-the-scenes in professional kitchens.

Bleszinski said the deal-making process for his book “has been kinda painful,” but thankfully for him, he said he’s close to signing papers with a “major publisher.”

In his post-Epic Games life, Bleszinski turned his attention in part to another one of his passions: theatre. He was an investor/producer for the play Hadestown, which won eight Tony awards, including Best Musical.

After finding success with Hadestown, Bleszinski was approached to co-produce another Broadway play, a new version of Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” The new version stars two-time Oscar nominee Michael Shannon and Audra McDonald.

Bleszinski is also involved in the restaurant business, having invested in The Raleigh Beer Garden and The Station in Raleigh, North Carolina.

“Make no mistake, though, games will always be my first love,” Bleszinski said in July.

Bleszinski was able to “retire” earlier than most in part because his career and investments in gaming and technology have proven to be lucrative. He saw a massive payday when Chinese internet giant Tencent bought shares in Epic. He was also an early investor in Oculus, and made a “very sizable chunk of money” when Facebook bought the virtual reality company.

He created and designed the massively popular Gears of War franchise while at Epic Games. After some time away, he set up a brand-new studio, Boss Key. The North Carolina studio would go on to release LawBreakers and the battle royale game Radical Heights. Both titles failed to capture a sizable audience, and Boss Key would eventually shut down. After that, Bleszinski said he would probably never make another game for a number of reasons, but now it appears he is at least entertaining the idea of coming back to gaming.