Cliff Bleszinksi to address Boss Key failure in new book

From Gameindustry.biz: "Industry veteran's memoir closes the chapter on studio that shut down less than a year after its debut title Lawbreakers launched"

[Einhander1971]

Shit happens

[sle7enn]

The End

[coolbeans]

Titled "Curb Stomping My Reputation," I imagine.

[gangsta_red]

I like, "It Can't Fail and How I Lost Anyways"

[rainslacker]

Weird. A whole book for what most development houses put out in a 2-3 page postmortem.

I guess he has to recoup that investment money somehow. Too bad any proceeds from the book go to him and not the investors.

More seriously, this appears only to be part of the book, and I guess its going to be some sort of auto-biography. Short version

guy creates mod...
guy gets hired by Epic....
guy rises to fame by creating a decent game....
guy becomes the director of a huge AAA game that is hugely popular....
guy gives it up to "retire"....

guy starts own studio and comes to realize that one's name only goes so far in the game industry, because 95% of game consumers don't have the first clue who anyone is....and when you piss off half of the other 5% who cared about your BS and condescending comments about how gamers are lame and they should just get with the program, said gamers aren't that keen to buy your game....particularly when more enticing games come out at about the same time......

Guy writes book to keep himself relevant, because those who can't, teach apparently.

[Ahytys]

LOL! Completely agree! Loved your comment, funny and smart at the same time

[fluxmulder]

300 pages of Cliffy blaming it on everything but himself.

[Skuletor]

Sounds like Hillary Clinton's "What Happened" all over again. .

[WorldGamer]

Or our current POTUS? That would be more timely and relevant than Hillary don't you think?

[crazyCoconuts]

Personally I'd rather read a book about Fortnite and it's success than Lawbreakers and it's failure. Seems like coming off a failed business venture is exactly the wrong time to write a book if the intent is for other people to read it. Bad timing for launches is kinda the consistent theme here I guess...

[Goldby]

Same could be said about epic and fortnite.

They gave up on paragon (failed venture) and pumped all the money into the BR mode to save fortnite. And now that they are racking in the cash, all they want is more, or they wouldn't have invested that bsck into their previous games

[gangsta_red]

If anything I say it's good to have both types of books to read. I mean Lawbreakers had a lot going for it, there really isn't anything on paper about the game that would even suggest it would fail.

I would be curious if there was behind the scenes reasons why this game failed, the way Cliffy is portrayed by fans as a reason, the things he said about not releasing on Xbox, the switch from F2P to paid (I believe), the comparisons to Overwatch, who knows.

[rainslacker]

Sometimes a negative postmortem can be more valuable than a positive one.

But in this case, I think even the most deluded of gamers can see what went wrong with this game, and the followup to it. Its not exactly that difficult to see.

Cliff is a talented game designer, but with his games at Epic, he had the full force of hundreds of talented game designers to help him with the productions he was put in charge of.

But the important lesson here is that no matter how popular you are, it doesn't mean your guaranteed success. Just look at how many big name devs went to start their own indie studio, only to not succeed. On top of that, I feel his ego may have not matched what he could actually achieve, and he was rather brash with his own fan base...which just wasn't large enough to make this game successful on their own.

Its not that I felt he made any improper business decisions in how he released Lawbreakers, but he has always been rather condescending to the gamer, and his ego often fed into negativity among the community at large...much of which he was relying on for the success of this game. But he found out that no matter how popular you may be within a community, it doesn't mean sh*t in a community which is more about "what have you done for me lately", than it is about remembering yesteryear. Peter Molyneux learned this lesson as well.

[crazyCoconuts]

I don't disagree. Personally I feel that when it comes to Multiplayer games there are tons (sadly too many) of examples of pretty good ideas baked into pretty good games that don't make it. It's like MP has to cross this really high threshold to keep our ADD from kicking in and moving on to something else, essentially killing the game. And with social media being as it is, it seems there's even more stratification around a handful of games that all your friends are playing. So failing is not that interesting - it happens all the time and the odds are stacked against you. It's the companies that somehow get their userbase engaged, keep them engaged, keep tweeaking, balancing, hyping, etc. Those guys are the magicians that I'm impressed with...

[rainslacker]

I've noticed that for the most part, the only MP games that seem to do exceedingly well, or even good enough to survive, tend to be the AAA games that are marketed heavily. The reason for this I believe is because they are marketed heavily, so they get a player base, and for a MP game, a player base is extremely important. Even mediocre MP games can continue to thrive, but they have to be good enough to keep the player hooked long enough that attrition doesn't take its toll early.

Games with smaller scopes like PBBG(at least for its early concept), which wasn't a huge budget game, and mostly crowd funded so it still returned a lot of money, and the success it had is extremely rare within the MP market.

I said above that I felt he might have had a more stable future had he not tried something so ambitious and something not in a market that was already over saturated. Without a doubt he knew of some of the heavy competition coming as well, and I think had he done something more along the lines of say Jazz Jackrabbit.(in scope but maybe not design)..one of his early titles where he was credited as a designer, could have helped establish his company better. It would have given a sense of nostalgia to help show why he became popular in the first place. I don't doubt he could have made a good game. But the important thing is that if he kept it SP, it would have cost less money, and likely would have had more chance to succeed, and return revenues for a longer period of time. With MP games, if you fail out of the gate, that's pretty much it, unless you're willing to go do "A Realm Reborn" and throw another AAA budget into it.

And of all the lessons that I think that could be learned from a postmortem of this game it would be don't be too ambitious out of the gate. Its one thing if you start a big studio to focus on making AAA games, but trying to make a high end mid-tier MP game and capitalize on the MP market is very risky without the funding to market the game. SP games may be riskier in terms of AAA development, but they seem to do quite well in the mid-tier market, and even if they don't do exceedingly well out of the gate, they can still make money over the long term. Not everyone can reach the stars on their first try, and I think some people who leave bigger studios to start indie studios fail to realize that.

[bangoskank]

"All the people who didn't want to play my games are dickheads."

[Fist4achin]

Sorry Cliff! Trying to enter an already saturated market that is quite finicky is a huge risk. Unless your product really brings something new or different to the table, probably best to keep developing something instead of trying for a cash grab.

[rainslacker]

He probably would have been better off trying a less ambitious style of game to start off with. Maybe a return to a nice 3rd party platformer. Something unique to stand out. Get a footing before going for something that could potentially become the next big thing...or at least trying to make something that would give a reasonable return in investment in what is a risky market if you fail out of the gate.

lawbreakers wasn't a bad game, but it suffered from lack of meaningful marketing, and just too much competition in what I'd call an oversaturated market with other games that have huge marketing and power behind them. Things like PUBG are extremely rare successes, and an arena shooter is something that is available in spades and would have to be exceptionally special to actually succeed.

[Fist4achin]

Agreed. He probably wouldve had more success with something like a gears of war/bulletstorm type of game. Im sure he will come back from his hiatus from development with something fresh. Im not a big fan of him personally, but i do enjoy his work.

[rainslacker]

I was thinking something more along the lines of Jazz Jackrabbit. One of the first games he helped design for Epic. It would be good to play on the nostalgia aspect, and it'd be a lot less ambitious. Plus, not being a multiplayer title, it wouldn't rely on strong sales right away. So long as it was a good game, it could manage to make money back quickly if it wasn't overly ambitious, and over time, word of mouth sales could give it a steady revenue stream.

Competing in any kind of shooter market is hard, and usually only works for the AAA titles, outside some notable exceptions.

I'm not a huge fan of his, but that is more in how he addresses, or at least addressed the community for so long after he became a big name in the industry. However, I do recognize his abilities as a game designer and director and wouldn't say anything bad about him on that front. I've met him a few times at trade shows, and he's always been really nice, and even helpful when I was a game design student. I can't speak to his personality like someone who knows him better though.

[AK91]

In all seriousness Cliff is actually a really good game developer it’s just he isn’t particularly known for creating his own ideas but copying others.

[frostlatch]

Its always the fucking trash that writes a book when he was worthless to begin with. No one cared, no one cares, no one will care. Prick. Better put those proceeds towards the lives he ruined with his arrogance.