Gears Designer 'Itching' to Create New IPGears of War 3 ships this September and will no doubt be one of the hot sellers of the fall/holiday period. As any developer would tell you, however, working on the same property for years can be tiring. It's one of the primary reasons Bungie sought out its independence from Microsoft - to escape from Halo. Epic design director Cliff Bleszinski would very much like to create a new type of game too, if he can get the chance.
Speaking with IndustryGamers at E3, we asked Bleszinski what it's like to be tied to a franchise, and we wondered if/when he might be able to create something new. "Good luck breaking free, right?" he said when we brought up how some developers become enslaved to a franchise.
"If we want to do a new Gears game, we need to be sure that we find a way to quarter off people that can work on different stuff."
He then commented, "I’ve been itching for a while [to create something new]. When we finished Unreal Tournament I wanted to do another game. It’s just a matter of opportunity and figuring things out. So all hands are on Gears right now, in the foreseeable future. But, we’ll see how things go." Bleszinski then proceeded to mention games from partners like People Can Fly's Bulletstorm and Chair's Infinity Blade, and how he'd consider an "opportunity to dabble in that."
The bottom line, though, is that for now all of Raleigh, North Carolina is focused on Gears. "That’s one thing I know about Epic traditionally is if you’re a body in Raleigh, you get sucked into the Gears vortex. That’s why Chair's able to do Infinity Blade, because they’re in Utah. So that’s one thing that we need to be sure of as a new developer. If we want to do a new Gears game, we need to be sure that we find a way to quarter off people that can work on different stuff. Who knows? We’re just shipping Gears right now," he said.
Finally, when we asked Bleszinski if any projects on new IP might be underway at Raleigh, he answered, "We have other things incubating."
Gears is too popular for it not to continue - that much is obvious. But we have the feeling that a Gears 4 would be worked on by separate team, while others in Raleigh get to craft something new. Of course, the other possibility is that, like Chair and Infinity Blade, the Gears team becomes more mobile focused.
Bleszinski commented, "What I would like to see moving forward is if we were to make a new IP or a new Gears game, I would like to figure out a way to get some sort of ancillary thing that ties in with mobile that ties in with the game directly. The future of the game is always with you. And those who are the platform holders, such as Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo, hopefully will understand that …to open their mind and have an iPad app that talks to Xbox, that talks to the PlayStation. So then maybe there’s a mini-game that I can do when I’m in the pub... things like that that contribute to the greater good. That’s where things need to go."
