Cliff Blezinski to set up own studio

Cliff Blezinski, the guy behind Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, left Epic Games in October and has been fielding offers from other studios left and right since. However, now he's suggesting that it's only a matter of time until he starts his own studio.

At the time of his leaving Epic, Cliff said that he wanted to get away for a while. “I had been working with [Epic] since I was 17-years-old. It's time for a fresh start. I'll start a new studio maybe at some point – it's not a matter of ‘if', it's a matter of when and with who,” he said, in a recent interview with G4.

Funnily enough, despite wanting to clear his head after such a long time as a developer, it wasn't long after his departure from Epic that Cliff said he got bored. It was at that point that he started fielding calls and invitations from other developers to see what was out there. One of the most covert invitations came from Ubisoft, that sent him a mobile phone with only a single number programmed into it.

“I felt like Liam Neeson in Taken. I called the number, talked to them, and we ended up meeting up and it was cool, but it was like the covert ops moment that was really amazing,” he said.

However as excited as he is by the prospect of setting up his own studio, Cliff is keen to watch out for pit falls. He noted John Romero's Ion Storm – the developer of Daikatana – and Curt Schilling's 38 Studios – creators of Kings of Amalur – as studios headed by big names – and big heads presumably – that failed.

KitGuru Says: It would be interesting to see what a Cliff headed studio could come up with. Based on his pedigree, there would be muscles involved and lots of guns. Explosions would probably feature. I wouldn't expect the world's most well crafted story either.

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