Cliff Bleszinski

Cliff Bleszinski (; born February 12, 1975), popularly known as CliffyB, is an American video game designer, known for his work in the development of the Unreal and Gears of War series. After working at Epic Games from 1992 to 2012, he co-founded Boss Key Productions in 2014. Career Bleszinski's first game was The Palace of Deceit, an adventure title he started at the age of 15. Programmed in Visual Basic, its second version came out when he was 16. Epic Games (1992–2012) Bleszinski got his start at Epic Games in 1992, after submitting his game Dare to Dream to the company's CEO, Tim Sweeney. Though Dare to Dream did not achieve a great success, it led Bleszinski to work on Jazz Jackrabbit, a platformer co-developed by demoscene coder Arjan Brussee. The title, which came out in 1994, became Epic's biggest selling game at the time, earning him enough money to buy his first apartment and car. It was also around this time that he joined Sweeney and James Schmalz on what would become Unreal, which received a follow-up, Unreal Tournament, and expanded into a series of games. In addition to his work on the Unreal series, Bleszinski served as creative consultant on Rune, and as lead designer on the first three installments of the Gears of War franchise, which has sold over 22 million copies and earned over one billion in revenue as of January 2014. Gears of War evolved out of the development of what was going to be a game called Unreal Warfare. As Bleszinski explained in a speech at GDC 2007 entitled "Designing Gears of War: Iteration Wins," the game started out as another first-person shooter in the Unreal universe. Over time, however, influenced by the cover mechanic in Namco's 2003 game Kill Switch and the third-person Resident Evil 4, Unreal Warfare became the game known as Gears of War.