From Jazz Jackrabbit to Gears of War to Lawbreakers, Cliff Bleszinski has been a popular figure in the gaming industry for over two decades. His most recent project is the memoir Control Freak, releasing Nov 1, 2022, which recounts the former Epic Games Design Director's journey from creating games on his father's Apple II through the success of Unreal, the birth and iteration of Gears of War, and his time as cofounder of Boss Key Productions.A deeply honest and unabashedly personal book, Control Freak is just as much about how Bleszinski changed and grew over time as it is about the games industry itself. Throughout Control Freak Bleszinski refuses to shy away from topics like the death of his father, sexual assault, infidelity, and divorce - as his brother Tyler Bleszinski recently said, "his story is one of overcoming." It's also an incredibly fascinating look at the origins of one of the biggest gaming companies in the world, and required reading alongside Sid Meier's MEMOIR!, Doug Walsh's The Walkthrough, and Ask Iwata for anyone interested in behind-the-scenes game development stories.Recently, Screen Rant sat down for a chat with Cliff Bleszinski to discuss Control Freak's blunt honesty, his ever-growing love of musicals, and why nothing hits quite like a retro platformer. The following interview has been edited both for clarity and to preserve the mystery of Bleszinski's karaoke song scoring system.
Screen Rant: Obviously it's been a while since you actually sat down to write Control Freak, so to get the most important question out of the way first - what are you playing right now?
Cliff Bleszinski: I'm honestly not playing anything right now. There's the old adage, "Teach a man to make a video game and he'll never want to play one for the rest of his life." The thing is, I'm waiting for the weather to really get cold before I fire up my backlog. We have a PlayStation 5 upstairs, I've hardly touched it. We have the new Xboxes. But when I go back to playing, I'll be playing on my Switch.
I had this time period during COVID where my mother-in-law was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, which had metastasized, so we had to spend a lot of time in suburban Louisiana, and during that time, while working on the book, my Nintendo Switch was my lifesaver. I like retro platformers, that's the thing, having worked in the AAA space for as long as I did - when I was at Epic, you know, I didn't see the behind-the-scenes stuff like 'How much money is in the bank?' or anything like that, that was Tim [Sweeney] and Mark [Rein]'s gig. But for me, with Boss Key, to know how much money we had in the bank, to know how much people were getting, and to know our burn rate, now when I look at these incredible Naughty Dog games, all I see is dollar signs on the screen. And you look at the marketing campaigns that has to get them out there, it just stresses me out, so I've just been getting all retro.
When I was spending that time in Mandeville, Louisiana, I burned through Celeste and beat it. And it's one of the best platformers ever made. I beat Shovel Knight, I played the hell out of Super Meat Boy... those are the kind of games I like. I think it goes back to my history with Jazz Jackrabbit, you know. Chris Rock says the music that you will love for the rest of your life is the music you listened to when you first got laid.
It's a very honest book as autobiographies go, and one which (as far as I can tell) doesn't hold much back from the audience in terms of raw emotion. In a recent tweet you called the book "a coming of age love story about a dork who fell for videogames and loved the industry as it grew up as he grew up that eventually led to him finding true love through said industry." How much of this book is a love letter to your wife Lauren, and how did the knowledge that she would read it influence the amount of honesty on display?
Cliff Bleszinski: First off, I wanted to make it deeply personal, and I always tell game developers to make their games personal whenever possible, because that comes through. Ken Levine never had kids, and when you look at Elizabeth in BioShock: Infinite, it's clear Booker and Elizabeth have this kind of father-daughter relationship. For me, the book had to work on two levels - those who know my video game work over the decades, hopefully they will pick it up and buy it and read it and enjoy it, but it has to play to your average person as a human story. It's a similar thing, even if you don't like baseball you can watch the movie Moneyball, and without even knowing who Billy Beane is, you can still appreciate what he did for the sport of baseball. Same thing with The Social Network - even if you don't use Facebook, it's still a compelling story.
And so for me, I did leave out certain details that were in the first early version of the book. I don't know if you recall the writer Tucker Max back in the day, he was a lothario who would go out and get drunk and just do horrible things to college girls when he was in college - also here in North Carolina, oddly enough - and now he has two little girls, [laughs] karma's a bitch. So yeah, I had my share of dating and shenanigans and things like that, but people don't want that. They want to see how the sausage is made, and the journey that I had along the way, and ultimately the mistakes that I made.
I had drinks with one of my former PR handlers at Epic Games the other night, Dana, she's an absolutely wonderful woman. Gave her a signed copy of the book and she's all excited to read it, I sent some preview copies over to Epic, and, you know, legally it's been vetted by [publisher] Simon & Schuster, my council, and really at the end of the day the only person I throw under the bus is myself. Talking about my infidelities, talking about the things that I've gone through, my father's death, getting molested by a guy I met on the internet when I was 15, losing the Nintendo World Championships, and I'm not going to lie, it's pretty freaking scary to put yourself out there like this, but I believe it's a compelling story to the point where a lot of people - even Mark Rein - texted me and are like "Dude! You have to do the audiobook!" And I'm like, "Dude, this book took four years to write!"
Four years to write and 47 years in the making, and I still, late at night sitting in the kitchen with Lauren, I read certain parts, like my father dying, my studio at Boss Key folding, meeting Lauren, marrying her, and I still get really really misty-eyed and have a hard time getting through it. Reliving the highest highs and the lowest lows of your entire life over and over again, it's kind of like Groundhog Day to some extent. So, I don't have time to do the audiobook. I've got multiple new irons in the fire, but we found a great voice actor, and he does a really good job with it, and that's going to be on Audible.com on November 1. It was a hell of a journey, and I hope people pick it up and I hope they enjoy it. It's going up against Matthew Perry's memoir, which drops the same day, and I'm not out here doing interviews talking shit about Keanu Reeves, yo.
[Laughs] No, you're out here writing books and co-producing musicals.
So, yeah, stumbling into the Broadway thing is a whole other story for another time, but I'm going to be co-producer on another show that I think is going to be huge - I can't say what it is, expect an announcement in about a month and a half - but as excited as I was about HADESTOWN, I'm really excited about this one. It's based on the music of somebody I've been a fan of for years, I'll leave it at that.
You say it's a story for another time, but in the opening of the chapter "Mad World" in level four of Control Freak, you start with a joke from your brother - "What's next - Unreal: The Musical?" and in your interview with Alanah Pearce on Video Game Writing 101, you talk about how The Phantom of the Opera kind of reignited your love of musicals. It seems like it has been a part of you for a while. Besides that piece, HADESTOWN, the K-Pop musical you recently invested in, what you just mentioned, and any others you may produce or finance in the future, what is your favorite musical?
Cliff Bleszinski: My mother, rest in peace, she saw this kid who was impersonating SNL characters around the house all day long, and in sixth grade she got me in to audition for Peter Pan and I ended up playing Michael Darling in the local community production. We even had the rigs and harnesses, and we were flying across the stage and everything like that. Drama is my second love after video games. It's one of those things, I wish my mother had put me in music class or got me a vocal coach. I think it's honestly probably the reason every Monday at eight o'clock I'm at the Beer Garden (which I co-own) doing karaoke - rather average, mind you - because I miss being in the spotlight and I miss the stage. But I love musicals. My number one, of all time, is probably RENT. I wake up with RENT in my head almost every day. Sometimes I do One Song Glory on karaoke.
My other one, which became one of my favorites, is Dear Evan Hansen. The irony of Dear Evan Hansen is, for those of you who don't know the story [proceeds to spoil the entire plot of Dear Evan Hansen] and I am in tears the entire show. But the kicker is, the actor who played the misanthrope in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway, Alex Boniello, is a fan of my video game work, and he reached out to me on Twitter and said "Hey, my friends over here at TBD productions, who did Dear Evan Hansen, they're looking to do this show HADESTOWN and they are looking for new producers, are you interested?" And I was like "Yes!" And so that's how I ended up being co-producer of that. And being in Radio City Music Hall as the musical won eight Tonys, including the award for best musical, was the much-needed win after my studio Boss Key folded, honestly.
Speaking of that chapter title - Mad World - there's an interesting serendipity in the choice of "Mad World" for Gears of Wars' first trailer, which you detail in the book. Are there any other songs which you feel a strong connection to, or have shown up at multiple interesting moments in your life?
Cliff Bleszinski: It's pop, but the one that I was listening to on repeat along with "Mad World" was Evanescence's "My Immortal." Amy Lee has the voice of an angel. For some reason, that song resonated really hard with me because I was listening to it while I was having the affair that led to the fall of my first marriage. I have a friend of mine who was a fan of my work and I met her for karaoke in a different bar one night and she was like "Are you Cliff Bleszinski?" and I'm like "Yeah" and I'm like "Let's do a duet!" and we did "Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing, and we became friends, right? So she comes to karaoke, and she can sing, she does a mean "Bang, Bang" by Jessie J, does the singing and the rapping parts perfectly, and so she knew about my affinity for "My Immortal." She goes up to my Beer Garden and crushes it, sounds just like Amy Lee, and I'm sitting there crying in front of everyone at the Beer Garden. There's something about that song that's just so haunting for me.
The other one is One Song Glory from RENT. Roger is battling AIDS and he knows he is likely to die, but he wants to get that one song out there - that one song for glory. The kicker is, in the end, he finds his muse in Mimi and he does that song, and for me, I remember listening to RENT on repeat when I wanted to make something that's wasn't just another multiplayer shooter with "cheap colored lights" like he says in the song. I wanted to make something that was an allegory or a metaphor for Bush's war for oil in the Middle East, but also felt bombastic and cool, and had action moments but also a group of characters that you grew to care about, Band of Brothers-style. Those are the ones that really stuck with me - and then there's the karaoke list, of course.
After this interview, Bleszinski added the following addendum to his statement:
You've seen lots of gaming trends come and go over the years, and undeniably started some of your own. Where do you think the industry is going in the wrong direction right now, and where do you think it's going right?
Cliff Bleszinski: I think budgets are going to continue to explode. I look at the amazing work that people like Naughty Dog are putting into their games, and I just see dollars on the screen. I have tremendous respect for them but when it comes down to it, when you look at how much the game costs, the marketing costs, at some point possibly in the future that could become unsustainable. And that's why so many developers are moving towards the games as a service model, right? I think the idea behind Halo: Infinite was to release a good game and start adding onto it, start layering it, Season 1, Season 2, Season 3.
This goes back to World of Warcraft, I think. I'd tell people "I make video games" back in the day and they would just [shrugs] "I play WoW." Every single game publisher and developer wants the One Ring - they want one game to rule them all. But what happens in that situation is that you have 5-10 games or IPs at the top of the heap and everyone else is left fighting for scraps. You see that in the App Store with games over there.
What I'm most excited about is VR finally getting some quality products and getting some traction, as well as the unique indie scene.
Tell me about your Kaiju Crayfish pitch. I lived in Lake Charles, Louisiana for a while years ago, and I could absolutely see this as a fun Southern Gothic horror story. Games like Mafia 3 and RDR2 already showed how marshlands can make for great ambiance.
Cliff Bleszinski: My wife is from suburban Louisiana, and every time we go visit the family it's basically my excuse to go to New Orleans and eat all the food and drink all the drinks. I basically throw a second line parade every time I go, because life's too short. Like Hannibal Buress says, "I've been walking around since 1986." It's the best way to walk around! I got a brass band, you get a drink, to-go, and that town just has so much heart and character. You have to limit your time there, because [whistles] you go into a bar and it's like "Three for one night!" and I'm like "Jesus, dude! Pace yourself."
But yeah, I'll give this to you as an exclusive because it's still super-duper high level. The idea is, you know, the crawfish got tired of being eaten, and there's some sort of chemical spill that happens in the bayou nearby. This one crawfish becomes enormous and starts raging across the city, and they throw everything at it. I had a scene where the people of New Orleans are gunning for the World's Largest Crawfish Boil in the Superdome, right? The Kaiju feels this, and goes to the Superdome to try and save his brethren, and I have this scene of Drew Brees on top of the Superdome with a rocket launcher, saying "Not in my house!" Crazy stuff like that. Then ultimately they lure the crawfish out into Jackson Square, and the mayor is some John Goodman-type character, because you know he just loves New Orleans. They unleash hell on it, armored vehicles, Mardi Gras floats with weapons strapped to them, and they think they take it down. But there's this character all throughout the story, this eight-year-old little black girl with afro puffs, and it turns out she practices voodoo because she is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Marie Laveau, the voodoo priestess from New Orleans, and she is the one who ultimately takes down the Kaiju because she has a little voodoo doll of the crawfish, and she takes it down by stabbing it and winds up saving the day. That's the high-level pitch, maybe I'll get around to making it some day. It's one thing I'm really excited about. The dog thing is another.
What can you tell us about the dog project at this point?
Cliff Bleszinski: So I tweeted that one image - a cel-shaded dog next to a pigeon overlooking this domed city. Kind of has a cyberpunk vibe to it. And my question with this property, with this IP that I'm building, is "What happens when those kids who love Paw Patrol get a little bit older?" I think there's room for a property out there that's kind of a Don Bluth vibe. Secret of NIMH with a little bit of Watership Down, little bit of Dark Crystal. It feels like all these things are either super adult or super kiddo these days, and there's got to be something out there for 10, 11, 12, 13, 14-year-olds, something that would appeal to them, very much a PG-13 vibe. I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that I am working with Alex de Campi, she did a book with Duncan Jones called Madi... and if you look at her prior work you can guess where this is going, but one thing for me, just sitting back and having the freedom to make IP on my own dime and by my own standards, is that I take my years of video game experience and I can build the IP to be very video game friendly, if the time comes for it to be a game, but first off making it a really cool narrative, cool characters, and really seeing where this ends up going.
Fun fact, my wife is doing the same thing. She's making her own IP about gargoyles, she plans to make it a comic book, but she's making it very game-adaptable, because she understands games and worked in game development back in the day. Fun creative times in the Bleszinski household!
Control Freak is available now via Simon & Schuster, Amazon, and most major book retailers. Screen Rant was provided a copy of the book prior to this interview.