Cliff Bleszinski Reveals BlueStreak Concept Art, Explains Why He Went With Nexon

After recently announcing his retirement from retirement and revealing BlueStreak, Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski has answered some questions about the game, and released some concept art.

You can check out the concept art from the game above, which appears to take place in Los Angeles. You can see the iconic Hollywood sign, as well as a strange blue lightning storm in the distance.

Bleszinski also just finished up a a Reddit AMA, where he ambiguously answered questions about microtransactions for BlueStreak, and why he decided to work with Nexon. You can head here to read the AMA, but here's what he said about the presence of microtransactions:

The #1 question that comes up in Free to Play every time.

Honest answer: I'm not sure, and it's entirely too easy to tell or make the call. Free to Play is one of those genres that means something entirely different depending on the game. For every model that feels like Las Vegas methods (Zynga, Candy Crush) there's folks who do it right, like League of Legends, or WarFrame.

I've never shipped a Free to Play game before. That's one of the MANY reasons why we're going with Nexon, they can provide server structures and a global peek into gamers of all types and guide us into a game that's more "Shut up and take my money" as opposed to "shaking you down for your hard earned cash."

So we'll experiment, tweak, tune, and most importantly, build a positive community around the game as we develop it.

Anyone can just jump in and play your darned game. I'm DETERMINED to not do Pay To Win. Since this game is a shooter I want that one player who likes the game and doesn't feel like spending any money to be able to take down the trust fund kid that's spent a ton of money to have All The Stuff.

And here's what he said about deciding to work with Nexon:

When Nexon came calling I laughed. "The f***ing Maple Story guys?!"

And then I met Min Kim, president of Nexon US. And then Owen Mahoney, who runs all of Nexon. And I saw the direction they were going - Brian Reynold's new game, Robotaki's one, Splash Damage etc... and I spoke with all of these western devs who are working with them.

They all had glowing things to say about working with Nexon. They said they just let you build the game you want to build and when the time comes to see if you can monetize they'll help.

When your developer friends vouch for a publishing partner like that, you trust them.

It was a bit awkward meeting Min Kim considering that the one Asian character we had in Gears was named that and died in the first hour.

For more on BlueStreak, head here. For more on Bleszinski's new studio, BossKey, head here.

[Source: Reddit, @BlueStreak]

Our Take
Cliff Bleszinski is drip-feeding us details about BlueStreak, but it doesn't sound like he's withholding information – it sounds like everyone's questions simply don't have answers yet because the game is in the very early planning stages. I'm definitely curious to see the final product, which it doesn't sound like we'll be seeing soon.