Gears of War 2 Designer Claims Industry Visionaries Deserve Celebration

Gears of War 2 producer Cliff Bleszinski thinks that the industry's superstar designers deserve a little more attention--at least to the extent that the games business can benefit from them.

"I don't think the industry values visionaries as much as it could," Bleszinski said to Gamasutra. "Look at a guy like [BioShock designer] Ken Levine or [Fable II designer Peter] Molyneux or [Demigod designer] Chris Taylor or [Metal Gear Solid designer Hideo] Kojima. I mean, we all need to celebrate these people," he asserted.

Bleszinski, who has his own fan following among hardcore gamers, appears not to be letting Internet Celebrity get to his head. Rather, the industry veteran wants to help games be marketed more effectively: "It absolutely is very much a team effort, and I'm nothing without the 100-plus people who worked on Gears, but if I can go out there and evangelize the game and help sell the vision of it, that's a very useful thing, and we're all able to put gas in our gas tanks as a result of it, right?"

The designer's recent work with a Gears of War Hollywood adaptation clearly provided a lot of inspiration for his comments. "As sad as it is, you're only as good as your last game, in many ways," he commented. "In Hollywood, at least, you get movie jail for like a year, and you're out, and you get to try and make another good movie. In games, you screw up once, and no one ever wants to hear from you again. It's pretty sad."

Hollywood may have also given Bleszinski some ideas on the day-to-day work of game development, as well. "It's a very structured, yet organic, process in Hollywood," he concluded, "where in games it's still the Wild Wild West in some ways right now."