An Insightful Sit Down with Boss Key Productions’ Cliffy B and Arjan Brussee
Both Cliff Bleszinski and Arjan Brussee don’t need to prove much to anyone. The former is the face of Gears of War while the latter co-founded Killzone makers Guerilla Games, and also worked on Battlefield Hardline at Visceral Games. The pair now run their own studio, Boss Key, and have traded the large offices and multi-million dollar budgets with the perk of creating what they want, and how they want it.
But even then, their small 2-story studio in beautiful Raleigh is starting to hit its limit among Star Wars props and funny wall-hangings. Life as a new studio isn’t always easy, but with the help of publishing giant Nexon, LawBreakers could become the success the studio needs to both attract more talent, and work on even more ambitious projects. The duo felt comfortable in a setting that had to be somewhat alien to them having spent decade’s at large studios. But they seemed to enjoy the change, with Bleszinski mentioning it was nice to know about what was going on in the lives of the employees at his studio because it was small enough to know. But it wasn’t all about the development side, with the Gears designer speaking favorably about Nexon and their importance.
Known for their mobile games initiative, Nexon seems to be making a shift to Western development with LawBreakers and European-based Splash Damage’s Dirty Bomb. Bleszinski spoke about the differences between working with Microsoft on Gears and on a smaller scale with Nexon on LawBreakers saying, “Nexon is nothing to sneeze at. They’ve been good to work with but it’s like every publisher – nothing is ever perfect. They’re building their marketing department for this game to really get it out there. They had Dirty Bomb come out and it did pretty good. DomiNations did extremely well for them. They’re essentially learning how to be a Western publisher now. They came to us and said, ‘Hey, we want to make a Western game.’ Well… Killzone and Gears.”
With talk of the publisher, the announcement that LawBreakers would be exclusive to Steam sparked my interest. Was there some kind of deal with Valve, or was it purely about optimizing the title for one single platform’s online infrastructure? Brussee spoke about the business side of things saying, “We’re on Steam because it’s a very mature platform. I think there are lots of players there, it’s easy to find and buy games. People have friends on Steam and you can play with them much easier. Instead of using a newer platform, where you have to make new accounts and put your credit card in – it’s all this kind of friction that we don’t like.”
Brussee interestingly spoke about how Valve might also need them saying, “There’s a lot of interest from Valve to work with us because they’re also seeing that a lot of big titles are not on their platform anymore. Overwatch is not on Steam. Uplay is its own thing. EA is doing their own thing. Steam wants bigger titles on their platform. If they help us be successful, then I’m good with that.” Bleszinski then jumped in to cheekily add, “Front page promos!”
And of course pricing would always be the hot topic after Bleszinski announced last month the shooter would no longer be free-to-play. But he did mention the game would definitely not be priced at the retail $60 mark, citing criticisms of both Titanfall and Star Wars Battlefront for their approaches. “From his (Brussee) prior work and my prior work, we’re used to spending $40 to $60 on a game. So is there a mid-range price point where it’s kind of an impulse buy? My gut tells me there’s a level that’s not $60 that I think will make a lot of sense for us,” Bleszinski said regarding the game’s pricing model.
Besides the studio and business inquiries, I was curious as to what led the team to choose to put such a unique yet simplistic health regeneration mechanic into the game – which you can read more about here. The game employs a health station system a few steps away from the objective which causes a brilliant meta-game to ensue between rushing out too early and getting killed, or waiting too long and seeing the opposition escape with the objective. Bleszinski spoke about the decision of implementing such a mechanic saying, “You want to be over at the health station which we deliberately put far away from the objective so you’re in there and you’re like ‘Oh my God, are they going for my battery right now?’ If you’re getting half up on your health playing as Chronos or Bombshell, there’s the whole straw that broke the camel’s back. ‘Do I get my health? Do I risk this or do I go back out there?’ There’s these interesting trade-offs and decisions. If you die, you blame you, not us.” Bleszinski continued saying, “The beauty about health stations is that they tap into FOMO – fear of missing out. ‘Oh man, shit’s getting crazy in the next room and everybody’s fighting. I wish I could be there.’ This is one of the ways we’re going to stand out. By not having a traditional sniper, by not having the traditional medic. By not having the typical wait to recharge health. This is the way we want you to play this game, and we’re hopefully going to stand out because of it.”
The feeling at Boss Key while touring their offices was one of unbridled passion. The studio seems to be having a blast tweaking and testing their game, and witnessing a high stakes match between the developer’s best players was a pleasure as the hooting and hollering of the post-game banter echoed around the brick walls of their little downtown construct.