Cliff Bleszinski’s WTF moment with

OXCGN in Australia

We attend the Gears Of War 2 Black Beta

and talk with “Dah Man”

by XboxOZ360

©2008 Grant Smythe:

Well Gears Of War 2 is just around the corner and waiting to hit our shores come November 7th at exactly 0.00:1am. Several midnight launches around Australia will be handing over the game to eager Gears Of War 2 fans. We will be some of the first “official” players online with Gears Of War 2, playing with those on our Friends-List.

You see our valued North American readers, Fri 0.00:1 7th November is around *16-20 hours BEFORE the East Coast of the United States or Canada even wakes up . . . let alone ticks over the hour of Midnight of the 6th into the 7th.

*Please forgive us for being smug about it  . .

as we are such a small market globally, we’ve often had to wait much longer and sometimes in the past even missed out on some games altogether, even had them banned! So we feel somewhat chuffed when we get a major title earlier than the BIG players.

We had both Halo 2-3 first, Gears 1 plus GTA:IV first and any other midnight launched World-Wide Release first (Oh wait, the Kiwis were actually “technically” first…..Curse you New Zealand!!!!).

Helping to excite us about our ‘early’ release was Cliff Bleszinski, over here for a media frenzy recently.  He was obviously extremely happily showing off the next Gears Of War to various media reporters, and also touring around this wonderfully BIG world called Australia.

Many people from overseas are simply amazed at the sheer size of the country when they start getting around it, and Cliff Bleszinski was no exception and seemed to love the place.

While In Sydney, MS Xbox-Div, via Pulse Media, their media arm in Australia, (big call-out to Scott Rhodie from Pulse for his excellent help and assistance btw – always a pleasure Scott) had teamed up with IGN.Au to bring 300 sweaty, eager, male and female screaming Gears Fans together in The Exchange Hotel Darlinghurst’s dark, red-glowing, ‘confined’ yet dingy (designed that way on purpose mind you) underground nightclub called the Phoenix Lounge.

The afternoon was originally set to be a major media blowout starting with with reps from all the local press and gaming media meeting at the * Shangri-La Hotel.

Unfortunately, due to an illness in the Gears 2 troupe, the event had to be called off at the very last minute, which no doubt frustrated many of the media there hoping to ask him the questions they had in mind on the day.

However, as fate had it, a pair of our traveling media troupe Mark and Mike from OzBoxLive did manage an unscheduled interview with Cliff in his hotel room, and managed to grab an excellent Podcast with him which you can hear over at OzBoxLive – Podcast #41.

Next, the IGN Black-Beta was an invitation only night event. Needless to say, with the opportunity to play Gears Of War 2 “hands-on” alongside Cliff Bleszinski and many others gamers, it didn’t take too long for the 300 tickets to be snapped up in a blink of a blood splattered eye, weeks beforehand – no Invite, no entry. The line-up was very impressive and went up the street, extending for a hundred meters or so, and looked every part of any major media event in Sydney.

Soon as the doors opened and the OK was given, all 300 people, including myself and our site representatives, slowly slipped down the stairs to be greeted head-on with a one-off custom built Gears of War 2 Harley Chopper sitting right at the bottom, glowing in soft hued red lighting.

The area was dark, noisy and packed. Fourteen 42″ HD LCD’s were showing the Gears Of War 2 game screen. The huge bar was offering up FREE drinks and munchies for all who came along. I have to take my hat off toe Joanne Choen for organizing these events, there’s one hell of a lot of work, and she just does it so smoothly, well it seems so – 11/10 Joanne.

The evening kicked off with IGN.au Editor introducing Cliff to the crowd. It was difficult to hear him above the din of the 300 strong crowd, even with the assistance of the PA. A huge roar erupted as Cliff stood up to demo the game.

Somehow I thought he’d be taller.  Well, he is a shorter guy than I am – put it that way . . . so standing up means not many could actually see him unless you were within the front 3 rows. He gave a little intro, welcomed us all there, praised Australia (naturally), and explained the details of the game.

First up, a MP tournament with two Lancers up for grabs for the winners, plus other great goodies including an Xbox 360, games and some very hard to get Gears Of War 2 Cogs – 2 of only 50 made for Australia and New Zealand apparently – cool . . . These went off early in the night to 2 lucky people from a hat draw. Lucky buggers, if you’re one of the winners reading this, my number is . . . . . oh heck, just email me, I might buy it . . .

Cliff then set the crowd loose on the 12 screens and consoles. Bodies rushed everywhere. The club’s bar filled up quickly and the beer and wine flowed continuously. The poor till (cash register) rolled up a massive $$$ figure for IGN/MS to take the tab on. So everyone was well oiled, like ‘Gears’ . . . I just had to get that in somewhere. You DO know that is where Cliff got the name gears of war from ?! It was from a phrase used about war . . “The ‘gears of war’ are oiled by the blood of men” – little bit of trivia for you.

Cheers – nah dare I say – screams of YEEAAHH! were heard across the room at various intervals from every corner as each pair worked their way into the top 10 for a chance at the final shoot out and to be crowned The Best Gears 2 MP Players of the night.

During this time, our good friend from Pulse Media, Scott Rhodie, managed to grab Cliff aside for a few quiet words with myself and a few members of the OXCGN team.

While talking and being introduced to Mr Bleszinski – (we’ll call him Cliff  for ease of this discussion) – I had the opportunity to ask him a few personal questions. I wanted to approach him about his background. A couple of my questions had him looking a little amazed and perplexed.

I asked him if he was “happy now that the game he was originally building in high school was finally in the can . . The game called “Over Fiend” . . . .  you remember?!” Cliff stood still for a moment, looked straight at Scott (Pulse rep) and then asked, “what did you say?” – I thought I’d broken some Gears Of War protocol or something. I repeated the question. He asked again, “what game did you say?”.

The words came out of my mouth yet again . . . “you know, the one you were working on before leaving high school, “Over Fiend” . . . the one before being taken on board by Epic – - you know” . . .  He turned to me and simply looked straight at me and said . . . * “WTF, how did you know that stuff man . . “ Gesturing and counting fingers on his hands, he commented . . . “that’s shit . . only 3, 4, 5, maybe 6 or so people knew that knew that . . “ I couldn’t help myself and said . . .  “well it’s 7 now . . .” , with a big grin of course from both of us.

He was fascinated, so asked Scott . . . “who IS this old guy?” . . Scott replied, “Yes hmmm, he has a great 360 site here in Australia . . . likes to read up on lots of stuff” . . .  Cliff replied something like . . . “Yeah . . . riiiight . .”

I followed up with a clincher, asking, “so Cliff . . the character in Over Fiend -he was the forerunner for Dom in Gears – right? In Over Fiend, the main character that looses his wife and kid to a war and goes off in search for them . . . or something like that wasn’t it” . . .

Again, the quick snap of the head, as he looked straight at me with a look of amazement in his eyes and the classic Americanized . . . “WTF, how the hell do you know this stuff  man”. . . To which I replied . . . “Dean Takahashi mate, he sent me an autographed book and I have both of his books on the Xbox Platform . . . . . . Cliff goes something like . . .  “ahhh shit yeah . . . god that was ages ago” . . . well done “mate”.

We chatted some more, and he seemed impressed I’d obviously done my homework and actually asked questions he had not heard before. We had a great team chat with him later, and some of the team got some answers to some questions and a few snaps to keep for posterity.

So that was my WTF Experience with Cliff Bleszinski here in Australia. He’s a great quiet and affable man, who simply loves his game/s and is passionate about what he does. He enjoys his work, and “gets paid a shit load of money doing it” (his words or similar with a laugh).

*Trivia Note: The names of the earlier gears of war started out from Cliff’s earlier game initially mentioned above while at school, “Over Fiend“. It then became known within Epic as Unreal Warfare which Epic owned by Epic. The game then turned into “Project Warfare” which was sidelined to finish Unreal Tournament 4. Cliff wanted to finally call it “Apex War“, which was named after a sleepy little town in his homeland area of Raliegh, N.C.

You could tell that the relationship Epic has with MS is a solid one, and will continue for some time, as when quizzed about Gears 3 (which IS part of the franchised trilogy) and the future of the Gears Franchise as an entity, he simply said, very diplomatically of course, that he still has a life ahead, and looking that far forward would be a significant chunk out of his life, so let’s just take it one day at a time shal we.  Fair enough.

Meanwhile, the Gears finalists eventually got down to the Top 10 (5 pairs). One of our website team had a  brother who managed to nab the HIGHEST score of the evening. . . Go Adam (Von Sutton)! Unfortunately he missed out on the gold in the final showdown in the last doubles final by just a few points.

The two winners walked away with a bag of goodies, including a life size replica of the famed Lancer Rifle . . . so there were 2 VERY happy gamers wandering around later with their loot.

Needless to say, MS didn’t let them wander off with the Lancers under their arms (call the cops someone, this man has a chainsaw gun) . They were delivered a few days later to their homes.

Australia’s gaming industry is growing and expanding in many areas. Developers are now sending crew over for Media junkets and presentations – finally- on a much larger scale than before. As this night demonstrated, it is nice to see and experience. Personally I think we have a great deal to offer the world in gaming, and the night was yet another example of how the Australian Xbox Community is coming together and sharing in some good old fashion “adult” fun.

Also, finally once and for all dispelling the belief that only men (read pimply face teens) play games, there were many female gamers there too. Some thumped many of the guys in competition, and many boast a string of games and consoles to make any male gamer envious.

Conversations with Cliff, Gears of War 2, free beer, oodles of atmosphere, prizes everywhere, and hot girl-gamer femme fatales – who can spank male egos down with impeccable skill . . . oh what a night, who could ask for anything more.

©2008 Grant Smythe:

Filed under: 1st Party Titles, Console gaming, Editorial, Events, Interviews, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | black beta, cliff belszinski, Cliff Bleszinski, Cliffy B, CliffyB, Epic Games, Gears 2, Gears of War 2, IGN australia, Over Fiend, Pulse, Unreal Engine