Clifford Unchained

As I write this it’s a stunning day here in beautiful North Carolina. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and spring has sprung. Not a cloud in the sky, and bathroom bullshit aside, this is a great place to be, and an even better place to start a game studio.

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting lately as this studio has grown and as this new world is sprouting, first, out of my head, and then, out of the heads of the fantastic folks I’ve managed to recruit to come build this vision. Yes, it’s “just a videogame” and we’re not curing cancer, and I’m certainly no Elon Musk (SWOON) but I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid and saw Space Invaders on my friend’s TV.

I’m making a god damned videogame, with a whole new world, with new characters and settings and stories. 

First time in ten years, honestly, since Gears 1 blossomed out of Epic and the failure of my first marriage. Boss Key right now honestly has the vibe of Epic in that timeframe, and it feels fantastic.

This week we had a MOUNTAIN of press and “influencers” at the studio. So, put yourself in my shoes. After willingly retiring after being fiscally comfortable to do so I felt the itch, “the need to express to communicate to going against the grain” – to make a new game. I found my Avengers and we started hammering away, day after day, in the heart of our capital city, in spite of the Sad Saxophone Guy outside our office, or the Obnoxious Gospel Lady, or the long hours everyone works, we stared crafting.

And something started to emerge.

Flash back to seven or so years ago when I met the love of my life, Lauren. I was at Epic, and things were…okay. Entertainment wise I was burnt out on the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Hell, the Locust were modeled after the Uruk-Hai. (Looks like Rod took it full Uruk-Hai with Gears 4, but that’s not important right now.) A little show based on a legendary book series came along and swept through Epic. I refused to watch it at the time out of principle. My now brother in law, Stephen, urged me to catch it, and I did, at the Carolina Shore one weekend escaping from crunch time. (I do my best thinking at the Carolina Shore, but that is for another post.)

20 minutes into the pilot Lauren and I were hooked on Game of Thrones.

Ever since then this has been our favorite show (outside of Rick and Morty) pretty much ever. Apart from the over the top rapey-ness of the show (really, did you need to do that to Sansa?) we adore nearly every aspect of it, the drama, the scheming, the locales, the casting, all of it. To the point where I married Lauren in 2012 at the San Diego Safari Park and at the end of our vows we quoted the books/show “I am hers and she is mine, from this day until the end of my days.” I’ve always seen Lauren as Dany, and as dumb as it sounds, our dogs as the dragons. (Teddy is grumpy but powerful, he’s a total Drogon.)

We’d been dating and in love at first sight about a month years ago when I said to Lauren “want to go to Comic Con with me?” and so, we went. And fell in love with San Diego and the entire convention. We kept running into the showrunners, Benioff and Weiss, (we had dinner years ago, and they co-op’d Gears together, FUNFACT) and the cast, heck, we got hammered with Robb Stark at one party and got a really goofy picture with Maisie and Sophie one night. 

Now, this might seem like a random rant, but it all ties together, so bear with me.

Imagine my amusement when I was able to pull the strings for Lauren and I to go to the season 6 premiere. I booked last minute tickets to LA and a hotel and at Zero Dark Thirty we were whisked to the airport to attend this event. We landed, rested, and Lauren got styled by the lovely WeHo couple Vince and Robert who did her wedding styling. Then, we went to Grauman’s Chinese Theater (or whatever they call it these days) and sat in the crowd with the cast and crew of this beloved show and saw the first episode of season six – which was introduced by the show runners on the very stage where I first demoed Gears of War 1 ten fucking years ago in front of Bill Gates.

The next morning we flew home, crashed, and the next day, full circle, I was at the studio showing off my new baby that has become the company’s teenager now that will, in the span of months, become the community’s adult. Utterly exhausted, in a beautiful way, I was able to see people grab and experience this new game and laugh and hoot and holler and play and enjoy it. (seriously, I slept 12 hours after the press event, listen to your body, kids!)

I have marked my professional career not by the games I put out but by the IPs I create, by the worlds I forge with my peers, and after Palace of Deceit, Dare to Dream, Jazz Jackrabbit, Unreal/Tournament, Gears, now, I cannot express how over the moon I am to have all of you get your hands on LawBreakers in Boston, of all cities.

Yes, the city I’m originally from.

Isn’t it weird how fate and all of this works? The city that I used to venture into with my family as a child that represented “the big city” that I escaped when I was 15 years old I’ll be returning to with a selection of my badass employees to lay it bare for all of you and let you see what we’ve been up to this last year and a half. And yes, I’m ponying up to take them on the private jet, because sometimes, it’s the little things that go a long way. :)

The time when I willingly and defiantly came back into this industry in spite of the bullshit culture war that’s been going on. The fact that I’ve built a relatively diverse studio and made a game that depicts people from all walks of life and has a half female cast that kicks ass first and then happens to be female after that – I’m putting my line in the sand and making the kind of game I want to play in a universe that I want to express.

I am over the moon right now and beyond thrilled for PAX East and hope to see so many of you there playing our new game.

Hugs.

Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I’ve been busy starting a videogame studio and building a whole new world from scratch. (Studio is at 33 employees now and growing!)

Anyways, several Boss Key Productions folks went to the Game Developers Conference a couple of weeks ago for a week of learning, networking, bonding with peers over nice dinners, not getting enough sleep, and imbibing in enough alcohol to kill Andre the Giant. Every year at GDC there’s some big buzz about something that’s going to be the Next Big Thing in gaming, or Chances Are You’ve Missed the Boat and so give us money for our product that’ll help you chase the smoke that everyone else is chasing. (Last few years it was Facebook games then mobile games…you get the idea.) This year the buzz was all about “Free” engines and Virtual Reality. I could do a whole blog post about “Free” engines, but that’s another subject for another time. (Loving Unreal Engine 4, btw.)

I’ve defended virtual reality multiple times, both on social networking and long form blog posts, so I’m obviously a huge fan. I can see the potential. I can see where it’s going. Will it be tomorrow? No. It might be 2+ years out from becoming truly a thing, not only for gaming, but for a myriad of other things. I also like Augmented Reality, but for me, they’re apples and oranges in many ways, and AR is another blog post. Let’s focus on VR for now.

There were three big main VR setups at the show, Sony’s Morpheus, Valve’s VIVE and Oculus’ Crescent Bay. My wife and I experienced all three, in that order, and each right now has their own unique take on VR, interface, and clarity. Sony’s has a lot of potential to make a great impact on consumers with their hardware being a fixed target, the move controllers work surprisingly well in VR, and I enjoyed the short but sweet Guy Ritchie like VR experience they had. It’s rather good. Crescent Bay is gorgeous and they’ve made massive leaps and bounds and I still think they’re on their way to making their VR a reality, however, after experiencing the Valve demos I have to say that that was the most impressive thing I saw at the show. Heck, it was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever experienced, honestly. I’m forty years old now and I’d like to think I call it like I see it but I really felt like I went someplace else. Once you interact in VR, you honestly cannot go back.

VR has a lot of naysayers, first and foremost, the crowd that says “What, am I going to play Call of Duty in that?” No, you’re not. That’s a dumb comment. Anyone who has a brain and has actually experienced VR knows that the kinds of experiences (not even all full “games” in the traditional sense that we’re used to) that will make VR work will be completely unique to VR.

“Everyone’s going to get sick, haha, vomit jokes.” Guess what folks, we’re getting to the point where that’s becoming a more and more rare exception rather than the rule. Higher resolution screens, better tracking, less latency, all of these things add up to a sick free experience. (Valve has been so bold as to say they’ve had no one getting sick in their demos.)

In regards to the VIVE “No one is going to have room in their home for this.” One of my coders, Matt, made a great point about this – 100 years ago people didn’t have a dedicated room for watching television. Now they do. Why? Because TV became that compelling of an experience, not only for individuals but also for the family to gather around, eventually followed by the VCR and DVD and beyond into films. Still, however, your average person in a major city might not have room, right?

Here’s where the title of my blog comes into play. I have a very light hypothesis about entertainment, tech, and life in general, it’s a rule of threes, of Small Medium and Large. 

Let’s apply it to film. If I’m on a plane and I’m watching, say, the seatback in front of me on Jet Blue or a film on my Ipad that’s the small film experience. It’s passable. I get the idea. Once I land in another city and I check into a hotel and queue up pay per view on the hotel’s flatscreen that’s getting into a medium sized experience. It’s better, larger, I can hear it even nicer, and I can relax in my hotel bed. The large experience is the equivalent of going to the theater, the IMAX, or going over to that rich friend’s house who has a theater room for movie night there.

Simple, silly food metaphor: Sometimes you get ketchup packets with your fries, at home you get the squeeze bottle, when you’re a restaurant or a family of 12 you go to CostCo for the gallon jug.

Let’s apply this to music. Sometimes you grab your shitty little ear buds and your phone and just listen to Spotify. It’s compressed, but it can get the job done. Then you get home and put on your home stereo and dance in your underwear and it’s fun. You get ready for the very same band’s concert that night where the instruments are live and loud and the experience is a memory to remember.

Small, medium, large. There are people who casually watch football at a bar, then there are people that buy the merch and root for their favorite team, and then there are folks with team logos inked on their bodies that go to every home game.

See where this is going? Right now, the GEAR VR is the small VR experience that’s to market. Sony’s Morpheus looks like it’ll be the Medium. And, if Valve can pull off what they’re gunning for, their VIVE will be the Large. (Large experiences can be scaled down often and operate on the smaller scale, obviously it doesn’t go the other way. If I want to just sit and use Vive I can, or just stand there and do something, but if I have the space to explore and move around a virtual kingdom, by all means!)

So that’s the big problem with how people are doubting VR right now, beyond the killer app that it might need. (Eve Valkyrie might just be that, we’ll see.) People are trying to shoehorn VR into a one sized fits most type of experience without looking at it as a variety of experiences, for a variety of people, for a variety of income levels. I still maintain that anyone who hasn’t experienced at least one of the three systems that I did needs to shut the heck up and hold their tongues until they do, because there’s two types of folks in this world, those that doubt VR and those that have truly seen it.

Hey all, been a while. Pretty busy with my new studio at Boss Key, working with the fantastic talent that we’ve brought on board to make a great new shooter. Haven’t had a lot of time to blog. However, there’s something that keeps coming up in my design and pop culture conversations that I’d like to share.

It was triggered by the Poltergeist remake trailer hitting yesterday. The internet reacted accordingly, because, quite frankly, this is one of those films that really didn’t need a remake, much like Psycho and The Shining. (both were redone to a resounding thud.) However, this being Hollywood, the bean counters being risk averse would rather just dust off an old idea that works, slap on some overdone CG, and call it a day.

Those of us who are older can rage all we want, but the main thing that we don’t keep in mind is the target demographic, especially for a movie like this. (It’s probably going to be PG-13) That demographic is one of the last main groups that still actually goes to the movie theater. I see them whenever I happen to find myself at North Hills here in Raleigh on a Friday or Saturday night. Piles of teenagers who are lining up to get picked up at the Regal cinema.

And you know what? If I were to go out there when this movie hit with a clipboard and asked them how many had seen the original I’d wager the amount that had would be few and far between. Maybe a handful of them have a cool older brother or sister, or awesome parents who have shown them some classic films, but that’s the exception over the norm.

I could go on and on about my feelings about Hollywood and remakes, but this blog isn’t meant to be about that. It’s about a rule that I’ve come up with that is rather helpful for game mechanics and intellectual properties (worlds, universes.) I call it the “10-15 year rule.” That number is slightly arbitrary, and can change, but it’s meant to be a range of pop culture (and game mechanics) that can assure you that some things that were around 10+ years ago are bound to not be known by the current crop of teens.

A recent example was when Missy Elliot crashed the Super Bowl and damn near stole the show from Left Shark. Many young social users had no idea who she was, because her last album was in 2005, ten years ago. (there’s that number again!) The reason for this is plain and simple, these kids who are 16 years old were six years old when she was popular, so for them, they have no idea who she is. Some even think she’s trying to be the “next Nicki Minaj.”

I use this argument when talking about world design, fiction, and sometimes, game mechanic. A recent example is in Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Dodging and double jumping with the exo-suit were touted as big, innovative features in that game. I’d wager that many of the players of CODAW had never played Unreal Tournament 2004, which had both. (Having been a key creative behind UT it’s cool to see this.) The phrase “it’s new to them” is an important statement to keep in mind when debating a feature set, or world, with older, experienced developers who have seen it all and can try to dismiss an idea as “oh, it’s just that feature from that old game.”

Yes, that feature that’s ready to be dusted off and re-introduced to a whole new eager generation of gamers. (“Rogue like elements”, anyone?)

Another example of this happening in gaming is with the space dogfighting genre. Star Citizen is set to pass 100 million dollars in crowd funding. Elite: Dangerous, Eve: Valkyrie, etc… On one hand you have the older gamers who have the money to afford these games, and to fund them, and they’re going to be introducing the genre to their teenaged kids who are too young to remember Descent: Freespace and Wing Commander.

The final main example I like to use is Twilight and True Blood. Vampires seem cyclical, and I look at the throngs of screaming kids who love Twilight and I remind everyone - these kids were too young for Buffy, for Anne Rice, heck, even for Blade.

Look at the trend that hit last year in fashion, the acid washed “a bit too high” jean shorts. They’re back from the 90’s, as is flannel. Fashion is cyclical, and, in many ways, as are video games and the universes in which they’re set.

If you’re young and doing your own thing in High School and you don’t think you’re having an influence on your peers, check out this message I got recently from an old classmate.

Needless to say, it made my month, maybe my year.

Some names edited.

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I never got the chance to send this message to you, when you posted your really moving message about Mr. Clague. Funny thing is Cliff, I had a really similar to share, but along with Mr. Clague. I found that my life was the most influenced by you. Ok, before you close this as some stalker fan boy message, hear me out. I was super shy in high school and I wasn’t really that ambitious. When I met you and you were already making video games, it was like seeing an alternate universe. You just has this certainty that you were going to do all these things. And when you showed me Dare to Dream and said that I inspired the little guy in it, I was pretty speechless. The next year, after you graduated, I not only created a bunch of new Drama programs (the multi-cultural group, a shakespeare lunch group), but I also went out and won the Tournament award at the Shakespeare festival (and a full ride to X University which I didn’t take.) On top of that, I tried out for the speech for commemoration and won, standing up there in front of the valedictorian. It’s not an exaggeration to say that you showed me confidence and what it can attain. That sparked the same ambition in me that I saw in your eyes so many years ago. That lead to a double major at X, landing a position at X, and eventually to X. Funny thing is it didn’t stop there. I was five years into a consulting career solving problems at every major company in the world. And then I saw an article with your name in it. It was a promotion for Gears of War, and I just thought it was funny that I recognized your name. And on the next page was the same face I remembered from high school. And I realized that ever since I graduated college I had been settling again. Just going for the safe route that would make the most money. In the next weeks, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. My passion had always been in gaming and I’d built all this expertise in IT software architecture. In the next month I quit X, took a 40% paycut, and joined Y. From there I spearheaded their digital portfolio, and moved to X, to Z Interactive, to X Mobile, and now to my own start up. We just closed our Series B securing $3MM from a Chinese investment company. Even more ridiculous, another investment company was so impressed by my background they offered another $3MM to start my own company separate from my current co-founders. That’s the offer I’m taking. I know you’ve probably heard of all sorts of fanboy lauding over you, and I love everything you’re doing for the community of Raleigh and for gaming over all. But at the end of the day, I just wanted to thank you. It’s a total cliche, but you are the reason I got into gaming, and I’m one of the happiest and luckiest guys on Earth because of it. If I can ever be of help in anyway, I owe you a big one. Excited to see what Boss Key brings in the future. SIncerely, That nerdy asian kid with oversized glasses. - X 

Okay Lauren made me watch the Power Rangers flick.

Here’s the thing about her generation’s movies vs mine.

When Ash Ketchum dies in the Pokemon movie he’s resurrected right away.

When Zoloft or whatever his name is dies in the Rangers movie he’s resurrected immediately.

Optimus Prime fucking DIED.

Right in front of our shocked little faces. Turned Grey and ashy and shit as his head fell to the side as Flint Dille’s way of saying “Fuck you and your generation, he dead, deal with it! ”

And that’s the generation gap in pop culture in a nutshell, folks.