Creator / Cliff Bleszinski

Clifford Bleszinski (formerly known as "CliffyB" and "Grand Master Ice Shaft") is a game designer born on 1975 at Boston, Massachussets.

He started writing games at the age of 15, and presented his second game, Dare to Dream to Epic Games's CEO Tim Sweeney, which landed him a job on the company. He then proceeded to work on other games from the company, including the Unreal and Gears of War franchises as lead designer.

After his departure from Epic due to Creative Differences, he co-founded his own development studio, Boss Key Productions, with which he developed LawBreakers. After the commercial failure of the latter and another videogame, he retired from videogame development.

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Videogames he was involved with

• The Palace Of Deceit (1991)
• Dare to Dream (1992)
• Jazz Jackrabbit series:
  • Jazz Jackrabbit (1994)
  • Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (1998)
• Unreal series:
  • Unreal (1998)
  • Unreal Tournament (1999)
  • Unreal II: The Awakening (2001)
  • Unreal Tournament 2003 (2002)
  • Unreal Tournament 2004 (2004)
  • Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict (2005)
  • Unreal Tournament III (2007)
• Gears of War series:
  • Gears of War (2006)
  • Gears of War II (2008)
  • Gears of War III (2011)
• Shadow Complex (2009)
• Bulletstorm (2011)
• LawBreakers (2017)
• Radical Heights (cancelled)

Other works

• Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games (2022, literature)

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Tropes related to his works:

• Approval of God:
  • During his stint as the lead designer of the Unreal franchise, he had his own site, "CliffyB's Ownage", where he chose what he considered "the cream of the crop from the Unreal Community", the best maps and mods from all games between Unreal and Unreal Tournament 2004.
  • He also loved a recreation of Unreal's "NyLeve's Falls" level in 3dsMax.
• The Cameo: Appears in Mega64 in a skit with Yu Suzuki where the latter describes the ending of Shenmue.
• Creator Cameo: In Unreal Tournament 2004, some levels (especially the urban-themed such as AS-FallenCity and ONS-Urban) have a billboard called "Bleszinski Blvd."
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Quoted by him as the reason why there are no Gears of War games after the first on the PC.
• Easter Egg: There are several eggs that feature an image of him:
  • Unreal Tournament: In the level DM-Codex, there's a secret room with a picture of him and the caption "Pretty Fly... For a White Guy".
  • Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2004: The level DM-Asbestos has a complicated egg that reveals an image of him in one of the central arenas.
  • He appears in the level AS-BP2-Outback of Unreal Tournament 2004's Mega Pack/Bonus Pack 2 DLC as the "Employee of the month" of the pub where the attackers start.
• Sincerest Form of Flattery:
  • He proclaimed that Sonic the Hedgehog inspired Jazz Jackrabbit.
  • He admitted once in an interview that the idea for Gears of War (which started life as a game called Unreal Warfare) came from the games kill.switch, Resident Evil 4 and Halo.

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