Boss Key Productions Folds - CliffyB Throws in the Towel

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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CliffyB and his Boss Key Production game developer studio "is effectively no more." This goes to show you that building games that people actually want to play is more important than how many people follow you on social media. Law Breakers, while a fairly polished title, came across as a me-too after Overwatch has staked claim to that ground. And this last foray into the battle royale genre, Radical Heights, well it just came across as a dumpster fire with a bit of money grab on the side. He is doing what other millionaire game devs are doing, focusing on himself (he never stopped that), and his family. Thanks cageymaru.
 
WHHHHAAAT? the dude with the massive ego wasn't the real talent in earlier successes?

I think of this all the time at my job. I'm the manager-visible lead, but there is a young person on my team who is a goddamn rockstar. I try daily to pay any karmic success I've enjoyed back by relentlessly removing my name from credit people are giving "us" which this kid did. And by "kid" I mean someone who is younger than shirts I own.

I hate narcissism. It's completely unflattering, perhaps ironically.
 
Aside from being one of the most hypocritical and two faced developers, bashing whatever platform he got paid to depending on how the wind blew. Then he jumps on the gamergate/SJW brianna wu et all movement?

Even if lawbreakers was good (it wasn't) I doubt he would have sold many copies.
 
I don't understand why people are so mean to him. He helped create Unreal and was the lead designer for Gears of war and probably could have retired on that success. Though instead he chose to make games he enjoys. I hope the best for him and hope he can make some cool games again.
 
Lawbreakers game play was just bad. It was a semi-interesting concept but the game play was just plain not good.....I played the beta and just was not impressed at all to be honest. It took way to much effort to get the right amount of combos to be effective.
He really needed to focus on something "new" instead of rehashing a genre that was already dominated but a extremely popular title at the time.
 
Devastadus said:
I don't understand why people are so mean to him. He helped create Unreal and was the lead designer for Gears of war and probably could have retired on that success. Though instead he chose to make games he enjoys. I hope the best for him and hope he can make some cool games again.
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Thats all well and good but making games he likes to play versus games everyone else likes to play doesn't pay the bills.
 
lucidrenegade said:
Never understood why this guy was a "celebrity".
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As far as game design goes he did give us the Unreal series and Gears of War. Back when the 360 launched Microsoft was looking for a killer title and found it in Gears of War, so I remember there being a lot of videos back then focusing on Epic as a studio and CliffyB while promoting the shit out of the game. I think that is when his "celebrity" status came. I remember one in particular showing the parking lot outside the studio and CliffyB pulling up in his car (a yellow Lamorghini Diablo, IIRC) acting like a big shot, and from that point forward I disliked the guy. He has a major ego and is very narcissistic.
 
I have mixed feelings about Cliff. He made some of my favorite games and I always appreciated his attention to gameplay and not just technical details. Yet I also find myself rarely agreeing with anything he has done since Gears 2. Hopefully he's able to figure things out and give us one more great franchise.
 
Devastadus said:
I don't understand why people are so mean to him. He helped create Unreal and was the lead designer for Gears of war and probably could have retired on that success. Though instead he chose to make games he enjoys. I hope the best for him and hope he can make some cool games again.
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Because of his personal comments, not his games. He always blames his failures on everyone except himself. The guy is just an ass.
 
bigdogchris said:
I just hope this is the last I hear of "CliffyB", the dumbest moniker in gaming.
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So sayeth “bigdogchris” Come on, the guy might be a narcissistic egotistical douche, but his nickname is hardly different from 99% of usernames/PSNids/gamertags.

Lawbreakers, I think I played the tutorial and I think even that didn’t play well enough for me to give a shit. I didn’t even know they made the other game Radical whatever. I’m a detractor of Overwatch(it was better when we called it Team Fortress 2) but at least it is enjoyable unlike lawbreakers seemed to be.
 
Nice to see others around here who remember the burn this asshat threw at all of the PC gamers on multiple occasions over the years. While I hate to see a bunch of people get the axe, I'm honestly not crying over CliffyB himself.
 
Devastadus said:
I don't understand why people are so mean to him. He helped create Unreal and was the lead designer for Gears of war and probably could have retired on that success. Though instead he chose to make games he enjoys. I hope the best for him and hope he can make some cool games again.
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I played Lawbreakers on a free weekend and it didn't seem bad. Along with Toxikk which I like, apparently they had about 9 players, total not concurrent.
 
Shmee said:
That being said, I enjoyed his games up until LawBreakers, but just not him.
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More people should see it this way.

CliffyB was involved with fantastic games in his career. If he ever said something that personally offended you, or that you didn't agree with, that shouldn't take away from his professional body of work.
 
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I've met and interacted professionally with both Cliff and John Romero...both known for extreme self-promotion and inflated ego.

Of the two, Romero is the only one I'd go have another beer with. That said, Cliff was the more talented game designer.
 
dgz said:
The anti id Software crowd needed their own hero. I am not even kidding.
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I don't think this is that far off. After Doom id was hyper-focused on engines and technical achievement rather than making a game of substance. Epic was kind of the opposite (for better or worse), so gamers fell in one camp or the other.
 
Cliff is meant to be part of a team, not leading one. He did his best work at Epic while collaborating with some other great people, but was never put in charge of the whole thing, where I think he isn't in his optimal role. He's got good instincts and ideas but needs strong people to keep him in check, something that likely didn't exist at Boss Key.

Wondering why he is a celebrity? Well, let's wonder why thousands of far less deserving people are more so than Cliff is or ever was. He was popular for a niche group and he was Epic's version of hip and cool back when Gears was a big deal and they made him the poster boy for trash-talking, old-skool gamers (we used to have Romero, but....yeah.). While he no doubt is/was a ham, he had some chops and success to back it up.

Yeah, he makes the game he likes and they don't pay the bills. In the next breath, we blame people for only making games that sell and not games for the passion or conviction of making games. Can't win for trying.

I am not standing up for the guy (even though it's pretty clear where my loyalties lay for the old Epic guys) but there's no need for all of the hate. I can't say I like the guy, but I avoided all of that cheesy hype and thus also never grew to dislike him. He invested early in FB, made a pile of cash and spent his own money trying to do something. It didn't work out and everyone loves a loser, right? Yep, Lawbreakers wasn't good and the timing was way off. Radical Heights was a sad last ditch attempt to salvage from Boss Key which also didn't pan out. So what? He's got way more winners on his resume than losers and that's something.
 
Sonicks said:
More people should see it this way.

CliffyB was involved with fantastic games in his career. If he ever said something that personally offended you, or that you didn't agree with, that shouldn't take away from his professional body of work.
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Do you feel the same about Cosby/Ceelo green?
 
There is a kickstarter for Hellbound: A 90's FPS. You can play the demo on steam while you obsess over what some knob said 20 years ago.
 
c@Nc3r said:
Do you feel the same about Cosby/Ceelo green?
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Hah, I did think about those few edge cases when I posted what I did. It gets a bit muddy but I still think you can be a piece of shit person and still be able to make, or produce, good work that has nothing to do with the shittyness. I'm not in any way absolving people of their shittyness because of their work, however. That's not what I'm saying. Just that the two sides can be judged independently most times.

In Ceelo Green's case though, there is that creepy ass Gnarles Barkley song called Necromancer that is just too much after the fact. I think even Cosby used to openly joke about his private antics too. These types of things are definitely over the line.

Getting back to the point though, I'll rephrase my wording to say that generally it's possible to separate the personal and professional work of someone and appreciate one or the other or both (There are, as you noted, exceptions to the rule). It's something I've learned from working with all types of people over the years. Sometimes you just don't like a person for who they are but you respect the work they do because it's on point.
 
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Devastadus said:
I don't understand why people are so mean to him. He helped create Unreal and was the lead designer for Gears of war and probably could have retired on that success. Though instead he chose to make games he enjoys. I hope the best for him and hope he can make some cool games again.
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I feel the same way. It's almost like people get a tingle in their willies when others don't succeed. Doesn't make sense to me.
 
I really liked Radical Heights. It had great potential and new ideas for a battle royal genre game like vending machines for loot which Fortnite now has
 
You'll never establish yourself chasing someone else's trend in the gaming market, Lawbreakers chasing the hero based shooter after Overwatch was just a bad idea.
 
Devastadus said:
I don't understand why people are so mean to him. He helped create Unreal and was the lead designer for Gears of war and probably could have retired on that success. Though instead he chose to make games he enjoys. I hope the best for him and hope he can make some cool games again.
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He talked shit about PC gamers, you know, the fanbase that led to his success in the first place, dumped them for Xbox, then tried to ween them back once that started losing Steam. It didn't help that Gow 2 and 3 never made it to PC either and GoW 1 had GFWL.
 


Fine example of cliffB's work. Worth a watch if anything to hear LtMkilla call him an asshole.
 
Devastadus said:
I don't understand why people are so mean to him. He helped create Unreal and was the lead designer for Gears of war and probably could have retired on that success. Though instead he chose to make games he enjoys. I hope the best for him and hope he can make some cool games again.
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Because he has a long history of being a grade a jackass. A few good games in ones past doesn't mean I have to forever think he is the second coming of christ when he goes around making the game development community worse for his presence.
 
Kor said:
You'll never establish yourself chasing someone else's trend in the gaming market, Lawbreakers chasing the hero based shooter after Overwatch was just a bad idea.
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Because Overwatch didn’t chase TF2, and Fortnite didn’t chase PUBG, and WoW didn’t chase EQ....
 
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Brian_B said:
Because Overwatch didn’t chase TF2, and Fortnite didn’t chase PUBG, and WoW didn’t chase EQ....
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Exceptions, not the rule. Think about the endless stream of low profit to loss making military shooters that were pumped out last generation after CoD4 hit big. You sighted wow as a pretender to EQ but look at the litany of failed large scale mmo projects that were chasing those Warcraft bucks.

One people have their thing, they sort of just stick with it. Trying to jump in with existing heavily established players typically ends in tears.
 
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