Lawbreakers is a great game in an oversaturated market. As confident and cocky the game’s director of Gears of War & Unreal Tournament fame, Cliff Bleszinski, had been prior to release, the launch numbers and eventual drop-off has been a humbling experience for him. In a recent interview with Gamespot, he had the following to say.
We need the bodies. We need to keep fluffing up the CCU,” Bleszinski said. “We need to do what we can to let people know this is a really sweaty palm type of experience that can hopefully lend itself to eSports. But you know, I have to keep this game alive, first and foremost. I can be very cocky and very brash on social media. And realising that, you know, we have a fledgling player base. It’s been very humbling for me. I’m going to continue to iterate on this game, continue to add to it. And try to be less of a dick, honestly.
“I didn’t want to do the exact same stuff everybody else did. The funny thing was, making a character-based, class based shooter–even though it’s not as simple as a traditional arena shooter, it still has a lot of that kind of feel underneath it all,” he said. “In hindsight, I think it was a mistake to not ship with it. I was stubborn. I was like, ‘Ohh, everybody’s [already] done TDM.’ Even Blizzard’s like, ‘Screw it, we need to put TDM action in Overwatch.’ Fundamentally, at the end of the day, players just want to get in and shoot some stuff sometimes. That’s one of the things that I consider my strengths: I am willing to admit when I am wrong. I think people in the public eye–it would do them a great benefit to do that more often.”
“The problem with what we were trying to pull off with this company and this title was shipping a quality product with a team of 65 people without ruining everybody’s marriages,” he said. “So certain concessions did have to be made from a production standpoint. It’s easy for me to sit there and go, ‘Ah, we should have shipped with this,’ ‘We should have shipped with that.’ [Or] change the date. In hindsight, it would have made sense. But hindsight is always 20/20. If I could go back in time I’d find a way to change the schedule and ship with more of those things.”
I really enjoyed my time with LawBreakers, and found it to be among the best shooters in recent memory. However, the game does have a steep learning curve, and other accessibility issues that have lead to a massive drop in player numbers. Whatever their plans are, I really hope that Boss Key Productions can bring the game back to life.
Register with us for the best in gaming, and join us for video game discussions on our forums.
