Interviews// Gears Creator, Cliffy B

SPOnG: Another question that was requested for me to ask was about the whole "emotion in the game" thing. During the games development you mentioned a few times that you wanted to get a real strong emotional response from the player. But you don’t really feel too connected to the other characters. Do you feel you hit it?

Cliffy B: I think that the emotional response we got out of the gamers was one of feeling like the game was a visceral one, and an engrossing experience. You know, we never really set out to make Shakespeare as far as the characters and dialogue go. It was planned to be an action movie experience form start to finish, so if I was expecting people to cry you know that wasn’t really the case. Perhaps I pitched that a little incorrectly but the feelings we wanted people to feel were feelings of fear and excitement...

SPOnG: Really get the heart pumping?

Cliffy B: Yea! You know, and shock and awe. Essentially, those are the feelings I think we succeeded at.

SPOnG: At what point, because I remember seeing the Unreal engine 3 demo a few years back ...

Cliffy B: The City Adventure demo.

SPOnG: Yes, where Theresa is just the one locust walking around...

Cliffy B: Yup.

SPOnG: ...an epic was like "forthcoming title but we aren’t releasing any info yet". How long as it really been Gears?

Cliffy B: Oh, it was Gears; it was Gears back then when we where showing that demo and I knew it but we couldn’t really say anything, it was one of those things. That's why being at GDC right now is kind of a trip with everything being full circle with Gears doing as well as it’s done. Because it was at GDC in San Francisco just a couple of years ago where you had that very first prototype demo. And it was promising back then and we fulfilled that promise and came out with a really cool game. So, it’s really nice to see, actually.

SPOnG: Time for opinions! Thoughts on the Sony announcements yesterday.

Cliffy B: The PlayStation Home and ...

SPOnG: Home, Little Big Planet...

Cliffy B: I think its a very cool and exciting direction and I think there tends to be a mentality in video games to kind of go more hard core, more badass more over the top and larger scale and crazier and to do something like "Okay, this is my little virtual home and I can hang out with other people and do stuff that’s very simple." I think helps to expand the market in ways that ... you know, it’s the girlfriend factor, man.

You know you can totally see your girlfriend getting into all those games and those experiences and really help to make the PS3 a hub for the home. So, I think Sony is going in a really exciting direction. It’s not like, you know, Mark Rein saying to me, "It’s not like Sony just made that entire system up yesterday. They've clearly been working on it for a long time.”

SPOnG: Biting their tongues through the bad press, waiting for their moment to let it out.

Cliffy B: Exactly.

SPOnG: Did you get to see the Miyamoto keynote this morning?

Cliffy B: No, I did not.

SPOnG: Shame you missed it. He talked an awful lot about what you were just saying, about taking things in new directions and not just all guns and blowin' up people’s heads, Not that I don’t love blowing up heads.

Cliffy B: Yea, I’ll be blowin’ up lots of heads while they're growing some flowers.