14 DAY TRIAL // Project Bluestreak Designer Cliff Bleszinski has talked a bit about the possible microtransactions in his new free-to-play game and emphasized that it's still way too early to tell just how the game will evolve and how it will ask for money from players.
Bleszinski has a rich history in the games industry, having worked at Epic Games for a huge amount of time, during which he oversaw the creation of stellar franchises like Unreal Tournament or Gears of War.
However, last year he resigned from his position at Epic and took some time off in order to get the creative juices flowing and start working on a new project, probably with a new team.
He finally revealed the first details in these past few weeks, establishing a new studio called Bosskey and confirming work on its first game, called Project Bluestreak.
The game is billed as a competitive arena-based first-person shooter and Bleszinski has already shared a few details about it.
Now, in a Reddit AMA session, the designer has also tackled the main question about any free-to-play experience: microtransactions. He has confirmed that it's still way too early to say just how his team and publisher Nexon will handle the way players can spend money on the game.
While the designer hates microtransaction models seen in Facebook games like Candy Crush, he does appreciate some in full-fledged experiences like League of Legends.
"Honest answer: I'm not sure, and it's entirely too easy to tell or make the call. Free to Play is one of those genres that means something entirely different depending on the game. For every model that feels like Las Vegas methods (Zynga, Candy Crush) there's folks who do it right, like League of Legends, or WarFrame," he said.
The designer has emphasized that, given his inexperience with free-to-play games, it was one more point in favor of partnering up with Nexon, a South Korean online game company with many different free online games in its portfolio.
"I've never shipped a Free to Play game before. That's one of the many reasons why we're going with Nexon, they can provide server structures and a global peek into gamers of all types and guide us into a game that's more 'Shut up and take my money' as opposed to 'shaking you down for your hard earned cash.' So we'll experiment, tweak, tune, and most importantly, build a positive community around the game as we develop it."
Bluestreak and developer Bosskey are still in the early stages of their lives, so don't expect to hear anything big at least for a few more months.