14 DAY TRIAL // Cliff Blezinski, the designer best known for working on Unreal Tournament and on Gears of War for Epic Games, has talked about the level of violence that players can experience in the video games he is involved with, in light of the recent discussion about video games and their possible regulation after the United States Supreme Court case.
Cliff Blezinski has said that, “When we create our games we use a slapstick type of violence, we poke each other in the eyes and hit each other with frying pans like the old Warner Brothers cartoons.”
He adds, “It's funny because the industry sometimes comes under fire from watchdog groups with regard to this sort of violence. But we always believe that when we first see this muscular space marine beating down a lizard man and heads explode with water melon guts spewing out of them, you’re morally inclined to smile and giggle rather than be revolted.”
The developer also claimed that Epic Games as a company has “an internal moral compass where we will decide, ‘No that’s a little bit too much,’ or we need to cut the violence back a little bit. So there’s still ways of showing violence to an affecting user without showing too much.”
The developer says that Gears of War is in many ways influenced by the over the top sensibilities of action movies from the 80's but he also says that there are important messages about the horrors of war, human drama and loss that are included in the games for all players to sample.
Gears of War 3 is the game Blezinski is currently focused on, set to be released exclusively on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft in the fall of next year.
The game was initially set to appear in the spring but a delay was announced to give the platform a sure fire autumn blockbuster.