Inside View of Epic, Preparing Gears of War 2

Subm writes "Lamborghinis, motion-capture rooms, secret new weapons — these are a few things included in the profile of Epic Games and its Design Director, Cliff Bleszinski. 'A Microsoft employee who works closely with Epic described the company as having a "band dynamic." Staff turnover is low, and many of Epic's most senior employees have been friends for more than a decade. This does not seem a very long time until one sits in on an Epic meeting and realizes that anyone over the age of thirty-five achieves the temporal stature of Methuselah. Epic's recent growth is regarded with wary gratitude by many of its employees, though some miss the old days, when, as Sweeney put it, "we were just a bunch of kids who had some cool ideas and were doing neat things."'"

CliffyB is a jackass

[ushimitsudoki]

Here's what you need to know about CliffyB's mindset:

Do you see the Xbox 360 as the main platform as opposed to the PC? During the whole Unreal time it was very much PC focused.

The PC right now is a fair amount different to what it was back in the day, with all the badly integrated video chips. Here's the problem right now; the person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know bit torrent to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.

So piracy was a main point for you...

Right now, it makes sense for us to focus on Xbox 360 for a number of reasons. Not least PCs with multiple configurations and piracy.

But when the dust has settled, is there any possibility of Gears 2 on PC?

No.

Definitely not?

No.

From: http://www.totalvideogames.com/Gears-of-War-2/feature-13270.html [totalvideogames.com]

Re:sounds reasonable to me

[Darkness404]

The main problem with PC gaming is the fact that it doesn't always work. Wheras if I buy a game for the Wii/PS3/360 I can be 100% guaranteed that it will work on my system. The most I might have to do is spend $20 for an extra controller. On the other hand, if I buy a PC game I have to worry about if I have enough RAM, graphics card capability, the right operating system, a fast enough 'Net connection, etc. For the average person, that just makes making a PC game a total hassle, not only that but the game's performance is not equal for everyone, unlike console gaming, plus, upgrades for console games are cheap, upgrades for PCs are quite expensive (not only the gear itself, but hiring someone to put it in, not everyone is computer literate). And don't get me started on DRM... PC gaming has many, many flaws, but being easily pirated isn't one of them.

UT3 Linux client

[L0stm4n]

Epic can kiss my ass after that fiasco. The ut2004 had a great linux client. Was supposed to be one for UT3 as well as the editor. Hell it's even done but Ryan Gordan can't release it.

Re:CliffyB, man, it's CliffyB

[mobby_6kl]

>You can now pick up the baseline 360 for $200. You'd probably spend twice that on just your graphics card to run Gears PC at 720p.

Welcome to two years ago. There's a $130 card that runs Crysis at 1680x1050 at 40 fps [techreport.com]. And really, if you'd be content with playing the games on consoles, why don't you save those $200 too and just continue playing on low detail? This way you'd get the same experience you get on the consoles, without spending anything extra!

He's a douche...

[madhatter256]

He's a douchebag. Stole Reality Engine for pennies, hired its programmer and then dropped his ass. Small community indeed... my ass.