Cliffy B's new title, Bluestreak, was revealed yesterday as a free-to-play arena shooter for the PC. Obviously, a bit of scrutiny was aimed towards the dev, but Cliff has stated that this won't be a simple pay-to-win shooter.
The Gears of War creator was asked whether BlueStreak would have microtransactions in a Reddit AMA, and said that at this stage, he doesn’t yet know.
“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.
“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.”
Bleszinski said he was attracted to free-to-play because “anyone can just jump in and play your darned game”, but that he’s determined to avoiud a “pay to win scenario”.
“Since this game is a shooter I want that one player who likes the game and doesn’t feel like spending any money to be able to take down the trust fund kid that’s spent a ton of money to have All The Stuff,” he said.
“I want to make a skill based game whereas someone who is really, really good is seen as a player with nearly godlike abilities. Sure, once in a while the person who sucks might get lucky with a stray shot and take that person down, but I want to craft a game that has weapons and moves that are easy to learn but to really make them sing takes thousands of hours of play just like a professional athlete would. Anyone can toss a football, but Drew Brees can get it through the tire at X yards every time.”
