Interviews// Cliffy B Interview: Gears Of War PC

SPOnG: So, just to quickly recap, what’s new in the game? What are the new gameplay elements? The new chapters?

Cliffy B: We have five new chapters in the single-player mode. These kind of fill in the gaps in the story with what happened in Gears 1, that whole thing with the train and the Brumack… the player now gets to actually fight the Brumack at the end of that section.

Also, multi-player wise, we’re shipping with 19 multi-player maps, three of which are new and completely exclusive. Plus you have 'King Of The Hill' mode. Also it’s totally integrated with Games For Windows Live, so you basically have that seamless Xbox LIVE-type experience on the PC, which is very idiot-proof and very nice.

Most importantly, above everything else, you have the editor. We’re shipping the same editor we used to build the game with, which is just amazing to me. We’ll see this great sense of community pop up, with people making their own levels, their own mods, machinima and things like that. Maybe we’ll hire one or two of them… who knows right now. It’s not just a game, it’s a platform you know…


SPOnG: Games For Windows is still in its early days at the minute… what's the difference between Silver and Gold memberships? What are your thoughts on the service?

Cliffy B: Yeah, you need to really talk to Microsoft about that, if you want to find out more about that, about the pricing structure or whatever. But as far as from my end, what I know is that they are taking a PC experience that is often very scattered. Where each game had its own solution, some people use Game Spy and things like that… Whereas now the experience is getting unified on Windows, which is something that should have happened a long time ago. So, Games For Windows is its own brand, it has its own packaging, its own magazine… things like that… and I, for one, am very happy to see this happen.

How other developers feel about it, having this one solution, is another issue altogether. Some of them want to code their own thing, some of them don’t want to hook in Microsoft software or whatever. But I’m happy to do it.


SPOnG: How does the matchmaking work in the game?

Cliffy B: There’s a kind of true skill-ranking system that essentially sees how long players have been playing the game, assesses their skill level and things like that.

When you do a matchmaking session, it essentially tries to put people together of similar skills and it works decently. They’re going to continue to iterate on it. That’s the great thing about online gaming, you can just continue to evolve it, continue to figure out ways of perfecting the system. Nothing of course is more frustrating than going online and getting your ass completely handed to you. But it’s also just as little fun to be going online and winning all the time. So you need to find that good balance, that ebb and flow… and since it is an organic system that can be dynamically modified, we can tweak it over the coming years as far as how gamers play to it.


SPOnG: You mentioned King Of The Hill earlier – what is that?

Cliffy B: King Of The Hill is an objective-based game type where there is one location at any given point on the map, which is usually where some of the super weapons are. One player has to essentially walk up to that point and, essentially, play the monkey in the middle, holding that location. It’s actually really dramatic when you are sitting there having to hold the spot and all your buddies are fighting, in cover around you providing supporting fire.

You kind of feel like you’re stood naked in the middle of the room shouting “Help, please, support me!” Once the point gets drained, it changes location… Plus the cool thing is you can respawn and there are 15-second queues, whereas in the traditional game once you’re dead, you’re out. Also, execution rules as well, so you have to walk up to somebody and kill them off completely. It’s great fun. We’ll give it a go in a little while to show you.


SPOnG: Just looking at the PCs we have here. We’ve got the top end PCs here running the game at what looks like the highest resolution. What about at the other end? What’s the minimum spec that will reasonably hold its own?

Cliffy B: A computer you’ve bought over the last couple of years should be good. I can’t remember the exact minimum specs off the top of my head, they’re on the website and the box.


SPOnG: We were talking about E3 earlier. What do you think about the demise of the beast that was E3? What about this year’s show!

Cliffy B: It was fucking WEIRD, man! Really weird. I mean, Santa Monica is always a nice place to be in and not having to go to the LA Convention Centre downtown was quite nice. Nobody really likes being around downtown LA and it’s not really the most commuter-friendly city. But from our end, we were demo’ing Gears on PC and we got to show it to a lot of people and everybody was easy to find and so on. But the vibe I get off of it is that you are going to continue to evolve it. I tell you, man, the security was tight. Whereas previously it was such a…

SPOnG: Clusterfuck, I think is the word!!

Cliffy B: Heh, well my own favourite anecdote is that I had a meeting in one hall and then had to be in the other in, like, 15 minutes and I physically couldn’t do it. There were crowds of people blocking me lining up for some free t-shirts being handed out by some half-naked woman in knight armour or whatever, and I’m like “Are you fucking kidding me? Is this the best use of our time and money?” It was just impossible to get from point A to point B.

Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft clearly realised that the amount of money that they were spending on this clearly wasn’t worth it any more and that things just needed to be drastically scaled down. I think what you are going to see is a lot more individual junkets at this point. Atari, a few years ago, just used to hire out a good section of a nice hotel in [Mexican island] Capo St Lucas and fly a load of journalists out so they could have a few days of playing all the games and just drinking and shooting the shit. And it was a great way to do it. They would get all sorts of great stories - instead of everybody having to come to one town.

Although I will say that the one thing that is missing about E3 is the mob factor. This is the ultimate way to show to your family that what you do is a legitimate thing! (Laughs) When there are all these celebrities and booth-babes and all that pomp and circumstance. That side of the old E3 was a very camera-friendly event. So, if you move it to private events and hotel conference rooms in hotels then it’s just not as sexy.


SPOnG: Yeah, well that’s one of the big arguments – because it’s lost that pizzazz element, that it’s going to lose a lot of it’s appeal to mainstream media.

Cliffy B: Yeah, Robin Williams would be out there every year. It was a gas for your average musician or celebrity to get invited and come along and check out the games. That was cool! So something is lost there, sure.