Following a successful near-30 years in the gaming industry, game designer andGears of Warcreator Cliff “CliffyB” Bleszinski publicly stepped away from the medium to pursue some other creative passions. Making a successful foray into the world of Broadway by producing the Tony Award-winning musicalHadestown, CliffyB then made a surprising pivot into the world of comics withScrapper. As a lifelong fan of comic books, the opportunity to work onScrapperwould end up offering yet another successful avenue for Bleszinski’s creative endeavors, with the title now poised to release in a collected hardcover format this spring after its initial 6-issue run last year onImage Comics.
Game Rant recently had the opportunity to sit down with Bleszinski to discussScrapperand the genesis of the comic, as well as how it shares certain thematic elements with theGears of Warseries. During our chat, topics naturally shifted fromScrapperand how it all came together to the issues that Bleszinski likes to incorporate into his work, as well as some thoughts on the sustainability of the current state of AAA development and the proverbial “arms race” among developers to create the “next big thing.“The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: How does it feel to finally haveScrappercoming out in a collected hardcover format?
Bleszinski:It feels good. It’s been a journey because it initially started as a game idea, and then I realized I didn’t want to slave away sleeping under my desk again after I’ve done it for 25 years. And then I was like, ‘What’s the best venue for this?’ You know, I think it could be a game. I think it could be an animated series. I’ve had a meeting with a certain streaming service already. My agents are continuing to shop it around, but the thing is, I think a comic book ultimately made the most sense. That’s the thing, you know, I’ve been a lifelong comic book fan. I came up withSpider-Man, then I transitioned toPreacherandThe Boys, and even crazier stuff by Garth Ennis likeCrossed. Just learning the art form has been a hell of a journey, I’ll leave it at that. It’s not easy to make a comic book, I’ll tell you that.
Q: When it comes to Scrapper, was working with Image always the end goal as far as your publisher? Or were there other publishers you had in mind?
Bleszinski:Well, I have to give credit to my friend John Nee. He used to work at Marvel, he used to run Cryptozoic, you know, Magic the Gathering, etc., and we’ve remained friends, right? And I met him through thegame designer ofPrototype, who I had hired at Epic at one point. He was working on an IP that ultimately got canceled, and I was up in New York doing research just to, you know, poke around the city. Met up with John, became friends, and then John knows so many people in general, but also in the comic book world. He introduced me to Alex De Campi, and she was my sherpa for the comic book world.
I had the overall story arc that I wanted. I had already paid out of pocket for concept art for a lot of what the world would be, what Scrapper would look like as a puppy, what he would look like as a petulant teenager, what he would look like when he ‘hulks out’, right? She kind of took it and molded it, like – top left panel, this happens, then turn the page and SPLAT. She also basically did the lettering as well. The artists, issue one was Sandy Jarrell, issue two is Ryan Kelly, colored by Jordie Bellaire. The way that lettering is done, I never paid attention to it, but the whole way you can kind of guide a person through the panels and the pacing…there’s a reason that there are so many comic book movies.
Q: When it comes to the actual conceptualization and plotting, what was the division of labor like? Would you come up with the general ideas for the arc and then have Alex work on the actual scripting and dialogue? Or was it more of a collaborative process?
Bleszinski:It was very much, just as the kids say, a ‘collab,’ but I came up with the whole ‘what if Batman was a dog’ idea and the origin of the story. Honestly, there’s so much to it. You know, I was in New York. I actually became a producer on Broadway. I producedHadestown, which won eight Tonys, which was a much-needed win after Boss Key cratered. And the thing is, we were going up to the city non-stop and I saw, you know, rats, I saw cats, I saw pigeons, I saw stray dogs, et cetera, et cetera. The initial idea for the IP was to call it ‘urban animals,’ and then it started morphing into the idea of ‘what if a dog was a superhero?’
Have you ever seen a badass dog superhero? There really aren’t any, you know? You’ve got Krypto, you’ve got Underdog, there’s Bolt, but he was an actor, right? I wanted to really, really answer the question – ‘what happens when the kids who lovePaw Patrolget a little bit older?’ Very much the Don Bluth-style target demographic, 11, 12, 13, and up.
Q: You’ve probably had one of the most interesting post careers of any game designer – 30 years in the industry, moving on to produce a Tony Award-winning musical, and now a successful foray into comics. How does working within the confines of those mediums differ from the experience of creating a game?
Bleszinski:Regarding passive narrative versus active narrative – actually, I read an interview with Ben Affleck where he’s talking about video games – and he said with TV and film, you ‘lean back.’ Video games, you leanintothem. My old writing partner intheGears of WarfranchiseforGears 2, Josh Ortega, once compared video games to novels. If you stop reading a novel, it stops. If you stop playing a video game, the game stops, the character dies, et cetera. If you walk away from a movie or a TV show, it keeps going, right? Video games and novels are things that require engagement at every single beat, and comics aren’t that different.
Broadway shows also, like looking at the capitalization of a show likeHadestownand seeing the numbers behind the scenes and what it costs to run it, and then for it to eventually wind up in the black, reminded me of what it costs to run a video game studio. And with a Broadway musical, they do it eight times a week, and they have to have understudies and backup. You have the lighting, you have the choreography, you have the orchestra in the pit, there are special effects – there’s so much that could go wrong. It’s similar to video games. I mean, when’s the last time you’ve seen an online launch for a game go smoothly, right? It’s just a million things that could go wrong within every medium. My addiction these days is learning new industries.
When you’re describing the process of working on a Broadway play and the amount of people that are involved in the production, it seems comparable to working on a video game. Especially a AAA game where there are hundreds of people that are involved in every step of the process.
Bleszinski:Oh, it’s what I call the ‘hydra development’ method for AAA these days. “AAAA” games are hyperbole, but the whole ‘hydra’ method where companies are like ‘we have a studio in Austin, we have a studio in Montreal, we have a studio in San Francisco, they’re all going to come together and make it.' It’s getting to the point like when you watch a major superhero movie and the credits go on for what feels like another hour, right? The amount of VFX people involved, the amount of people just involved in general…it’s getting to that point with games. I think when it comes to games, in particular, it’s unsustainable in the AAA space, especially considering wanting to pay developers – especially developers and their families – a living wage.
We’re kind of seeing the impact of that unfold right now with the unfortunate reality of all the layoffs that have been occurring recently.
Bleszinski:I mean, that’s what happened. That’s why we’re seeing so many microtransactions and things like that. That’s why we’re seeing the price of games rising. Games have largely been $50 to $60 for many, many years. There was a brief period on the SNES forgames likeChrono Trigger, I think they were 70 bucks, right? Something’s gotta give at some point, you know? Gamers want more features – they want amazing online play, they want amazing graphics, they want a great story and voice acting, realistic faces, and everything like that. All of that shit costs money. And then you see a game likePalworldcome out of fucking nowhere and crush it. That gives me hope. The creators ofPalworlddid the whole ‘the puck is going out where the puck is,’ you know?
Palworduses a lot of stock Unreal Engine assets. That swinging animation is directly out ofFortnite– trust me, I know. I worked on it. They did a lot ofthings thatPokemonplayers wanted. They kind of mashed upARKwithPokemonand added guns. The entire game pitch sounds like something that an eight-year-old would just rant about at dinner. But it works and it’s doing well, so there’s still hope for a game like that. It looks solid. It doesn’t look incredible, but it’s good enough. And what always matters is: is it fucking fun? Comparatively,Palwordwas made by a small team.
Working on a comic is also a relatively small team, with the actual core creative team being a much smaller group of people.
Bleszinski:What happened withScrapperis I had that feeling that I haven’t had in decades. It reminded me of when I didJazz Jackrabbit. That was just me, Robert Allen, and Arjan Brussee. And, you know, a handful of contractors, but it was just a few people, right? When I had my studio Boss Key, we wound up at like 75 to 80 people and a lot of contractors. It’s hard at that level to maintain a core vision. WithGears– everyone says I’m theGearsguy, like howRomero was theDoomguy. The thing is,Doomwasn’t just John. It was John Carmack. It was Kevin Cloud, J. Wilbur running biz. It was still a small team, but that’s where the magic kind of came from. I believe that, fundamentally, sometimes that magic comes from a smaller team. It goes back to the old joke about ‘Oh, our movie is going to be amazing! We have 12 screenwriters!’. It’s like – no, you need to have a core person who has the stones and has a vision supported by other people.
Gearsbecame a thing because I had a vision of what I wanted to do, but I was supported by Lee Perry, who introduced me toKill Switchand the cover mechanic. I loveResident Evil 4, and we kind of merged those ideas. Rod Ferguson believed in the vision and then we just kind of built the team around that and then you wind up with, you know, a billion-dollar franchise.
It seems like having a smaller creative team keeps the purity of the vision. There’s a sense of that inScrapperlike the creative team knew exactly what the book was trying to do and achieved that from issue one to issue six.
Bleszinski:I lucked out working with Alex. Alex, again, was my sherpa for the comic book world. We discussed different publishers, and she was like, ‘No, Image is the best for this.’ She was able to provide so much of this added flavor toScrapper. The fact that the pigeons are fans of Scrapper, the whole ‘Senpai, notice me!’ kind of thing, the rats kind of speaking gibberish, et cetera. I believe, in the grand scheme of entertainment, I want to be moved. I want to be thrilled. Scrapper loses some people who mean a lot to him in issue one, and then ultimately overcomes his kind of teenage angst and manages to unite all these urban animals for a revolution. For me, it’s a statement on abandoned animals, a statement on the over-militarization of the police, and a statement about gentrification.
I’d like to believe we didn’t do it too on the nose. So many gamers are oftentimes like ‘Get your politics out of my games!’ and I’m like ‘Have you playedBioshock? Hello! Ayn Rand, anyone?’ Jesus Christ, there’s like so much there. So much ofCall of Dutyis about war in the Middle East.Gears of Warwas about the Bush administration’s thinly veiled war for oil. The opening cutscene literally has emulsion pumps. Like, ‘hello McFly!’, you know? Pay attention, people. But, again, you can’t be too on the nose with that kind of stuff. That’s all I’m saying.
Q: Even though they’re different, bothScrapperandGears of Wartouch on a lot of similar themes, like economic disparity, resource scarcity, loss, and the different ways that people grieve and deal with that loss. When it comes to the existence of these themes across both works, was that something that was intentional or is it just something that kind of came about naturally because these are things that are at the forefront of your mind?
Bleszinski:Well, the irony is that capitalism has been good to me, but I think we’re at a point where …people keep using the phrase ‘late stage capitalism,’ and we’re at a point where only the rich get richer. I’ve seen so many threads on Reddit of people in their twenties who are convinced they’re never, ever going to be able to buy a house, right? You have outside investors – I think it’s BlackRock – that are just buying up suburban homes and renting them out, and we’re seeing an entire generation that’s going to be renting for life. So what you’re seeing is this huge wealth gap, especially in America where capitalism works until it doesn’t, you know? The world is getting exponentially more expensive, andScrapper’s kind of my statement on it.
Q: Another thing aboutScrapperthat really jumps out to a reader is a theme that is very relatable for a lot of people, which is this idea of a ‘found family. ’ Was that something you knew you wanted to include?
Bleszinski:Well, my business partner in the restaurants tells me ‘five people.’ Have five people that you’re super close to. I learned many, many years ago that just because you’re related to somebody doesn’t mean you need to talk to them. We all have that one racist uncle, right? You don’t need to talk to him just because he’s your uncle. Fuck him, you know? Sadly, that actually happened with my own mother, right? Until my father died when I was 15, she was incredibly caring and incredibly giving. Once my dad died, she flipped a bit and turned into a total narcissistic sociopath. The idea of ‘found family,’theFast and the Furiousfranchisewas built on that shit. It also goes back to the hero’s journey – you know, ‘who does he meet along the way trying to deal with the one ring’ kind of vibe fromLord of the Rings. What kind of bonds does he have with people?
One of the things in the fiction that I wanted was for Scrapper to get powered up when someone pets him. One of my favorite Twitter accounts is @CanYouPetTheDog. It’s brilliant. IfScrapperbecomes a video game, I want the mechanic where if he walks up to a stranger and they start petting him, he starts getting powered up and we see he eventually starts to become like a local folk hero. There’s one point in the story where Scrapper’s feeling a little bit down, and he asks this character ‘Can you pet me?’ It’s like, we all need a little bit of love sometimes.
Q: You’ve made it clear in previous interviews that the world of game design is something that you’ve put behind you, but it’s hard to readScrapperand not envision it translating into a great video game. If the opportunity presented itself, how would you feel about working on aScrappergame, and in what capacity do you think you’d feel most comfortable?
Bleszinski:Well, I still do a little consulting from time to time, but I don’t want to be a CEO ever again. That was incredibly exhausting. I’m still friends with a good amount of the Boss Key people, but having to stand in front of them and tell them the studio is closing still breaks my heart. So, I wouldn’t want to be heavily involved. One of the things I do miss about working in video games is just, like, getting new builds. Like, ‘Oh, there’s a new build!’ and just getting to check out the new features and then just typing up lists of things that could be better.
Video games are about verbs. What can you do? Can you run? Can you dodge? Can you dive? Can you shoot? Can you duck? Scrapper has plenty of verbs, and that was deliberately done.
Think aboutthe genius of Rocksteady Gamesand how they cracked the code of finally making an incredible Batman game withArkham Asylum. That’s kind of the mold that I was going for initially. Even Rocksteady didn’t go forArkham Cityinitially. They walked before they ran. They stayed in the asylum, initially. They also did the whole ‘Batman’s the world’s greatest detective.’ They actually tapped into that, whereas other games just had Batman kicking guys’ asses. I could absolutely seeScrapperas a game, I would just need the right partner for it.
NOTE: This interview took place prior to Xbox’s confirmation of the four current Xbox exclusives going multiplatform.
Q: There’s been a lot of talk recently regarding Microsoft’s plans to take several console exclusives and make them multi-platform titles as part of their business model moving forward. You’re the creator ofGears of War, which is one of the exclusive pillars of the Xbox ecosystem and has been for years. What are your thoughts onGears of Warpotentially going multi-platform and coming to PlayStation?
Bleszinski:In the words of Ronald Reagan (I’m showing my age), “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” I think that’s what Phil Spencer’s going for. He’s going for the Netflix model. That started with Xbox Game Pass and then, like Netflix, they realized they needed to be on every device. People have been joking aboutGears of Warcoming to PlayStationfor well over a decade and, you know, I think ‘the more, the merrier.’ If people own a PS5 and get to play and experience the next-genGearsgames, that means moreGears of Wartattoos. One of the things I learned from one of my heroes, John Romero, is that he’s very good at reminding people about his past as he’s guiding them toward his future in regard to his career. I have no problem encouragingGearsfandom. I embrace it.
Anytime somebody comes up to me, and they’re like ‘Oh my God, I loveGears of War!’ I’ll buy them a drink. They’re like, ‘Wow, why are you doing that?’ and I’m like, ‘You helped buy my fucking house, dude.’ It’s the least I could do. But then, you know, I kind of pivot like, ‘Oh, check out this dog comic book,’ or ‘Check this Broadway show,’ or ‘Come have a pint at my beer garden.’ I just like diversifying my life in general, but it’s good to embrace your past.
Q: WithScrapper’s first arc finally releasing in a collected hardcover format, are there any plans to reunite with Alex for another arc in that universe?
Bleszinski:Yeah, I have a Word document on my desktop upstairs titled ‘ScrapperVolume 2’ with some ideas on where it could go. You know, like, what’s outside the dome? Dogs give birth to litters. Does Scrapper have siblings? Are they good or are they bad? Has SMITE really been taken down or has it not? I don’t want to do J. J. Abrams' storytelling method of ‘answer one question and ask three more.’ I think that’s a pyramid scheme of narrative where, you know, like withLost, he painted himself into a corner.
Learning what I’ve learned about narrative over the years, it’s like fishing. You have to push and pull, give and take. But you don’t always need to explain everything, you know?
[END]
Scrapperreleases in a collected hardcover format on April 23 via Image Comics.
