After serving at Epic Games for 20 years, Bleszinski announced his resignation back in October. "I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager, and outside of my sabbatical last year, I have been going non-stop," he said in a personal note to colleagues. "I literally grew up in this business, as Mike likes to say. And now that I’m grown up, it’s time for a much needed break.."
Since then, Bleszinski has done what anyone would do after entering "retirement": travel. But now two months later, he's bored and is ready to create something to add to his "legacy." He's already talked to publishers and developers over the last few months, but it appears that he wants to go solo, to make a fresh start.
"I don't really want just the whole chainsaw gun thing to be my legacy," he said. "A lot of these kids who have been playing games over the last so many years, they think that's the only thing I ever did. They forget about Jazz Jackrabbit, Unreal, Unreal Tournament. Moving forward, I would hope to work on something new and fresh and kinda re-define my legacy."
Steven Spielberg didn't want to be known for just making Close Encounters and E.T., Bleszinski pointed out, he made numerous movies in several genres. "It's time for a fresh start," he added, referring to his long tenure with Epic Games.
Later on in the interview, he spills the beans on a new IP he's working on codenamed "Silverstreak", a name based on his first Transformers toy Bluestreak which was later renamed to Silverstreak. He didn't reveal anything about this new IP he's "gestating" on, but admitted that his favorite Transformer is Optimus Prime.
G4TV also asked Bleszinski how he plans to handle a gaming studio given his celebrity status in the gaming industry. Will his superstar status effect his risk-taking when developing the next blockbuster title? Bleszinski immediately pointed to John Romero, another celebrity developer who took his fame-packed ego and left id Software to help create Ion Storm and one of the biggest flops in PC gaming history, Daikatana.
"I think when you look at Romero and when he did Ion Storm, I think it worked against him as much as for him," Bleszinski said. "I think when you look at Curt Schilling and his studio, you have to be careful when you have a certain cult of personality. You can use it and leverage it to some extent, but you have to be careful not to believe your own crap."
To see the whole 6:46 video interview, head over to Beyond Unreal here.
