Cliff Bleszinski Explains Why He’s Working With Nexon for Blue Streak

In a Reddit AMA, Bosskey Productions' founder Cliff Bleszinski has explained why he's working with Nexon for sci-fi shooter Blue Streak.

Saying he felt like the "belle of the ball", Bleszinski met with many traditional publishers and even Zynga in trying to find the correct partner for the free-to-play game. However, he felt it was important to talk to developers who'd worked with them previously: 

“Knowing developers who’ve worked with the traditional publishers, I’d take them out, feed them beer, and they’d [look around to make sure no one was listening before telling me to] ‘Run away.’”

He adds that Nexon actually came to him and while he was skeptical at first, but after meeting with them, he changed his mind. 

“When Nexon came calling, I laughed. The fucking Maple Story guys?!’ And then I met Min Kim, president of Nexon U.S. And then Owen Mahoney, who runs all of Nexon. And I saw the direction they were going.

“It was a bit awkward meeting Min Kim considering that the one Asian character we had in Gears was named that and died in the first hour.”

Bleszinski wrote about Nexon’s current relationship with Western developers such as Robotoki (Human Element), Splash Damage (Dirty Bomb), and Brian Reynolds (Civilization 2).

“They all had glowing things to say about working with Nexon. They said they just let you build the game you want to build and when the time comes to see if you can monetize they’ll help. When your developer friends vouch for a publishing partner like that, you trust them.”

Finally, Bleszinski said that while he has never made a free-to-play game before, Nexon has a lot of experience and success with that kind of business model. 

Bleszinski founded with Bosskey with Arjnan Brussee, with whom he co-created Jazz Jackrabbit in the 90s. Brussee later founded Guerrilla Games and started the Killzone series before working on Battlefield Hardline, Visceral's upcoming shooter, at EA.