Gears Creator Cliff Bleszinski Criticizes Japanese Game Devs for Ignoring Multiplayer

Gears of War designer Cliff Bleszinski had a few words of advice to share with his Japanese game developer counterparts in a recent interview.

Speaking to Gamasutra, Bleszinski criticized the Japanese game industry for failing to give multiplayer its due. He believes that the lack of multiplayer in Japanese games is criminal, and does their games a huge disservice.

"My advice to Japan is that in a disc-based market right now, you cannot [ignore multiplayer]," he said. He quickly added that multiplayer shouldn't be tacked on to every game, but that it should be given its due where possible.

Bleszinski cited Shadows of the Damned and Vanquish as two recent games that would've benefited from having multiplayer modes.

"And if you're going to make a third-person shooter… the fact that Vanquish didn't have a multiplayer suite was a crime. That IP, it was pretty good as far as being Western, but the gameplay was great, the vibe… and I've often said on record that if Gears is the kind of Wild, Wild West coal train chugging along, that Vanquish is the Japanese bullet train, with style and everything.

"And there is absolutely no reason I shouldn't have been zipping around, doing the mega slides, diving up in the air in an arena with other players."

Nonetheless, Bleszinski offered his praise for Dark Souls' innovative multiplayer, which pulled it off in a way that no developers—neither Western nor Japanese—had done so before.

"That game is going to continue to inspire a lot of Western developers to figure ways that you can have connected elements in campaign games, and have more of a blended experience," he said.