Cliff Bleszinski

Clifford Bleszinski
Bleszinski presenting at the 2016 Game Developers Conference
Born	Clifford Michael Bleszinski (1975-02-12) February 12, 1975 (age 41) North Andover, Massachusetts, U.S.
Residence	Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.
Other names	CliffyB, Dude Huge
Occupation	Game designer
Spouse(s)	Lauren Bleszinski

Clifford Michael Bleszinski (born February 12, 1975), popularly known as CliffyB, is an American video game designer, former design director for the game development company Epic Games, and the co-founder of Boss Key Productions. He is known for his role in the development of the Unreal franchise, especially 1999's Unreal Tournament, and the Gears of War franchise.

Cliff Bleszinski made his first non-commercial game at the age of 11. His first commercial game was made at age 17, an independently developed point-and-click adventure game called "The Palace of Deceit: Dragon's Plight". Bleszinski created the game while he was a student at Bonita High School in La Verne, California, and released it in 1991 via his own company, Game Syndicate Productions. He sent a copy of the game to Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games (then known as Epic MegaGames). Sweeney was impressed with the game and hired Bleszinski to work at Epic.

His next game was Dare to Dream, a point-and-click adventure, released in 1993. Bleszinski worked on one of Epic's first multi-person projects brought, 1994's Jazz Jackrabbit followed by 1998's Jazz Jackrabbit 2, and designed the first-person shooter game Unreal Tournament.

In addition to his work on the Unreal series, Bleszinski served as lead designer on the Xbox 360 shooter Gears of War and its sequel, Gears of War 2. Gears evolved out of the development of what was going to be a game called Unreal Warfare. As Bleszinski explained in a speech at GDC 2007 entitled "Designing Gears of War: Iteration Wins," the game started out as another first-person shooter in the Unreal universe. Over time, however, influenced by the cover mechanic in Namco's 2003 game Kill Switch and the third-person Resident Evil 4,Unreal Warfare became the game known as Gears of War. On April 12, 2010, he appeared on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon to promote Gears of War 3, his last game for the company.