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Cliff Bleszinski On LawBreakers, his studio and other stuff

R

Roude Leiw

Member
Gamespot released an interview with Cliff Bleszinski about the current state of Lawbreakers and what they plan for the future.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cliff-bleszinski-on-saving-lawbreakers/1100-6453676/

I play LB every other day. Its a very cool game and I had a lot of fun with it. Some of the matches I played where the most exciting ones I had in years. Having that low player base sucks. Especially because all the people working on it seem awesome (they are very active in the forums, on twitch etc.)
I really hope that the game can recover a little with the new content update which will drop next Thursday!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UI_tecEY7g
 
entremet

entremet

Member
Thanks for the interview, but you don't want post the whole article in the OP. Mods will lock the thread.

You can post excerpts, though.

Back on topic, I do love that CliffyB is about better work-life balance in the industry. Shame Lawbreaker bombed, but it's just a crowded space right now--OW, PUBG, Fortnite, and the incumbents--CoD, Battlefield, Destiny.
 
Q

Quonny

Member
'Officially in Destiny season' when the game hasn't even released on PC and the whole point was talking about PC CCU.

wat
 
N

nynt9

Member
His point about how you need to be f2p to succeed in Asia is pretty ironic right now considering PUBG also costs $30 and is exploding in Asia with millions of sales.

Quonny said:
'Officially in Destiny season' when the game hasn't even released on PC and the whole point was talking about PC CCU.

wat
Click to expand...

Yeah that was a very poor dodge.
 
BennyBlanco

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69
But we made a skill-based shooter that people who actually play it love and continuing to double down on marketing and awareness of it and committing to the product, is something that we're very much intent on
Click to expand...

I saw a promoted tweet from them earlier, and was like huh? Then I looked at the replies and it was literally all people telling them to cut their losses and to stop pushing their dead game. Then I looked deeper and most replies to the tweets on the main lawbreakers account are like this.

uDGtGaA.gif


Felt kinda sad.
 
S

Swarna

Member
I think Cliffy's reading too much into internet culture and overanalysis of the numbers killing his game on Steam.

The numbers are visible from within the Steam client. If people can see that no one is playing your game they will naturally have less motivation to do so themselves. Most don't go off into forums talking about it, they will just stop playing themselves. This can work for you or against you when your game snowballs in either direction (growth or decline) as a result.

I also enjoy how there is no questioning or reflection on the game's quality. It was revealed that PS4's numbers were only 1.5x bigger at some point well into the population plummet so the platform numbers were likely much closer around launch. The drop-off from this can't all be explained by simple "mean people saying mean things". There are plenty of games that sit around a stable 1k-2k CCU on Steam because people continue to find them worth playing. A common sentiment I see by people who play LB is that it's a good game that dirty casuals can't appreciate but it is hardly more skill-based than something like Quake Champions which is likely doing better on Bethesda's client alone in its unfinished state with shitty netcode, optimization and zero marketing. Nah, I don't buy it.
 
E

Exploratory

Banned
Roude Leiw said:
Gamespot released an interview with Cliff Bleszinski about the current state of Lawbreakers and what they plan for the future.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cliff-bleszinski-on-saving-lawbreakers/1100-6453676/

I play LB every other day. Its a very cool game and I had a lot of fun with it. Some of the matches I played where the most exciting ones I had in years. Having that low player base sucks. Especially because all the people working on it seem awesome (they are very active in the forums, on twitch etc.)
I really hope that the game can recover a little with the new content update which will drop next Thursday!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UI_tecEY7g
Click to expand...

I mean I'm sure they're active on the forums but when you're talking to 10 people that's pretty easy.
 
S

Syntax

Member
Whenever we introduce these new classes, they're probably gonna wind up overpowered in the build, but that's an old kind of technique, taking some moments to kind of try and get people to try the new hero and then, of course, massage your back and balance it once players get a sense of it.
Click to expand...

No, Cliff, don't do that. Offer loot boxes or other rewards for playing X amount of games or completing character specific missions to encourage players to try new characters. Don't ruin the game during their launch window.

Here's the thing; I really like and enjoy the characters we shipped in the game because I wanted to go in the opposite of the kind of style that's really popular right now. And is it a little bit retro? Sure, it's a little bit '90s. Maybe it's that my love of the whole '90s Spawn archetype's coming through. Who knows if that's the case? But, the thing is, is we're not gonna beat some of those other games in regards to their crazy, 400 Pixar animators creating these amazing ... The five-minute shorts that make you care about a robot and a bird, right? So, it's like the direction that I've been working with with [community manager Rojan Rivas is to] double down on the verbs you do in the game and in particular, the guns. Let's put the characters in the background, but let's really double down on the sliding, the shooting, the stabbing, the sexiness of the manufacturers of the weapons.

And remind people that what I've been saying tirelessly in interviews is we're a shooter that then, also has characters and I feel that the marketing campaign should've represented that.
Click to expand...

The Lawbreakers character designs make a lot more sense now but, as someone that remembers the 90s clearly, they're nowhere near as pleasing to look at as Spawn. But those were comics, not game models.
 
Z

Zojirushi

Member
BennyBlanco said:
I saw a promoted tweet from them earlier, and was like huh? Then I looked at the replies and it was literally all people telling them to cut their losses and to stop pushing their dead game. Then I looked deeper and most replies to the tweets on the main lawbreakers account are like this.
Click to expand...

I don't know much about Lawbreakers but shitty people on the internet should certainly not be the thing to discourage them.
 
C

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
going against what's most popular is always commendable, but sometimes doesn't pay off. This is one of those cases
 
1

120v

Member
he kind of has a point comparing something like warframe. something that was quaintly dropped in there and built up a following over time. it didn't set the world ablaze right away and nobody touted it has a bomb

but it was a conscious decision not to go f2p so it's their cross to bear i guess
 
T

Tripon

Member
nynt9 said:
His point about how you need to be f2p to succeed in Asia is pretty ironic right now considering PUBG also costs $30 and is exploding in Asia with millions of sales.



Yeah that was a very poor dodge.
Click to expand...
Well, it's also ironic considering lawbreakers started as a F2P game and went pay to play mid development. If they knew, they shouldn't have switch payment models.
 
J

JDB

Banned
120v said:
he kind of has a point comparing something like warframe. something that was quaintly dropped in there and built up a following over time. it didn't set the world ablaze right away and nobody touted it has a bomb

but it was a conscious decision not to go f2p so it's their cross to bear i guess
Click to expand...
Warframe had almost 20k people player at peak hours straight from launch. Never dropped below 14k. Lawbreakers launched with almost 5k players and has already dropped down into the double digit s. It's not really comparable.

http://steamcharts.com/app/230410#All
http://steamcharts.com/app/350280

(Just gonna assume PS4 numbers aren't much better because when they showed a graph of both PC and PS4 population around launch they were really close together)
 
R

Ryuuga

Banned
You can't even create a "Lawbreakers has developed quite a fan art following.." thread because then you'd be lying. Lying is not nice.
 
M

Madness

Member
And in regards to considering doing an Xbox version. I'd love to, but there's still other discussions that need to be had. And I think, you look at Xbox ... from my prior work, and I think they felt miffed and kind of rejected, that we chose PlayStation, but for us it was just a matter of install based for PlayStation at the time, and then considering we'd see for Xbox down the line.
Click to expand...

The only mistake with this though is that Lawbreakers is a first person shooter, looking at global install base of PS4 vs Xbox One makes sense, however having a shooter and ignoring Xbox One means millions of people in the US/Canada/UK/Aus who play shooters don't get to buy. Then you also take into account that a lot of Gears fans are still on Xbox. Cliff just launched a shooter in a crowded genre with little to marketing or hype, hedging his bets primarily on PC which hasn't really embraced shooters beyond Overwatch or CS:Go. I mean look at the numbers of call of duty and battlefield and battlefront on PC versus console. At one point this game was even going to be F2P with microtransactions. So he didn't really have a cohesive vision for launch.
 
E

Evolution of Metal

Member
element said:
I have a feeling that Lawbreakers is going to fall into the same spot as Demigod or The Culling.
Click to expand...

The Culling actually sold a ton of copies for the hackjob of UE4 assets that it is. It started as a decent BR game with a good CCU (compared to the competition at the time), but the developers were way too slow with updates and improvements.

The Culling was profitable where Lawbreakers is a pure loss.
 
D

Diablohead

Member
The thing with lawbreakers is its not a game a lot of people want, it's a nice love letter to classic arena shooters with some low and no gravity thrown in but that's about it, it's not reinventing the wheel in many ways and when you go against the current big hitters... Well.

Also not helping matters is the talk on low numbers and a game update that changed a lot of what the game was designed around, adding in regeneration and things changed it up and make it like a sequel only a few weeks after release, it was a sloppy desperation move.
 
J

Jacqli

Member
The game is so ugly (Tarantino my ass). Even if it went F2P, I would not play it because of that art-style. And I do not mean everything has to be anime-esque, far from it, I love for example Rainbow's style. But Lawbreakers is hard to look at and no one of the characters, especially for a hero shooter, seems interesting.
 
R

Roude Leiw

Member
SinCityAssassin said:
Based on that player count, I'm very surprised you have enough time to wait that long for a match.
Click to expand...

i played a lot in the beginning. now its less but thats because of the patch they released with health regen and health buff.
but of course nowadays you need to wait 5-10 minutes. but thats fine i can do other stuff in the meantime.
 
R

RSTEIN

Comics, serious business!
Wow, doubling down on PC gaming criticisms. Not good, Cliff.

On PC, there's this immediately wanting to declare something a success or a bomb by this kind of internet culture that loves to just observe things.
Click to expand...
 
BiGBoSSMk23

BiGBoSSMk23

A company being excited for their new game is a huge slap in the face to all the fans that liked their old games.
I wonder if a game about aerial acrobatic shootouts would work well/better as a TPS.

I'm a sucker for lavish animations.
 
P

Perineum

Member
RSTEIN said:
Wow, doubling down on PC gaming criticisms. Not good, Cliff.
Click to expand...

Is he wrong? There's a thread every other day about PUBG circle jerking, and when LB came out there was a thread every week talking about how it was going down the toilet.

Often sales threads are posted for Steam numbers to tout greatness or shittiness in sales.
 
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