Industry veteran and former Gears of War lead designer Cliff Bleszinski has launched his new studio, Boss Key Productions, and announced its first project in partnership with Nexon: a free-to-play PC shooter currently known as BlueStreak.
Bleszinski is trumpeting the game's design as an "old-school" sci-fi arena shooter, which is perhaps unsurprising in light of his very public ruminations about the viability of focusing on PC development after leaving Epic Games nearly two years ago.
"There are two lessons people have not learned from Minecraft: Get the game out there and build it," said Bleszinski in a recent interview with Gamasutra, and that appears to be what's happening with Boss Key's first project.
Bleszinski is currently the only publicly-announced employee of Boss Key, though that seems likely to change very shortly -- the company is known to be hiring, and Polygon reports that Bleszinski filed paperwork with the North Carolina Department of the Secretary of State in April naming himself CEO of Boss Key Productions and Guerrilla Games co-founder Arjan Brussee as the COO.
Brussee worked with Bleszinski on the Jazz Jackrabbit games, and left Guerrilla Games two years ago to join EA's Visceral Games.
As part of the partnership, Nexon has purchased a minority stake in Boss Key and will be publishing, marketing and managing BlueStreak.
Friends, @BossKey will be working with Nexon to publish a Free2Play Sci-Fi PC arena shooter code named #BlueStreak. #BossKey #UnlockTheFun
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) July 8, 2014