What is Cliff Bleszinski's Net Worth?
Cliff Bleszinski is a video game designer who has a net worth of $16 million. Cliff Bleszinski is best known for his work on the "Unreal" and "Gears of War" franchises. He helped develop both for Epic Games, where he worked from 1992 to 2012, and after that co-founded Boss Key Productions in 2014. Following the closure of that company in 2018, Bleszinski ventured into theater production as an investor and co-producer of the Tony-winning musical "Hadestown."
Early Life
Cliff Bleszinski was born on February 12, 1975 in Boston, Massachusetts. He has two brothers named Greg and Tyler. A skilled video game player growing up, Bleszinski appeared in the first issue of Nintendo Power magazine when he was 13 for earning a high score close to 10,000,000 on "Super Mario Bros." At the age of 15, he came in second at the Nintendo World Championships.
Career Beginnings
Bleszinski began his career proper when he started his own company, Game Syndicate Productions, as a teenager. His first game was "Palace of Deceit," a text adventure game originally released for MS-DOS in 1991. The game was remade for Windows 3 in 1992 as a graphical point-and-click game under the title "The Dragon's Plight."
Epic Games
Bleszinski joined the video game and software developer Epic Games in 1992. Two years later, he had his first major career success with the platformer "Jazz Jackrabbit," co-developed by Arjan Brussee. The game became Epic's bestselling game at that time, and earned Bleszinski enough money for him to purchase his first apartment and car. He had his next big success in 1998 with the release of "Unreal," which he co-developed with James Schmalz. Powered by the 3D computer graphics engine Unreal Engine, the first-person shooter game was a huge hit, spawning a franchise. Bleszinski worked on the sequels "Unreal Tournament," "Unreal Tournament 2003," "Unreal Championship," and "Unreal Tournament 2004." He also served as a creative consultant on the action-adventure game "Rune."
In addition to the "Unreal" series, Bleszinski found enormous success with the "Gears of War" franchise, which he launched in 2006. As well as creating the third-person shooter, he worked as the lead designer on the first three installments of the series. "Gears of War" became one of the bestselling franchises for the Xbox 360 console. In October of 2012, one year after the release of his final "Gears of War" game, Bleszinski left Epic Games due to occupational exhaustion and jadedness. He intended to permanently retire from the video game industry at that time.
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Boss Key Productions
In the summer of 2014, Bleszinski announced via Twitter that he was coming out of retirement to work on new video games via his company Boss Key Productions, which he co-founded with fellow former Epic Games developer Arjan Brussee in Raleigh, North Carolina. The first game from the company was 2017's "LawBreakers," a first-person shooter for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation 4. Although the game was well-received by critics, it sold poorly and was shuttered in 2018. Boss Key Productions went on to have another commercial flop with "Radical Heights," leading to the company's closure in May of 2018.
Other Projects
Following the closure of Boss Key Productions, Bleszinski ventured into theater production. He invested in and co-produced Anaïs Mitchell's musical "Hadestown," which had its London premiere in 2018 before transferring to Broadway in 2019. A major hit, the production won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Bleszinski subsequently invested in the 2019 Broadway revival of Terrence McNally's play "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune." Among his other activities, Bleszinski co-produced Jeremy Snead's 2014 documentary film "Video Games: The Movie." He later penned a memoir entitled "Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games," which was published in late 2022 by Simon & Schuster.
Personal Life
In 2012, Bleszinski married former professional gamer Lauren Berggren. The couple resides in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Bleszinski opened two bars: The Station and The Raleigh Beer Garden.
