BIZ: Do you find more females playing Gears?

CliffyB: Just from my own anecdotal evidence of talking to random people, I think Gears because it's in third-person and is a slower pace, is a more successful shooter than a lot of other shooters. And the co-op is huge because you get the boyfriend playing the game as Marcus and the girlfriend jumps in as Dom and then he can guide her through the game. That's cool.

BIZ: Gears has had a huge following online. What do you like to play online?

CliffyB: I like shooters. Recently I've been hooked on Call of Duty 4. I love their leveling system in there and their perk system is really cool. I've played a lot of Halo 3 but I've played enough of Halo and Halo 2 to know what I'm getting into there so that's when I transitioned over to Call of Duty 4.

BIZ: Are there other games that influenced you in developing Gears 2?

CliffyB: I can't really talk about that at this time. I can talk about games I enjoy playing right now.

BIZ: Which are?

CliffyB: I loved the Devil May Cry 4 demo...that was really solid. I think the marketing for that game isn't really that good, by the way. I played The Club from Sega, which is cool, but I would have liked more of a narrative in that game. Kane & Lynch was solid, and of course I loved BioShock and Portal. Burnout Paradise is cool, too.

BIZ: How have you seen the Game Developers Conference grow?

CliffyB: It's swamped today. You can barely get from Point A to Point B. There's always a certain amount of people who will show up for conventions and clog the aisles. It's great for the game industry's growth, but it's also problematic for people trying to get from one appointment to the next.

BIZ: What role does GDC play for Epic Games?

CliffyB: For us as a premiere middleware provider, this is a great place for us to get face time with our existing licensees as well as potential new customers.

BIZ: Thanks Cliff. Enjoy the rest of your GDC.