Hello, My Name Is Cliff

OXM: Does your theater background contribute to your ability to “be yourself on purpose” like that — to perform when you’re in public?

CB: Absolutely. I was such a huge theater geek and I don’t mind putting myself up in front of people. The funny thing is, I maybe get a little nervous doing the E3 press briefi ngs, but I get fi ve times more nervous talking to the team here in meetings. Because when push comes to shove, the opinion I care the most about with my professional career is the people I work with here. You can directly translate that to nerves.

OXM: Can we talk about “Fake CliffyB” on Twitter? Two comedians were posting as you, making jokes about your badassery. I fell for it at first; I thought you were goofing on your own image.

CB: That’s where the whole thing got really dangerous. With internet journalism and gaming, that kind of stuff overshadowed the actual promotion of what Gears 2 was about. I can’t really speak to any of the legal shenanigans, but personally, outside of anything at Epic, I was a fan of it and laughed my ass off. It was extraordinarily well-written. The joke was because I started hitting the gym a little bit more, but they gave this perception that I was some kind of hulking mass that got into fights in the hallways, some legend growing out of control — f**king hilarious.

OXM: But you don’t have a Twitter account, and you’ve stopped blogging — the last game you blogged about was BioShock. It was interesting to read how you would break down other games that you were playing.

CB: I would rather save that opportunity for an interview with the press. We talk about accessibility, but if you put yourself out there too much, it ceases to be special. I don’t need to know that [God of War creator] David Jaffe wants to nail Sarah Palin — and I don’t mean that as a slam at Dave. But I’m going to buy God of War 3; they had me at hello. I wanna know more about what you’re working on now.

OXM: Funny you mention David Jaffe. When the whole “don’t call me CliffyB anymore” thing was reported, Dave said he would use the name if you no longer wanted it. Are you okay with him taking over the moniker?

CB: Maybe it’s one of those things with someone becoming the new superhero, where the identity is handed down. Like when there’s a new Robin. And he can deal with all the comments on the internet for a little while! [laughs] Honestly, that was just a media experiment to me. It was Stephen Totilo [former editor/blogger at multiplayerblog.mtv. com] who started it — I had an IM conversation with him and said, “I’m thinking of abandoning that.” And he broke it on MTV Multiplayer, and it got picked up everywhere, and then it turned into “Who does he think he is?” Dude, the fact that you’re getting upset just means you’re playing along with my joke here. You can call me whatever you like as long as you play the game.

OXM: Well, that begs the question: Who do you think you are? Everybody thinks they know you from your videos and interviews and games. How do you see yourself?

CB: I’m just a big kid. But I’m also the adult with an interesting career and an interesting life that I was hoping I could be when I first saw Space Invaders when I was 6.

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