Control Freak cover art

Control Freak

My Epic Adventure Making Video Games

 Preview

Try for $0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Control Freak

Written by: Cliff Bleszinski
Narrated by: Kurt Kanazawa
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $19.42

Buy Now for $19.42

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

The designer of Unreal and Gears of War offers an eye-opening personal account of the video-game industry as it grew from niche hobby to hundred-billion-dollar enterprise.

Video games are dominating the planet. In 2020, they brought in $180 billion dollars globally—nearly $34 billion in the United States alone. So who are the brilliant designers who create these stunning virtual worlds? Cliff Bleszinski—or CliffyB as he is known to gamers—is one of the few who’ve reached mythical, rock-star status. In Control Freak, he gives an unvarnished, all-access tour of the business.

Toiling away in his bedroom, Bleszinski created and shipped his first game before graduating high school and at just 17 joined a fledgling company called Epic Games. He describes the grueling hours, obscene amounts of Mountain Dew, and obsessive focus necessary to achieve his singular creative visions. He details Epic’s rise to industry leader, thanks largely to his work on best-selling franchises Unreal and Gears of War (and, later, his input on a little game called Fortnite), as well as his own awkward ascent from shy, acne-riddled introvert to sports-car-driving celebrity rubbing shoulders with Bill Gates. As he writes, “No one is weirder than a nerd with money.” While the book is laced with such self-deprecating humor, Bleszinski also bluntly addresses the challenges that have long-faced the gaming community, including sexism and a lack of representation among both designers and the characters they create.

Control Freak is a hilarious, thoughtful, and inspiring memoir. Even if you don’t play games, you’ll walk away from this book recognizing them as a true art form and appreciating the genius of their creators.

©2022 Huge Tank, Inc. All rights reserved. (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Entertainment & Celebrities Celebrity Video Game Funny Witty War Epic Games
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

You may also enjoy...

Doom Guy cover art
Doom Guy

Written by: John Romero

Disrupting the Game cover art
Disrupting the Game

Written by: Reggie Fils-Aimé

Play Nice cover art
Play Nice

Written by: Jason Schreier

Press Reset cover art
Press Reset

Written by: Jason Schreier

Sid Meier's Memoir! cover art
Sid Meier's Memoir!

Written by: Sid Meier, and others

Masters of Doom cover art
Masters of Doom

Written by: David Kushner

What listeners say about Control Freak

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    7
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.ca reviews

Amazon Reviews
Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for James

Inspiring - You've got to lose, to know how to win

To summarize this book in one word, "Inspiring."

The good:

I hit, "buy it now" the moment I saw Cliff's unboxing video on socials the other day. The courage he has demonstrated throughout his career has been game-changing figuratively and literally. I've always been a hardcore Unreal fan from the moment I saw my first article (which was explained in the book!!) as a young teenager. So instead of fanboying I will suggest this: Get this book, learn a lot about/from this gaming industry titan, and get the fantastic behind-the-scenes experience this book offers from one of the coolest dudes in the biz.

I used to email back and forth with CliffyB, Mark, and Tim in the late 90s, and after the release of Unreal only Cliff would respond (even so recent as 2015!) Back in '97, '98, I had NO IDEA they were just up the street from me, I would have walked there if I knew. Maybe they made sure to leave that part out in our email chats for a reason huh? ;) Reading about their start, the conversations they had, learning more about Digital Extremes, all of it.. such a treasure trove of information. Cliff has always been someone I looked up to and respected and compared all others to, even if people hate the cat-scanning days.

This book was such a treat, I experienced nostalgia for so much of it, (from Nintendo experiences to names like Carmack and Romero and Capps, to feelings towards the various communities) and yet learned so much more about the man himself. I gained more respect for his efforts over the years; Also, he had a Viper folks, c'mon, obviously a proper badass!


The not so nice about the Audible version (nothing about the literature itself) :

Little things like the over-emphasized Japanese accents on words were jarring to say the least. Things like, "The "Elle Thirty-Three Tee speak" were upsetting (It's LEET speak dude!!) and some other strange and poorly executed accents — c'mon, what was that British accent you were going for Kurt? — also hurt my ears.


These days I hold a lead-position in the gaming industry and I've told everyone I can at work to get this book! The CEO was the first person I told. I often think back to the 2006 "Race to E3" film where Cliff was persistent, held strong, even against the big brass... You can probably figure out who motivated me to get where I am. Thank you CliffyB, thanks for the book, the games, and your contribution to gaming, all of it - you're my Hideo Kojima!

Now I'm off to hopefully find one of Myscha The Sled Dog's books on Audible! ;)

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Gerry Corcoran

Cool history but lacking self-awareness

We have a boon of excellent game industry memoirs coming out lately as many of the biggest legends are getting older and recounting their experiences. Cliff is a somewhat unique one as he principally grew in the industry as a designer, as opposed to a programmer or artist, which were the most common ways into the business back then.

His story is certainly an interesting one and he goes into a surprising amount of detail about some early traumatic experiences that shaped his life and choices, as well as being candid about the difficulties in his first marriage. I applaud anyone willing to do that. He also tells a ton of great stories about coming up in the 90s, being there near the beginning of Epic Games and riding that through to it being the juggernaut it is today. There's no doubt he's played a big part in some of the industry's most influential franchises, many of which have influenced others.

However, there is also a surprising lack of self-awareness in here, which further solidifies Cliff's reputation among gamers as having an overinflated ego. He talks about the struggles in making the "deep narrative" of the Gears of War franchise, and if you've played that series, you'd know that while it plays great, the story is deep as a puddle. He bemoans the lack of women in the industry, while he did nothing notable to deal with it as he came up, and also ignored his part in the Race to E3 documentary, when his female Microsoft producer Lauyra Fryer, was falsely thrown under the bus for trying to remove the chainsaw from Gears (she didn't) and received a lot of hate for it. He never clarifies that or apologizes for it. He hand wrings about (and misrepresents) GamerGate and toxic gaming culture, ignoring that he was at the forefront of creating the Gamer Bro culture in the early 2000s that was the progenitor of that. He talks about how bad he felt when Boss Key shut down and how he wanted to do better by the employees who got screwed over, even though he's a multi-millionaire and could have helped, but chose not to.

If you know that going in and can accept it, then there's still a great bunch of stories in here about an influential figure's rise in the business. Just know that Cliff clearly hasn't humbled at all and still thinks himself above many of the things he himself did and does.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for Marko Dj

Probably for only his most loyal supporters

I want to start this review by stating how weird it is for the author to not narrate his own book considering it's written in the first person. The narrator is fine but it probably would have been better for the author to read his own thoughts. It might have even added more to the story.

Other than that, I didn't really learn too much about Bleszinkski that you can't learn from his many interviews over the years. It also doesn't do anything to make you more interested in him. If you didn't care for him, this changed nothing.

The book is fine but it's not the kind of memoir I was expecting. His loyal supporters will enjoy this but for everyone else, you can probably skip and not feel like you've missed out on anything of value.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!