Cliff Bleszinski has a team of over 40 developers working in downtown Raleigh at Boss Key Productions. After just a year of development, gamers who attended the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle were able to play a 15-minute multiplayer demo of the free-to-play, first-person shooter LawBreakers.

The five-versus-five futuristic shooter pits members of the “Law,” who have access to great weaponry, against the “Breakers,” who are gang members that use drugs to get superhero-like abilities. They’re fighting for control of a post-cataclysmic world which has seen “The Shattering” impact gravity and destroy much of the planet. The first gameplay level, Grandview, is set over what used to be the Grand Canyon. The level offers a multi-tiered arena for players to compete in.

LawBreakers doesn’t have an open beta or release date yet, but there’s now buzz building around the game. It marks the first entry into the booming freemium games market by Bleszinski with Japanese publishing partner Nexon, which is a pioneer in that space.

After touring the Raleigh studio, I caught up with the former Epic Games design director to discuss his latest project in this exclusive interview.

Where did the name LawBreakers come from?

The word “breakers,” for some reason, was stuck in my head. I have a friend who lives in San Francisco, and they have this race they do every year called “Bay to Breakers” and she always posts photos of it. Then Taylor Swift had taken off, she sings “Heartbreakers,” and that word popped up again, and then the idea of breaking free of gravity in the game and the way the characters move and manipulate the environment.

I originally suggested “Free Breakers” to my art director, Tramell Isaac, who said that name sounded like a cheap iPhone game. Then he suggested “LawBreakers” and everything clicked with Law versus Breakers and breaking the law of gravity. I can pitch that in 140 characters.

Why did you decide on five vs. five gameplay?

“We capped it at that. We wanted to keep it intimate. When we play the game in our lab and our QA lead Aaron Jones kills me eight times in a row, I want that feeling of wanting to go over there to punch him in the shoulder. I want that kind of rivalry. Keeping it medium-sized was not only to keep it intimate, but also to make sure we could pull it off. The studio has been open for a year and I’ve heard comments — not to start celebrating too much already — but we have a really fun experience. And we built a team from nothing, from absolutely scratch.

I’ve worked this industry for a while, and I’ve seen a team that has worked together before over the course of year not come up with anything tangible or fun. My studio operates as a team effort, but they need somebody saying this is where going, otherwise the boat’s never going anywhere.

Has Epic tried the game since it’s built on Unreal Engine 4?

I had some former peers from Epic at the office, and it’s kind of surreal to see my worlds colliding, where I’m playing with four other folks I used to work with on one side, against my current employees on the other side. It was kind of cool.

Who won?

The first round was won by the other guys because they showed no mercy, and then the second round myself and my former peers won. So that was pretty cool. In game development, we always get rivalries or weirdness, but everybody does better if they’re allies. It’s honey over vinegar, so they say.

Two of the four playable characters shown thus far — Maverick and Kitsune — are female. How did the free-to-play nature of the PC impact this?

At the end of the day the more different types of races and genders that I can depict in the game, the more potential people there are who might want to see these characters as somebody they can be and feel represented. We’re looking at the future here (in this game), where everybody is going to be some slight shade of mocha. We’re going 50/50 when it comes to male and female playable characters in this game.

This is an issue that Hollywood seems to struggle with still. When you look at the phenomenon of “The Fast and The Furious” there are so many types of folks represented in that, and so many folks can go see it and feel like, “Hey, this is America at its best with all sorts of different diverse people doing cool stuff together.” That’s the goal for this game.

What’s it like not having to worry about a disc-based product anymore?

Some Illuminati got together and decided all games have to be $60 brand new. I don’t know why that’s the case. I’m okay with different pricing options in this “new world order.” We’re making a really good-looking game that runs great. I don’t have to force certain things in the fiction or into the world just to sell the engine.

That was always a concern for me at Epic. They were like, “I’m getting this great shimmer effect, should I put some water on the map?” and I’m like “Dude, it’s the Mojave.” And they were like, “I don’t care,” so I always had to figure it out. That’s something I do not miss. Now we make what matters based on what the world is and what the fiction calls for from the IP, which is really fun and powerful.

What have you learned from Nexon?

One of the things that Nexon is really going to help us provide is global reach. Understanding various markets, everything from China to Russia to even some sections of Europe, is tricky.