Gears of War 3: defining HD gaming

I agree with you. I'd love for that to be true. At the gold party for Gears 1 I stood up and talked to the team and called it lightning in a bottle. A lot of people are grateful for the fact that they're just in the game industry alone. But there are people in the game industry who are not necessarily making games they love to make.

We've been double privileged in that not only are we making something that contributes to popular culture, but we're also doing something we love. It's truly lightning in a bottle. These are rare times that you can work on a game you love and that's going to have an impact.

When Gears 1 came out people said it was derivative and not innovative. I have a Google Alert for Gears of War. Every review that comes out now has a reference to Gears of War somewhere in their game, whether it be the cover mechanic or Horde. Almost every game review has a reference to Gears.

There are other games out there. Call of Duty is killing it. Halo killed it. We'll be there too and be a part of that notion of the third-person game and cover-based shooters. We helped establish that genre.

There was a woman on my Twitter feed who said, "Marcus has a cool tattoo on his arm in Gears 3. Can you give me the source art for that because I'd like to get a tattoo?"

I said, "If you want to put a tattoo of Gears on your body I'm more than happy to give you the source art for that."

Several months later she sent me her wedding photos where she wore a strapless dress and on her back left shoulder blade is Marucs' tattoo. In her wedding photos.

She had met her husband in line at a "midnight madness" to buy Gears of War. That's what brought them together. They cut their wedding cake with a Lancer. She's forever got Marcus' tattoo on her back. It was the grounding and the basis of her relationship with her husband, and it's something that impacted her life to a large degree.

This other day I get a tattoo from someone who uses Gears 2 to get through chemo. He says he pisses off the nurses every time because he has to set up his Xbox and boot up the game before they put the needle in and start his chemo. He plays Gears 2 to get past all the stomach sickness and all the pain. That was his big thing.

You go beyond. It's not entertainment anymore. It's impacting people's lives in a meaningful way. That's what affects me.

People say, "Oh, it's a time waster." But it has an impact on people's lives. It's not everybody. Some people, it's disposable. They play it and they throw it away. But it has a big impact on a lot of people.

That's the reason you end up doing it. You realise there's a devoted community out there that looks to you to make the best game possible and to bring that to them. That's what we want to do.

One of our strengths is the character of our brand, the personality of our brand. You see the devoted followers. There's a way to bring that brand to other forms, whether it's comics or figures or novels or other types of games. There are different ways to experience the IP.

One of the nice things about Sera being so earth-like is it's grounded. We're not doing crazy, over-the-top aliens. We call a chicken a chicken. We don't call it a floosit or whatever. Money, we call it a buck. It's stuff people can relate to.

There's an opportunity there for us for sure, for people to experience our brand in a different way. But where that goes and what that ends up being, I don't know.