Cliff Bleszinski's Boss Key Productions hires two Call of Duty vets for its upcoming shooter

Cliff Bleszinski is developing a new shooter — and he found a couple of veterans from the big guns in the genre to help him make it.

The game designer and CEO of Boss Key Productions will be announcing on Friday the hiring of two former developers on the best-selling Call of Duty series.

Ryan Palser was previously an animator at Neversoft and worked on 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts. He will be joining Boss Key as a senior animator. David Rose was previously the lead U.I. (user interface) artist at Neversoft. He also worked on Ghosts but will be getting a cooler title at Boss Key: U.I. Ninja. (Seriously!)

“We wanted to get talented developers who worked on big franchises but who wanted to make something new,” Bleszinski told GamesBeat.

Boss Key is currently putting together the development team to create its first project: a free-to-play, sci-fi-based shooter code-named Blue Streak. This game will focus on arena-style multiplayer combat, similar to 1999’s Unreal Tournament, which Bleszinski helped design at his former employer, Epic Games. Two years ago, Bleszinski left Epic for an early retirement (read our exclusive interview here), but he recently returned to help co-found Boss Key.

Nexon will be publishing Blue Streak, which is due “in playable form” in 2015.