Gearbox's Randy Pitchford Talks Borderlands
by Game Informer Online
POSTED: 8/26/2009 6:23 PM
As one of the five founders of Gearbox Software, the developers behind Borderlands, Randy Pitchford has been immersed in the project for several years. Predictably, he's got a lot of information stored up in his mind that he was dying to let loose during GamesCom. From the game's competitive multiplayer, to co-op questing, to the bending of established genres, Pitchford drained his mind of details regarding the upcoming shooter. October 20th is still a good chunk of time away, so it's time to become educated on exactly what you're waiting for.
What genre is Borderlands classified as? The game appears to be struggling from a minor identity crises, straddling the line between first person shooter and role-playing game. Randy Pitchford is no stranger to this genre-defining quagmire, and he's more than happy to shed some light on the muddled matter.
"Well, genres are blending. The marketing guys are like, 'Say RPS! Role-playing shooter, role-playing shooter!' So they've been saying call it an RPS, role-playing shooter. On one hand I think that's a fair statement. On the other hand you have to be careful when you make new promises because people sometimes will have a hard time parsing them. I typically introduce the game as a shooter, but we've layered these things on top. The other reason why, too, is because there's certain role-playing things we did, there's others we didn't do."
Borderlands may offer a large-scale gaming experience for players to work through cooperatively, but that doesn't mean Pitchford expects you and your cohorts to get along all the time. Sometimes there is frustration to vent and grudges to settle. That's where the player versus player arenas and duels come into play.
"When we think about the competitive play for Borderlands you have to think about it in the context of Borderlands," says Pitchford. "Borderlands is not saying, 'If you like playing online deathmatch games, drop what you're doing and come play Borderlands.'" He elaborates, saying "Because you're developing a character, and you're developing gear, and you're developing skill, sometimes maybe through smack-talk or through bravado sometimes you want to throw down with your buddies. So we've created a couple ways where that can happen, where you can test yourself against your friends instead of always allying with them. The easiest way is with the duel, which you can do anywhere in the world. You just walk up to a guy, do the melee attack, and it says 'you demand satisfaction.' If the guy melee attacks you back it's like he's throwing down the gauntlets, slapping you, and the duel starts. So we surround you in a dome, you can do that anywhere in the world, monsters around, crazy cover, out in the open, it doesn't matter. Wherever you are you can start a duel. A dome appears and if you stay in the dome you're fighting."
Today's competitive FPS multiplayer market has integrated a bit of a punishment and reward schematic to keep gamers motivated. In many games players level up by racking up kills, and may receive penalties for abandoning ailing matches. Pitchford touches on the core of competitive multiplayer in Borderlands, and how the rewards system is entirely a matter personal perspective.
"Somebody, if they want to flee [a duel] they can just run out and escape the dome and that tells the game 'I really wish I didn't start this, I want to be done.' Then if you stay out there for a few seconds the fights is over. Inside you'll fight it out. All of your skills, gear, and equipment apply so you can have an imbalanced fight and that's fun too. Balanced fights are more fair. One player will win, and one player will lose. The player that wins gets bragging rights. There are some consumables in the game and if you consume them, you've spent them. So if you use any health kits or whatever, you're spending them and that's your choice. It's kind of like when you duel or play in a battleground in World of Warcraft, and if you burn a potion it's burned, sorry. We're not taking anything away from the loser, and we're not giving anything to the winner."
The competitive multiplayer in Borderlands sounds like it's coming along great, but the concept means nothing without locales to battle within. Pitchford touches on the where and how of organized player versus player matches. He also discusses how fan response to PvP in Borderlands will be huge in shaping the future of the game.
"We also found though that it's kind of fun to duel and we built this arena mode that's in the context of the world with the arenas. You go to an arena, you go inside, and you can use an interface to actually set up a more formal match. That's where the game will keep score and you can do a free-for-all, or a team deathmatch, and that's about more traditional, competitive... inside the arena the map is designed to be more a competitive map. It's not just about where you are in the world, it's like a Quake map or something. It's designed to be a really good combat arena. There's few of those in the world. They tend to be near the settlements and there's always a fast travel station nearby so if you want to just zip there and do it, you can do that. That's fun too. And maybe that becomes really popular and customers will scream at us and clamor to extend the competitive modes and maybe we'll do that."
Pitchford teases that if the competitive multiplayer of Borderlands goes well, the team at Gearbox may consider developing new PvP-related content. He also talks about the touchy subject of pre-planned DLC for games, and shares his opinion on how it should be done.
"We built it [DLC] within the budget, within the investment we made for the game. That's part of the offer, I don't need to bilk you for that. If we do something awesome you'll be begging us for more, anyway. Then we'll say, 'Okay let's do it,' then we'll add that. There will be value there and there will be a fair proposition. If it's an unfair proposition, we know, we're smart as gamers. I'm a gamer, I totally know. I don't like it when they try to trick me and charge me for s*** they should have given me. On the other hand, I also... when I love something and I want more it's like, 'dude, come on where is it? Why am I waiting so song?' It's tricky to balance, too. It's also tough, because for us right now we're trying to ship the game so we're insert. All of the energy and focus is on that. We know if we wait too long before we get started on DLC it's going to be a long time. DLC that comes a year after the game ships, you don't care as much. Even if it's big stuff. I thought the DLC for GTAIV was awesome. Huge value, a big pack. I also know that by the time it came I had already moved on, I was already playing other games. I had to kind of like re-get myself back in the mood to play GTAIV. I don't know if every gamer was able to do that. I was, but I can also imagine that some people might have stopped there. We'll see. I think they did pretty well with it, though. They didn't sell 12 million units, though."
Borderlands has received a ton of attention for its random weapon generating system, RPG/FPS genre merging, and change of art direction. Pitchford was quick to offer one other feature of the game that he believes is just as important as everything else; split-screen co-op.
"There are surprising number of customers that play split-screen," Pitchford says. "Maybe you have brothers and they have one console, and mom can get them the thing where maybe they fight over it because one person can play at a time, or something they can play together." Pitchford goes on to emphasize the importance of gaming as a social experience, saying he believes it's key to be "able to have shared experiences not remotely, not internet shared experiences, but live shared experiences. It's really growing a lot and it's hard to track because the metrics don't, a lot of the split-screen players don't have to be connected to do that. It's very difficult to track so the publishers don't even know the value there. I think it's huge value. There's some evidence of the value of this."
A game that combines randomly generated weapons is bound to harbor a few that are so overpowered they render the game's challenge laughable. While this may not weigh too heavily into the game's PvP, which has no tangible reward system, it definitely resonates in cooperative questing. Pitchford discusses what role a very powerful character can play in the progression of a low level character.
"If you wanted to kind of use that [power] to exploit the game, it's going to be difficult to use that to help people level more quickly because the experience is bled off by the bigger, more advanced player. You can help eliminate a lot of the challenge. A level 50 player in a level 1 area, he's a god. He just looks at guys and just gibs them, it's amazing. He can remove a lot of the skill for the weak guy, but the weak guy won't be having a lot of fun. It will still be more efficient for him to play with people his own level, but if there's a difficult challenge and you have a big guy come in and help you out there. In terms of the loot thing, a more advanced player can give a newer player a weapon, but the weapons themselves have limitations to them. The best stuff at the end game requires you to be a certain level and have a certain proficiency, so there's some balancing there."
Finally, Pitchford touches on one of the key aspects that adds infinite longevity to games like Borderlands; twinking. The ability to acquire new and powerful gear and pass it on to a lower leveled alternative character can inspire players to play a given game for years. After a slight "eureka" moment, Mr. Pitchford suggests how Borderlands may accomodate such pack-rat habits.
He says that sharing items between characters would be "complicated," but adds that "what you'd have to do is create a split-screen game and have one of your characters loaded on one screen and the other character loaded on the next and trade weapons that way. But you could do it. That's interesting, I hadn't thought of that. You could do that. There's some gear and weapons that aren't the best things in the game, but there aren't as restrictive as level caps - or what level is required to use them. They're not necessarily the best stuff in the game, but you can do some twinking if you like doing that."
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