Gearbox president: 'Borderlands has zero competition'
Borderlands has been a tremendous success for developer Gearbox Software. Which begs the question: "why hasn't it been copied?"
Borderlands has been a tremendous success for developer Gearbox Software. Which begs the question: "why hasn't it been copied?"
Gearbox president Randy Pitchford has been wondering exactly the same thing. "I'm actually astonished that we're about to launch a sequel and no one's stole it from us," Pitchford said. "We're in an industry where people do nothing but steal from each other. That's kind of interesting."
When the first game launched in 2009, Gearbox had declared it the "fastest selling original IP" of the year. In fact, it went on to sell over two million copies. Those numbers must have invited copycats by now, no? "Not that I want anyone to steal it, or I'm challenging people to steal it," Pitchford added.
The lack of clones and competitors has Pitchford quite pleased, and exemplifies why the studio is so keen not to ever have to compete with the likes of Call of Duty. Using boxing as a metaphor, Pitchford explains how it's easier to avoid competing with the industry heavy hitters. "Why let our brains get beat in and put so much energy, when we're not even sure we can beat the best boxer? We can create new sports, or we can win some other sport."
"If you're the only ones that do something that people find as valuable? You don't have to worry about competition," he told Gamasutra. "Like, Borderlands has zero competition. It doesn't have to worry about that at all."
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replyAndrew Yoon posted a new article, Gearbox president: 'Borderlands has zero competition'.
Borderlands has been a tremendous success for developer Gearbox Software. Which begs the question: "why hasn't it been copied?"-
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Dead Island is the competition.
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I wish they never fixed the weapon dupe trick :(
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Does that work with the Steam version?
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This is what I clicked reply to say. Dead Island is the only game I can think of that it is very mechanically similar to Borderlands. I think I may have actually liked Dead Island more but that's simply related to my personal coop experiences I had with Dead Island. Borderlands is a more technically sound game and better designed and has better controls.
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Unfortunately it is linear at some points.
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No. Your game being somewhat unique only means it has a edge on its competition, not that there is no competition.
Every game out there is competition. Going outside is competition. -
Rage was the competition...and failed miserably.
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What? How exactly?
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I agree
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Thanks. Anyone who can't see how similar they are is just trolling. One of the big things before release was how Rage looked to be a Borderlands clone. Wasteland. Check. Buggies. Check. FPS. Check. Towns. Check. Quests. Check. Hicks. Check. You get my drift. Yea, Borderlands had coop and a ton of other things but that is why Rage failed. The direct comparison to Borderlands is Rage. Dead Island? Huh?
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i think Rage was more of a mix between Borderlands and Fallout 3, i actually wanted RAGE to do good, but... well, 20GB and 4~6 hours of game play with no re playability = fail. borderlands is a different game, is is ALL about guns and smashing tons of mobs and bandits where rage is a linear fallout 3 is desert setting and it tries to be much more serious, and fails as well.
I think when he says there is no competition he means that there is no other game that does the same exact things, think COD and BF3, or D3 and Torchlight 2 or DOTA and LOL.... i think Rage would still be closer to Fallout NV than to Borderlands....
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Nope and nope.
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Borderlands itself is full of concepts stolen from other games, but that doesn't make it good enough to be influential on its own. What are other devs going to copy from it? Mediocre base shooting mechanics? Poor quest design? Annoying dialogue, vehicles that handle like garbage, and weak enemy AI?
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It wasn't the first (Hellgate) and probably won't be the last. A team creating a new first person thing may look at games like Borderlands and Hellgate and Dead Island for ideas on what not to do, but the main influence will still go back to Diablo, right? That's what they are going to try to capture. That's what all loot driven games are still striving for.
No doubt if it happens it will be called a Borderlands ripoff though.-
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Pitchford should love Borderlands, but know his place.
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This is what Pitchford was talking about in the article for those of you who were unsure. Hellgate London was really the only other game doing something similar.
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A lot of people did, I played quite a bit of that game too and I wasn't saying it was awful. Just that it's an amalgamation of other game ideas and concepts itself, many of which have been done better elsewhere. There's not much reason to follow and copy what Gearbox is doing when you can go to the same sources that they did and do it differently or better yourself. Randy is trying to prop up their game as something more than it is. Which is smart.
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haha
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hellgate london was an AWESOME game!
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Even solo I had a good time with the game. It had a frantic shooter/RPG mix that was nice.
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It's a blast in co-op, especially with 4 players using each character.
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i paid $5 for it and didn't get my moneys worth :|
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I was bored playing it co-op as well. It was a string of fetch quests and felt tedious after a while. It's not that it was bad, but there are a lot of other games I'd rather spend my time on.
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well there is nothing wrong with that mate, we are all different we all like different things, for example i only played 1 assassin's creed game and it didn't even finish it and never bought any other sequels while there are millions of people love that game...
Cheers!
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I'll never stop laughing at that face.
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well what he is saying is that he doesnt need to set any bars anywhere :) he has no competition, people that want diablo stile FPS have no other choice...
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I really thought this game was a lot like Rage. I know Rage was in development way before. But I played Borderlands and Rage and I beat the crap out of both of them and they both look, breath and feel the same to me. Even the ending of both the games pissed me off. Borderlands for sucking and Rage's for coming to damn fast. (Am I the only one that saved the BFG because they thought that there was still like another 2 or 3 levels to go?)
Regardless of what people say. I think Rage/Borderlands are the same games. They just have different people telling the story.
Both of FPS RPG's
Both use cars a lot.(actually, you almost HAVE to use them.)
Both are open world games set in similar settings. (don't get wrapped around the axle about one being on a different planet and one being Earth. You know what I'm getting at.)
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The only competition was Rage, you are correct, sir.
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i wouldn't call rage a competition, i mean... i failed hard on it's own, not even in comparation with other fpsrpg
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problem with rage was that it was way to short, it was not diablo like (TONS OF LOOT/GUNS) game. also i think it was TOO linear, i mean there is absolutely no reason for rage to be open world, there is just NOTHING to do.... and i am not trying to make it look bad, i really wanted rage to do good, but it failed hard...
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"i mean there is absolutely no reason for rage to be open world, there is just NOTHING to do..." I mean completely agree. I don't understand why they tried to bridge the two and become "open but directed". It's like, you can't have both. Open means tons of quests and exploration, there was only freaken 4 hours of gameplay driving back and fourth through the same freaken places over and over again. How is that open in any sense of the word. I am truly disappointed with rage's gameplay.
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I thought Borderlands was awesome. It was one of the few games my wife actually got into and we played splitscreen coop all the way through so I'm super excited for Borderlands 2.
This is in spite of this dude and his interviews. I've lost count of how many times over the past few years where he comes off as kind of a douche. -
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different people like different things, while you spent only 2 hours, most of the fans of this game spent over 100 hours in the game, which doesn't happen to many games unless it is a multiplayer
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Lot's of people do, but they had trailers of it out for a year before Borderlands was even announced.
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RAGE was first shown in June 2007 at the WWDC, with this trailer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvuTtrkVtns Borderlands was unveiled in the September 2007 issue of Game Informer, and looked very different from how it did at release.
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Here's a site with images from the BL reveal article.http://www.liveplay3.fr/news/72087-Fourn%C3%A9e_de_scans_pour_Borderlands_%21
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The game was only really similar to Rage in some of the design choices. The games had a similar look to them at times... but played totally different. And I don't think the visual design is what they are talking about other people "stealing" I think it's the focus on a large open world with 4 player co-op with a kind of MMO approach and design to the game. That is the magic Borderlands formula and basically what nobody has really copied since the first game.
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I'm liking "Dead Island" better than "Borderlands". Granted, I only played Borderlands (co-op) for about a week where both of us got bored rather quickly and never returned. About a week into "Dead Island" we're still loving it. I can't really qualify what the difference is because both games are pretty similar but I think....it...might be the violence.
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n{Firefall}n and others like it. the people who think that it is a good thing to copy are off to make real monies
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I would say Rage is a competitor in the "apocalyptic wasteland" genre (which I consider Borderlands to be in also) and is an overall better game.
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Generic jobbing quests, randomly-generated guns that look the same with tiny stat differences, annooooying character (you know the one).
This is the difference between isometric 3rd-person and 1st-person. That random-gen crap just doesn't work in 1st-person and gives it an unbelievably generic feel.
It's like Tony Hawk games. I don't care even if you can score 10000000000000000000 "points." It feels generic and empty.-
glad you were able to tell us how you feel :) i hope you feel better!
Now that you are finished we can go back to playing borderlands 1 again, as most of us love it :)
Cheers!
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agree!
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