Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think I would not be who I am if I did not have experience both as an audience and as a performer in those early days of my career. It taught me what entertainment is all about.
There are times when you can take yourself seriously and there are times when you can cut loose. It really depends on your goals and it depends on what you're promising the customer.
Condition Zero' introduces quite a bit of content and gameplay to 'Counter-Strike' including new weapons, characters, mission types and even new technology to enhance to look and feel of the game.
You can polish and iterate and double down on what the magic was. You can make a much better thing. A much cleaner thing, a much more solid thing. And that's what 'Borderlands 2' is to 'Borderlands.'
One of the neat things about Gearbox that I love is, we don't look at our designs as a totalitarian regime and we're all really happy to let designers and creators within the studio explore in our space.
And Duke Nukem, I think he is the most iconic videogame character in the industry. I think Lara Croft is the female and Duke Nukem is the male. Between them, they're the most iconic figures in videogames.
There are several cool cross-overs between 'Blue Shift,' 'Opposing Force' and 'Half-Life.' The plots are all designed to work nicely with themselves and the observant player will catch many cross-references.
Sometimes you stumble when you push yourself harder and you're trying to run faster or whatever. We forgive ourselves, pick ourselves up, and keep running. We don't cry and stop running because we skinned our knee.
We are fortunate that there is a lot of demand on us to deliver our brand of interactive entertainment within the powerful franchises we have at Gearbox Software and the challenge for us is growing to meet this demand.
You don't really want to talk about 'Duke' in terms of, how many levels are there, how many guns does it have, how many monsters… It's got everything it needs in terms of that, but it's always been about the experience.
I wonder if too frequently publishers and developers are so caught up with going after new, untapped audiences that they can forget to care for the largest, most loyal and reliable audience there is - the current gamer.
I've only experienced it a few times where you get to have a thing that simultaneously gets some critical respect, some critical success, while also having sales success. Sometimes you get one or the other if you're lucky.
As successful as 'Borderlands' is and as much fun as everyone is having going after all the loot and finding and using all the weapons in the game, I often think that we really missed the mark by only doing 87 bazillion guns.
When I'm in line at the grocery store, I might pick up one of those tabloids. I might not even buy it. I'm just gonna sit there and read the headlines and chuckle at how stupid that stuff is, even though I'm reading it anyway.
Usually when we finish a game and we're at the end, we're sick of it. We want to put it in the box and be done with it. But with 'Borderlands,' it's actually become a productivity sink at Gearbox, because we're just having fun.
I want to make sure that people with talents, who want to perform or to develop their act, know that the Peacock Theater exists and to reach out to us and know that there's a safe and fun place for them to develop their material.
If you're making entertainment on a grand scale, if you're reaching millions, there will be tens of thousands of people who absolutely hate us, and some percentage of those will take it upon themselves to let us known how they feel.
Up until 'Blue Shift,' 'Half-Life' characters were repeating, expendable entities. In 'Blue Shift,' important named partners will work with you over the course of several levels and objectives in order to overcome the hazards of the plot.
Demand alone might let a business case be created, but things driven by that will have a risk of being soulless. You need it being driven from both directions. You need the nexus between demand and creative passion that wants to make something.
If I have something that I've finished with, and someone else might find value in it, the idea of passing along for a price is a rational transaction. It exists in many aspects of our lives. But I do have to say that media is a different beast.
There's a different kind of experience you have when you experience live entertainment versus the kinds of media we tend to consume most of, when we're watching television or films or reading books. Live entertainment is a whole different beast.
Sometimes we do derive some entertainment when we 'appreciate' something, and sometime we feel something when we're moved. So a lot of game makers want challenge themselves with 'can I move someone?' or 'can I get them to respect me as an artist?'
What a lot of people don't know is that I got started as a professional gamemaker when I moved out to Texas to join George Broussard and Scott Miller and Allen Blum who created Duke Nukem, to join those guys and become part of the 'Duke Nukem 3D.'
Wired gave 'Duke Nukem Forever' the first Vaporware Award, and then the next year it won No. 1 vaporware again, and then again and again until Wired decided, you know what? 'Duke Nukem' is just going to get the lifetime achievement award for vaporware.
Why is 'Borderlands' different from every other game with respect to DLC? It's because we haven't really worried about what the past models are. We just thought about what would be fun for us to make and what there would be demand for if it were to exist.
With 'Duke Nukem Forever' it was a different level of commitment for me with reference to helping the creators be true to their vision. I've been able to enjoy this game as much as a fan as I am a part of the creative process, and that's a very rare and unique for me.
Duke Nukem' helped bridge the gap between games designed for adults and what they wanted in their entertainment as adults who also wanted to have fun. 'Duke Nukem' bridged that gap and helped bring those things together. It's one of the reasons it succeeded at the time.
We're convinced that Frisco Square is the perfect environment for Gearbox Software's new headquarters and we are eager to break ground, build out and move in so that we may join the community and bring everything we can to the city as a Frisco business and as Frisco citizens.