Borderlands 3

[AndyKurosaki]

I play Borderlands for the fun gameplay. The over the top “I’m dead wacky, me” humor is never something I’ve found particularly funny in the series. Sometimes it hits the mark (Tiny Tina). A lot of the times it doesn’t.

 

They’ve certainly not made life easy for themselves. Not that it’ll matter, it’ll still sell well no matter what they’ve done.

[Bob]

I think they are pretty funny. I like the memes. 

[mfnick]

 

2 hours ago, AndyKurosaki said:

They’ve certainly not made life easy for themselves. Not that it’ll matter, it’ll still sell well no matter what they’ve done.

Exactly this. The whole run up to this game has been a utter Shitshow.

But, the internet is the internet. Nobody will care when the game is released and in a month or so it’ll all be forgotten about. & people will eventually actively fight against it being brought up in future. Oh well.

[Maryokutai]

Depends on the game. Mass Effect Andromeda famously failed because of twitter memes and it never recovered from that.

 

I think the internet is a bit like a hivemind version of Two-Face. There's a game coming out, Hive-Face tosses a coin and everything that follows depends on which side the coin landed on. Borderlands 3 got the face, so even if there has been genuine criticism about it in the press, nothing will flip that coin, ever.

 

I think that sounds like a very reasonable explanation.

[DANGERMAN]

11 hours ago, AndyKurosaki said:

I play Borderlands for the fun gameplay. The over the top “I’m dead wacky, me” humor is never something I’ve found particularly funny in the series. Sometimes it hits the mark (Tiny Tina). A lot of the times it doesn’t.

 

[one-armed dwarf]

Are people angry about memes or them trying to massage their metacritic?

 

What about Randy and his squirt porn?

[Maf]

Is it all right that I don’t care about any of that stuff? I just want the game to be fun 

[one-armed dwarf]

You dont care about metacritic? Well that's bullshit

[Maf]

I care about MC in a black and white kind of way. Is the score high or low and does it help or harm my excitement of a game. 

 

All the backend politics of who got a copy and who didn’t. It’s entertaining in and of itself but I don’t actually care. 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[DANGERMAN]

it seems there isn't an impressions thread for this, kind of surprising given how popular the first 2 games were on here

 

Anyway, this will apparently be free to play over the weekend (ends the 24th) on PS4 and Xbox One

[AndyKurosaki]

I’m currently renting it, but haven’t played much of it yet. I’ll do an impressions post when I have. But yeah, it’s more Borderlands really.

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[DANGERMAN]

nah, you're alright 

[Craymen Edge]

I'm gonna wait until there's a version with all the season pass stuff included.

[DANGERMAN]

 

 

Quote

Gearbox, based in Frisco, Texas, offers its employees below-average salaries for the video game industry, according to more than a dozen current and former Gearbox staff who have spoken to Kotaku over the years. To make up for that, the studio offers something unique: profit-sharing. Royalties from all of the developer’s games are split 60/40, with 60% going back into the company (and its owners) while 40% is distributed to employees in the form of quarterly bonuses. This system has been in place since Gearbox’s inception, and when the company has big hits, it can be lucrative. When 2012's massive Borderlands 2 came out, many Gearbox workers made enough money to buy houses—a fact that the studio often touted while recruiting new employees.

Since then, however, Gearbox has been struggling, failing to find much financial success with flops like Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) and Battleborn (2016). As a result, quarterly bonuses have been smaller in recent years. In 2020, that was supposed to change. Several Gearbox employees told Kotaku that company management promised them six-figure bonuses following the launch of Borderlands 3. The more years they’d been with the company, the larger the check. This vision of financial success helped Gearbox’s developers get through many long nights and weekends working on the game.

 

Then, in a meeting yesterday, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford told employees that Borderlands 3 bonus checks would be significantly lower than they hoped, according to three people who were present. He said the game had been more expensive than expected, the company had grown significantly larger than it had been in the past (it now operates a second studio in Quebec, Canada), and that their sales projections had been off-base.

The game had sold very well—“We expect lifetime unit sales to be a record for the series,” said Strauss Zelnick, CEO of 2K parent company Take-Two, on an earnings call in February—but it cost way too much to make. One large factor was a technology swap midway through development, from the Unreal Engine 3 to Unreal Engine 4, which added a great deal of time to the project. In addition, before Gearbox could receive any royalties from publisher 2K, Borderlands 3 would have to recoup not just the game’s entire budget (around $95 million) but also the budget for all of the downloadable content (for a sum closer to $140 million), thanks to a contract that the two companies had signed.

 

Pitchford also told Gearbox developers that if they weren’t happy with the royalty system, they were welcome to quit, according to those who were in the meeting. He did not attribute the diminished bonuses to the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to economic uncertainty and pay cuts in many other fields. He did say that he hoped to get more money to employees as an advance from 2K on future royalties.

 

 

[DisturbedSwan]

Once again it’s no surprise what a piece of shit Pitchford is. Absolute fucking cunt.

[AndyKurosaki]

What an absolute cock he is. As if we didn’t know that already.

[mfnick]

Grade A Cunt.

 

If the game cost far too much to make that’s a management issue. If a game can achieve a “lifetime record for the series” the employees should get their bonus. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I mean I dunno, I think Randy is a prick but also I was hired to my company with a fairly below average salary with similar promises of bonuses which are now lesser than expected. Also our company is going to practice cost maintenance (reduced hours/layoffs).

 

Point being is this doesn't sound like such a unique thing at all to Gearbox and Randy in these times so I'm not ready to rush to a judgement either way.