Borderlands 4 lader til at være en kæmpe succes for Gearbox, og ligeledes var Borderlands 3. Det skyldes naturligvis loyale fans, effektiv markedsføring og solid kritisk konsensus, men instruktør og studiechef Randy Pitchford mener også at det skyldes mangel på ordentlig konkurrence.
I et interview med BBC Radio 5 Live siger Pitchford, at der er overraskende få looter shooter-spil på markedet der kan matche det Borderlands tilbyder:
"You're poking at some fundamentals, which is part of why I think Borderlands as a game has worked, and does work, and why it's a very delicate design that I think is one of the reasons why there haven't really been many successful imitators since we first showed how a shooter looter could work with the original game. If other game designers that were trying to get in on the action, so to speak, understood that, we'd have more competitors, or we'd have good competitors," he said. "But we haven't so far. It's weird. The kinds of people that just want to go after it, they're not thinking about it on that level. They're just putting into motion something because of market analysis. It's not a designer's or creator's drive that's doing it. It's either a business drive or a wishing to be something that you're not kind of drive."
Pitchford insinuerer lidt at hvorimod andre spilgenrer benytter looter shooter-rammen for at skabe afhængighed af loot, så gør Gearbox det fordi det er stimulerende - to forskellige slags mål:
"We don't do it because it's addictive. We do it because it's stimulating and because we kind of need that. Part of why games exist are to... yeah. we can live a fantasy that we might not be able to have in the real world, and we can explore themes and ideas in a safe place that we can't explore in the real world, but we also can, because it's an interactive simulation, we can test our thinking and our decision making and put our brain to work in really interesting ways that we kind of need and want."
Tror du at det også spiller ind i spillets succes?