In the gaming world, there is no guarantee that a game will be successful. Just as important, it’s never a guarantee that a video game spinoff of a popular franchise will be successful. After all, all sorts of things can go wrong in production, or the fanbase might not resonate with what is happening in the spinoff to be truly successful. In the case of Borderlands, they’ve done a few spinoffs from the mainline titles to help flesh out its universe. One of the most unique ones, though, was Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. This game was a D&D-style spinoff that let players have more unique control over their characters than ever before.
Plus, the whole thing was “controlled” by Tiny Tina, further giving it a unique place in the universe. At SDCC, GamesRadar+ was able to talk with Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford, who had some very wonderful things to say about the game. First, he noted:
“What we demonstrated with the first Wonderlands game was that there’s something there. It was wildly successful and exceeded our expectations.”
That’s quite a claim, and if you caught the phrasing, he noted the “first game” in the series, implying there’s another to come. Or, at least, they’re considering it, which he elaborated on later with:
“We had a bigger result with the first Wonderlands game than we did with the first Borderlands game. So that’s something we can build on. I think it’s reasonable for our fans to expect more there.”
He also praised the franchise going in a fantasy direction, which allowed them to do some new things that they didn’t do in the main titles due to its more FPS and sci-fi genres.
To be clear, he didn’t confirm that a new game is coming, but the fact that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was so successful does give fans hope. Plus, there’s another angle here. Tiny Tina is in the upcoming live-action adaptation of the film. The film itself is still in a “murky spot” regarding how well it might do when it launches in August, but some do have hope it’ll at least be salvageable.
If the movie does even well enough to help further boost game sales, it might encourage Gearbox to try and make its next titles for the series soon, regardless of whether they’re mainline entries or spinoffs.
No matter how you look at this, it has to feel good for Gearbox to say they took a big swing at a spinoff, and it totally paid off.
