Video gamers are many things. They can be incredibly passionate, willing to go to bat for their favorite games or franchises because they KNOW how good they are, and they want people to enjoy them, and developers to continue the franchises in meaningful ways. They can also be incredibly mean, willing to go after anyone, gamer or developer, who they feel is “less than them.” Arguably, the worst part of gamer mentality, though, is impatience. They are infamous for not being able to wait for something to come out, and for proof of this, look at Borderlands 4 and what some people are talking about right now.
For the record, they’re not worried about the game “not coming out” or “being delayed last minute,” as the game is less than twelve hours from release at the time of this post. That being said, there are some who are already talking…about the 5th mainline entry in the series. Yeah, believe it. Thankfully, Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford shut down things pretty quickly:
While it does show the “passion” of gamers to already be thinking about “what comes next,” there’s a reason the phrase “stop and smell the roses” exists. Yes, there might be something nice down the road, but that doesn’t mean you ignore what’s right in front of you.
Furthermore, while it’s fair to think that Gearbox Software has already planned SOME things for the next game, potentially because they couldn’t put things into Borderlands 4 for one reason or another, it’d be foolish for them to already be ramping up production on the next game when it’s unknown how well the game will do with gamers.
Yes, we did get the critic reviews for the game today, and it got a rather nice score. However, that doesn’t guarantee it’ll sell millions of copies, especially since the previous entry from Gearbox wasn’t as well-received as other past entries.
Just as important, Randy Pitchford himself noted that the gamers who buy the title are the true “testers” of things and that they listened to a lot of community feedback when making the 4th entry to ensure that the players’ voices were being heard. As such, it’d be weird for them to barrel on ahead before hearing any of the feedback, good or bad, on the game that just came out.
So, yeah, let’s just enjoy the release that’s about to happen, see what the game is like, and THEN talk about the next entry, okay?
