Borderlands Is Now 16 Years Old

Borderlands is officially 16 years old.

2K Games officially acknowledged the anniversary with this tweet.

Ronnie Singh, AKA Ronnie 2K, also chimed in with his own message:

Borderlands was released 16 years ago today!

I had just started at 2K when the game launched, and it’s been one of my favorite game series since

How Do You Invent A New Game Genre In 2009?

Randy Pitchford gave an interview with Rolling Stone in 2017 where he spilled the beans on the seed of an idea that became Borderlands (dead link). In his words:

When I started as an amateur game developer, I only made RPGs and I only played RPGs. I’m a gamer that grew up with Ultima. Then Wolfenstein 3D happened.

It was shortly after that I moved out to Dallas and I became part of Apogee Software. My first commercial product was Duke Nukem 3D. So there was this movement that happened when a 3D action game could be fun, fast, and there was a depth and a subtlety to it. That changed my relationship with interactive entertainment.

Contrast that with when I grew up playing Roguelikes and playing NetHack. Then Diablo showed up and you realize that the skill to play Diablo is about moving a cursor and clicking an icon. That’s the same interface that I would use to launch the application.

What was engaging about the Roguelikes and the NetHacks and Diablo back then is this long-range layer. These ideas of growth. Of developing a character. Getting more powerful by leveling up, gaining experience, and all that. Then finding gear and loot.

The thing that compels us towards that growth and that discovery and that choice in typical RPGs, that sort of long-range loop, it’s not mutually exclusive with all the short term, visceral, base-level joy we get from the right kind of moving and shooting in a shooter.

These two elements were just sitting there. Given that these two things aren’t mutually exclusive, if we marry them together, there’s a real opportunity there to pave new ground. That was Borderlands from the very beginning.

Borderlands Is Literally Built Different

More recently, Pitchford opined on why he thinks Borderlands has survived the wave of imitators and copycats, including no less than Bungie’s Destiny. Again, to quote him directly:

We’ve reduced it down to this simple moment with this interface in this system. It’s a gratifying loop. It’s a gratifying decision. Our brains need to do it, and our brains like doing it. And we’re better off when we do it.

…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. 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.

With all the ups and downs Borderlands, the looter shooter genre, and the industry as a whole has gone through, Borderlands itself endures. Congratulations for 16 years to Gearbox and Randy Pitchford, and here’s to the next 16 years and beyond.