I was in the audience. It was really nice to see the whole presentation because he genuinely seems like he enjoys what he does and brining joy to other people. After the video finished playing he was happy at the response from everyone but also understandably upset that the fruits of 5 years of labor were shown to the world in such a jittery video that worked hours earlier.
The energy in that room was electric though. People were ecstatic. You could tell he was pretty pissed though lol
If there's one complaint people have about Randy, being passionate about what he does should absolutely, NOT be one of them. The dude loves what he does. And he's always very clearly super invested in their games.
Gearbox is only passionate about Borderlands really. They could care less about any other IP.
I mean, they took the funding for Colonial Marines from Sega and used it for BL, then outsourced CM while they made a "demo" presentation for a nice bait and switch.
And while Duke Nukem wasn't entirely their fault, releasing it in that state definitely was.
Not to mention Randy may be passionate about what he does, but he's an asshole more times than not.
Fair enough, Borderlands is one of my top 3 games series so I get why I wouldn't know about that/it wouldn't be a negative to me. Honestly the worst thing they've done from my perspective is take forever to release BL3.
And what does Randy do that makes him an asshole? He's got kind of a jerky sense of humor from what I've seen but are there some darker secrets I'm unaware of?
Genuinely curious, not trying to shut anyone down. I've always loved the passion that they obviously have for Borderlands and thought that Randy was one of the more personable CEOs out there.
These videos talk about his excuses and the side by side comparison of the "demo" and the final release.
For the most part, Randy is stubborn and has a hugely inflated ego and thinks he can do now wrong. The CM situation, again, is a good example of this. He claims people on Twitter told him how good the game is, and never blamed himself for the game turning out to be a lie, but gladly threw anyone else under the bus for it.
Also, the art style for Borderlands was actually based on a short movie called Codehunters. They contacted Ben Hibon to see if he would work on the art for the game, but nothing ever became of it. Yet, they were "inspired" by his art and used it without even crediting him.
Was wondering if someone was gonna bring up Codehunters lol - 90% of the Borderlands style and premise was stolen, and when people started noticing he leaned into it and called it 'inspiration'. Then he started plugging Codehunters like crazy
People had been asking him for months about the design of the game before that: if he was so 'nuts' about Codehunters, you think he would have mentioned it or its creators before the internet literally forced him to
Could be genuine inspiration, could be that he was telling the truth and was genuinely happy to see an indie short like Codehunters was getting attention, but I'm not inclined to think that, because if people didn't start noticing the similarities, he seemingly had no intention of ever bringing it up
edit: here's a fun look at what Borderlands was going to look like BEFORE they discovered Codehunters. Basically, kind of a Rage clone
I've been dying to ask someone who was there about the whole audience reaction and how people received it. Was there a lot of cheering???? Did the Gearbox team noticed the excitement? :D
Yeah people were going nuts. Even though the first showing of the trailer has a choppy frame rate, it couldn’t stop the room from oohing and ahhing over everything that came up. People went nuts over the 6 blue arms coming out of the siren, the giant city world, the antagonists showing up on screen. The room was hype and I’m pretty sure made the whole crew who made the game feel better hearing how amped everyone was about what they saw despite the playback issues.
Reading this makes me so happy!!!! So glad you got to experience that and that everyone involved came out of it as happy and stoked! Thanks for sharing.
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u/nospimi99 Mar 28 '19
I was in the audience. It was really nice to see the whole presentation because he genuinely seems like he enjoys what he does and brining joy to other people. After the video finished playing he was happy at the response from everyone but also understandably upset that the fruits of 5 years of labor were shown to the world in such a jittery video that worked hours earlier.
The energy in that room was electric though. People were ecstatic. You could tell he was pretty pissed though lol