Peter Gillibrand<\/span>BBC Newsbeat<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n “It’s been 84 years…” or so says the meme.<\/p>\n For video game fans, it can certainly feel like it, as the gap between big releases gets longer.<\/p>\n Earlier this month Silksong, the highly anticipated sequel to 2017’s Hollow Knight, was finally released<\/a>.<\/p>\n And don’t get us started on Grand Theft Auto 6.<\/p>\n But the wait for one big title, Borderlands 4, is finally over, six years after its predecessor came out. <\/p>\n “I’m freaking out. It’s wild,” Randy Pitchford, head of developer Gearbox, tells BBC Newsbeat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Borderlands is, quietly, one of the most successful game series launched in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n A mixture of first-person shooter and role-playing game, part one stood out in 2009 thanks to its cartoonish art style, edgy humour and co-operative multiplayer modes.<\/p>\n Players take on the role of vault hunters, tasked with gathering loot on an alien world where they meet a cast of wacky characters and over-the-top enemies.<\/p>\n The series has never swept an awards ceremony, but it’s debatable whether it ever tried to.<\/p>\n Journalist Ash Parrish, of tech website The Verge, tells Newsbeat the game “turns off your brain and turns on the fun”.<\/p>\n “The core ethos in Borderlands is that there’s going to be a lot of shooting and a lot of dumb humour,” she says.<\/p>\n “That’s sometimes all you want out of a video game.”<\/p>\n It’s been a winning formula for the series, which has sold 94 million copies since the first game, putting it in a similar league to titles such as Tomb Raider and games based on the Harry Potter films.<\/p>\n “It shouldn’t be as successful as it is,” says studio boss Randy. <\/p>\n “It should be a super, super-niche thing.<\/p>\n “We have somehow reached people, which is awesome.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Success can be a blessing and a curse in video games. Critical acclaim can mean big sales, which help to fund your next work. <\/p>\n But praise also brings pressure to improve on what came before, and those expecrations only grow as the gap between releases widens.<\/p>\n Game development is notoriously complex, but Randy says it pays to take time to get things right, repaying the “trust and confidence” gained from previous games. <\/p>\n But he acknowledges a desire to “exceed expectations” with each new release.<\/p>\n “It’s pretty hard and it takes time. It’s not something we can rush.” <\/p>\n If the game doesn’t live up to expectations, he says, there’s a risk fans will turn away from the series.<\/p>\n But there are other forces at work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ash says advances in technology have made development times longer. <\/p>\n The recent state of the games industry, “with lots of firings, studios closing down and games getting cancelled,” is another big factor, she says.<\/p>\n She points out that Gearbox itself had a turbulent time, going independent before being acquired and sold off again to GTA publisher 2K.<\/p>\n “That leads to a lot of churn in terms of your employees,” says Ash.<\/p>\n “A lot of the knowledge is stored up in the minds of developers.<\/p>\n “When you lose employees you lose a lot of wisdom, and any game getting made is like a miracle.”<\/p>\n In some cases, this can effectively mean “starting over” as new staff get up to speed, she says.<\/p>\n Developers also face pressure from investors who buy shares in companies, says Ash, whose expectations can also be sky-high.<\/p>\n “Everything that comes out has to be bigger, better and has to take advantage of all these technologies,” she says.<\/p>\n “And that takes a lot of time.”<\/p>\n The longer something takes, the more it costs to make, which can affect the amounts investors receive.<\/p>\n “If that line is not going up as fast as they want it to\u2026 then you’re done,” says Ash. “That’s it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Randy, perhaps unsurprisingly, puts a more positive spin on the situation.<\/p>\n He says new technologies have allowed Borderlands to “live up to the ambition we’ve always had”, and says number four “is by far the biggest thing we’ve ever done”.<\/p>\n The latest instalment allows players to roam an open world environment with larger areas, in contrast to the smaller levels in previous games.<\/p>\n “If you look at the moon in the sky – you can get there, seamlessly. <\/p>\n “Which is kind of astonishing from a technology point of view,” he says.<\/p>\n Randy also insists that he concerns himself more with actually making games than with sales figures or what investors say.<\/p>\n “When the games sell, we get to make more,” he says.<\/p>\n “If the suits are happy with the commercial results then we get more fuel to go deeper down this crazy rabbit hole that we’re in, which is freaking awesome.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So far, the waiting seems to have paid off for Borderlands 4.<\/p>\n The game has received positive reviews from critics, and was one of the most-played games on PC platform Steam 24 hours after its launch, although some players encountered bugs and crashes.<\/p>\n![\"2K\/Gearbox](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/07e4\/live\/28b0e310-9006-11f0-84c8-99de564f0440.jpg.webp\")
2K\/Gearbox<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![](\"https:\/\/static.files.bbci.co.uk\/bbcdotcom\/web\/20250905-110137-f27f908f49-web-2.29.1-3\/grey-placeholder.png\")
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Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n![\"2K\/Gearbox](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/cedb\/live\/f7d4c760-8ff2-11f0-9cf6-cbf3e73ce2b9.png.webp\")
2K\/Gearbox<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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