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Limited Run Seemingly Throws Old Guard Under The Bus, Promising No Future Delays

Limited Run Seemingly Throws Old Guard Under The Bus, Promising No Future Delays https://ift.tt/lEpW8d9 Limited Run has been no stranger to online controversy. Between allegations of using cheap recordable media in place of pressed CDs for certain games , a lawsuit for alleged violations of privacy , and severely delayed collectors' editions arriving with questionable quality control , things have been messy for the Embracer-Group-owned boutique physical games publisher for quite some time. However, with the recent departure of former CEO Josh Fairhurst, it appears that the new management is scrambling to make amends with customers --and subtly trashing the old management in the process. One of the most common complaints around Limited Run Games involves delays--buyers have come to expect delays of months, if not years on many projects, though many still grumble online whenever the dreaded release-date-change email from LRG hits their inbox. On Friday, many customers with outstand...

How Borderlands Ensures Character-Driven Storytelling Remains A Focus 14 Years Later

How Borderlands Ensures Character-Driven Storytelling Remains A Focus 14 Years Later https://ift.tt/GvgXNM4

The Borderlands franchise holds a peculiar place within the history of the gaming industry, kickstarting a genre that has gone on to become a different kind of beast. After all, though the concept of combining both RPG and first-person shooter mechanics was first seen in 2007's Hellgate: London, the loot-shooter genre owes its popularity to 2009's Borderlands. And yet, today, many of the most popular loot-shooters are also live-service games (like Destiny 2 and Warframe). Borderlands is not, having never adopted that format. It instead has multiple sequels--some of which diverge from the original game and don't feature any looting or shooting.

Like these other live-service game franchises, however, character-driven storytelling has been one of the main unifying pillars of Borderlands, which has been supported by a writer's room. "Gearbox is casually unique in the sense that we maintain a writer's room," Gearbox Entertainment associate director of narrative properties April Johnson told me. "So we don't just plunk you to work on a project and say, 'Okay, enjoy the two of you doing this--we have multiple things that we are working on, so we won't Voltron up as a full unit until later.'"

Having a constant writer's room is a strategy you usually see in story-driven live-service games where maintaining a narrative vision over multiple years--over a decade in the case of some games like Destiny--is important. It's not often seen in AAA franchises that feature several sequels and recruit a new set of writers from project to project. Gearbox Entertainment is not wholly unique in this strategy within the gaming industry, but it is a rare exception and the team points to this as one of the reasons for how the studio has managed to curate a specific narrative voice across all its projects.

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