From 'Half-Life' to 'Borderlands': Gearbox rides the rocket

One of Gearbox's earliest projects involved working with Valve Software on expansion packs to Half-Life. Gearbox could have played it safe, tacked on a few extra levels to Black Mesa and called it a day; instead, the developers recreated the original game from the points of view of different characters you met along the way.

Pitchford describes the process of pitching his idea for Half-Lifeexpansions to the guys at Valve:

When I went up to Seattle, I sat down with Gabe, Rick Laidlaw and said 'Hey, I got this idea. What if you went back to Black Mesa or what if you were in Black Mesa at the same [time as] the events in Half-Life went down, but it is kind of like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead. You are doing it from the point of view of one of the soldiers that went in. Wouldn't that be cool?' And they were like 'That would be kind of cool, we never thought of that. Go see if Sierra will buy it!' Then I drove down the street and pitched it to the Sierra guys and they were like, 'Sounds pretty cool, can you guys build it?'

Pitchford was pitching Opposing Force, which cast players in the role of the soldiers storming Black Mesa to "find Freeman," allowing players to see pivotal events from the original story from a completely different point of view. The second Half-Lifeexpansion, Blue Shift, did the same, except this time through the eyes of hapless security guard Barney.

"I have probably watched those movies 50 times," Pitchford says. "Certainly people at the studio have been influenced or inspired by the work of those filmmakers."

The look and feel of James Cameron's Alienshas been aped by more video games than probably any other film. One of video gaming's biggest-selling franchises, in fact, is an almost direct rip-off of the Cameron film. And although Gearbox didn't create that game franchise, they've played in its sandbox, too, and so they probably know at least a little bit about how to create convincing space marines.

"I mean look at Halo," Pitchford says. "We clearly love Halo ... Halo is cool is because it is the first time we got to interactively play Colonial Marines from Aliens. You can feel the influence, you can feel the inspiration, it is not just subtle, it is in your face to the point where the sergeant from Halo is the sergeant fromAliens. It is like the same exact character trope and all the designs of the dropships and stuff, it is all there."

Pitchford says he's been stealing from Aliensfor his entire career, so the chance to now give back to the franchise and create a new chapter of its mythology is kind of a big deal.

"In the case of Duke Nukem Forever, there has been 15 years of expectations built up," Pitchford said. "There are a lot of people who were perfectly gratified by the game; they liked the surprises, the details of how the humor manifested itself or how the scenarios manifested themselves ... and there were other people, because of the development effort or because of the way it's been upsold throughout the years, there is just no possible way to meet or exceed such expectations."

Pitchford says that of all the games they've shipped, Gearbox gets more positive fan mail from players of Duke Nukem Forever. He believes this, above all else, is the indicator that Gearbox hit the mark in terms of quality.

"The true definition of quality," he says, "is not about things like fidelity or features, or you know production values, or anything like that. The true definition of quality ... is to what extent does the thing meet or exceed expectations of the customer."

Yet in spite of whether or not the game met anyone's expectations, Pitchford says that just shipping the game, long plagued with development and funding problems, is another feather in Gearbox's cap.

Whether it was perfect or not, Gearbox shipped it.

"We are so proud of that, you have no idea," Pitchford says. "It's like, it is a miracle. The game exists and we get to see that content with what those guys have been working on for so long. And I love the game, I think it is hilarious frankly."

Gearbox isn't talking about what lies beyondBorderlands 2 and Aliens: Colonial Marines, but whatever it is that Gearbox ships in 2013 and beyond will be exactly what they want to ship. No more, no less.

"What we want to do is probably the biggest driver," Pitchford said, "because if we do what we want to do, it's likely going to have some relationship to what the customer wants because we consume video games ourselves, right?"

So what does Gearbox want to do? Pitchford isn't saying, although he does drop some hints:

"As long as we want to make a game set in aBorderlands franchise, we will be doing that. As long as we want to make a game set in Duke Nukem franchise, we will be doing that. As long as we want to make a game in the Brothers in Arms franchise, we will be doing that. As long as we want to create new franchises we will be doing that to the extent that we can.

"There are a lot of other things we have our eyes on that we would love to be a part of."

Whatever those things turn out to be, you can be sure that Gearbox will love them, feel passion for them and, above all else, ship them.