Borderlands 4 was built with the help of years of community feedback, senior project producer says
Borderlands 4 is made by several veterans of the series at Gearbox Software, and I sat down with one of them at a recent gameplay event where I went hands-on with the upcoming looter shooter. Anthony Nicholson, the senior project producer on BL4, has been with the company since 2012, most recently working as the head of DLC production on Borderlands 3. We spoke for around 15 minutes about the future launch, but there was one common thread throughout: what players want matters a lot to the developers. Image via 2K Games The landscape of player feedback and social media criticism has changed wildly over the years, with a shift towards overly negative sentiment just about everywhere you look. One can only imagine how hard that must be to navigate for developers. But according to Nicholson, it's one of the most important parts of game development. "I'll start by saying with 100 percent genuine approach that the player is always at the forefront of our minds," Nicholson said. "As we're designing, as we're planning, we're constantly thinking about 'what does the player feel? Does the player feel awesome when they do this? Are we getting what we want from the player?'" As head of BL3 DLC, Nicholson said he "was right there" watching player reactions to things like campaigns, live end-of-week events, and all sorts of other content drops, and so he's been attuned to feedback and how to implement it for a long time. "Without saying like, 'hey, we're going to do every single thing that people mention or complain about, we have a vision for what we want in the bounds that we want people to be able to flex with," he said. "And whenever there's things that are genuinely not making it to where players don't feel awesome or they're not having fun with it, then we wanna look at it and approach it and see what we can do to tweak it." Nicholson made sure to highlight how Borderlands fans are "super important" to Gearbox, and the feedback supplied by players has been "invaluable" to help keep the franchise so strong after 16 years. Image via 2K Borderlands 4 launches on Sept. 12 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Lodging and travel for the Borderlands 4 hands-on event was provided by 2K. The post Borderlands 4 was built with the help of years of community feedback, senior project producer says appeared first on Destructoid.
Borderlands 4 is made by several veterans of the series at Gearbox Software, and I sat down with one of them at a recent gameplay event where I went hands-on with the upcoming looter shooter.
Anthony Nicholson, the senior project producer on BL4, has been with the company since 2012, most recently working as the head of DLC production on Borderlands 3. We spoke for around 15 minutes about the future launch, but there was one common thread throughout: what players want matters a lot to the developers.
The landscape of player feedback and social media criticism has changed wildly over the years, with a shift towards overly negative sentiment just about everywhere you look. One can only imagine how hard that must be to navigate for developers. But according to Nicholson, it's one of the most important parts of game development.
"I'll start by saying with 100 percent genuine approach that the player is always at the forefront of our minds," Nicholson said. "As we're designing, as we're planning, we're constantly thinking about 'what does the player feel? Does the player feel awesome when they do this? Are we getting what we want from the player?'"
As head of BL3 DLC, Nicholson said he "was right there" watching player reactions to things like campaigns, live end-of-week events, and all sorts of other content drops, and so he's been attuned to feedback and how to implement it for a long time.
"Without saying like, 'hey, we're going to do every single thing that people mention or complain about, we have a vision for what we want in the bounds that we want people to be able to flex with," he said. "And whenever there's things that are genuinely not making it to where players don't feel awesome or they're not having fun with it, then we wanna look at it and approach it and see what we can do to tweak it."
Nicholson made sure to highlight how Borderlands fans are "super important" to Gearbox, and the feedback supplied by players has been "invaluable" to help keep the franchise so strong after 16 years.
Borderlands 4 launches on Sept. 12 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Lodging and travel for the Borderlands 4 hands-on event was provided by 2K.
The post Borderlands 4 was built with the help of years of community feedback, senior project producer says appeared first on Destructoid.
