Gearbox’s Mikey Neumann talks about Borderlands demo, DLC
Borderlands is one of the better looking games I’ve seen all year thanks to the new art style. Still, the gameplay is much more important in an open-world game like this. The best way to show it off would probably be by way of a demo, but there’s a chance that we won’t be seeing a Borderlands demo anytime soon. DLC, on the other hand, has a better chance of appearing.
Borderlands is one of the better looking games I’ve seen all year thanks to the new art style. Still, the gameplay is much more important in an open-world game like this. The best way to show it off would probably be by way of a demo, but there’s a chance that we won’t be seeing a Borderlands demo anytime soon.
When asked if they were going to release a Borderlands demo in a recent interview with Shacknews, Gearbox’s Mikey Neumann cited “factors”. Lots of them.
We talk about a demo every day. We would love to do a demo. There’s obviously factors there. If and when we do one, I don’t know if it’d be pre-launch or post-launch, because …there’s a lot of factors there.
We would love to promise a demo, we can’t quite yet, we just want to get the game done. That’s always the hardest thing for developers to do–you never quite know how the time’s going to work out. We’re doing really well, but I can’t promise it.
DLC, on the other hand, seems to be a sure thing. Neumann assured gamers that what they release post-launch won’t be things that were originally in the game, but it’s way too early to be talking about any specifics. He even took the time to explain why DLC is sometimes announced even before games launch.
What happens a lot of the time is you finish your game and it’s time for cert, and during cert a lot of bugs crop up that you have to fix, and a lot of them are really, really big bugs. You are certainly not adding any content to the game at all. A level? No way.
But, during cert, if you have a lot of level designers who have nothing to do–which is pretty common, you pull level design and art off first–they’re gonna be making cool shit and want to make cool shit. That cool shit, that tends to be what DLC ends up being. It’s the stuff we couldn’t add to the game because we’re making it during cert, which is impossible to get into the [retail] game.
You can read the full interview at the source link. Gearbox is shooting for an October 2009 release for Borderlands. The game will be available for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
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Via Shacknews
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