Randy Pitchford is de baas bij Gearbox, een studio die ons fijne games als Brothers in Arms en Borderlands bezorgt. Gearbox maakte echter ook Aliens: Colonial Marines. In een interview laat Randy zich van zijn slechtste kant zien.
Randy verdedigt hoe de game na de reveal eruit zag en hoe de sales van de game blijkbaar niet zoveel schade aan hem hebben berokkend. Een aantal citaten:
Eurogamer: In the case of Aliens, you must accept it's not as good as Borderlands. Surely you accept that.
Randy Pitchford: It depends on what criteria you're using to define good. It did not sell as much. It didn't receive nearly the scores. It wasn't even close. Borderlands has sold maybe 15 times as many units. And the scores are very clear. Aliens got destroyed by the critics.
Eurogamer: Did you not feel that was fair?
Randy Pitchford: I probably lost somewhere between maybe $10-$15m on Aliens, whereas I made a ridiculous amount of money on Borderlands.
Eurogamer: I absolutely accept that, and the footage was marked as work in progress and that's fair. What I'm curious about is why did this game change in the way it did?
Randy Pitchford: Which way do you want to talk about? Pick a way it changed. Do you have a specific example of something that changed?
Eurogamer: Yes! If we look at the E3 2011 gameplay demo for Aliens, there were certain graphical effects we didn't see in the launch version.
Randy Pitchford: We need a laptop. We can't do this.
Eurogamer: Oh come on. You must know what I'm talking about.
Randy Pitchford: I can't remember every effect. I can't possibly remember.
Eurogamer: Okay, but the general point is that it didn't look as good when it launched as it did in those videos.
Randy Pitchford: I think that's subjective. There was one demo that was done, there was basically the same environment that was the first map of the game, and they were trying to show, oh look how it changed. It was kind of hilarious because, the first thing was, you're walking down the umbilical chord and then there's a jolt and a shake and you look up and a body of a marine smashes against the glass and the glass shatters and there's blood and then the first-person player falls down and there's blood on the ground and then he pushes his hand off of it and stands up and you can see blood on his hand, and then he readies his gun and moves forward.
And then they showed, like, here's the final version. In the final version, the thing shakes, he looks up, the body hits the glass but it doesn't shatter. There's no shattering effect. And then when he falls there's no blood on the ground and he doesn't do the thing where he looks at the blood on his hand. And that's a scandal. Like, that is a scandal.
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