Randy Pitchford says sifting through the loot in Borderlands 4 is tickling a fundamental part of you: ‘Our brains need to do it, and our brains like doing it, and we’re better off when we do it’

Borderlands 4 is here, it’s a hit, and… oh. On PC it continues to be plagued by performance issues, is currently sitting at “Mixed” reviews on Steam, and Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford still has access to his X account and is still giving out bad advice.

Pitchford can’t help himself, but he comes across way better in an actual conversation than his social media persona might suggest. He recently did an interview with the BBC to discuss Borderlands 4, and Gearbox’s history more generally, in which he basically humblebrags about what Borderlands gets right, during which I think he claims it basically encapsulates the human experience?

“[Gearbox’s] mission is to entertain the world,” said Pitchford. “Which means we suck! Because there are billions of people in the world. We got a lot of work to do. Borderlands, with 4, we’re gonna cross probably 100 million units sold, with Borderlands 4, of the franchise. That’s awesome compared to a lot of things. But it kinda sucks if your goal is to entertain the world. So I feel like we’re just getting started.”

The world population is estimated at just over eight billion people. Just think about how many of us on Earth are yet to get angry at a Randy Pitchford tweet. But it’s when Pitchford gets on to the whole design of looter-shooters, and why they appeal, that we firmly leave terra firma behind.

“That decision, that choice about ‘do I keep what I have or do I try the new thing?’ That is a very compelling, fundamental, both need and skill that our brains have, to make choices like that,” said Pitchford. “We’ve reduced it down to this simple moment with this interface in this system. It’s a gratifying loop. It’s a gratifying decision. Our brains need to do it, and our brains like doing it. And we’re better off when we do it.”

Looter-shooters are good for you! You heard it here first. But our man’s just getting warmed up.

“The more we exercise that muscle, not just in the video game but literally in life—this is what separates our species from a lot of others, and how we developed language and how we developed all kinds of high levels of consciousness and cognition that allow us to analyse the world. Most of what our prefrontal cortex is for—why that adaptation exists and what it’s used for—is that skill, or versions of it. We’ve reduced it down into this design.

“And yes—is the thing I’m looking at better than the thing I’ve got, and managing the cognition between the objective, almost scientific analysis of that choice, versus the emotional impact on that choice, and having those at odds with each other frequently, is very interesting, and dare I say it addictive.”

Pitchford seems to realise he’s maybe gone a bit far here, and said something that might return to haunt him in other contexts. Time for a reverse-ferret! “We don’t do it because it’s addictive,” clarifies Pitchford. “We do it because it’s stimulating and because we kind of need that. Part of why games exist are to… yeah. we can live a fantasy that we might not be able to have in the real world, and we can explore themes and ideas in a safe place that we can’t explore in the real world, but we also can, because it’s an interactive simulation, we can test our thinking and our decision making and put our brain to work in really interesting ways that we kind of need and want.”

I should say that, while I think Pitchford may be getting a little high-falutin’ about what exactly Borderlands is doing, there’s no denying he’s fundamentally right about the appeal of games generally. Gaming is an active pastime, something where your brain needs to be engaged constantly. The first thing you do in any new game is start testing what you can do, where the boundaries are, what if I do X near Y. They tickle the part of our brain that delights in play.

Pitchford reckons that this is why Borderlands hasn’t had much in the way of competition. There are loads of other shooters of course, and you could argue that something like Destiny 2 is a very successful example of another kind of looter-shooter, but given Borderlands’ commercial success it’s odd that Gearbox is on the fourth mainline entry and it doesn’t really have a direct rival.

“If other game designers that were trying to get in on the action understood that, we’d have more competitors, or we’d have good competitors,” said Pitchford. “But we haven’t so far. It’s weird. The kinds of people that just want to go after it, they’re not thinking about it on that level. They’re just putting into motion something because of market analysis. It’s not a designer’s or creator’s drive that’s doing it. It’s either a business drive or a wishing to be something that you’re not kind of drive.

“It’s so weird. I fully expected after the first game came out that everyone would be hip to exactly what you mentioned, and we’d immediately see lots of other games imitating and aping, and we’d be dead, because we can’t compete with a lot of other folks, especially back then. We were the scrappy underdogs.”

They’re certainly not now. Pitchford ends with the vaguest of vague teases that basically amounts to yes, Borderlands will return.

“I’ve been working on Borderlands for over 20 years now. And it feels like we’re starting to get pretty good at it. It feels like we’re starting to figure it out. I feel like we’ve probed a lot of the end points. But I don’t think we’re anywhere near the end of a journey.”