One of the unique aspects of the Borderlands series of games is their distinctive art style, which works perfectly for the general tone and visual themes of the games, to the point that it’s impossible to imagine them without it. But according to Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick, the ‘now-established’ cartoony and cel-shaded art style was actually a last-minute change into the first game and had it not made it into the final product, the first Borderlands could’ve been a flop.
In a recent interview with David Senra, the CEO talked in detail about how a daring, last-minute decision had changed the fate of the franchise:
“We had not turned around the company yet, and we had very limited capital,” Zelnick started:
“We were developing a game and it was about to be released two months later, which is to say it’s done. And we’d spent a lot of money,” Zelnick continued. “And the head of the division came into my office and said, ‘Look, we just don’t think this is good enough and we think we screwed up and the art style is not appropriate and it’s not differentiated. So, we want to remake the game.’ I was like, ‘What does that mean?’ He said, ‘It means $50 million of incremental dev costs [which was a lot of money to us], and another year.’ It was on a release schedule, which we’d announced.
And I dug in. I mean, I don’t give knee-jerk answers. I dug in and did my homework. In the end of it, I supported the decision. And that title became Borderlands. Had we not done that, Borderlands wouldn’t have been a hit. And that was a non-obvious decision. And I can pretty much assure you no one else in the business would have done it.”
According to him, anyone else in his position might not have made the choice: “Because it was insane,” Zelnick explained. “They would have said the game is done. Put out the game. Move on to the next thing. I’m not spending 50 million bucks to remake the goddamn thing in another art style. And I have no evidence that one will work either.”
It was Zelnick’s trust in the developers’ vision that led him to make the brave choice which resulted in the first Borderlands being a definite hit: “Be the most creative, be the most innovative, be the most efficient. I hired the most creative people. I said, ‘You have to pursue your passions. We will support you.’ They came and said, ‘This is our assessment. This is our passion. Are you going to support us?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’”
In the current state of the industry where we frequently hear about the publishers interfering with the devs’ vision in an unfair way (Dragon Age Veilguard being a great example), it’s certainly inspiring to know the Take-Two boss supporting the developers’ last-minute and pivotal changes which also paid off in remarkable ways, making a win-win for both the publisher as well as the developer.
