Interview: Gearbox's Randy Pitchford

We talk to the President and Co-founder of Gearbox Software to find out what makes Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway worth your attention.

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Speaking with Pitchford, it's clear that this is a passionate man who is excited about what he does and unafraid to say what he feels. It's a luxury afforded him by the independence of Gearbox as a developer. Being free of the shackles that hinder so many other talented game developers, Pitchford is better able to make the game he wants and to take his time doing it, if that's what's needed.

"Unlike Activision or EA or even Ubisoft, I'm an independent studio, and like a lot of us I don't make games to make money. I make money to make games. So there's a little bit of a difference there," he says. "I like a lot of what Ubisoft does and they're a good partner. They've been patient with us. We've been working hard. We had a vision that we wanted to fulfill and it hasn't been easy for them to predict when we're going to be ready and they've been patient with us."

Making games is what excites Pitchford, not the mandatory promotion needed to sell a game in today's crowded shooter market. For that, he's grateful to have Ubisoft's backing. The publisher is in charge of pushing the game in front of gamers to sell them on the concept just as much as on the gameplay. "I'm happy that they're doing that job," Pitchford adds, "because I don't want to do it."

This combination of passionate developers and professional marketers is the sort of thing that many studios envy, but because of the subject matter and more importantly how it's presented Pitchford is well aware that there is a limit to how well his game can possibly do relative to the chart monsters of recent years. "I have a different kind of mission here," he says. "I do know that one of the consequences of that angle is that in this market I will peak at about 4-5 million units. And that's cool. That's a huge success to me. And I'm happy because I feel good about what I'm doing."

Because, when it comes right down to it, it's clear from speaking with the team that while shooter fans are the audience, that's not necessarily the group of people that they have in mind as they work on the game. No, to them it's the veterans of Operation Market Garden in particular and the great war in general that they want to satisfy.

"When I take this approach, as the president of my studio and the creator and executive producer of this whole brand, I realize that I'm making a trade-off," Pitchford says. "I'm going for a headier experience. I'm asking you to not just shoot, I'm also asking you to plan tactics and I'm also trying to engage you in deep storytelling, and I'm trying to be very deferential to the history and the feeling and the mood that I get from the veterans."

"I want to make this game such that when the guy who was there plays, he's able to say, 'Man, you guys got it.'"

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