The Borderlands video game (and its surrounding universe) is a great way to approach many current best practices in innovation, marketing, community management and overall entrepreneurship notions.
Disclaimer
It’s been a few months since i’m dying to take an evening to write this article. I’m sure that procrastination is a common personality trait amongst vault hunters (heros of Borderlands). I found many excuses to avoid writing this tribute to Pandora’s designers…
But today, in addition to having discussed this gaming masterpiece with some friends in a very pleasant chat, the official page of the game just teased the preparation of a Borderlands movie ! The first article speaking of the matter highlights the ambition for Gerabox Software and Lionsgate to create the first video game adaptation capable of earning the status of Blockbuster, (or heavyweight of the Hollywood industry) which no video game-based movie has achieved yet !
For me, that’s the sign my message must be heard (a Vault symbol just appeared in the clouds). This wonderful game that keeps innovating on many fields and disrupting the video game industry since 2009 deserves one more night of my time. And that’s how an all nighter begins.
What is Borderlands ?
I wish many of the future readers of this articles will be familiar with the Borderlands universe. But for you, who clicked by chance here, prepare to be amazed. Discover a quick 5W1H story of one of the funnier, crazier, most violent & addictive game of these last years.
- What ? Borderlands. The perfect mix of a role-playing and a first person shooting video game (RPG & FPS), oddly named shoot and loot.
The game takes place in an aggressive sci-fi post apocalyptic universe, full of scammer cowards loving juicy guns. The game was referred for a long time as a surprising UFO project.
- Who ? It’s being developed by Gearbox Software for the editor 2K Games, that recently made a Borderlands’ universe extension-oriented partnership with Telltale Games (another videogame disrupter).
- When & Where ? Since 2009 till now, created in Plano (near Dallas) and spread worldwide.
- Why ? To be the deadpool of videogame, obviously.
- How ? By proving their greatness, selling more than 26 million copies of the game worldwide.
- And ? Yeah, we are talking about the video game industry, so big figures, originality and extended universe might not seem very impressive. For me, Borderlands is special because it takes the risk of being so very rudely original, in an ultra-competitive field.
It succeeds in doing and that’s worth analyzing !
How Borderlands is freaking innovative
Time to get some strategy XP without spending any Eridium. Here are 7 reasons why some creatives, entrepreneurs, marketers, community managers, businessmen and many more might be talking about this game.
( Some points are divided in Theory / Facts )
1-A Brick-strong vision
Starting with amazing ambition and great ideas
Theory : What’s usually advised
Power of Storytelling and inner motivation — Why you make something is much more powerful than how you make it, and than what IT is.
That’s Simon Sinek’s « Why before What » rule you may have heard of.
Nowadays, it’s one of the first rule we teach entrepreneurs.
Copycats and mashups aren’t really advised — Taking forces and inspiration from other’s projects is a great idea, but it’s very hard to adapt it to your own company. To succeed in creating your own identity will be a struggle if you copy others too much. Also, most people will say you’re not very creative.
The only way to enter a highly competitive market is by taking risk — The business jungle law obliges you to take huge risks to get your piece of the cake. That’s just how it works.
Facts : How Borderlands respects those advices
At the time it was created, Borderlands was a new license in the video game industry. While we kept seeing sequels and prequels of old stories, only a few editors dared to try changing the game.
More than a new license, Borderlands is a full innovation : A game mixing RPG and FPS, dark humor and sly jokes, sci-fi apocalypse and fantasy stories… it’s also a full challenge : a weirdly mixed mashup of everything people like, but featuring sleazy risky gags…
All that in a very codified market environment.
The Why — I suspect that many players loved Borderlands because it totally changed from their habits of playing the same types of games, year after year.
Even if it may not be the inner motivation of Gearbox, i’m sure this idea of disrupting the game industry resonated with gamers.
The time frame, without much newness, had a powerful impact on the game’s success.
Mashup — Who could dare to say “Borderlands lacks originality” ? Designers of the game surely created their own identity by taking inspiration from other games, movies, books… but they did great and managed to forge their own identity !
You can see the inspiration or the copy, but it always have an overlay of Borderlandness, and those elements are more perceived as a tribute or a reference.
Taking risk — That’s Borderlands way of taking over the market, or at least to get a nice niche market ! That’s also the best way to accomplish something special and rise to the top. All the winners have played.
2-The Purple Skag Law
Practicing differentiation by any means
Theory : What’s usually advised
Find your purple cow or your blue sea — Differentiation is one of the last advantage a company can have on its your competitors (even if it’s becoming more and more transitory).
Having a purple cow in a word of normal cows makes you more visible and attractive.
It’s also always better to find a peaceful and hard-to-copy blue sea far away from the bloody red sea made by competition’s wars.
( Purple Cow by Seth Godin, and Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne)
Underdo your competition — One interesting strategy can be to do less than everyone else, but do it better. Don’t try to always one-up your competitors, keep it simple and functional.
(Build Less by 37 signals)
Facts : How Borderlands respects those advices
It’s on that Purple Slag Law (PSL) that Gearbox people tear other companies apart, disrupt the system and win badass levels.
If we exclude the pitch of the game (which is a freaking Purple Cow surfing a UFO on a blue sea of strangeness), the first awesome PSL move Gearbox made was due to technical and financial difficulties :
When the game was almost done, they realized that the design budget was too low. The solution found was to use cel-shading design (cartoon effect).
By doing so, Borderlands moved away from the classical “Halo” sober design it was intended. This economic issue turned into a real differentiation advantage and grounded the identity and uniqueness of the game.
From here, we can find many PSL or “Underdoing-your-competition” ideas inside Borderlands’ development strategy :
- Revealed during a huge trend of Massive Multiplayer Online game, Borderland has a gigantic community, even if you can only play by 4, max.
- Every other game at that time allowed player to have their head-to-toe customizable avatar. Well, Borderlands offers you the choice between 4 pre-made characters, #oldschool.
- Gearbox people can even find purple skags inside their own farm : everyone expects a sequel for Borderlands 2 ? They create the first pre-sequel game ( an unexpected mix of prequel and sequel).
3-The Moxxi home effect
Creating one of the rare at-home-good product
This one’s tricky : do you remember that superficial thing you wanted so bad ? You were watching ads, catalogues, talking about it all the time.
You finally went to the store and that thing was amazing : so many features highlighted on the packaging, so much fun on the horizon…
Of course, once at home it just didn’t delivered !
It’s wasn’t as easy to use as expected, it was too complex or too simple, and remorses started to go up and down. You just felt betrayed and robbed.
This is very common, and that’s why strategy experts from Signal versus Noise advise in their masterpiece book Rework, that firms must make a at-home good product (instead of in-store good or on-paper good) !
Borderlands designers should rename this concept the Moxxi Home Effect. Given how they made this character, there is no chance Moxxi will disappoint you once at home… In fact, i’m sure she will surprise you !
Create a product with a great Moxxi home effect and give people things they didn’t even expected ! What a pleasure to buy a simple speaker and discover once at home that it is waterproof, or to find out that your vinyl album also contains a mp3 download code.
As regards my “at-home experience” with Borderlands 2, I would never have imagined that it could be so much fun with my vault hunter team of friends. Even after weeks of games, we still had nervous giggles ( especially with the “Bane” submachine gun trolling features).
We got many surprises and I can say with no doubt that the game has came above my biggest expectations.
That’s exactly how you want your product to be described.
4-Hammerlock’s species books
Learning from customers, cultivating their interest
Theory : What’s usually advised
Lean is the new black : The Lean Manufacturing strategy has touched and challenged almost every industry during past years.
A deviated method, the Lean Startup strategy ( created by Eric Ries, upgraded by Steve Blank and Ash Maurya ), is no small subject.
Here is the main idea as Ash Maurya sums it : « Life’s to short too build something nobody wants ».
Old ways of checking people’s interest in your product consisted in various market analysis and customer satisfaction estimations, after the product’s creation.
You can now easily change that nonsense : make a product or service come near perfection by testing multiple times its core ideas, which helps make quick and accurate improvements. Learn on your assumptions, measure your trials and errors, and choose the right path to success.
Being flexible is the better advantage you can have to adapt yourself to your customers’ needs.
The process is easy : build something simple, not too expensive or time-consuming, test it to measure its success, get feedback or insight, and learn how you could have done better.
Repeat the process and try to reach perfect product-market fit.
Facts : How Borderlands respects those advices
As feedback listeners, Gearbox Software has performed many updates between the first and second opus, and even more between the second and Borderlands : the Pre-sequel.
Customers asked for more character personality, they have now their own personal vulgar sentences, GREAT.
Other asked for more plateform-oriented game sequences, they answered with a game taking place on a low gravity bouncy world.
(The thing I found most impressive was how easy it was for them to give the development of an entire new gameplay and new game concept to a remote team in Australia, while they were improving the last game. Having a remote teams with such responsibilities is usually a strong insight showing that the company is open-minded.)
Many creators are afraid to give to their hardcore fans the complexity they ask for.
(like Pacific Rim’s director that was too afraid to push its exciting “dream-sharing neural bridge” concept forward).
Borderlands’ designers did not hesitated to create a complete and complex universe. With a backstory many players had to search for on wikipedia, they did not took fans for fools (and that’s rare).
Even those who aren’t into scripts details can feel while playing that the crazy battles and dumb missions they achieved were backed with a wisely engineered story.
Also, good knowledge of customers allows the game’s designers to insert pop-culture references by dozens, all hitting their giggles target !
I insist : customers asked for more stories in the Borderlands universe. The game designers then created comic books, web-based TVshows, and a script-oriented opus with the famous interactive tales teller, Telltale Games.
Extend your universe with some new features or ideas, test if people are interested, learn why they are (or not) and be empowered to perform better next time.
5-Selling it better than Marcus’s Gun$ Shop
Making explosive marketing work
Most people I confronted on this subject tend to think that provocation, free violence and rule-breaking are too risky for marketing strategies. I think those people would have a hard time working at 2K Games !
The marketing team behind Borderlands managed to make free violence and dark humor their trademark. We have here a exception-which-proves-the-rule study case and we should look further into it !
For this part, I just wanted to emphasize some advices/notions for this type of marketing, that I found noteworthy :
- Be yourself, stay natural. This may seem obvious, but we all tend to use too much politeness and loose time on it, along with sincerity. Don’t think to much : treat coworkers, customers and people like you would like to be treated.
If you want to make a robot dance on disco while singing WUB WUB dubstep, go ahead !
Your ( weird ) choices defines your ( crazy ) brand identity.
- Don’t wonder about being too outdated or too original, just be you and celebrate your own way ( check this Game of the year celebration trailer )
- If you make a crazy marketing, expect to get insane customers… ( This Google Search of “Tattoo + Borderlands” proves it )
- Meme sharing is the new gold, especially when you have such badass characters to introduce ! ( Borderlands on Gifphy )
- Break the rules every time it’s possible. That’s a rule.
- Get a funny mascot and practice self-derision, that might just work.
- Never miss an occasion to do some News jacking ! News jacking is making a special announcement (for the products or the company) every time a special date is spotted on the national calendar.
For example : every holidays comes with its Borderlands additional content or exclusive in-game stuff.
6-Claptrap’s clan management
Creating a ready-for-fight community
Originality inside community management is the kind of moves your best community members will remember the most. The Borderlands’ community is so passionated that its manager must feel like a badass Vault Hunter.
The Borderlands’ cosplay community exists all around the word make fan films and photo shootings all the time, quickly relayed by the official page.
They even made a cosplay party on the theme “ come as your hero dressed for summer ”(completely unprecedented !).
Also very reactive on customer requests and questions, the social network team even created a twitter account for its characters Claptrap and Handsome Jack (not sure if official). The social media skill is flawless here.
Besides that, the Borderlands site offers interviews from fans and blueprints to make your own cosplay costumes. Nobody is blamed for showing their love to the brand (contrary to some IKEA’s fans).
Fans can share without troubles 3D printing files, and many other sell Borderland themed posters and jewels on Etsy…
Let fans the possibility to easily express their gratitude. Help them spread your message with community management originality.
Straighten your ranks and be up for the word-of-mouth war.
7-Gearbox people remain Hyperion Businessmen
Being aware that Eridium is vital for the company
Besides taking risks and having fun while designing products, exploring customers ways of thinking and preserving community’s amazing love, Gearbox people must also focus on profit.
Turns out they also perform well on this matter…
- As we said, the original pitch of the game is enough to confine Borderlands customers into a niche market.
That’s truth if we forget to mention that the mashup on many things players like and the disrupting mission of Gearbox gives a stunning virality to their products !
Also, who doesn’t like to laugh out loud while living great adventures with remote buddies ?
No real niche here, just a growing customer segment needing to be made aware of Pandora’s world awesomeness.
Word of mouth is nowadays business’ weapons of mass destruction.
- The game is REALLY better when we play on multiplayer mode. A lot of game try to do this but only a few succeed. This also gives a kickstart to Borderland’s world of mouth impact : you feel obliged to convince all your friend to buy the game and play with you. Another virality key !
- Of course, many downloadable contents are made available for addicted players to invest in. That’s more money for the bullymong bank ! The “season pass” offer even allows you to pre-pay for future additional content.
- Money is also made on Merchandising. With a community like that, it was a strategy no-brainer !
- The players that may find too disturbing to not have it’s own avatar on the game can buy virtual wearings his friends don’t have, (to shine in Moxxi’s pub) with real money.
- And finally, there is the SHIFT code effect.
Same feeling as looting “Eridium” on the game, getting a SHIFT code during the day is always a pleasure.
SHIFT codes are simple 25 numbers/letter codes that can unlock special items on the game, and that get out-of-date after a few days.
The thing is, in order to get one of these code while it’s still functional, you’ve got to stay in standby mode on Borderlands’ social network pages, or on websites made by community members.
Anyways, if you want those tempting reward codes, you will be aware of all new announcements from the brand. You’ll then be tempted by awesome new products.
That’s Shift code effect is what we could call a locking strategy.
It also helps consolidate the habit of playing, because SHIFT code popping notifications reminds you it’s been a very long time since you haven’t played !
That’s pure GENIUS.
Why does this sh*#t deserves an article ?
I’m not sure. Have you read or understood any of this ? Me neither.
I Forgot to compare Mad Max and Borderlands, to explain how Deadpool is disruption superhero movies, and to apologize for the use of vault-hunters-only words and references…
Anyways, if you learned anything, I would be truly delighted if you dropped me a comment, shared this work, or just clapped like a mad Gunzerker 👏.
P.S : This Borderlands’ movie better be damn good !
