Pitchford attributes Borderlands success to targeting the 'current gamer'

If you haven't been paying attention to the end-of-year NPD reports, it may surprise you to learn that Gearbox's multiplayer shooter slash RPG, Borderlands, performed quite well in the gruesome 2009 gaming sales arena. How did it manage this feat? Well, we'd attribute it to the game's massive stockpile of collectible weaponry, which we found to be black tar heroin-esque in its addictiveness. However, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford chalks it up to choosing hardcore gamers as the title's target audience.

"Perhaps Borderlands can be a lesson for all of us -- that when making a videogame, we should not be afraid to identify gamers as the audience," Pitchford said in a recent interview with IGN. "I wonder if too frequently publishers and developers are so caught up with going after new, untapped audiences that they can forget to care for the largest, most loyal and reliable audience there is -- the current gamer," he added. Well, there go our hopes for a Facebook-based Borderlands gem-swapping casual puzzler.