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Borderlands: Production, Consistency & Change

By Pierre-Alexandre Garneau

Video of the presentation available here.

Lulu LaMer came to Montreal to give an insightful talk on communicating and evangelizing for a project during its development, using the upcoming game Borderlands as an example. Her role in this project was as a producer on the publisher’s side, where she served as the bridge between the developers and the publisher. With a background in game development, this was her first project on the publisher’s side of a project.

2K's Senior Producer, Lulu LaMer, came to Montreal to open this season's IGDA presentations.

She introduced the audience to Borderlands, an upcoming role-playing shooter with 87 bazillion guns. Beside the large number of guns, Borderlands is being recognized as a game with a very unique art style.

She told us how this new art style came very late during development – about 9 months before shipping. The reason for this change was that it made an ugly and monochromatic post-apocalyptic world look beautiful. This new art direction was a more achievable visual target than photo-realism, avoiding the uncanny valley. It also distinguishes the game from all the other post-apocalyptic games currently on the market. They discovered that the over-the-top stylized visuals were a much better fit for the existing over-the-top gameplay, making the game funnier and more enjoyable. It was a big change, but Lulu said that during development, “You discover your game through change.”

To enable such a large change to take place so late during development, clear communication is necessary to facilitate understanding and trust between developer and publisher. This meant that Lulu had to communicate with many people from backgrounds that were different from her own. To do so effectively, she says you must first notice how people are responding to what you say, then react to how people are responding. By talking in a jargon that the group is unfamiliar with, you create a barrier that excludes them.

Lulu talked about being a publisher-side producer for the upcoming Borderlands game.

When it comes to evangelizing for a project, she says that the most important thing is to make the concept resonate through feelings and emotions. You need to find a way to make people want to believe in the project and support it. Communicating the concept objectively is secondary in this marketing effort. Producers are the emotional touchstones of a project: stressed producers make for a stressed team and a stressed publisher.

She finished her presentation by talking about how moving up in the hierarchy of the development ladder has changed her perspective on the project. By going to the publisher’s side she now has a better view of the big picture. Now, she has to use a new vocabulary to talk to people in various departments, all of them with different perspectives.

Bioware's Jonathan Cooper and Joel MacMillan hung out for some post-presentation socializing.

Here’s a quick recap of the questions and answers that followed the talk:

Q: How did you get marketing to understand the concept of the game?
A: For a long time they didn’t, because she was using developer terminology. But one day in a marketing meeting, she described it as “Less epic, more white trash” and they finally got it.

Q: How costly was the art change?
A: There were changes to the rendering pipeline and some light clamping, but the bulk of the work went into hand-drawing all the textures instead of using photos. It wasn’t that costly, because the team had suggested the change in the first place and had already done a lot of work on a demo level so that they could pitch this new direction to the producer who then took it to the publisher.

Q: How would you have handled it if the new art style hadn’t worked?
A: “It would have been a problem.” But the style inspired people and made them believe in it.

Q: How was it experiencing the publisher’s side for the first time?
A: The surprise was how much work there is on the publisher’s side (dealing with the ESRB, manufacturing the disks, etc.) From the point of view of the people at the publisher, she represents the whole development team and everything, good and bad, that happens during development.

Q: Is the box art representative of the game?
A: “The game really is that crazy.”

Q: How much proof was needed before the publisher green-lit the new art style?
A: The team came with a full area done in the new style to Randy Pitchford – he was convinced and it also convinced the publisher.

Q: How did you manage the tension between the publisher and the developer?
A: There wasn’t too much tension. The publishers were pretty open-minded (they’re the same people who approved the dystopian Bioshock).

Lulu has drinks with Clint Hocking, Charles Lavigne and Pierre Yves Savard from Ubisoft.