Top 50 Randy Pitchford Quotes

The key is when we make mistakes, we want to be able to correct them and we also want to be able to learn from them so that we do not make the same mistake twice.

I’ve always wanted to ride a sail barge and drive a sand skiff.

Demand alone might let a business case be created, but things driven by that will have a risk of being soulless. You need it being driven from both directions. You need the nexus between demand and creative passion that wants to make something.

There’s a different kind of experience you have when you experience live entertainment versus the kinds of media we tend to consume most of, when we’re watching television or films or reading books. Live entertainment is a whole different beast.

Most single player games put a lone character against an army that is just standing around waiting for the player to show up and defeat them.

Wired gave ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ the first Vaporware Award, and then the next year it won No. 1 vaporware again, and then again and again until Wired decided, you know what? ‘Duke Nukem’ is just going to get the lifetime achievement award for vaporware.

There is always the person who’s got to stand on the sandcastle, they must crush it.

Sometimes you stumble when you push yourself harder and you’re trying to run faster or whatever. We forgive ourselves, pick ourselves up, and keep running. We don’t cry and stop running because we skinned our knee.

A mission to entertain the world is a good one because it’s impossible to achieve.

Each scenario in ‘Battleborn’ is kind of like a TV episode, you can play them in any order, and each one has a beginning, middle, and end. And they are super replayable.

One of the neat things about Gearbox that I love is, we don’t look at our designs as a totalitarian regime and we’re all really happy to let designers and creators within the studio explore in our space.

When people take risks and it’s not rewarded, in the case of ‘Mirror’s Edge,’ it’s makes it harder for others to be comfortable taking risks.

Borderlands’ asks you to pick a class, and once you’ve chosen that character class, you’ve committed yourself to that game session.

Of course, the idea that a robot can have a sexual identity is kind of an absurd one.

The philosophy at Valve and Gearbox is that if things can’t be done better, they shouldn’t be done at all.

As a creative, as an artist, I’m just excited when people want my stuff, and want to experience it.

I have immense respect for Christopher Nolan for taking a character called ‘Batman’ – taking a comic book – and making people believe in him in a real world context.

What a lot of people don’t know is that I got started as a professional gamemaker when I moved out to Texas to join George Broussard and Scott Miller and Allen Blum who created Duke Nukem, to join those guys and become part of the ‘Duke Nukem 3D.’

You can polish and iterate and double down on what the magic was. You can make a much better thing. A much cleaner thing, a much more solid thing. And that’s what ‘Borderlands 2’ is to ‘Borderlands.’

Teamwork is a significant part of ‘Counter-Strike: Condition Zero’ and many of the secondary objectives require you to effectively work with your squad.

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.

I think it’s safe to say that ‘Half-Life’ was influenced by every first person action game that preceded it.

Condition Zero’ introduces quite a bit of content and gameplay to ‘Counter-Strike’ including new weapons, characters, mission types and even new technology to enhance to look and feel of the game.

In ‘Condition Zero,’ failure has greater consequences and success offers greater rewards.

Borderlands’ is a horrific failure if our goal is to entertain the world.

There are several cool cross-overs between ‘Blue Shift,’ ‘Opposing Force’ and ‘Half-Life.’ The plots are all designed to work nicely with themselves and the observant player will catch many cross-references.

Duke Nukem’ helped bridge the gap between games designed for adults and what they wanted in their entertainment as adults who also wanted to have fun. ‘Duke Nukem’ bridged that gap and helped bring those things together. It’s one of the reasons it succeeded at the time.

Usually when we finish a game and we’re at the end, we’re sick of it. We want to put it in the box and be done with it. But with ‘Borderlands,’ it’s actually become a productivity sink at Gearbox, because we’re just having fun.

Sometimes we do derive some entertainment when we ‘appreciate’ something, and sometime we feel something when we’re moved. So a lot of game makers want challenge themselves with ‘can I move someone?’ or ‘can I get them to respect me as an artist?’

I think I would not be who I am if I did not have experience both as an audience and as a performer in those early days of my career. It taught me what entertainment is all about.

From a narrative perspective, ‘Blue Shift’ for the PC and ‘Blue Shift’ for the Dreamcast are very similar.

I’ve got a 6,000 square-foot home in Plano that probably costs as much as a three-bedroom house in Van Nuys.

The first-person shooter genre owes itself to ‘Duke Nukem.’

Things that are created with passion tend to work out better than things that are assignments that we don’t really want to do.

I have a lot of respect for those in medicine that are trying to extend our lives or help us when we’re sick.

No gamer, whether you’ve played ‘Duke 3D’ or you haven’t, can play ‘Duke Forever’ without having experiences that surprise them.

If you’re successful, ‘Blue Shift’ has what many have called the most satisfying ‘Half-Life’ ending yet.

I mean, of course there’s art in video games – duh.

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.

And Duke Nukem, I think he is the most iconic videogame character in the industry. I think Lara Croft is the female and Duke Nukem is the male. Between them, they’re the most iconic figures in videogames.

Just as ‘Half-Life’ redefined the first person action game, ‘Half-Life’ for Dreamcast redefines what an extension of a great PC game to console should be.

The hallmarks of the ‘Brothers in Arms’ series are about authenticity, squad combat, brotherhood between soldiers.

There are times when you can take yourself seriously and there are times when you can cut loose. It really depends on your goals and it depends on what you’re promising the customer.

I’ve decided, because we have a short time here, that those of us that create joy and happiness, that’s a really noble thing.

One of the things I wish Sony would do is get behind ‘Borderlands,’ because I’d love to see a Vita version of the game.

I, personally, trust Valve. But I’m just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn’t.

PAX is not a show about retailers, not a show about journalists. It’s about players.

Do something good, and people want that! Do something less good, and people want it a little less!

I owe my career to ‘Duke.’

A very important part of game development is testing – something that a lot of developers don’t do.