Ruckus Games Interview – A Closer Look At Their Genre-Defying Multiplayer Project

Scott: If I go down the lexicon of all the things that I love; games, films, books, every single one of those people went out on a limb and started something that no one believed they could do, but they did it anyways. They created new standards, pushed the boundaries and limits of the time. I think that it is so important to say to ourselves, “We can do that, we can build the new things that inspire the next generation.”. I think that’s the way our society evolves, how the world continues to get fresh content.

All of us here are late in our careers, so we’ve worked for other people for a long time. When we were doing that, you know, we often had the thought of, “How would we run a company? How would we do things differently?”. Then when we were on our own, we had to be very smart and have a clear vision, we’re not just pursuing our dream blindly. We wanted to create not only the game that we ourselves want to play, but we also had to be very cognizant of what the market wants and be able to be flexible and adapt.

To do that, we had to look at our strengths and what we knew we had done well in our past work, and we took those things and figured out a way to organize in a more creative way that allows us to create something fresh and new.

Scott: I’d like to say we designed some pretty cool environments and characters and made some pretty iconic things throughout that. Those are things that you learn from and get better at. We’re taking all those lessons but doing something new with it, going in a different direction.

I’ll always be proud of what we created in Borderlands, but I always want to be even more proud of the next thing I do, so we take those learnings, experiences, and lessons and we improve and grow, and I think that is something I’m excited for players to see.

Scott: There’s a lot of things you can interact with, a lot more than I think people will expect, given some of the history of the things that we’ve made in the past. There’s a crafting element to our game, so there’s a lot of objects that you can find that you can add together to make new things that can influence the environment in diverse ways. I think this is a lot more of a dynamic game compared to some of the other games that I’ve worked on that had a little more of a static landscape.

Keith: The contributions that we made to previous games, whether that’s elements of design, the way we keep players in mind when we’re designing, or the sense of humor. When you think of Borderlands, you think of humor, but I don’t think of the humor that’s outward facing like the writing or in the voice acting or things like that. I think of the humor that’s baked into the game itself.

You know, what was funny or fun that happened? We’re always looking for the humor in things, but we’re also always looking for the fun in things. There were plenty of times at Gearbox when Scott and I would be in meetings talking about game features and systems, and you riff off each other and get off topic, but there are times when that is actually a useful exercise, and things get added into the game from it. So, that kind of process and attitude, we can’t help but bring that forward because that’s the people we are.

Scott: What Borderlands came into, I don’t want to say, is an art style shift because the base of what Borderlands was was a cool foundation. It wasn’t just visual; there was also design and writing, and a lot of things got a little breath of fresh air. It wasn’t just me, obviously. There were a lot of talented artists and different branches of development involved.

Carl Shedd, World Director at Ruckus Games, he was focused on the environment, where I was focused more on the character side. Kevin Penrod, Character Art Director at Ruckus Games, I think the first heads he made were TC Baja and Krazy Earl, who were the first characters that I had created.

I saw a little environment vignette. So, I started drawing characters at night, and I brought them in and immediately got pulled from UI and put on concept art. And I just dug in, you know? I dug in with many talented people around me, and we just went to town. It felt like a very punk rock thing. It was like every other day somebody was doing something kind of avant-garde. It was extremely exciting, and all of us fed off of each other creatively, and I feel that here at Ruckus as well.

Scott: I’m very excited to answer this question because this entire game, for myself and a lot of us, is a love letter to our childhood. A love letter to the places we grew up in the Midwest. We grew up in these areas that are kind of rural, kind of boring, not that interesting, but I think that’s why it’s so cool.

As a child, when you grew up in a space like that, you had to make it exciting, right? It almost feels like fantasy in that aspect of the latchkey child’s fantasy. When you’re living in suburban neighborhoods, you imagine big, fantastical things that come to your mundane hometown and shake things up. So, you’re looking in the cornfield and asking yourself, “if I run through there right now, what if I run into an alien or something?” And what this game does for me is it brings me back to that feeling, and it brings back a bit of this childhood wonder of what’s outside.

Average people in smaller Midwestern towns that have to deal with these wildly crazy significant phenomena is very cool, because when you have an amazing environment and an amazing thing happens, it all kind of becomes normalized. The big mythical dragon next to the castle makes sense. But when you take a mythical dragon, and you put it on your corner store gas station, it’s like, Holy crap, that’s really inspiring now.

I love the idea of locations and places that are kind of mundane because our characters, what they’re building, what they’re doing and fighting are not mundane. There are these things that become overly exciting, it grounds us, and it makes us understand that I’m not a superhero or a brand name character that can do anything. I’m underpowered, underground, and in a situation where I can take that out.

So, we feel like having something that’s set in a little different time than now, in a place that’s not crazy exciting, becomes something that’s an interesting destination that a lot of games don’t give you the opportunity to explore.