In May 2016, Gearbox, the studio behind Borderlands, released the first-person shooter Battleborn for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The game featured a quirky roster of heroes: There were mushroom beings, emo birds, and crazy penguins. The high-quality produced shooter with its unique heroes flopped terribly. The former head of 2K explains what went wrong and what Overwatch had to do with it.
What kind of game was Battleborn?
- Battleborn was a quirky game: It was a hero shooter with a cult-humorous science fiction setting: An evil empire destroyed all stars in the universe, only a coalition of heroes wanted to save the last star, Solus.
- Players could play a PvE campaign, where they were constantly over-the-top chatted at and insulted via voice chat.
- There was also a PvP variant, similar to Overwatch.
Battleborn was known for its strong trailers:
How did the game perform? Like Evolve, the previous “big hit from 2K”, Battleborn also faced difficult times after the release:
- The game received only 69% on Metacritic, which is quite weak.
- At launch on Steam, it started with an average of 12,000 players, which was moderately received, and fell to 660 players within a few months.
- Developer Gearbox admitted early on: The game was not selling well, but they still wanted to save it. However, even a “Free Trial” in June 2017 could not prevent the end. In October 2017, the game went into maintenance mode – in 2021, the servers were completely shut down.
Activision Blizzard spent 10 times more money than us
This is what the head of 2K says went wrong: In an interview with GameSpot , Christoph Hartmann explains the issues; he was the head of publisher 2K at that time.
For Hartmann, it comes down to the fact that Battleborn entered a direct duel with Overwatch from Activision Blizzard and was doomed to fail.
They made the mistake of revealing all their cards too early.
In hindsight, the head regrets having presented Battleborn so early, already at E3 2014; he sees this as a foolish mistake:
We were so stupid to announce the game too early. We showed it at E3, much too early, years before release. We explained everything to the world, explained what we were doing, and then we couldn’t deliver for ages. Activision Blizzard spent 10 times more money on marketing than we did. We did a little bit, but clearly not as much as Overwatch.
Back then, the information about Battleborn constantly mixed with that of other hero shooters
This is what it was about: Hartmann explains the exact problem of Battleborn back then: The game was presented early and looked interesting; however, there was no continuous marketing campaign for the game, but rather, one heard bits and pieces about it and then quickly forgot.
Somehow, there was a feeling that Battleborn kept disappearing completely from players’ awareness, only to return for a brief moment: “Oh right, that existed too, didn’t it?”
The marketing for Battleborn became blurred in the minds of players with information about a series of other “hero shooters” that also emerged between 2014 and 2016, most notably Overwatch.
Players constantly wondered: “What was this Battleborn again?” They struggled to distinguish between Battleborn, Paladins, Lawbreakers, Paragon, and Gigantic – all somewhat similar games, featuring a cast of exciting heroes. All shooters, all somehow set in an arena – all were games that looked interesting and vied for attention.
There are some great trailers for Battleborn; my personal favorite is the trailer for E3 2015 – the song is titled “Fitzpleasure – by alt-J”
Ultimately, Activision Blizzard then overwhelmed the competition with the huge and great campaign around Overwatch – Battleborn was hopeless:
- Battleborn was released on May 3, 2016
- Overwatch was released on May 24, 2016
This duel was one that Battleborn could only lose, especially since they had failed in the 3 years prior to convey to all interested parties what kind of game they had and how cool it actually was.
One developer’s heart was broken by the end of Battleborn:
Developer on the end of Battleborn: “It will feel like it never existed”
