I am sick to death of hearing about BioShock Infinite. It's become one of those games, like Super Smash Bros. Brawl once was, that I've been hearing about for so long that the more I hear, the more it sounds like white noise.

Juggling video game press announcements can be a tricky thing. Announce a game too late (ie, too close to its release) and it might not have enough time to generate awareness. Announce it too early, though, and you run the risk of hitting a wall, your game running out of steam before it's actually released.

That's where I'm at with Infinite (to be fair, I'm at that point with many games, but we're just talking about BioShock here!). It looks cool, and I was excited to see it when it was first shown off, but the more I see the more I grow tired of seeing it. Every new scrap of information - and really, most of the information to date has been in the form of meaningless scraps, like showing off enemies in individual releases - works in reverse, sucking away my excitement for the game rather than generating it.

It's death by a million PR papercuts.

If you feel the same, about Infinite or any other game, you should at least know this: it's not always the fault of poor marketing. It can sometimes just be a result of "external factors".

"We probably would have announced it later, but we were worried about it leaking", Irrational boss Ken Levine tells Penny Arcade. "We had a nice unintentional head fake, everyone thought we were working on this X-Com game, but we weren't. It wasn't what people expected. Without our presentation, people would have gotten the wrong message about [BioShock Infinite], it would have been confusing."

"I would have announced it significantly later if I wasn't worried about that. We had this external factor."

OK, so they wanted the official announcement to beat a leak. I understand. I don't agree, though. Leaks, even the most convincing ones, are never the same as official announcements, because there's always the risk they're either fake or will later be edited or even scrapped.

An official reveal, though, with trailers and screens and info, gets the ball rolling. And in Infinite's case, it got it rolling too soon!

The art of (over?) exposure: Ken Levine discusses Bioshock Infinite promotion [Penny Arcade]

I love animal companions that fight on your side. The mabari you get in Dragon Age is a great example of why; they're adorable, loyal, and not too shabby as fighters.

Borderlands could also benefit from this concept. After all, skags are such a huge part of the universe that you might as well give the player some friendly, trained ones.

In the spirit of Pokémon, one user created this grenade mod that lets you throw Pokéballs that release one of ten skag variants to fight on your side. That's a feature I would definitely love to see in a Borderlands game.

Thanks, Jason!

Mass Effect cosplay? Sure! BioShock cosplay? I guess that shouldn't be a surprise. People love dressing up in all sorts of Steampunk garb, some of which intersects with the aesthetic of the BioShock games. But I didn't expect to see much BioShock cosplay at PAX East this past weekend. There was, in fact, plenty... at the official BioShock party.

The video I shot of amateur BioShock cosplayers at the series' Saturday night part is a bit dark, but you can see some cool costumes and maybe a gaming journalist or two you might recognize.

Note: The Delta drill suit you see in the video was much more impressive when there was a guy in it!

Earlier today I attended Gearbox's panel at PAX East, where they revealed a badass new downloadable class in the works for Borderlands 2.

But the existing four classes still needed some flair. Enter the new character customization feature, through which you can create all sorts of wacky costumes and hair colors for your character.

There are also "bazillions" of character skins to choose from, so there's definitely a healthy amount of fun to be had with building your new treasure hunter/mercenary.

In a panel at PAX East, Gearbox Software just revealed that Borderlands 2 will add a new class—the "Mechromancer" sometime after the game releases this October. The class is in the conceptual stages only and will be developed once the game goes into its certification stages later this year. Concept art for the character was shown during a Gearbox Software panel at PAX.

To clarify confusion regarding our original wording, while preorders will receive the Mechromancer for free, the content will release to all players at the same time. That date is not set but a Gearbox representative said it would be 60 to 90 days after the game releases.

Furthermore, those who did play the first game (and still have their gamesave, of course) will be given a custom character skin and a unique head as a thank-you, Gearbox said at the same panel.

Some of the game's special edition premiums—which the studio had put up to a suggestion box last year—also were revealed. There will be two tiers of special editions. The "Deluxe Vault Hunters Edition" at $99, gets a Marcus Kincaid bobble head. He's the weapons supplier with the lothario accent who narrates the first game. The second, an "Ultimate Loot Chest Edition" (pictured above) delivers you a stylized Borderlands loot chest with all the goodies packed inside. It doesn't open up with hydraulics—it's more like a jewelry box, but it matches a community suggestion as best it could. More goodies and premiums in both editions will be announced later.

Finally, the Gearbox gang tossed out Easter eggs with codes inside, redeemable at a special website, that allowed attendees to compete to potentially insert their names into Borderlands 2 or Aliens: Colonial Marines as an Easter egg.

The Boys of Silence are BioShock Infinite bad guys. The original plan was for them to make you pay for all your noise.

The Boys were going to wait to attack the player, BioShock Infinite 's art director Nate Wells explained today during a panel about the game's bad guys at the PAX East convention. They were going to wait for you to make too much noise. The bullets you fire? They'd hear them and sort of collect their sound. The steps you take? They might collect those too. Eventually they'd have enough and attack. These enemies would compel you to choose quieter weapons, the game's creative director, Ken Levine, added.

Unfortunately, the Boys won't do that. Well, maybe it's fortunate, because the Irrational guys said the concept didn't work. Players wouldn't understand what was happening. They'd not see a Boy of Silence who was collecting their sound and wouldn't understand why one was suddenly attacking them. The Irrational team tried to compensate by having ambient noises drop from the game's environment as a Boy of Silence collected sound. That wasn't the right fix. So the function of the Boys of Silence has changed. We'll find out their new set of rules when BioShock Infinite is released this October.

This Big Daddy and this Little Sister walked into the BioShock Infinite panel at PAX East today.

Pretty good cosplay, folks!

What would games look like if the developers behind them had an unlimited amount of time to work on them?

I'm not talking about an unlimited time in development hell, like Duke Nukem Forever. I'm talking about the luxury of not having a publisher breathing down your neck to crank a game out by the contracted time.

So what would Borderlands 2 look like if the Gearbox team had no time limitations? Would it look different than what they anticipate it currently will?

"No. It would look the same," says Sean Reardon, senior producer at Gearbox Software. But why?

"I don't buy into unlimited time. As a producer, I think the thing that creates quality is the focus on time. If you have unlimited time, you're going to have no constraints. The boundaries are too ill-defined for me to do anything creative in that space. I need something concrete to be creative. If we had infinite time, we'd still be dicking around on that very first decision. There'd be no game."

What about infinite money? Surely you could use infinite money for glamorous cinematics, high-end voice actors, motion capture, promotional campaigns, anything?

Nope, not that either. "If I have infinite money, where's my passion? If I have no creative boundaries, I have nothing to do. I have no challenge. I'm not saying, ‘Work for money,' I'm saying, ‘Use money to solve interesting challenges.'"

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What do you do with a sequel to a game that has a huge roster of weapons, quirky characters, and awesome 4-player co-op? You add more weapons, of course. More »

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How The Worst Thing Players Did in Borderlands Made It Better

Gearbox Software's first Borderlands won fans over with its awesome, awesome loot, high-contrast art style and wacky characters. But, as great as the game's procedurally-generated weapons were, Gearbox say that the first-person shooter/role-playing hybrid was whatever the gamer wanted it to... More »

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Day One DLC Isn't Always Evil, Says Borderlands 2 Guy

Everyone hates day one DLC. But even haters of the practice don't really understand why it exists.
The exact procedure that goes into launching a game means that developers aren't always on-hand with a game up until to the day it is launched. More »

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Everyone hates day-one DLC. But even haters of the practice don't really understand why it exists.

The exact procedure that goes into launching a game means that developers aren't always on-hand with a game up until to the day it is launched. Teams are left free to work on bugs, patches, or extra content after the game has entered its alpha stage.

Gearbox senior producer Sean Reardon finds it unfortunate that the wider community of gamers does not understand this procedure, but to him it's also understandable. He loves working on DLC, and in fact was the producer for the DLC on the first Borderlands title. DLC, he says, is not always evil.

"I can imagine a situation where the game is in certification for 5 weeks before it comes out. It's actually off our hands. Day one feels different to me than on-disc. On-disc means that at the time of going into certification I've done extra work and decided, you know what? I'm not going to give you that. I'm going to cordon that off and ask you for more money later on. There's a line there.

I'm going to go home and I'm not going to get my $60 worth. Then they're going to charge me more to unlock the thing I should've gotten the first time. That's horseshit. That's actually horseshit. And I firmly believe that."

It's safe to say you won't be seeing any on-disc DLC with Borderlands 2. Reardon says he is going to push his team to put every ounce of effort into creating a complete game for launch, and then push them even further for any potential content thereafter. "The only work that had happened before shipping Borderlands 1 was to enable the fact that we could even have DLC. There's actually a lot of work to make that possible to not exclude that option."

The first title's DLC gave players new settings, creatures, vehicles, and gameplay modes that convinced gamers to revisit their gameshelves for Borderlands 1. For those of you who were as addicted to the game as I was, the downloadable content was both a welcomed addition as well as the perfect excuse to keep playing. Any potential Borderlands 2 DLC will hopefully inspire the same amount of creativity from the development team.

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What do you do with a sequel to a game that has a huge roster of weapons, quirky characters, and awesome 4-player co-op? You add more weapons, of course. More »

---

How The Worst Thing Players Did in Borderlands Made It Better

Gearbox Software's first Borderlands won fans over with its awesome, awesome loot, high-contrast art style and wacky characters. But, as great as the game's procedurally-generated weapons were, Gearbox say that the first-person shooter/role-playing hybrid was whatever the gamer wanted it to... More »

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Gearbox Software's first Borderlands won fans over with its awesome, awesome loot, high-contrast art style and wacky characters. But, as great as the game's procedurally-generated weapons were, Gearbox say that the first-person shooter/role-playing hybrid was whatever the gamer wanted it to be.

During Gearbox Software's trip to NY for a Borderlands 2 preview, I asked senior producer Sean Reardon if he wished certain merits of Borderlands were more emphasized in the eyes of their community of gamers. He told me that the games the team makes are for the consumers, and it effectively becomes their game.

"We make that as a joke. We'll say, ‘You're a bad designer if you tell your customer that you're playing the game wrong.' It's actually the customer's game. We should do our best to enable that experience. If someone is playing the game and they're not having a good time and it's because they're not playing it right, that's our fault."

Borderlands 1's history shows that Gearbox has practiced what they preach here. I brought up the rampant duping and modding of weapons in Borderlands 1 where gamers would have access to things like rocket launchers with unlimited ammo and perfect targeting.

This was a perfect example, Reardon noted. "People duping weapons was eye-opening and made us feel embarrassed," he responded. And although Gearbox released a patch embedded in the third DLC, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, that wiped most of the duped and illegitimate weapons, they decided to keep one of the buggier creations. It came to be known as "Pearlescent" for its off-white tone. The glitch-based anomaly wasn't a very good gun but it wound up being incredibly cherished for its rarity. And even though it broke the game, the development team decided to embrace the community's positive response towards it. Because in their view, "So long as the player is laughing, it's a feature. If he's crying, it's not."

Fortunately, a game as wacky and creative as Borderlands lends itself quite well to new, community-inspired additions like this one. Reardon looks pleased when he tells me that "we can do basically anything we want if it feels fun." Gearbox feels obligated to deliver on the kind of content their gamers want, and that their gamers find fun even if it wasn't something that the team had come up with. And adding the Pearlescent gun class was fun.

It's unclear if Borderlands 2 will have similar exploits that let weapons like Pearlescent happen, but here's hoping that players will find more unintended options for making the sequel uniquely exciting.