Gearbox Software was founded on February 16, 1999 by five members of the content team from the defunct developer Rebel Boat Rocker: Randy Pitchford, Brian Martel, Stephen Bahl, Landon Montgomery, and Rob Heironimus.
They started with developing expansions to Valve Software's Half-Life. They subsequently work on or helped with every expansion to the Half-Life game and have produced and work on such titles as Brother’s in Arms, Duke Nukem, to Alien: Colonial marines, ( but the less said about the Alien game the Better).
They are an American company based in Texas and currently have 187 employees.
Working for Gearbox studios would be a dream come true and from their catalogue of games you can see that they produced a lot of First Person and Third Person based games, but within very different settings, styles and themes. They have a diverse range of environments from realistic war settings to futuristic dystopias.
Some example Titles you may recognise:
One of the main reasons for wanting to work for this company they produced my all-time favourite game sagas Borderlands, and with the announcement of the 3rd game in series to be released in the autumn this year I am a super excited.
Borderlands in want for a better word is a BADASS game. It appeals to wide audience and incorporates an adventure looting game with a FPS. This accompanied with a fantastic storyline and a multitude of diverse characters, and displayed within a visually stunning style, it was everything an OCD comic book lover like myself needed.
The game is crazy, it has crazy characters, crazy weapons and a crazy game style, visually and to play. It has references to many other iconic games and the humour and story is what grasp your attention and the re-play and levelling capabilities mean hours and I mean hours of fun.
I will stop fan-boying now but in all honesty I would love to produce work for a Borderlands game. The art style is unique the design of vehicles character and is quite caricature but yet credible, plus the creatures and weapons within the game are just as entertaining as the main characters. Yes a gun can be entertaining, trust me play the game you’ll understand.
The mechanical characters, vehicles, and environment props, really are where I could see myself working on. The game has extremely wide an open maps that allow for exploration, and I can see myself dressing sets with props and creating the iconic Borderlands crate. The Borderlands crates are more than just crates there’s a distinct hierarchy of ammo, loot, and special crates throughout the games.
Borderlands has a tongue in cheek humour and it is very fresh with its comedy, the comedy is introduced via characters throughout gameplay and one other reason to be Borderlands fan is the most annoying yet amazing sidekick/ guide in a game, the Claptrap. A tiny robot with a massive ego, but an amazingly engaging character.
I feel that if I were to apply to Gearbox it would be to specifically work on a Borderlands title, as the other titles such as Brothers in Arms and Half Life have seemed to die down in recent times though there is talk of a new Half Life release coming soon.
I feel that I could adapt my style of working to the style of the games that they produce and I really love my war based games, but the way they have a dynamic change of style between series would take time to get used to. I would have to get a few years’ experience behind me before applying here of course but with a minimum require of 5years experience and having to apply for a working visa this would be a job in a couple of years after gaining experience.
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