How Borderlands 2 Illustrates Changing Content and Involvement

As you may have guessed, some of us here are seriously digging Borderlands 2.  I’m enjoying it and am currently on the first DLC campaign AND running a second game with a DLC character.  Jose penned his own love letter to it when it first came out (where did he get the time?).  All things aside, it’s a great game, filled with references, and has a crazy cute robot named Claptrap who at one point threatens to violate a villain’s corpse.

Really, it’s great.  Also, the Commando class rules and you can’t prove me wrong.

But what’s interesting on a pro geek level, is that the game has several great lessons for those of us working in gaming and content.  Beyond the whole angry-cute-robot angle.

One of the great lessons?  Mindshare.  A lesson that shows how we need to rethink content.

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Why Do We Have Such A Creative Explosion on Mobile and DLC?

(I'm still thinking about DLC and mobile content as of late.  Blame my new Android.)

I sort through the DLC on my console and am amazed at what's there (and at times appalled, but mostly amazed).  I look through the online store on my smartphone and am overwhelmed with choices.  When it comes to books the content available to me, especially via eBooks is stunning.

It seems that, media, software, and gamewise we're in a kind of explosion of creativity and productivity.  There's just a huge amount of stuff everywhere – often good stuff – that we can download, play, read, or listen too.

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Are We Loosing Our Creative Breathing Room?

Technology allows us to deliver content and spectacular speeds to an audience of ready fans.  We writers can get our eBooks out faster than anyone in publishing dreaded of a decade ago.  Those of us in gaming can get out a game in parts, or keep the DLC flowing until a game's sequel comes out.  Musicians can deliver one tune at a time until the DVD burns or concert season comes up.

We can keep delivering content all the time.  There can be almost no gap between one product than the next – in the case of novels, with continual e-chapters, it never has to end.

I'm wondering if this is a good idea, or if at the very least it'll be hard to adapt to:

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