Video games are taking longer to make, but why?

“It’s been 84 years…” or so says the meme.

For video game fans, it can certainly feel like it, as the gap between big releases gets longer.

Earlier this month Silksong, the highly anticipated sequel to 2017’s Hollow Knight, was finally released.

And don’t get us started on Grand Theft Auto 6.

But the wait for one big title, Borderlands 4, is finally over, six years after its predecessor came out.

“I’m freaking out. It’s wild,” Randy Pitchford, head of developer Gearbox, tells BBC Newsbeat.

Borderlands is, quietly, one of the most successful game series launched in the past 20 years.

A mixture of first-person shooter and role-playing game, part one stood out in 2009 thanks to its cartoonish art style, edgy humour and co-operative multiplayer modes.

Players take on the role of vault hunters, tasked with gathering loot on an alien world where they meet a cast of wacky characters and over-the-top enemies.

The series has never swept an awards ceremony, but it’s debatable whether it ever tried to.

Journalist Ash Parrish, of tech website The Verge, tells Newsbeat the game “turns off your brain and turns on the fun”.

“The core ethos in Borderlands is that there’s going to be a lot of shooting and a lot of dumb humour,” she says.

“That’s sometimes all you want out of a video game.”

It’s been a winning formula for the series, which has sold 94 million copies since the first game, putting it in a similar league to titles such as Tomb Raider and games based on the Harry Potter films.

“It shouldn’t be as successful as it is,” says studio boss Randy.

“It should be a super, super-niche thing.

“We have somehow reached people, which is awesome.”

Success can be a blessing and a curse in video games. Critical acclaim can mean big sales, which help to fund your next work.

But praise also brings pressure to improve on what came before, and those expecrations only grow as the gap between releases widens.

Game development is notoriously complex, but Randy says it pays to take time to get things right, repaying the “trust and confidence” gained from previous games.

But he acknowledges a desire to “exceed expectations” with each new release.

“It’s pretty hard and it takes time. It’s not something we can rush.”

If the game doesn’t live up to expectations, he says, there’s a risk fans will turn away from the series.

But there are other forces at work.

Ash says advances in technology have made development times longer.

The recent state of the games industry, “with lots of firings, studios closing down and games getting cancelled,” is another big factor, she says.

She points out that Gearbox itself had a turbulent time, going independent before being acquired and sold off again to GTA publisher 2K.

“That leads to a lot of churn in terms of your employees,” says Ash.

“A lot of the knowledge is stored up in the minds of developers.

“When you lose employees you lose a lot of wisdom, and any game getting made is like a miracle.”

In some cases, this can effectively mean “starting over” as new staff get up to speed, she says.

Developers also face pressure from investors who buy shares in companies, says Ash, whose expectations can also be sky-high.

“Everything that comes out has to be bigger, better and has to take advantage of all these technologies,” she says.

“And that takes a lot of time.”

The longer something takes, the more it costs to make, which can affect the amounts investors receive.

“If that line is not going up as fast as they want it to… then you’re done,” says Ash. “That’s it.”

Randy, perhaps unsurprisingly, puts a more positive spin on the situation.

He says new technologies have allowed Borderlands to “live up to the ambition we’ve always had”, and says number four “is by far the biggest thing we’ve ever done”.

The latest instalment allows players to roam an open world environment with larger areas, in contrast to the smaller levels in previous games.

“If you look at the moon in the sky – you can get there, seamlessly.

“Which is kind of astonishing from a technology point of view,” he says.

Randy also insists that he concerns himself more with actually making games than with sales figures or what investors say.

“When the games sell, we get to make more,” he says.

“If the suits are happy with the commercial results then we get more fuel to go deeper down this crazy rabbit hole that we’re in, which is freaking awesome.”

So far, the waiting seems to have paid off for Borderlands 4.

The game has received positive reviews from critics, and was one of the most-played games on PC platform Steam 24 hours after its launch, although some players encountered bugs and crashes.

Ash, whose review praised the game for leaving the tried-and-tested formula alone, wasn’t especially wowed by the new open world, but found a lot to enjoy

And in a world where 10-year waits for sequels are not unheard of, six for Borderlands 4 doesn’t seem like such a bad deal.

“It’s a long time… but not as long as it could be,” she says.

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