Shack: Were you to roll out some better trade rules, would that be on all platforms?

Mikey Neumann: Hopefully, yes. There's some technical hurdles there that we're going to have to look at, but obviously whatever people are clamoring [for], we're gonna try to make it all better.

Shack: That's what Randy was saying about downloadable content, that it'd be based on community feedback. But there's already some downloadable content in the works--how do you incorporate community response when they've yet to play the game?

Mikey Neumann: We have a plan for multiple downloadable contents, hopefully.

DLC 1 is an extension. It's something new that we wanted to give the players--a new area to play in, some new stuff to do. From there, I think [DLC] will be more reactionary.

We make decisions based on our own focus testing, which is listening to players, what they wanted more of, listening to people that played the game early, talked to some people that are reviewing the game. We're definitely listening to everybody we can at the time. Obviously, when the game comes out, we're going to have a whole lot more people to listen to.

Going forward, we're trying to take as much community feedback as possible.

Shack: On downloable content, what's the limit? Have you run into any technical hurdles--no new classes, no rocket ship etc.?

Mikey Neumann: We're finding out some interesting things that maybe we didn't realize before. So far, none of them have been game changers.

To be specific, we are making DLC for all three platforms simultaneously. We don't want any customer to miss out. I will say that our first DLC is an additional story, it's a tight little story that's pretty cool, a whole new area with all-new monsters and all kinds of stuff. It's definitely something that people are going to want, because it's more of what they are going to want to do--explore more, find new stuff, meet people. That's all there.

I think the limitations we're running into are under the hood stuff, that if we're did our job right you're probably not going to notice. Once they start seeing the new stuff, I think they're going to get where we're going with DLC specifically.

Shack: This comes up every time we talk. What are the odds of a demo?

Mikey Neumann: I haven't heard anything different than what we've been saying. There might be one post-launch. Again, we're going to look at what's going on. That's other resources that we need in places like DLC and adding things to the existing game. We'll see how we're doing, if people are picking it up.

A demo is essentially something that shows the players what they're getting in for. Unfortunately, our game is so big and so expansive that it's really really hard to cut it down. A demo for us could be a six-hour game.

We go back and forth on that. We'd love to do one, we'd love to give people something to look at, but there's a lot of other factors there.

Shack: I know some games just serve up their tutorial as a demo, but Borderlands ...those "learning to play" missions take a while.

Mikey Neumann: We thought we had a really good plan for a demo--"oh, that's perfect"--and it was like nine hours. In our heads, it seemed shorter than it was. There's just so much content, and it's so open.

It's a very tough game to demo. What we do is just put it in everyone's hands that we can, taking it everywhere, letting anybody play if they want to. That right now is the easiest thing that we can do. I think word of mouth is going to carry the game a lot when it comes out. You've got people "oh come over and play this, you've gotta try it" and they try it and "oh yeah I gotta get that because I want to play co-op."

As for a post-release demo, we'll do what we can, but it's still ...it's just as complicated of a problem as it was two months ago.

Shack: Speaking of the training, is there any way to skip those first few missions?

Mikey Neumann: The missions are pretty much locked. That's the mission system, you finish one, it does the next one.

Shack: They're not too bad the first time through, but if you roll a new character or play through again or hop in co-op with a friend and they're just starting out, the first few learning-to-play-esque missions are pretty dull. "Go here! Talk to this person! Yay!"

Mikey Neumann: I think that's fair. Given the time frame, it was the best we could do. I mean, again, if we find people are saying a lot of things like that, then we'll look into the problem.

Shack: To start wrapping things up, is there any particular criticism or concern that you'd like to address?

Mikey Neumann: Nothing's coming to mind. It's seems like everybody gets the game. They're like, "wow, okay, this is Diablo and Halo with a really cool art style." That's all we ever set out to make, so it's good that the end product is there and people are enjoying that.

People expecting some kind of Saving Private Ryan-level drama are going to be disappointed, but I think once you make it through that little intro at the beginning, you know what you're in for.

It's a game you can play by yourself and have a badass time, you can play with your friends--I think it's one of the most friendly co-op games I've ever seen. It's really easy to jump in, jump out. It's really fun to level on your own and come back and go "haha, I am five levels higher than you."

Shack: I think it'll be interesting to see where the online community is at here in a month or two.

Mikey Neumann: I'm hoping in a month or two they'll be like "we want this and we want this and this and this." I want everybody to be like, "yeah we love the game so much we want more." We'll give them more.

Shack: I wonder if a lot of the matches will be higher level players grinding for ultra-rare loot, and if those who haven't been playing since launch will be kinda SOL.

Mikey Neumann: I think people are going to start new characters, they're going to want to try all four because they're so different when you play them through the game. I would expect to happen that kind of organically take on its own idea.

I'm really excited to see what the Borderlands community becomes. It could be really big when it all starts rolling and it's going to require a lot on our part to really keep up with that, not with just DLC and additional stuff. Who knows?

Read on for a discussion of end game events, but beware of spoilers.