Gearbox's Randy Pitchford said that the idea of "Borderlands" was inspired both being an avid role-playing game (RPG) fan, including roguelikes such as "NetHack" and action role-playing games like "Ultima" and "Diablo", and being drawn into first-person shooters (FPS) that he worked on in his early career, including "Duke Nukem 3D". He recognized that the core gameplay loops for both genres are at different time scales; whereas the core loop for a role-playing game is long in terms of leveling up characters, a shooter has a much shorter one in moving and shooting to clear out a new area. Pitchford felt these two loops were not mutually exclusive due to the different time scales, and believed some type of fusion could be made from the two genres, thus forming the basis of "Borderlands". Pitchford recognized this could be a risk but was not afraid to take it: in a 2017 interview, Pitchford recounted that industry analyst Michael Pachter had believed "Borderlands" was going to be a failure, as players that would want to play a role-playing game or a shooter would more than likely play a game dedicated to that genre instead of the hybrid. After the "Borderlands" series had sold more than 30 million copies, Pachter admitted to Pitchford how wrong he had been.