Duke Nukem Forever - a Post Mortem

[midorigreenwood]

Interesting article by wired magazine...... Looks like they made the same mistakes as John Romero and Ion Storm (except on crack).

Too much money + too much freedom = lack of focus

plus they kept on rebooting their work when new and shiny 3d engines came out which they didn't have to license ........ but they did :/

Interesting enough, it is theorised that the current publisher Take two is trying to bankrupt 3D realms so that owner George Broussard would be forced to relinquish Intellectual property rights to Duke in order to pay back the loans owed.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1

It was never completed. Screenshots and video snippets would leak out every few years, each time whipping fans into a lather — and each time, the game would recede from view. Normally, videogames take two to four years to build; five years is considered worryingly long. But the Duke Nukem Forever team worked for 12 years straight. As one patient fan pointed out, when development on Duke Nukem Forever started, most computers were still using Windows 95, Pixar had made only one movie — Toy Story — and Xbox did not yet exist.

 

[Forrest Gimp]

Crazy stuff. The fact that it was ironically subtitled "Forever" was just the icing on the cake. At the end of the say though, Duke 3-d is still well known after all these years and is screaming for sequel. I'm sure it will come, but will it still be "Forever" or something else?

 

[Suspense]

Crazy stuff. The fact that it was ironically subtitled "Forever" was just the icing on the cake.

If that's the icing, the game's acronym is still the ****ing cherry.

 

[Ochre]

who cares

link >>> duke nukem

 

[omit]

after investing $20 million in the game they would want to get it released at some stage

 

[Kerrby]

after investing $20 million in the game they would want to get it released at some stage

$20million? Pfft, hbn00b told me Killzone 2 cost $60 million to make .

 

[midorigreenwood]

$20million? Pfft, hbn00b told me Killzone 2 cost $60 million to make .

they only had a tiny team of about 20 people while Killzone had hundreds.......

you could get away with that 10 years ago....but not anymore.

Also this is 20 million dollars ..... out of their own pocket....

Imagine facing your children and telling them that daddy blew 20 million dollars on a game that wasn't even released...... I'm sure they'll appreciate the humour when they're eating baked beans out of a can

this entire crazy quixotic expedition was self-funded..... if they had corporate backing, they would have been forced to shut up shop years ago like John Romero and Ion Storm

best quote I've read on this sad state of affairs?

I believed in the release of this damn game longer than I believed in Santa Claus

 

[midorigreenwood]

after investing $20 million in the game they would want to get it released at some stage

Thats the thing..... Take two has publishing rights.....

so 3D realms couldn't just go to another company to get funds to finish the games.

Take two doesn't want DNF to be finished..... they want 3D realms to die so that they are forced to relinquish the IP AND THEN make their own game.

3d Realms/Apogee, ID etc came from a bygone era where the developer, if smart, held alot more power and the big corporations was lapping up the bread crumbs.

This has all changed of course. Easier to be independent when you could create a game with only 10-20 people.

 

[scooterb]

bump.

Confirmed and playable at PAX.

 

[omit]

I ****ing hate Gabe and Tycho right now