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Duke Nukem For Never

50 replies · 6,862 views · Started 07 May 2009

Cloral 11 May 2009, 16:20

But there's no way the game has reached a state where it will be ready for release in 1 month. 1 year, maybe, but not 1 month.

Beldaran 11 May 2009, 17:16

Yeah, if it was 1 month away from release, 3DRealms wouldn't have asked TakeTwo Interactive for $5 million to finish it.

AtmaWeapon 12 May 2009, 00:29

Mr. 207 wrote:As a person who on again off again frequented the 3d Realms forums, I really don't think that's true. Whoever told you that (if you didn't just make it up all together) either lied, or strongly exaggerated the truth. The forum was very heavily moderated (more so then even here), so you didn't have alot of idiots and rift raft in there.
It was like a 24-page thread that Broussard himself started. Some of the best became a humor article, but I assure you I read at least 8 pages and there were enough to make a much larger article. I just flipped through tons of pages looking for it, but it looks like their archived forums posts only go back to 2005. That only represents 1/3 of the development lifetime of this monumental software engineering failure.

I'm curious exactly how much money was burned on this project. I hope Gamasutra does a good post-mortem, I live for them.

Beldaran 12 May 2009, 01:13

They had so much nice looking work done. How did they not manage to just finish the damn thing? So pathetic.

AtmaWeapon 12 May 2009, 13:24

I'd side with the "I bet this is a publicity stunt" crowd if I thought there was a serious chance of it being true. This isn't the first time there has been a flurry of "look we're actually doing DNF stuff!" material. When 3d Realms got low on money, they'd make an announcement or drop a teaser to trick some publisher into thinking they were a year or so away and giving them some money. I think the only reason they made it through the last recession is the game had only been in development for about 5 years at that point, making prospects for release much more probable.

If the project developers were id Games complaining that the game required rendering technology he was still inventing, I'd believe. That's a group of people that brought 3D gaming to the PC when it was considered impossible, and every game they release pushes the envelope. 3D Realms brought fart jokes and breasts to the genre. It doesn't take 12 years to come up with fart jokes and breasts. There's no envelope to push; it's potty humor and it doesn't take much effort to make it work.

Go check out the Duke Nukem Forever List, it was linked earlier. When you consider what other companies have accomplished in the time that 3d Realms has been pretending to develop DNF it is ridiculous that there haven't been sequels. Here's my favorites:

  • Every Harry Potter novel, including 5 movies and numerous video games, was created since DNF was announced.
  • South Park's first season was the same year DNF was announced. Didn't take 12 years for them to make fart jokes, did it?
  • All three Star Wars prequels were released.
  • The Lord of the Rings movies were released.
  • The DVD was announced, became popular, and made obsolete.
  • The entire line of GeForce and Radeon cards were developed and released.
  • Google, eBay, Craigslist? All of this was developed in less than 12 years.

Go look at the list of games that were developed in the past 12 years. There's been roughly 4,500 games for roughly a dozen consoles. Consoles that were developed in less time than it took to make a handful of renders for DNF. That's 75 Mega Man games, everything Final Fantasy since VII, 10 Duke Nukem games, 9 Zelda games, the entire Sims series, both Max Payne games and the movie, Half-Life 1 and 2, the entire Metal Gear Solid series, and the entire Halo series. These are all large-scale games that took a long time to develop in the eyes of their developers, yet somehow they managed to release in less than 12 years. I think most telling is the fact that Croteam managed to create the Serious Engine, Serious Sam, and Serious Sam 2 starting in their garage with 10 employees.

No sir, there should be more than renders. There should be playable levels. So far the stills haven't eclipsed anything that was developed in less time by less people, and honestly some of the released content looks worse than your average straight-to-wal-mart game of today.

My guess is that the rumors are true and this was just a Broussard pet project; he wanted it to be what he wanted and didn't mind throwing money and effort away if it didn't look like what he wanted. You'd get instructions, work on a level for a while, then he'd decide that he wanted a different level and tell you to throw that away and work on a different one. That's fine if you fund it yourself, but publishers want results. We'll probably see someone pick up the license or fund continuing development, but we won't see a release until Broussard decides what he wants (or dies and is replaced by someone that can say "enough".)

Beldaran 12 May 2009, 14:36

I think your analysis is spot on, Atma.

This was my favorite comment from the Slashdot discussion:

Post mortem?

What is there to know? This isn't brain surgery.

Cause of death:
Lack of Adult Supervision.

vegeta1215 12 May 2009, 15:59

AtmaWeapon wrote:If the project developers were id Games complaining that the game required rendering technology he was still inventing, I'd believe. That's a group of people that brought 3D gaming to the PC when it was considered impossible, and every game they release pushes the envelope. 3D Realms brought fart jokes and breasts to the genre. It doesn't take 12 years to come up with fart jokes and breasts. There's no envelope to push; it's potty humor and it doesn't take much effort to make it work.

Thank you.

So... you all haven't watched this video yet? http://kotaku.com/5247608/duke-nukem-forever-gameplay-footage (March 10th, 2009)

Beldaran 12 May 2009, 16:58

I do think DNF is an interesting study in how modern AAA game development has become so complex. It really is a significant engineering and organizational task on the scale of designing a new jet airplane or something like that, and no longer something that a group of "dudes" with mullets can easily do in their garage.

The only people that can really do AAA development in their garage are those that are in the top 1% of intelligence, organization, and motivation for success in the industry. George Broussard is a man who benefited from being in the right place at the right time to secure his place in the game industry and Duke Nukem Forever has shown that he does not measure up to his peers in the areas of project management and company ownership.

I think the failure of DNF is sort of the final symbol of how the game industry is no longer a labor-of-love-in-your-mom's-basement kind of business. Starting a game company is not like starting a rock band. It's like trying to start a symphony orchestra and television production studio at the same time.

Archibaldo 12 May 2009, 19:50

I think the reason why this is such a disappointment was because of the legacy it had, not the actual game itself. With something that was promised 12 years ago, suddenly get the shaft, it's kind of like losing a pet. You sort of cared about it, but really didn't pay attention to it, but now that it's gone you miss it dearly.

It's definitely got some history behind it, mainly the list of things that have happened since it was announced.

It's just weird that it just ended like that.

Maybe there's still hope for Star Craft: Ghost 😉

vegeta1215 13 May 2009, 01:51

AtmaWeapon wrote:Seriously? That looks slightly inferior to DOOM 3-era FPS games, even the parts that they managed to texture over the course of 12 years. "Gameplay footage"? Those were less maps and more single rooms designed to test a particular enemy or game mechanic.

Frankly I'm surprised they made it that far.

It looks good to me. Then again, I don't own an HD capable console (Wii only), and I have an old computer that ran Quake III Arena in it's hey day :shrug:

Although, if they had any intention of actually releasing this game, I would hope they've finally released they can't keep trying to play catch up graphics-wise, and would have to settle on the graphics and just make the game damn fun. I would also hope that after 12 years the level design and story etc. are fucking incredible.