How Success Killed Duke Nukem

S

Starseeker

Vault Senior Citizen
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/

On the last day, they gathered for a group photo. They were videogame programmers, artists, level builders, artificial-intelligence experts. Their team was — finally — giving up, declaring defeat, and disbanding. So they headed down to the lobby of their building in Garland, Texas, to smile for the camera. They arranged themselves on top of their logo: a 10-foot-wide nuclear-radiation sign, inlaid in the marble floor.

To videogame fans, that logo is instantly recognizable. It’s the insignia of Duke Nukem 3D, a computer game that revolutionized shoot-’em-up virtual violence in 1996. Featuring a swaggering, steroidal, wisecracking hero, Duke Nukem 3D became one of the top-selling videogames ever, making its creators very wealthy and leaving fans absolutely delirious for a sequel. The team quickly began work on that sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, and it became one of the most hotly anticipated games of all time.

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.

On May 6, 2009, everything ended. Drained of funds after so many years of work, the game’s developer, 3D Realms, told its employees to collect their stuff and put it in boxes. The next week, the company was sued for millions by its publisher for failing to finish the sequel.
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A very interesting read, and apparently, they might have eventually pull it off. Of course, 6 million more might be just like the 20 million USD they have already personally invested. I thought they were kinda ..... dumb to only take 400k for publishing rights or something of the sort, but hey they were rich and on top of the world.

Maybe they should just publish Duke Collections, a mini series of games of all the games they already scrapped due to engine change.

Well, nevertheless, it's over.
 
They probably only took 400k to have more freedom from 2k. Ironically, that's what ruined them. Broussard obviously had no idea wtf he was doing.
 
It's neat how sudden success can prove to be a hindrance (like this case) or in the case of Valve and HalfLife, spur them on to greater things.
 
Good riddance. Any team that can't complete a corridor shooter in 4 years deserves to go out of business. Any team that can work on a corridor shooter for 12 fucking years - using third party tech no less! - without so much as delivering a coherent gameplay trailer deserves to be taken out back and shot.

I have nothing but contempt for these people. May they never again taint the game industry with their incompetence, lies and empty hype.
 
So much incompetence it's not even funny. I gave up hoping that there would be another Duke game a long time ago, not that it was all that important to me. Duke 3D will always be a childhood favorite of mine, but come on, what the hell were they doing over at 3DRealms for all that time?

Well, I'll always have fond memories of playing around with the Build engine that came with Duke 3D. :) That was probably the best part, for me anyway.
 
I just find it funny that we never got Duke Nukem Forever because the developers wanted to make it the best game ever and due to their insane level of perfectionism they never actually came out with anything.
 
But isn't that how Perfection is? Unobtainable?

Does anyone think Take2 will win the IP grab, and published the half game that they have now?
 
well i will add more than a very sad smile, this news makes me sad because duke nukem was and still is the best awesome shooter ever made (not even half life beats it) in my opinion, it bothers me bacause they make this game from scratch like 3 times, if look around youtube, there is Duke Nukem Forever trailers in diferent engines.

if any company bought the rights to make a new Duke Nukem game i just hope they 1) make a very good game and 2) release somehow all previous "beta" versions of Duke Nukem forever (i know that probably will never happen but....)

But isn't that how Perfection is? Unobtainable?

Does anyone think Take2 will win the IP grab, and published the half game that they have now?
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that made me remember that, if i am not mistaken, one of their versions of DNF was complete but they decided not to release because the engine was "too outdated" for the time
 
BR4ZIL said:
if any company bought the rights to make a new Duke Nukem game i just hope they 1) make a very good game and 2) release somehow all previous "beta" versions of Duke Nukem forever (i know that probably will never happen but....)
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I doubt they ever reached beta. Hell, judging by the state of the game in the "trailers", they can barely be said to have reached alpha.
 
Ratty said:
BR4ZIL said:
if any company bought the rights to make a new Duke Nukem game i just hope they 1) make a very good game and 2) release somehow all previous "beta" versions of Duke Nukem forever (i know that probably will never happen but....)
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I doubt they ever reached beta. Hell, judging by the state of the game in the "trailers", they can barely be said to have reached alpha.
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In the article they mentioned that there was about 5 hours of playable game. I'm sure they could string that together into a demo.

I don't think there is a need though. The game is still being made. I don't know who is making it or if they are using anything they've been working on but the guy who voices Duke pretty much
confirmed that it is still being developed.

Like so many things that have been in development for so long, it will probably come out eventually, feel very dated, and disappoint overall.
 
One must ask: is Duke Nukem even relevant today or in the future? Seriously, the franchise's big success was Duke3D back in 1996. The gaming audience of '96 is different from that of 2010 and who knows when, or if, the next installment will be released.

3DRealms has really dug themselves in a hole, a very deep hole. Even if the game is going to be released it won't amount to much of anything. No matter what they put out, critics and gamers will be like "It took you 13+ years to make this?" It's Duke Nukem we're talking about here, a FPS with generic characters and cheesy one-liners, it's not going to be the most epic game in the world, and it certainly shouldn't take this long to make. Shouldn't take this long to make any game.
 
Like so many things that have been in development for so long, it will probably come out eventually, feel very dated, and disappoint overall.
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Wasn't Prey in development for a very long time? I don't remember it feeling dated.
 
Prey was canceled in 1999 and development restarted pretty much from scratch in 2001, with a new story, engine and substantially modified design. So you could say the game was in development for five years, which is indeed a long time, but not *that* long. Also, the reason why the project was canned was because it was too ambitious for its time, which is why Prey didn't feel dated when it eventually did come out.

DNF, on the other hand, seems to be intended as a modernized Duke Nukem 3D, which would have been fine a decade ago, but would likely feel dated and underwhelming nowadays. I predict it would meet the same fate as OutRun 2 - popular with old-school FPS enthusiasts, ignored by gamers at large.
 
TheRatKing said:
Like so many things that have been in development for so long, it will probably come out eventually, feel very dated, and disappoint overall.
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Wasn't Prey in development for a very long time? I don't remember it feeling dated.
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I liked Prey but like someone mentioned, the game that came out wasn't in development for all those years. The original project was canceled (not officially but technically) and work on this completely new version of Prey started anew a couple of years later.

It would be very hard to impress anyone today with 10 year old ideas though.
 
One must ask: is Duke Nukem even relevant today or in the future?
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i dunno about you but i think we (gamers as a whole) need a big kickass shooter game, if you think about it the only thing close to "kickass game" is the COD series, "where is out next Doom?" maybe Duke Nukem Forever will be our next Doom.

ok i know my expectations are high (and yes i am a Duke Nukem fanboy) but even if the game isnt the most EPIC thing ever released, at least i want to have the same fun i had with Duke Nukem 3d back in the day.
 
We need a kickass shooter? Gears of War? Halo? Call of Duty? Unreal Tournament? Those are all ongoing shooter series.
 
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