How Duke Nukem Forever development ran all outta gum...

mrk

mrk

mrk

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Excuse my genius thread title choice for a second :p

It appears Wired has pieced together the last bits of this decade+ long wait for the game that was set to be released "When it's done".

faildukenukemf.jpg


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.

Front and center in the photo sits a large guy with a boyish face. You can’t tell from the picture, but he had gotten choked up when he made the announcement. His name is George Broussard, co-owner of 3D Realms and the man who headed the Duke Nukem Forever project for its entire 12-year run. Now 46 years old, he’d spent much of his adult life trying to make a single game, and failed over and over again. What happened to that project has been shrouded in secrecy, and rumors have flown about why Broussard couldn’t manage to finish his life’s work. What went so wrong?

This is what happened.
Click to expand...

Long read but worth it...Wired
 
Thanks for the link. Interesting read.

For a brief period in the 90s I got some freelance work reviewing games for CD-ROM Mag... just before it closed. I guess most of the usual reviewers had already jumped ship, but I didn't know that at the time. :-)

One of the games I reviewed was Duke Nukem, so I've always had an interest in the project. It was a shame to see it become a running joke, and it'd be nice to think some of their work might be used, eventually. But picking up someone else's code to finish must be a complete nightmare, so I doubt it'll happen... though I suppose a completely new title may emerge if the publisher gets the rights.

Perhaps this will still be a topic for discussion in another ten years' time! :-)

Andrew McP
 
Good read, looks like the whole development was destroyed by one single person "Broussard" who was obsessed for the game to be best in every aspect.
 
He strikes me like a bit of a kid in a toy shop - he kept dropping what he had in his hands for the bigger, shinier toy on the next shelf.

And then suddenly the tills were closed and the security guard was shoving him out the door :D
 
apatia77 said:
Good read, looks like the whole development was destroyed by one single person "Broussard" who was obsessed for the game to be best in every aspect.
Click to expand...

Certainly seems that way.

The same thing is happening at the company i work for, they keep trying to add features etc etc to the point now that the project will probably never be complete.
 
apatia77 said:
They should have released the game running on quake2 engine, no matter what the game would look like it would definitely bring some $$$.
Click to expand...

yeah just reading the bit about paying a truck load of money for the quake 2 engine...getting the game ready on that then changing to the unreal engine seemed stupid beyond belief.
 
It would seem Broussard was constantly striving for perfection, but that perfection was forever out of reach.
 
In essence, they seemed to have had at least three, possibly more, fairly full iterations of the game on different engines, all very different in plot to one another. As said, if 3DR had just stopped to polish and release each one of them, individually, they could have created that series of titles they'd so hoped for originally, even if they hadn't all been the very best they could be.
 
Well we can await the court case and if Take-Two win then I believe they get the rights to Duke Nukem and so we may see it finally being released?
 
Despite the brave move to Unreal, that was the time to release it, and then Duke Nukem Three could have taken them longer, possibly on their own engine.

Such a shame - good article.
 
Good read, hard to understand why they kept it going for so long but I suppose the anticipation and hype surrounding it demanded more from 3D and Broussard so they wanted it to be the best game ever which is virtually impossible.

Such a shame.
 
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