Duke Nukem NeverEver

v_dog

Shacknews reports that 3D Realms is closing its doors after working on Duke Nukem Forever for the last 12 years

Joe Siegler quashed the rumour that it was a marketing stunt saying " It's not a marketing thing. It's true. I have nothing further to say at this time."

Apparently, another former employee was more forthcoming, saying;

"The 2001 trailer was 100% scripted cinematic, and not actual gameplay. They built specific demo maps just to record video from to make a trailer. Everything you see in that trailer was phony.

The typical work flow there went something like this:
Designer would be assigned a task (build a new map, rebuild an old map, polish a bit of a map, etc.). Designer would work on said task for two, three weeks, a month, all the while lower management would be looking over it and making sure it was going in a "good general direction." Designer would move on to another task. A month or two later upper management would finally look at the work and say, "It's all wrong, do it again." Rinse, repeat.

ntire maps would be done from the ground up, almost to beta quality, and then thrown out simply because no one would make decisions early on in the process. (Read up on Valve's 'orange box' method of design -- that's how you make games)

Another example of [redacted] is the fact that there was one part of one map that was being worked on before I started working there. Nineteen months later and the same designer was still working on the same part of that same map... I'm not blaming the designer, it wasn't his fault.

I think the biggest problem that the company had in general is being self-funded. When you're a developer working directly with a publisher and you have milestones to meet it's a whole different ballgame. If you don't meet those milestones, you don't get any money. That right there will keep your project on schedule. If, however, you're funding it yourself, you don't really have anyone to answer to except yourself and you can quickly lose sight of just how much money is going out the door."

dhromed

@v.dog said:

I think the biggest problem that the company had in general is being self-funded. When you're a developer working directly with a publisher and you have milestones to meet it's a whole different ballgame. If you don't meet those milestones, you don't get any money. That right there will keep your project on schedule. If, however, you're funding it yourself, you don't really have anyone to answer to except yourself and you can quickly lose sight of just how much money is going out the door."

But how do you make money for 12 years to pay your workers if you're not selling anything? Was there a DukeNukem Trust Fund somewhere?

DOA

I think Duke Nukem Forever now qualifies as the biggest fail in the gaming industry ever. I hope someone else picks up the license at least. I've been waiting for that game since the early Pentium days.

bstorer

@DOA said:

I think Duke Nukem Forever now qualifies as the biggest fail in the gaming industry ever.

There are thousands -- perhaps millions -- of catridges of Atari's E.T. buried in a New Mexico landfill that would disagree with you.

3D Realms closes — too sad. Thank goodness I managed to download the Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades before that happened.

dtech

@bstorer said:

@DOA said:
I think Duke Nukem Forever now qualifies as the biggest fail in the gaming industry ever.
There are thousands -- perhaps millions -- of catridges of Atari's E.T. buried in a New Mexico landfill that would disagree with you.

Well, but that was primarily (citation needed) because the game was developed waaay to fast and with too little resources. This is about the other way around. At least it thoroughly qualifies as the biggest fail in modern (post-crash) gaming industry.

v_dog

Something like that. They made so much money off their previous games, that they could carry on for along time without external funding.

Valve did something similar; Half-Life was so successful that they haven't needed a publisher since. They happliy spent six years working on Half-Life 2 and nine working on Team Fortress 2 using nothing but the cash in their own coffers.

Gaming is a huge business if you can make it work.

dhromed

I hope Valve takes up Duke.

Maybe as an assisting character in Half-Life Episode 4 :D

dtech

@v.dog said:

Valve did something similar; Half-Life was so successful that they haven't needed a publisher since. They happliy spent six years working on Half-Life 2 and nine working on Team Fortress 2 using nothing but the cash in their own coffers.

Well, they kept gettings huge piles of money from Counter-strike (during HL2 dev) and Half-Life 2 (during TF2 dev). And maybe more importantly: they actually were developing a game and they turned out to be some of the greatest games from the recent past.

Also: ID software was about in the same position but hasn't had most of the same problems, altough they're games haven't been as astonishing since quake 3

dtech

@dhromed said:

I hope Valve takes up Duke.

That would be great indeed, only would mean another duke nukem game takes at least another 10 years, if you take into account Valve's usual release shedule :P

Welbog

@dtech said:

@dhromed said:
I hope Valve takes up Duke.
That would be great indeed, only would mean another duke nukem game takes at least another 10 years, if you take into account Valve's usual release shedule :P

I hope Valve takes Duke, but only because I know the guys at Valve have a great sense of humour and wouldn't actually develop any Duke games but rather continue releasing high-quality and long Duke trailers. Valve makes videos of TF2 characters for no real reason at all other than because it's fun as hell. Duke Nukem should be kept in development forever without getting anywhere. That's just how it should be, and I trust Valve to waste money to that end.

bstorer

@Welbog said:

@dtech said:
@dhromed said:
I hope Valve takes up Duke.
That would be great indeed, only would mean another duke nukem game takes at least another 10 years, if you take into account Valve's usual release shedule :P
I hope Valve takes Duke, but only because I know the guys at Valve have a great sense of humour and wouldn't actually develop any Duke games but rather continue releasing high-quality and long Duke trailers. Valve makes videos of TF2 characters for no real reason at all other than because it's fun as hell. Duke Nukem should be kept in development forever without getting anywhere. That's just how it should be, and I trust Valve to waste money to that end.

I hope Valve releases it that so somebody will write a Counterstrike mod for it and we can finally play out that age-old battle: strippers versus pig-cops.

Soviut

@bstorer said:

@DOA said:
I think Duke Nukem Forever now qualifies as the biggest fail in the gaming industry ever.
There are thousands -- perhaps millions -- of catridges of Atari's E.T. buried in a New Mexico landfill that would disagree with you.

Its millions. They over-produced the ET game that holiday season. There were about 1 million atari consoles sold, and they made 2 million ET carts.

bstorer

@Soviut said:

@bstorer said:
@DOA said:
I think Duke Nukem Forever now qualifies as the biggest fail in the gaming industry ever.
There are thousands -- perhaps millions -- of catridges of Atari's E.T. buried in a New Mexico landfill that would disagree with you.

Its millions. They over-produced the ET game that holiday season. There were about 1 million atari consoles sold, and they made 2 million ET carts.

I don't know where you got your figures, but they're not accurate. There were 4 million copies of E.T. made, with somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million sold. As to the number of consoles, there were over 10 million sold when E.T. was released.

Whether or not those excess 2 million copies were all buried in New Mexico has never been definitively answered, but what the hell, let's assume they were.

Renan

@bstorer said:

@Soviut said:
@bstorer said:
@DOA said:
I think Duke Nukem Forever now qualifies as the biggest fail in the gaming industry ever.
There are thousands -- perhaps millions -- of catridges of Atari's E.T. buried in a New Mexico landfill that would disagree with you.

Its millions. They over-produced the ET game that holiday season. There were about 1 million atari consoles sold, and they made 2 million ET carts.
I don't know where you got your figures, but they're not accurate. There were 4 million copies of E.T. made, with somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million sold. As to the number of consoles, there were over 10 million sold when E.T. was released.

Whether or not those excess 2 million copies were all buried in New Mexico has never been definitively answered, but what the hell, let's assume they were.

http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp

bstorer

[quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]@bstorer said:

@Soviut said:
@bstorer said:
@DOA said:
I think Duke Nukem Forever now qualifies as the biggest fail in the gaming industry ever.
There are thousands -- perhaps millions -- of catridges of Atari's E.T. buried in a New Mexico landfill that would disagree with you.

Its millions. They over-produced the ET game that holiday season. There were about 1 million atari consoles sold, and they made 2 million ET carts.
I don't know where you got your figures, but they're not accurate. There were 4 million copies of E.T. made, with somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million sold. As to the number of consoles, there were over 10 million sold when E.T. was released.

Whether or not those excess 2 million copies were all buried in New Mexico has never been definitively answered, but what the hell, let's assume they were.

http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp[/quote] Yes, but notice clearly what this does and doesn't say. We know that 14 (other sources report a vague 10 - 20) trucks of materials from their El Paso factory were dumped in New Mexico, and that there were cartridges among the items, but there's no proof that the E.T. cartridges were included. Atari was extremely vague about it, but it wouldn't have been out of character for them -- they had performed similar burials and dump-offs before.

Like I said, nothing definitive, but I personally suspect that much of the E.T. overstock found its way to Almorgdo, New Mexico.

v_dog

Since this is basically unmatched, I'd like to propose two new scientific measurements:

Nukem (Nk): the degree of falsehood or illusion over time that an
object exists when is does not. DNF has a value of 1Nk. Values greater
than 1 are possible but unlikely.

Broussard (Br): a measure of gross managerial incompetency over time. 1Br = 12PHB per year

dtech

@v.dog said:

Nukem (Nk): the degree of falsehood or illusion over time that an object exists when is does not. DNF has a value of 1Nk. Values greater than 1 are possible but unlikely.

I like the idea. The only problem is for a scale you need at least 2 measuring points. Obviously real object have 0, but that's not enough: how about UFO's, The Phantom (during 2006) or Chinese Democracy (during circa 2007).

Also, I would like to add a few things to the specification

1 Nk = Illusion that DNF existed just after the 2001 trailer
0 Nk = Real objects (in the most abstract sence of the word). You must be able to feel, smell, hear or see them

TI = Nukem value at is highest (yet) value
CI = Nukem value at the current moment

E.g: for DNF - TI = 1 Nk, CI = 0 Nk

(Oh, and I might have found an object with a higher Nk, I give God a CI of 2,5)

bstorer

@v.dog said:

Since this is basically unmatched, I'd like to propose two new scientific measurements:

Nukem (Nk): the degree of falsehood or illusion over time that an object exists when is does not. DNF has a value of 1Nk. Values greater than 1 are possible but unlikely.

Broussard (Br): a measure of gross managerial incompetency over time. 1Br = 12PHB per year

These go nicely with the Carmack, a unit of measurement of programming skill proposed by the Pan-American Conference of Geniuses, which consists of morbiuswilters, Welbog, and myself.

Xelort

@bstorer said:

@v.dog said:
Since this is basically unmatched, I'd like to propose two new scientific measurements:

Nukem (Nk): the degree of falsehood or illusion over time that an object exists when is does not. DNF has a value of 1Nk. Values greater than 1 are possible but unlikely.

Broussard (Br): a measure of gross managerial incompetency over time. 1Br = 12PHB per year
These go nicely with the Carmack, a unit of measurement of programming skill proposed by the Pan-American Conference of Geniuses, which consists of morbiuswilters, Welbog, and myself.

Great, let me guess: now the not-pan-american countries (as stupid as it may sound) will refuse to embrace the Carmack and implement instead some dumb imperial nuissance. The Gates maybe.

RayS

@bstorer said:

Yes, but notice clearly what this does and doesn't say. We know that 14 (other sources report a vague 10 - 20) trucks of materials from their El Paso factory were dumped in New Mexico, and that there were cartridges among the items, but there's no proof that the E.T. cartridges were included. Atari was extremely vague about it, but it wouldn't have been out of character for them -- they had performed similar burials and dump-offs before.
Like I said, nothing definitive, but I personally suspect that much of the E.T. overstock found its way to Almorgdo, New Mexico.

I always like to think that the developers themselves were in those trucks bound for New Mexico.

On the topics of trucks & worst game ever though, who can forget the truly epic Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing ?

YOU'RE WINNER!!!

bstorer

@RayS said:

I always like to think that the developers themselves were in those trucks bound for New Mexico.

There was one developer, Howard Scott Warshaw. Cut the guy some slack: he created the game in five weeks. Plus, he wrote Yar's Revenge. @RayS said:

On the topics of trucks & worst game ever though, who can forget the truly epic Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing ?
YOU'RE WINNER!!!

Thanks for dredging up all those repressed memories of that awful, awful game.

dtech

@RayS said:

I always like to think that the developers themselves were in those trucks bound for New Mexico.

Yeah, well, how good would you perform when you're the only one to develop a game and mush rush it immensly because managment says it needs to be done before the film comes out which is a little more than a month...

RayS

@dtech said:

Yeah, well, how good would you perform when you're the only one to develop a game and mush rush it immensly because managment says it needs to be done before the film comes out which is a little more than a month...

I was under the impression that everyone managed that all the time? Or do I read too much into this site?

OK, I'll be generous. He was the guy driving the truck, having in amoment of desperate shame stolen all available copies in an attempt to salavage his professional reputation. Better? (But that still means he was inside the truck)