The last face you'll see...
An Updated Look at Darksiders II!
We recently attended a Darksiders II preview event in San Francisco to see what Vigil Games have in store for the next Horseman of the Apocalypse, Death. Check out our preview!
The Ghosts Are Back
Ghost Recon Future Soldier Preview!
We recently got a sneak peek at the upcoming new Ghost Recon Future Soldier from Ubisoft. Check out our in-depth preview for a closer look at the action!
no longer dubai ous
We Chat with Yager and 2K Games
We got a good sandblasting when getting hands-on with Spec Ops: The Line, so we returned the favour with a full video interview with Yager and 2K Games.
Reviewed in Absentia
The Old Republic Reviewed!
Read the AusGamers review to find out if importing Star Wars: The Old Republic is worth the hassle, or if you should wait for the local release to get your Force on!
AusGamers News
RSS
Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem Forever
Post by Opec @ 02:04pm 22/12/09 | 24 Comments
Wired have an interesting read about what went on with one of the world's most well known vapourware titles:
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.
promoted/edited forum item






Latest Comments
  Link  
trog
Posted 02:13pm 22/12/09
edited a bit and promoted, hope you don't mind opec - ta!
  Link  
ctd
Posted 02:31pm 22/12/09
There would be no point having a duke nukem game from different devs. It would probably be another generic shooter surviving on a few bits of "Oh, I enjoy things that I remember!"

Would hate to of been a fanboy of DNF trolling the forums every day wanking over every small update.
  Link  
tequila
Posted 02:33pm 22/12/09
yep they sux

Duke Nukem Forever?
DNF?
Did Not Finish.
  Link  
konstie
Posted 02:35pm 22/12/09
I get it!





ohhh now i get it!
  Link  
Seven
Posted 02:37pm 22/12/09
Wow. Good read.

They (3D Realms) finally hired a guy to get the game out the door, asked for $6m to get it finished. The company (Take Two) offered $2.5m now and $2.5m when it was finished. 3D Realms said no, took their ball and went home.

1. Unlucky they wanted the latest and greatest in a quickly-evolving world.
2. Stupid that the guy asked for so much with so little people.
3. Lucky they had/have a patient fanbase.
4. Impatient Take Two at the last hurdle gave up - final blow.
  Link  
DM
Posted 02:45pm 22/12/09
The way it's written makes Broussard out to be incompetent... oh wait
  Link  
Hogfather
Posted 02:52pm 22/12/09
Reminds me of a Joel Spolsky blog:
Sometimes, you’re on a team, and you’re busy banging out the code, and somebody comes up to your desk, coffee mug in hand, and starts rattling on about how if you use multi-threaded COM apartments, your app will be 34% sparklier, and it’s not even that hard, because he’s written a bunch of templates, and all you have to do is multiply-inherit from 17 of his templates, each taking an average of 4 arguments, and you barely even have to write the body of the function. It’s just a gigantic list of multiple-inheritance from different classes and hey, presto, multi-apartment threaded COM. And your eyes are swimming, and you have no friggin’ idea what this frigtard is talking about, but he just won’t go away, and even if he does go away, he’s just going back into his office to write more of his clever classes constructed entirely from multiple inheritance from templates, without a single implementation body at all, and it’s going to crash like crazy and you’re going to get paged at night to come in and try to figure it out because he’ll be at some goddamn “Design Patterns” meetup.

And the duct-tape programmer is not afraid to say, “multiple inheritance sucks. Stop it. Just stop.”

...

Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.
  Link  
bepatient
Posted 03:26pm 22/12/09
really good read. cheers
  Link  
Opec
Posted 04:06pm 22/12/09
trog: no probs :)

Having worked at a couple of dot com companies that went belly up, I had personal experience of how this happened. People fighting/hyping over un-shipped products, investors fighting how how gets the none existence profit, sabotage, add more bells and whistles instead of focusing on shipping the product and get some real $ to fund the said bells and whistles, you name it.

Sad really, because the code monkeys like me were the one that were powerless to do anything, we just suffer the consequences. But on a positive note it was probably one of the most fun time and most fun companies I worked for. I got up and look forward to work everyday, despite the long hours and so-so pay. The loved the people I worked with and have still kept in touch with a few over the years.

Would I do it now, heck no.
  Link  
konstie
Posted 04:23pm 22/12/09
what do you do now opec?
  Link  
Opec
Posted 04:32pm 22/12/09

what do you do now opec?


Same, I'm still a code monkey but, I vowed never to work for start up ever again, as much as the temptation and promise of the "big pay day" are. Sure you hear people worked for small start up like "google" or "facebook" but man I gotta say, those developers have more balls than me, I've been burned twice and that was enough for me.

One of the legend I've heard was apparently one of our server engineers at the first dot com I worked for bumped into some guys at the data centres that we used in 99, who said "we work for a start up called google, you ever heard of it?", our engineer went nah never heard of you guys. LOL. Not sure if it's really true but sure make a good party story haha.
  Link  
Plasma
Posted 04:39pm 22/12/09
Yeh I'd think some company should just pay for 3DR to finish the project; get some profit from it and use their own PM to get the thing done in 12 months.

Seems stupid to throw away all of that investment.
  Link  
trog
Posted 04:52pm 22/12/09
Yeh I'd think some company should just pay for 3DR to finish the project; get some profit from it and use their own PM to get the thing done in 12 months.Seems stupid to throw away all of that investment.
as I understand it, it's just pending the court case between 3dr and Take2 before anything else will happen to it. I guess 3dr want to try to raise more VC to try and finish the game independently, but Take2 are desperate to try to sue so they can take the IP and brand and then do something with it. Either way I'm sure it'll come out at some point.
  Link  
greazy
Posted 05:34pm 22/12/09
That was a great read.

But what the hell is this?

http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/18-01/fail_duke_nukem2_f.jpg

http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/18-01/fail_duke_nukem8_f.jpg

http://www.wired.com/magazine/wp-content/images/18-01/fail_duke_nukem11_f.jpg
  Link  
thermite
Posted 05:45pm 22/12/09
Sounds like my former boss and designing the company website. While I was there I saw it built from scratch half a dozen times, some really good efforts too. The website they are still using is like 8 years old from before I even worked there. Each time it was done the boss had some more ideas on how to make it even greater. Oh by the way it's a company that makes websites. He would do this to some extent on day to day client work too, but not as much, thankfully.
  Link  
Reverend Evil™
Posted 06:25pm 22/12/09
Awesome read.

I think Take 2 are entitled to sue them if they're fucking around with their cash.
  Link  
sleepy
Posted 10:35pm 22/12/09
But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill.


no wonder it never took off.. eh eh
  Link  
Fn
Posted 10:35pm 22/12/09
First pic is Mike Tyson
I don't know who the second one is.
  Link  
Dazhel
Posted 01:43am 23/12/09
Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem


I liked the alternative title: "How to piss 20 million bucks up against the wall and get away with it."
  Link  
Topper
Posted 08:01am 23/12/09
Interesting read....Broussard was such a perfectionist he was never able to meet his own expectations (let alone the fans')

Will be interested to see what Take 2 do with the IP if they get it. Not sure how far DNF was along in development, but if that code is handed over to another developer with deadlines imposed on them by a publiosher...who knows ? We may actually see some incarnation of dnf
  Link  
Bonez
Posted 09:35am 23/12/09
Cool read...

I remember first hearing about DNF shortly after DN3D was released, man that was ages ago, but the hype put into it was amazing.

I waited, got bored, and finally forgot about the game. But for some reason it kept (crept) popping up ever 6 to 12 months as something new would turn up on the net. In a way I'm kinda glad that it's pretty well dead, don't get me wrong, if someone was to resurrect old Duke and release a new game I'd probably buy it in a heart beat, but I don't ever think DNF will be a game, and if it does ever get released the reviews will be brutal as everyone will be expecting more from it that it could possibly provide.

Who currently owns the IP that is Duke Nukem? Is it still 3DR? Maybe they ought to consider selling it (if they do still own it) to a developer that can do something with it, like Bethesda, or id... At least with the money they could pay off some of their debts to Take2.
  Link  
giririsss
Posted 11:16am 23/12/09
Who currently owns the IP that is Duke Nukem? Is it still 3DR? Maybe they ought to consider selling it (if they do still own it) to a developer that can do something with it, like Bethesda, or id... At least with the money they could pay off some of their debts to Take2.


You reallllllllllllllyy didn't read the article? just go read the article, all your questions will be answered.
  Link  
Deano
Posted 11:39am 23/12/09
I always remember Duke as the ultimate DNF (Did Not Finish (racing)) :D :D
  Link  
Bonez
Posted 12:04pm 23/12/09
Who currently owns the IP that is Duke Nukem? Is it still 3DR? Maybe they ought to consider selling it (if they do still own it) to a developer that can do something with it, like Bethesda, or id... At least with the money they could pay off some of their debts to Take2.
You reallllllllllllllyy didn't read the article? just go read the article, all your questions will be answered.


I read it last night, on the bus, on the way home.... Didn't have time to re-read it this morning before I posted.
Commenting has been locked for this item.
24 Comments
Show
 
Log In
User:  
Pass:  

Advertise with Us | Download Media Kit | Privacy Policy | Contact Us
© Copyright 2001-2012 AusGamers™ Pty Ltd. ACN 093 772 242.
A Mammoth Media web development, runnning on Mammoth VPS.