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3D Realms Won't Rush Duke Nukem Forever 310

Posted by Zonk from the why-rush-it-now dept.
WeAz writes "GameSpot has news that 3D Realms has no plans on rushing Duke Nukem Forever. Despite the $500,000 bounty that Take-Two Interactive was found to be offering for the game after a filing with the SEC last week, George Broussard, President of 3D Realms, has given his official response: 'We're certainly not motivated by that amount of money, after all this time, and getting the game right is what matters. I would never ship a game early (even a couple of months), for 500k.'"
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3D Realms Won't Rush Duke Nukem Forever More

3D Realms Won't Rush Duke Nukem Forever

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:15PM (#15532911)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • “3D Realms Won't Rush Duke Nukem Forever”... you mean they've been rushing it this whole time? I'd have never guessed! What are they, sealed in a Slo-Time envelope or something?

    • Rushing it could... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mfh ( 56 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:25PM (#15533005) Homepage Journal
      ... cause major problems with the globally accepted definition of vapourware [wikipedia.org]. My god, what if the damn game actually gets released?

      What would the kittens do?
      • That's the point they're bringing forward. 3D Realms won't want to rush Duke Nukem forever, instead they'd like to slow down development once in a while since they don't want to disrupt the very fabric of the universe by a too rapid development pace.

    • Re:What??? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Surt ( 22457 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:25PM (#15533009) Homepage Journal
      You have to understand. It has been about a year from being done, for oh, the last 6 years. If they rushed, they could be 9 months from being done for the next 3 or 4 years.
    • I can't believe I just used my mod points! This article is going to be a mass of hilarity ...

    • Re:What??? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Rob the Bold ( 788862 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @01:05PM (#15533361)
      You mean it's possible to rush Duke Nukem Forever at this point????

      They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

      • Re:What??? (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        [Non sequitur abort! -- invalid parse of "rush" in same sentence as "Duke Nukem Forever". Abort, retry, fail? *Retry* ... Attempting recovery ...]

        Yeah. If they get Rush to do the soundtrack for DNF, it might take even longer, though the guitar and drum instrumentals might be cool.
        • Yeah. If they get Rush to do the soundtrack for DNF, it might take even longer, though the guitar and drum instrumentals might be cool.

          Actually, I could see the beginning of "Red Sector A" being in DNF

          "Are we the last ones left alive?
          Are we the only human beings to survive?"

          Of course, if Quark were in the background intoning "hu-man" everytime that word came up in the song, it would be even cooler.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:What??? (Score:3, Funny)

        by Funger ( 607214 )
        Inconceivable!

      • Everything is relative (Score:4, Funny)

        by Aceticon ( 140883 ) on Thursday June 15, 2006 @03:06AM (#15538190)
        I think what everybody is missing is the right context to interpret the word "rush" here, so i'll give it a try at sketching it:

        Imagine you have a snail. The snail has been moving from one city to another distant city. This has been going on for the last 5 years.

        Thus "rush" in this context means making the snail go faster, but still within it's capabilities.

        Now, just fill in the blanks by considering that the Duke Nukem Forever development team departed one year before the snail and the snail already overtook them and you'll get the picture...

    • Re:What??? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tolkien ( 664315 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @03:42PM (#15534596) Journal
      You mean it's possible to rush Duke Nukem Forever at this point????

      It's possible to rush Duke Nukem Forever .

  • Oh good! (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot&uberm00,net> on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:15PM (#15532913) Homepage Journal
    I was so worried that they'd release it too soon.

  • Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:16PM (#15532918)

    I would never ship a game early (even a couple of months), for 500k.

    Don't wory George, I don't think anybody could accuse you of doing that!

  • So... (Score:2, Funny)

    by revlayle ( 964221 )
    ...when it IS done, this game is gonna use that totally awesome Quake 3 engine! AM I RITE???

  • DNF v. Vista (Score:5, Funny)

    by happyemoticon ( 543015 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:19PM (#15532945) Homepage
    I wonder what's weirder: That DNF has taken longer to develop than Windows Vista, or that Windows Vista has taken almost as much time to make as DNF?

    • Re:DNF v. Vista (Score:5, Funny)

      by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:27PM (#15533021)

      Weirder still is the fact that Duke Nukem Forever has taken more time to create than NASA took to design & build a pair of robots, fly them to Mars, and drive them around for a year.

      • I bet with the budget of NASA, DNF would've been out by now, too.

      • Re:DNF v. Vista v. NASA (Score:5, Funny)

        by Rob the Bold ( 788862 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @01:44PM (#15533653)
        And even weirder still, I was working on this really funny response, but then this new humor engine was available and I started using it and went back to square one. Then I thought, crap, I can adapt a humor engine better suited to my style than any off-the-shelf models, so I started work on that. But the whole concept of what constitutes high quality jokes changed in the meantime, so I started over again. There will be a really funny rejoinder here real soon now.

      • What DNF Can Teach NASA (Score:5, Funny)

        by patio11 ( 857072 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @01:55PM (#15533732)
        A game is only late until its released, but a space probe which smashes into the body it is orbiting because it doesn't know the difference between feet and meters is gone forever.
      • Bashing the US government, especially NASA, is a favorite pastime on Slashdot. Periodically I have to stop in and that, having been in the corporate world for over 25 years, Government has no monopoly on stupidity - there's plenty of it roaming the halls of the private sector. Not that I'm saying government isn't stupid and inefficient, just that they're not the only ones.

        Thank you for adding ammo to the argument.

    • Nice Try but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Duds ( 100634 ) <dudley @ e n t e r space.org> on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:46PM (#15533189) Homepage Journal
      We didn't even have NT4 when DN-Forever was started, let alone XP.

      5 years != 10 years.
    • I wonder what's weirder: That DNF has taken longer to develop than Windows Vista, or that Windows Vista has taken almost as much time to make as DNF?

      Anyone else see the irony that Duke Nukem Forever's initials are exactly the same abbreviation used in auto racing stats for "Did Not Finish"?

  • "3D Realms has no plans on rushing Duke Nukem Forever" This has to be said, but did anyone really think Duke Nukem Forever was being rushed?

  • Thank God. (Score:5, Funny)

    by stlhawkeye ( 868951 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:20PM (#15532955) Homepage Journal
    I know we were all worried about this.

  • What is wrong with these people? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by eln ( 21727 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:22PM (#15532975)
    This company must have the most patient investors in the history of business. They've sunk millions of dollars into this game. At this point so much money has been spent that it has no hope of being profitable, even if it becomes the highest selling game of all time.

    Meanwhile, they continue to delay it and the project clearly has no well-defined sense of direction. They've basically scrapped it and started over from scratch I don't know how many times, and feature creep is not so much a problem as it is a religion for them. I mean come on, an FPS with the ability to send email? 5 years from now, when they decide to release another few screenshots to drum up interest in the "imminent" release of the product, they'll show the game automatically ordering milk when your smart fridge tells it you're almost out.

    By the time this game comes out (if it ever does), all of the people that would have run out and bought it just because it's the greatest running joke in Internet history will have all died, and their grandchildren won't get what all the fuss is about.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • If the game is good, no one will care. I'd imagine something like 5-10% of their target market is even aware of the DNF soap opera.

      That said, I just do not believe a game that's been in development for ten goddamn years can possibly be any good. Prove me wrong, Broussard, prove me wrong.
    • This is an internal project, paid for by their own money. They can take all the time they want as long as they are willing to spend their own money doing it.

      I thought everyone knew this. 3Drealms in an independent like Id (quake) and can do what it wants. They self financed it from the money earned with the earlier Duke Nukem titles.

      Wich goes to show how much of a success they were and how little development has to cost (especially when you don't produce anything). Compare this to the guys who did daikata

      • Okay, they're self-financed. Why continue burning through all of their cash to continue work on a game whose development cycle is clearly way out of control? Whether they're burning through their own money or through some other investor's money, they're still burning money on a project that will not be profitable. They are still throwing good money after bad. At this point it's hard to believe that the money they will make on this project will ever exceed the money they've spent on it (regardless of sou

      • Re:WTF? Talk about uninformed (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dtyst ( 790737 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @01:30PM (#15533538)
        3DRealms has earned from Max Payne franchise alone about 50 million USD (about 25 miljon royalties and sold the max Payne brand (game + engine to take two for 50 million , the developer Remedy got their share of course so I estimate that 3DRealms got at minimum 35 million USD). Now they are doing (trying) the same with Prey (developed by HumanHead) produced by 3DRealms. 3DRealms have lots of older other profitable self-developed games aswell. So they can afford to drag DNF development forever with the cash they have in spare.

        As they say on their website: In business since 1991. Never had a loan. Never had layoffs. Extremely stable and successful environment.

      • The problem is (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @02:15PM (#15533900)
        There's an expiration date on almost all the content in a game. Ok so music you can have composed and rendered to WAV files and keep that forever. Soundeffects too maybe. Plot, well it's a FPS, plot is light anyhow but ya. However the really expensive and hard parts, the code and the graphics assets, expire after a year or two. Consider if UT2004 had not been released and was instead to come out right now. Nobody would give a shit. It's not a bad looking game but it fails to impress by today's standards. It has been exceeded many times, and it's only two years old. UT2007, which should launch this year or eairly next year, has totally new graphics assets and a major code reqrite to stay current.

        So when development starts to stretch in to the 5+ year bracket you are losing a lot of work. Unless they orignally planned to release it this far off and designed accordingly (which would be hard with the way technology changes) they've been doing a lot of development to no end.

        A similar thing happened to Shadowbane. Though it had many other problems, one was just that it didn't look very good. It's graphics were fine for when they first started talking about it, but it took so long to release that by the time they came out they were rather dated. That could have worked perhaps had it been an awesome game, but it was so it flopped.

        I think DNF faces a similar problem. Either they have been updating their engine and assets, in which case they've been wasting colossal amounts of time and money, even if it is their own, or they are talking about releasing a game with Quake 1 graphics to compete with things like FEAR.

        They claim they are using the Unreal 2.5 engine (basically the post UT2004 development engine, UT 2004 was UE2) so that means that they have redone development. In fact, if you look at their timeline they went from Q1 to Q2 to UE1 to UE1.5 to UE2 to UE2.5. Well that means there's had to be some significant updating of grpahics assets to keep pace with that. It's also a lot of money sunk. iD and Epic do not give their engines away, they license them for 6 figures, regardless of if you get your game out the door.

        • Re:The problem is (Score:3, Interesting)

          by randyest ( 589159 )
          There's an expiration date on almost all the content in a game. Ok so music you can have composed and rendered to WAV files and keep that forever. Soundeffects too maybe. Plot, well it's a FPS, plot is light anyhow but ya. However the really expensive and hard parts, the code and the graphics assets, expire after a year or two.

          So, of:
          • Music
          • Sound effects
          • Plot
          • Code
          • Graphics

          Two of them, Code and Graphics, have an "expiration date" and they comprise "almost all" the content?

          In fact, if you look at t

          • Re:The problem is (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )
            Well I don't usually respond to retarded trolls, but what the hell, I'm bored so I'll bite.

            Yes, the two things off the list comprise most of the work. Just because a list has 5 items does not mean all items are equal. If my weekend todo list was "Replace burnt out light bulb, buy a new garden hose, vacuum living room, wash the car, and rebuild my car engine" you can't very well say they are all equal. The bulb replacement is a 1 minute job, rebuilding an engine is a major operation.

            Code and graphics are the
    • Or is it the other way round? Anyway, there's nothing wrong with the developers. As you indicated, they must have some seriously pissed-off investors. They realize that they wouldn't find anybody to fund them ever again, so they have no choice than to go on with developing DNF. That way, they at least have a very small chance of striking even; if they scrapped the project, they wouldn't find any new investors.
    • Meanwhile, they continue to delay it and the project clearly has no well-defined sense of direction. They've basically scrapped it and started over from scratch I don't know how many times, and feature creep is not so much a problem as it is a religion for them.
      Do you realize you have just described a typical IT project at any large corporation? I know because I am suffering through one right now.

  • Let me be the first to say (Score:3, Funny)

    by dcapel ( 913969 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:23PM (#15532981) Homepage
    BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH....

    Duke Nukem Forever... Ship Early...

    BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

  • Good headline (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrTester ( 860336 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:23PM (#15532986)
    Boy. Theres a shocker headline.
    Right up there with "A new study shows that Men like to have sex" and "The sun is expected to rise in the morning"

    Wait. Im being handed a piece of paper. Holy Cow! Breaking news! "Companys like free publicity!"
  • (+5 Pants-Wettingly Hilarious)

  • I'm as interested as the next geek in seeing the final release of DNF but having just had a quick look at the screenshots on Game Spot I can't see this game doing very well. I admit that good graphics do not a good game make but if you aren't playing in the same league as HL2 you aren't playing. This project should have been cut loose (or perhaps I should say lose as it's /.) a long time ago.

    • Those shots are from 1999.

      I doubt HL2 shots looked so hot from back then either
    • Face it, FPSes tend to be light on anything but the shooting and the eye candy. It's just kinda hard to do much plot wise. The only games I've seen where it's really done well are ones like Deus Ex. However that I'm not sure is really an FPS in the classical sense. It's the same style but there's not a lot of emphasis on the "shooter" part. In fact you can get away with almost never firing your gun.

      For a real shooter style FPS, well people want a lot of the shooting. Ok, fine, but that means the only real t

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:27PM (#15533029)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • That comment about investors did it, I finally realize why. It's investors!

    As long as some project isn't finished, you don't know that it's a bomb. So, with DNF looming "forever" in the future, hope is kept up with investors (who often don't know JACK what they invest in) that they might see some money coming back some day. Hopefully with interest.

    Now, if DNF went out and the loss would have to be realized, it's likely that they start pushing for money. And probably get a company into heavy problems.

    I guess
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Best use of the Slashdot tagging system evar.
  • How about they rush Duke Nukem Foruntil-it's-done. Which hopefully would be sooner rather than later.
  • It might make sense for them to hold off on releasing it. I have to wonder how many people will actually buy it after it's been lambasted for so long. Granted, this doesn't mean it's a *bad* game, just that most games enjoy a certain amount of hype before being released. While some say that any press is good press, was that true for Daikatana?

    I think their best bet, is hold off on releasing the game until everyone who remembers when it first was created either becomes senile or dies.

  • Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

    by east coast ( 590680 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @12:59PM (#15533316)
    3D Realms Won't Rush Duke Nukem Forever

    1998 called. They want their story back.
  • DNF will not be out this year.
  • Somehow I don't think the game has been in danger of being considered rushed for a very long time.

  • Nah (Score:3, Funny)

    by WedgeTalon ( 823522 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @01:14PM (#15533439)
    At this point I hope they *don't* ever finish DNF. It's a great running joke and the name just fits oh-so-perfectly! It would be a tragedy to lose that. :'(

  • Early? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aim Here ( 765712 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @01:18PM (#15533463)
    "I would never ship a game early (even a couple of months), for 500k.'"

    This must be some new usage of the word 'early' that until now I have been unaware of.
  • Why dont they just give up at this point...

  • *oik* (Score:2, Funny)

    by Shaman ( 1148 )
    I -honestly- had diet coke fly out my nose after seeing that headline. Thanks a lot for the burning proboscis!
  • President Kennedy was shot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Im just playing "what if" here, so dont take it too seriously (or flame) but.. what about if he HAS been tempted by the cash and he IS rushing the game? (although maybe a little later than december to keep a low profile) wouldnt be the first thing to say "Hey dont worry we are not rushing it... it was almost finished when this hit"?
    I mean, some fans have been waiting for DNF for ages, they probably wouldnt be too amused if all it took to get the game out the door were $500k!

    Anyway, considering the source, I
  • I'm sure, for $500K you could easily hire someone to rush it for you, no?

    Pay him/her well (but no better than $500K), bag the difference, Profit!!!

  • Something doesn't add up (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UES ( 655257 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @01:55PM (#15533729)
    There is no game. No one is working on the game. The investors got fleeced.

    Use common sense for a moment.

    It takes 3-4 years to write, cast, design, film, edit, and release a major Hollywood picture like a Star Wars or an X-Men, which can cost $100MM or more to develop.

    It takes 3-4 years to concieve, design, manufacture, and ship a new console like a PS2 or Gamecube.

    Rockstar developed and released three new hit games with a new engine and tremendous amounts of content since 2001.

    But it takes nine years to program a knockoff Doom clone? Really? Are they coding it on a loom?

    Things I would love to know:

    1) Exactly how many programmers are working on DNF.
    2) What percentage of their days are spent on DNF versus other tasks.
    3) Why management keeps an obviously defunct product on the books when normal business practice would suggest writing it off at this point, having missed at least SEVEN release years in a row.
    4) I am dying to see the balance sheets for this project.

    There is no game, there never will be a game. But there may be an audit.

  • I think that we need to introduce a bill to prevent DNF from ever being released, lest it harm the IP and business model of people who make their living off of jokes about DNF coming out. The joke at this point is far more valuable than the game could ever be.
  • A Bundle Package for $59.95

    It will include DNF, a copy of Chinese Democracy and a sweater. (Hell will be a bit chilly)

  • ...because I refuse to support the most INEPT management of a project ever. At this point why even bother? The franchise is no longer exciting and most of the people who played the original are too busy *raising their kids*. Add to that the fact that at this point any game you release would be a complete fucking EMBARASSMENT because no matter what people are still going to sit back and say, "WTF? *THAT* took 10 years to complete?"

    3DRealms is the most pitiful excuse for a games development company ever.

  • Title asked for mockery (Score:3, Insightful)

    by foamrotreturns ( 977576 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @03:21PM (#15534436)
    I don't think I've ever seen this many Score:5 Funny comments on any given /. article ever.
    More serious note:
    I find the whole DNF saga tragic. They're trying to create the ultimate game, but the longer they wait, the more spectacular it will have to be in order to be considered
    a) worth the wait and...
    b) better than whatever else is out at the time.
    3D Realms had their time, but the electronic entertainment industry is one of the most competitive out there, and firms like 3D Realms just don't stand a chance of survival unless they can produce quality product on a consistent basis. I have the feeling that they're reworking their game every time some new trendy concept becomes popular. For example, how much you wanna bet that one of the "start from scratch" moments was when bullet-time got huge? Remember Max Payne and how revolutionary it was? I'd be willing to wager that 3D Realms has an Achilles' Heel, and that is a propensity to go chasing after whatever is popular rather than trying to set their own trends.
    3D Realms: Take a hint from Rockstar and create a new game. Create a game no one has played before. Bring elements into the game that are truly unique. At this point, with all the time and money you have invested in the project, it's too late to make anything mediocre. Be creative and think outside the box, because if you copycat, people will call you on it, and you will lose everything.

  • Duke Who? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by guidryp ( 702488 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2006 @04:00PM (#15534726)
    Who is Duke Nukem to your average teen gamer today? When Duke 3d was big they were mastering potty training.

    On the other hand, players of the original probably will not be interested in that type of game anymore. I played Duke 3d in University but that was 10+ years ago. I don't play FPS games anymore as I don't have time to get over the motion sickness curve. It takes me too long to get my FPS legs now.

    I think this game will get no advantage from being a sequel.

    I also have a serious hard time believing this game is actually in development. If it is, it already ranks as the most colossal development failure in the gaming industry ever. 10 Years. I am quaking in my boots at the dev costs on this one. And if this is a mind boggling huge game it will take an army to to polish and test it.

    The first 100 Million dollar game?

  • lol (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JustNiz ( 692889 ) on Thursday June 15, 2006 @12:36AM (#15537754)
    Judging by the sceenshots from 1999 in the article the game has been in development so long technology has passed it by. They look almost laughably low-detail when you compare them to any other game less than 5 years old. They're probably having to spend almost as much effort just to update the graphics and re-port it to more recent engine every couple of years than it would be just to write a new game from scratch.

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