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Duke in Trouble?

Posted by Zonk on Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:38 AM
from the need-more-than-a-headshot-here dept.
Entertainment Games
1up reports on rumours of trouble at 3D Realms, the long-term developers of the Duke Nukem Forever project. The duke project is apparently in jeopardy, according to the buzz, as several key developers have left the company for greener pastures. 3D Realms webmaster Joe Siegler has responded to these rumours, saying on the message boards "It's internal business - all employee departures and comings have always been that way. This is nothing new. People have left before, IT IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS. It's the way it goes ... There's honestly nothing to be concerned about. People leave. People come. There's staff on the project you don't know about."
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[+] Duke Nukem Forever Due This Year? 251 comments
nz17 writes "Under the original deal, 3D Realms was to receive some $6 million from Take-Two to develop the title. Now the Texas-based developer will receive only $4,250 for the oft-delayed game when it is completed. Just the same, 3D Realms has a fairly large incentive to get Duke Nukem Forever done by the end of the year; Take-Two has offered the studio $500,000 in the form of a promissory note if the game sees commercial release by December 31, 2006."
[+] 3D Realms Won't Rush Duke Nukem Forever 310 comments
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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  • I don't think anyone still thought this game was ever going to be released anyway.

    • Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Funny)

      by creimer (824291) on Friday September 01 2006, @01:15PM (#16025588) Homepage
      Except for the hardcore Duke Nukem fans who run around E3 in their foam body suits.

      (BTW, Someone did tell them that E3 was cancelled?)

      • Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Funny)

        by MojoBox (985651) on Friday September 01 2006, @01:48PM (#16025880)
        Why? Can't you see the comedic value of a half dozen geeks in foam body suits, wandering the deserted halls of the Convention Center, bits of paper blowing in the drafts, a broken pipe dripping water somewhere in the distance, and each of the "Dukes" quitely whispering, "Hello? Anybody here?" Come to think of it, that's a bit like the condition of DNF itself.
    • It matters very much. If the project is cancelled, few will remember it in 10 years. It is so much cooler to have a game permanently in development behind closed doors.

  • Tagged 'shocking' (Score:5, Funny)

    by bunions (970377) on Friday September 01 2006, @11:40AM (#16024812)
    Honestly, who could have predicted this? I am at a loss for words.

  • Obligatory... (Score:5, Funny)

    by RoloDMonkey (605266) <rolo@@@irolo...net> on Friday September 01 2006, @11:42AM (#16024824) Homepage Journal

    "We have top men working on it."

    "Who?"

    "Top. Men."

  • ...anybody this long to wonder if their project was in trouble?!?

    Good grief... Didn't the near DECADE development cycle give anybody their first clue on that front?

  • Nothing to see here.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by BigNumber (457893) on Friday September 01 2006, @11:43AM (#16024836)
    Nothing to see here...in fact there probably never will be anything to see here.

    • Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score:4, Funny)

      by legoburner (702695) on Friday September 01 2006, @11:56AM (#16024942) Homepage Journal
      That is not entirely true, there is always the atari 2600 [3drealms.com] version.

      • Re:Nothing to see here.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by soft_guy (534437) on Friday September 01 2006, @12:56PM (#16025424)
        I'm still waiting them to release a version I can play on my Atari 1450XLD [wikipedia.org].

        For those who don't get the reference - Atari announced this top of the line 8Bit computer in 1983 as if it were already shipping. Two years later they "canceled" it. There were never any units actually made (other than prototype), yet they advertised it as a shipping product. I had the misfortune that my family decided to get one and we decided to not buy a new computer to replace our Atari 400 until we could get one of these. All the mail order houses "advertised" them with "call for price". I was 12 (with all that implies), so I called them every couple of days for about 8 months asking when they were going to have units available to sell. So, to me, the Atari 1450XLD computer is the epitome of vapor ware.

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by daranz (914716) <daranz@gmail.com> on Friday September 01 2006, @11:44AM (#16024844)
    So Joe Siegler is basically saying that the infinitely long developement process for DNF is going to continue as planned, and will be subject of jokes and speculations for many years to come... Good to know.

    • Re: (Score:2, Redundant)

      by greysky (136732)
      ...process for DNF is going to continue...

      Okay, this is the first time I've noticed that the abbreviation is DNF. In racing it's the abbr for "did not finish".
      • just more evidence that it's an elaborate hoax. yes ... all the pieces are starting to fit together ...

  • I thought... (Score:5, Funny)

    by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) (613870) on Friday September 01 2006, @11:45AM (#16024851) Journal
    ...Duke Nukem Forever was a geek joke. You know, like the coming of the Messiah, the second coming of Jesus or the arrival of the Maitreya Buddha. I didn't know there really was such a game in development. That's shattered my whole world view. I might have to rethink my views on religion now.
    • I thought Duke Nukem Forever was a geek joke. You know, like the coming of the Messiah, the second coming of Jesus or the arrival of the Maitreya Buddha. I didn't know there really was such a game in development.

      Apparently you are correct.

  • "The duke project is apparently in jeopardy" (Score:3, Funny)

    by ip_freely_2000 (577249) on Friday September 01 2006, @11:53AM (#16024921)

    In other news: Water is wet.

  • Of course people left (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MobyDisk (75490) on Friday September 01 2006, @11:56AM (#16024949) Homepage
    Duke Nukem has been in the making for 10 years! With an average lifespan in this undustry of 3 -5 years, how the heck could a 10 year project be completed with the same set of employees?

    "It's time to write code and chew gum... and I'm all outta gum."

  • It is the nature of a business. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by kinglink (195330) on Friday September 01 2006, @11:57AM (#16024954)
    You get burnt out in the game industry unless you're constantly shipping high quality titles. Turn over in a couple years isn't amazing, but it's not a great thing.

    The fact is after EVERY game there's a good amount of turn over and even then that's a game that takes 2-4 years. People wanted to stay with the company til the game goes gold then leave. Duke Nukem has been going for far longer than any other game it's not a shock people are leaving the company now, especially before people have seen the game.

    This might mean the game isn't amazing or up to par and people want to cash out now, but more likely it's business as usual.
  • So if the list of developers is secret... Is there a chance that nobody is working on it? "We have secret people working on it" just sounds like an ongoing part of a joke. Maybe all the 3D Realms developers are really working on something else, and they just release bits of news about DNF whenever the company needs a laugh?

  • I'm disappointed (Score:5, Funny)

    by ludomancer (921940) on Friday September 01 2006, @12:04PM (#16025009)
    After keeping the stupid project alive for so many years, I really am surprised. You'd think after 10 years it'd pretty much keep going forever, if not eventually get released.

    I really hope this game doesn't get cancelled. I really want to play this badly because I have the highest expectations of getting the absolute worst game ever. Something to love for it's terribleness. Something Mystery Science Theater 3000 bad.

    Please release this game. I honestly can't wait.

    • I wonder if 3D realms is trying to create the ultimate Duke Nukem Forever experience with a paradigm shift. They could very well be experimenting with a old coding technique that was never really implemented. Anyone wanna take bets that there are 100 million monkey's chained to 100 million computers running basic hex editors? When any of them have typed, say, 4GB of code, it's thrown on a DVD and into a PS2/360/XBox/PC and tested to see if they get a 'Good Duke'?
  • C'mon now... Duke Nukem Forever is taking forever to release. The majority of people that were waiting for this game have forgotten about it. Those that remember it treat it as a joke. The hype surrounding this game once rivaled or surpassed Daikatana but, hey, at lease Daikatana was actually released. Duke Nukem Forever will go down in history as the one piece of software that completely defines the term "Vaporware".

    I would have appreciated it more if 3DRealms said "Hey, we fucked up on this one... DNF wil
  • We all know the forever in DNF actually stands for how long we have to wait before we see this game. I've some hope mostly because I go back and play the original D3D and its still fun and I want more. And they did finally release Prey.

    Thats also what I'm scared about - I just don't want it to be like Prey where the original claim was that there was going to be non linear gameplay and you could interact completely with your environment, destroying it or whatever. We did get portals in the end but heck I've

  • First Global warming, and now this... (Score:3, Funny)

    by zoomzit (860737) on Friday September 01 2006, @12:11PM (#16025074)
    My children's children's children have absolutely nothing to look forward too...

  • Duke is dead? (Score:5, Funny)

    by BrunoBigfoot (996441) on Friday September 01 2006, @12:12PM (#16025087)
    He's not dead. He's frozen. And as soon as we find a cure for cancer, we're gonna thaw out the Duke, and he's gonna be pretty pissed off. You know why? Have you ever taken a cold shower? Well, multiply that by fifteen million times, that's how pissed off the Duke's gonna be. I'm gonna get the Duke, and John Cassavetes, and Lee Marvin, and Sam Peckinpah, and a case of whiskey, and drive down to Texas...
  • I'd really like to know what's going on with this game. At this point, it's taken longer than an operating sSystem to develop, and it's been an industry joke for many years. What gives? Do they have like, 1 programmer working half time on it? I can't imagine working on a single product for so long, so it's no wonder there are people leaving, I'd just like to hear the actual story of why it's taking so long, and not just a press release version of "we'll ship it when it's done."

  • IDEA!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nascarguy27 (984493) <nascarguy27&gmail,com> on Friday September 01 2006, @12:40PM (#16025288)
    Since it'll never be completely done, open source Duke Nukem Forever. That way it can forever be in beta AND people can use it. Unless of course it's unusable at all now. Hopefully it's beyond that.
  • Seriously.

    They MUST be using Perl to code this thing because that's the only way it could take this long. I know I'm going to get trolled down by all the Perl babies out there, but can you honestly think of any other reason it could possibly take this long to code a FPS? And one with no plot line to boot?

    The only way would be code that looked like this:

    http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Perl [uncyclopedia.org]

  • Obituary (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nahor (41537) on Friday September 01 2006, @12:46PM (#16025332)
    And soon, we'll learn that people killed themselves on the project, while in truth, they just died of old age.

  • maybe (Score:5, Funny)

    by Billly Gates (198444) on Friday September 01 2006, @12:55PM (#16025415) Homepage Journal
    Maybe the DNF developers are leaving to join the exciting GNU/Hurd team with its quick and upbeat release record.
    • Maybe the DNF developers are leaving to join the exciting GNU/Hurd team with its quick and upbeat release record.

      I'm pretty sure we've been waiting for Hurd since way before DNF. Like by about a decade [gnu.org] if we count 1983 as the starting point of that project.

      That's just scary.

      Cheers
      • In all fairness, I believe you can, in fact, download and run the HURD, and have been able to do so for years. It just sucks royally when compared to any useful OS.

  • This is nothing new. People have left before, IT IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS.

    Just sub in 'vaporware' and you get this.

    This is nothing new. Vaporware IS THE NATURE OF THIS BUSINESS.

    As a side note, why does Duke keep getting coverage??? Let the man rest in peace until the day he rises from the 3D Realms ashes and is born again at retailer near you. Until then, goodbye, Duke.

  • What's Phantom going to use now that their star title is floundering?

  • I've just been converted. It's a new religion! I get it now. Life is complete. I have no fear of death, for I am destined to live forever in paradise, if only I believe in the Duke.

  • The List (Score:5, Informative)

    by inotocracy (762166) on Friday September 01 2006, @03:49PM (#16026790) Homepage
    Has yet to be posted, so I shall do just that, things that have occured since the announcement of Duke Nukem Forever [a-13.net]:

    Popular Video Game Series Releases
    Final Fantasy:

    * Main Series
    o Final Fantasy VII
    o Final Fantasy VIII
    o Final Fantasy IX
    o Final Fantasy X
    + Final Fantasy X-2
    o Final Fantasy XI
    o Final Fantasy XII
    * Cell Phone Games
    o Before Crisis: Final Fantasy
    o Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII
    o Dirge of Cerberus: Lost Episode
    * Tactics Series
    o Final Fantasy Tactics
    o Final Fantasy Tactice Advance
    * Crystal Chronicles Series
    o Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles
    o Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
    o Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearer
    * Remakes
    o Final Fantasy Collection
    o Final Fantasy Anthology
    o Final Fantasy Chronicles
    o Final Fantasy Origins
    o Final Fantasy I & 2: Dawn of Souls
    o Final Fantasy III DS
    * Games Featuring Final Fantasy Characters
    o Ehrgeiz
    o Kingtom Hearts
    o Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
    o Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix
    o Kingdom Hearts II
    * Movies, Anime Series & Concerts
    o Final Fantasy: The Sprits Within
    o Final Fantasy: Unlimited, Entire Series
    o Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
    o Final Fantasy: Dear Friends, Entire World Tour

    Grand Theft Auto:

    * Grand Theft Auto
    o Grand Theft Auto, Gameboy Color Port
    * Grand Theft Auto
    * Grand Theft Auto: London 1969
    * Gr

    • Re:The List (Score:4, Informative)

      by 4D6963 (933028) on Saturday September 02 2006, @01:46AM (#16028800)

      In April of 1997, Google, eBay, and the term "weblog" didn't exist.

      eBay was founded in 1995. [wikipedia.org]

      Mac OS switched to UNIX...

      Actually I guess we can say Mac OS had switched to Unix earlier with A/UX [wikipedia.org]

      I swear, I really don't have anything better to do at 8:47am than to check your facts ;-)

  • They are just waiting for the PS3 becoming the market leader of the next gen consoles. Then they will release it as a PS3 exclusive...

  • Nobody quit... (Score:4, Funny)

    by AmazingRuss (555076) on Friday September 01 2006, @10:00PM (#16028366)
    ...but a few did die of old age.
    • I guess it's a great story because it's so obviously silly. The very notion of a commercial game without a deadline is really ridiculous in the first place, and DNF's development to date provides a striking example of why this is the case. Yet still, after throwing away not only lots of money but also the reputation of a once-valuable franchise, they continue to repeat the "when it's done" mantra like a broken vinyl recording of a George Bush speech.

      You'd think that they would learn something after all th
    • Gnu Hurd has been taking longer, Windows Vista probably has been in development also for quite a while, but wont beat it.

      • Re:A theory of late games and program development (Score:4, Informative)

        by ScrewMaster (602015) on Saturday September 02 2006, @09:10PM (#16031452)
        Well, maybe not completely impossible ... but the reality is that code tends to move from elegance to thorniness, and not the other way 'round. Call it ScrewMaster's Rule of Developmental Entropy. Fixes for this and fixes for that: over time the code will be inelegant as hell yet reliable and perfectly functional, but nobody in their right mind would dare try to rewrite it because nobody remembers why all those hacks and patches are there. I deal with that a lot in some of the older code I have to support and maintain. I wasn't the original coder, and I'd love to dig in and rewrite some of the stuff that truly offends my engineering sensibilities. I don't dare, however, because if I did I'd miss some of the special cases taken care of by all the thorns, wreak havoc amongst our customers, and would probably end up spending just as much time to make my new code work as well as the old. At which point, it would be just as thorny anyway.

        Ultimately, what it comes down to is that it is very difficult (if not impossible) for even a very good, clean, thoughtful initial design to account for all the eventualities that a codebase will have to face. You may truly want to leave that code cleaner when you leave, but odds are that time pressure alone will sometimes leave you with what you know in your heart is a hack. Trying to do everything perfectly all the time takes forever, which is unacceptable in most production environments. 3DRealms may be different in that regard. Certainly they don't mind giving their developers all the time they need.

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