Duke Nukem Developer Closes Its Doors

No word from George with a definitive - we're done, we are closed, etc etc.

And a bunch of low level guys are all saying "Oh we are done, we were fired, etc etc" with posts showing the concept art and some type of animation footage - In game? I don't know....

Then there's the announcement they just hit some milestone a month ago....... Here's my take - say your closed, yadda yadda, get everybody thinking your closed, so you can have a month or so to get the disks pressed while everybody is looking the other way... Then drop the bomb... Talk about a marketing coup. If the pressing company doesn't know what they are pressing - then the chance of an early leak drops......

Just saying..... Think about it.

And are you guys telling me there's not one member of the [H]orde close enough to go swing by their offices?!?!?!?! Just to take a look and report back?
 
It's Sad, but not unexpected. Especially with our recent change in economic climate.
 
The Mamories we might have had? Is that a boob reference? I'm thinking of this girl's mammories I I might have had at the bar last night ;)
 
I'm actually really sad about this. Bummer. I remember playing Duke when demo versions came out on those old-school "1,000 Shareware Games!" CDs when CD-ROMs first started taking off. Then Duke3D was awesome. I was really thinking 2009 might have been the year it came out. Sigh.
 
I hope that nobody picks it up Duke Nukem can GTFO and take his FAIL with him...
 
GB stuck me as another Romero. Just kind of an anti-social tool with an arrogance off the charts. WTF couldn't they finish this? Sad- so freakin' sad.
 
Enduring_Warrior said:
Then realease it in 6 months as a total piece of crapware. I'd like to see Valve or The russians who made stalker take care of this. In an ideal world Bungee would be on that list too.
Click to expand...

I personally wouldn't mind Croateam picking it up. Duke Nukem is similar to Serious Sam personality-wise.
 
Would someone please fund this project... We obviously still want it, and there clearly is fantastic work done so far.
 
We may still see this being worked on if someone will fund it. I really would have liked DNF to be finished, but maybe it's better this way and never being released.
 
R0N1 said:
We may still see this being worked on if someone will fund it. I really would have liked DNF to be finished, but maybe it's better this way and never being released.
Click to expand...

I think that's the problem. Take2 picked up the funding last time, but 3D Realms still botched things up. It's going to be difficult for them to persuade another publisher to take them into their wings.
 
Azhar said:
I think that's the problem. Take2 picked up the funding last time, but 3D Realms still botched things up. It's going to be difficult for them to persuade another publisher to take them into their wings.
Click to expand...

Incorrect, DNF has always been self-funded by 3DRealms. Take 2 had publishing rights but hadn't sunk a dime into DNF development. The problem is that Scott Miller went off to reboot Apogee and do his own thing about a year ago. He was one major part of DNF funding, the other part was George Broussard. When funds ran out, Broussard finally went to Take2 to ask them for additional funding to finish the game, something like five million. TT came back with a counter-offer of 30 million for the rights to the Duke IP. 3DR said no and shut down production. Take2 still has the rights to publish the game, so its a pretty dicey situation everyone is in right now.

Either way, bums me out, all of the released media that has been coming out the last few days looks like it would have been really fun to play. I'm hoping that they find the money to finish production at some point, but we'll see.
 
Don't think there's anything overly complicated about the game. The inflated production time is simply due to bad management. Producing a game can be a pretty linear production pipeline, which does not fair well to "changes on the fly" in the middle of productions. Put yourself a manager that can't help themselves to constantly change or add things, and you're going to waste massive amounts of time and never finish anything. You're supposed to get all the design elements nailed down before you start working on ANYTHING for this very reason. Design>produce>test & tune>profit. They never made it passed #2.

Anyway, if they refused to take 30mil for the ip, and don't have the funds or capable management to complete it on their own.........then sorry, don't think we'll ever see much more than some nice models & renders.
 
Atech said:
Looks nothing like 12 years of work...kinda dissapointing...
Click to expand...

I thought the exact same thing when I saw those screens/video. What the hell were they doing that whole time? Hookers and blow? Certainly not working on making a video game. :rolleyes:
 
MavericK96 said:
I thought the exact same thing when I saw those screens/video. What the hell were they doing that whole time? Hookers and blow? Certainly not working on making a video game. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

In their defense, they weren't spending 12 years on the sole task of trying to make some screenshots look 12 years worth of badass. They spent 12 years making change after change, each of which rendering much previously completed work obsolete (& hence has to be redone). I'm sure a few of the guys working there saw this coming 8 years ago.

I really feel bad for the artists though tbh. When you work on something that long you can't help but start pouring yourself into your work. Then only to get laid off and watch your baby die. Sucks for them.
 
supaspoon said:
In their defense, they weren't spending 12 years on the sole task of trying to make some screenshots look 12 years worth of badass. They spent 12 years making change after change, each of which rendering much previously completed work obsolete (& hence has to be redone). I'm sure a few of the guys working there saw this coming 8 years ago.

I really feel bad for the artists though tbh. When you work on something that long you can't help but start pouring yourself into your work. Then only to get laid off and watch your baby die. Sucks for them.
Click to expand...

That's the real problem. They'd start with a game engine. Trash the game, and then start over when a newer engine came around. They did this several times and never finished a product.
 
i reckon they nearly completed the game and went, hey this game just aint epic, infact its shit, we spent 12 years developing shit, we're going to be laughing stocks.. BURN IT FUCKING BURN IT DESTROY ALL THE NOTES BURN IT BURN IT... ALL EVIDENCE OF THIS EPIC FAIL MUST DIE!!

true story.
 
The savedukenukem.com site has some new info up. Guess it's just one man trying to gather funds to finish development...
 
I see Take-Two is now suing 3DR for failing to deliver the game.Saw that one coming,can't say I blame them,since they paid out 12 million for the publishing rights (so much for all the "self funded" BS).But they'll probably have as much luck getting the money as they did the game.
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
The savedukenukem.com site has some new info up. Guess it's just one man trying to gather funds to finish development...
Click to expand...

Some of the screen shots look good. The game looks especially good for such a dated engine. Still I have to wonder if the game is worth saving. If anything, someone needs to secure the rights to the Duke Nukem name and character, and then start off from scratch. Brand new engine, new physics engine, new developement team, everything. Use nothing from the unfinished product.
 
Dan_D said:
Some of the screen shots look good. The game looks especially good for such a dated engine. Still I have to wonder if the game is worth saving. If anything, someone needs to secure the rights to the Duke Nukem name and character, and then start off from scratch. Brand new engine, new physics engine, new developement team, everything. Use nothing from the unfinished product.
Click to expand...

It is better for Take2 to get the IP and start all over than will be to continue where they left off. You are talking another 2 years before they can even start working on it again.After all the legal waiting, and everything they would have to go through before any developers could even sit down and start working again, it's pointless.

DNF right now is a sore thumb of gaming, they would be better getting the duke IP as far away from that disaster as it can.
 
Bigbacon said:
It is better for Take2 to get the IP and start all over than will be to continue where they left off. You are talking another 2 years before they can even start working on it again.After all the legal waiting, and everything they would have to go through before any developers could even sit down and start working again, it's pointless.

DNF right now is a sore thumb of gaming, they would be better getting the duke IP as far away from that disaster as it can.
Click to expand...

Frankly I'd like for someone other than Take 2 to get the IP. Based on what they'v released in the past they just don't seem like the right developer for a Duke Nukem title.
 
supaspoon said:
I really feel bad for the artists though tbh. When you work on something that long you can't help but start pouring yourself into your work. Then only to get laid off and watch your baby die. Sucks for them.
Click to expand...

While that's true, and on some level I feel bad for the artists as well, mostly for losing their jobs, it doesn't change the fact that they couldn't put out a finished product in a reasonable timeline. Tons of other developers seem to have no trouble doing this, as evidenced by the fact that we get a lot of great games with awesome graphics and gameplay. The real failure here is the development team as a whole. Obviously they did not "pour themselves into their work" enough to actually produce something useful. Unless it was entirely a marketing/production decision, and the developers had nothing to do with it, and they were nearly done with a finished product each time and were told to scrap it, then the failure is theirs. I also don't believe this to be the case, considering the extremely unfinished nature of content we've been seeing leaked.

12 years only to end up with a horribly unfinished game is pretty shameful, IMO.
 
MavericK96 said:
While that's true, and on some level I feel bad for the artists as well, mostly for losing their jobs, it doesn't change the fact that they couldn't put out a finished product in a reasonable timeline. Tons of other developers seem to have no trouble doing this, as evidenced by the fact that we get a lot of great games with awesome graphics and gameplay. The real failure here is the development team as a whole. Obviously they did not "pour themselves into their work" enough to actually produce something useful. Unless it was entirely a marketing/production decision, and the developers had nothing to do with it, and they were nearly done with a finished product each time and were told to scrap it, then the failure is theirs. I also don't believe this to be the case, considering the extremely unfinished nature of content we've been seeing leaked.

12 years only to end up with a horribly unfinished game is pretty shameful, IMO.
Click to expand...

3D Realms was based in Dallas/DFW. There are a ton of other developers that are as well. Plus many developers in the area have shut down and there are tons of graphic artists, computer animators, computer modelers, and programers out of work in this area right now that have plenty of experience and credit for several different games under their belt ready to work on the cheap. (Some of them I know personally.) 3D Realms could absolutely have found the necessary talent to finish the work or they could have farmed the development out to another local studio easily. There is no reason why this game couldn't have been finished by now. They could have done this long before they ran out of money too.

Out here we have or had the following developers in the area during the time the game was in development:

3D Realms
ID
Ion Storm
Raven
Gearbox
Ensemble Studios (Before and after it became a division of Microsoft Games.)

I'm sure that there were others I forgot. Frankly there is no shortage of computer game development talent in this city. This reeks of mismanagement and nothing else. For whatever reason 3D Realms just couldn't get their shit together.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top