3D Realms' Scott Miller Warns Warner

firstadopter.com writes "Scott Miller of 3D Realms, maker of Duke Nukem and non-maker of Duke Nukem Forever, is panning Warner Brothers' recent re-entry into the videogame industry. He cites the lack of focus of conglomerates and aversion to risk-taking on original brands as the heels of Warner's future downfall, suggesting of their new gaming division: 'Focused [game-only] publishers will always lead us in making the best games... It's just not as important for a [diversified into films/TV] company like Warner to really try hard in a area that, in the end, doesn't mean life or death to their company.'"

Comments

Yea right

[AKnightCowboy]

3DRealms has been focused on Duke Nukem Forever for 5 or 6 years now and they still have nothing but vapor. They're hardly a company to talk about video gaming anymore since they can't even get a simple game out the door. License the damn Quake 3 engine and make Duke Nukem Forever with that instead of jumping around redesigning engines every year. 3DRealms is like a kid with ADD when it comes to their flagship character. The fun thing about Duke3d wasn't that it had great graphics (it didn't), but that you could hold up a buck to a stripper and say "shake it baby". We must have more of this in the next version!

Re:Yea right

[fredrikj]

I think Carmack stated in a Slashdot post about a year ago that writing a 400-page design document and following it down to the details is a really bad idea - a good game evolves out of thousands of design decisions that turn up along the way. Compare Tom Hall's original "Doom bible" written in 1992 with the end result, I don't want to think about how bad the game would have been if they had followed the original plan. I think Tropico's problem was lack of communication, not lack of a design document.

Re:Yea right

[Twylite]

Unless your development team has only one member, you're interfacing to someone else's code.

Designs are able to be changed. That's the whole point of using flexible patterns. But if you don't have a design to begin with then nobody knows where you are planning to end up, or has a framework in which to control the change.

There is nothing special about game development that isn't part of any other software development process.

DNF original?

[Roshin]

"He cites the lack of focus of conglomerates and aversion to risk-taking on original brands..." Original brands? Duke Nukem Forever..?

History lesson:

[Asprin]

Doesn't he remember Atari? T-W owned that from '76-'86, their most profitable and inventive years when they made great games.

/Tongue-very-nearly-almost-only-partially-in-cheek :)

Risk taking

[fmaxwell]

He cites the lack of focus of conglomerates and aversion to risk-taking on original brands as the heels of Warner's future downfall, suggesting of their new gaming division: 'Focused [game-only] publishers will always lead us in making the best games...

This is a man who really knows about "risk-taking on original brands." Look at the Duke Nukem brand: How risky is it to take eight or more years to release a sequel? Even "focused" game publishers like Epic Games and ID Software aren't willing to take risks like that with their flagship brands.

There are people who played Duke Nukem 3D when they were in junior high school and they've now graduated from college and there is still no sequel. There's a risk that, when/if Duke Nukem Forever is released that no one will even remember the original. If all game companies took risks like 3DRealms does, stores wouldn't need nearly so much shelf space for video games and consumers would have a much easier time of it.