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Duke Nukem Forever Update
Gamasutra reports on an update to one of the longest running jokes in the games industry, Duke Nukem Forever. The title, already ten years in development, may (possibly) see release this decade. From the blurb: "3DR's George Broussard also demonstrated world interactivity that includes Duke standing in front of a computer and emailing the player, if he provides his email address for the game. But, according to the piece, Broussard was bashful, overall, about showing off the game, commenting: 'The problem is that when we show it, people are going to be like, Yeah, whatever. Honestly, at this point we just want to finish it.'"
They are complex.
The technology is forever changing.
There are multiple platforms.
They become obsolete after two months.
The fan base is one of usual hypercriticality.
With these aspects working against you, developing them is just all the more difficult. How many times has this game changed the engine it's being built upon? Too many.
From the article: There's also a very informative timeline. As the last sentence of the above excerpt illustrates, Duke Nukem Forever came to suffer a development process that simply could never complete itself because it always needed the newest latest and greatest renderer. This is insanity, and I predict that this game will lack original content and any sort of story line since they are relying on graphics and graphics alone to satisfy the customer requirements. You could release a side scrolling version of Duke Nukem (a la Duke Nukem II) that I would play given a good story line and fun puzzle-solving levels.
My work here is dung.
This sounds great...where can I preorder it?
http://skelman.com
Once again proving the old adage that all computer programs evolve until they can handle email.
I expect we'll see a realease right after Duke Nukem gets threaded news reader and RSS support.
until ( $win ) { &cheat }
The brand itself seems to have lost a significant amount of value and overall relevancy to me. I remember many endless nights playing Duke 3D, and the great world it immersed you in. The character itself was great, as was the game. Everyone was excited to see what they could do next with the franchise, and they sounded really ambitious about what they wanted to do. Then, time passed.. and passed.. and passed.. and games like Deus Ex came out, which again kicked some serious ass (the sequel maybe not quite as much). So, obviously the industry has moved on, and would this game coming out even make as much as a splash as much as it once may have? I mean in all this time, they had plenty of opportunity to license another engine (again, like Deus Ex) and take the original game to the next level. Instead, I honestly have no idea what they have been doing, and in the meantime, many other great games have come along to fill the void. No matter what they come out with at this point, it is never going to live up to the expectations that they have working on this game, theoretically, for 10 years now.
You don't understand... the power of DNF is such that anything related to it, even press releases and Slashdot stories, show up late.
Less is more.
Common sense is not so common
1. Some game website will first frown on it, then get a beta copy and hype all the neato features.
... oh fuck call it Far Cry 2.
2. Other testers will then buy $800 graphic cards to test it out on their vapor cooled 5Ghz Pentium4 box, then say, meh, only gets slightly better FPS than Jazz Jackrabbit or something equally stupid
3. The game will be released, it will sit on 5 CDs instead of one DVD to keep "costs down" and pirated versions will appear with all the speech replaced with mexican festival music
4. People will realize the game is as deep as the pamphelet their latest credit card came in and will toy with the game until 17 minutes after initial release someone posts a complete walkthrough with every secret bonus and glitch found.
5. The online site will be inundated with delinquant 13 yr old sharp shooters who won't give us hard working adults a chance to just play the game and have fun.
6. Some dude in Korea will die after playing the game for 79 hours straight.
7. A full week after the release of the game a dozen patches will come out to fix various holes in the game [re: pirates] and each one will take a full 200MB to replace 39KB of code in the binary.
8. A full week and one day after release the game will become yesteryear news and people will be clamouring about the latest "let's kill the mutant aliens in obviously dangerous situations game"
9. The folk at 3DR will be vindicated then bought out by MSFT and outsourced to India to make the "books" look good.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
If the big feature they have is that the game's character can e-mail you a form letter then the game is in even worse shape than I ever imagined. They don't talk about innovative gameplay at all, but they were sure to show off how Duke can write you an e-mail probably telling you to "keep it real!"
This "feature" should be a late addition in the final production or something a programmer added on their lunch breaks, not something to show off.