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Wired's 2007 Vaporware Awards
Braedley sends word that Wired's annual vaporware list is up, and a number of products this community has discussed made the cut. The top spot, the position of most dishonor, was almost a foregone conclusion. "Another December, another list, another crowning achievement by the Emperor of the Ethereal, the Head Honcho of Hype, Duke Nukem Forever. We were going to disqualify him out of pity, but Sir Duke is back for 2007 thanks to a few leaked screenshots and an overwhelming number of votes. DNF creators 3D Realms even chose this week to debut a well-publicized video trailer for Duke's long-awaited return. Alas, a trailer is not a game, so — long live the king!"
Maybe they keep releasing Duke Nukem screenshots on occasion as some kind of a running gag? I guess the real joke's on Duke Nukem fans in that case. =)
-Vendal Thornheart
So, are you saying that by being true vaporware they can live on in glory in a fictional world? Such that, in non-existance we are spared from the crushing mediocrity of "meh"?
Truly philosophical.
More Twoson than Cupertino
How can an unannounced product be vaporware?
When I saw DNF in your post and in a glance-through of the article, I thought you/they were using DNF to denote vaporware status to one of the products until I realized that you (and probably they) were specifically referring to Duke.
This makes me think that they never planned to finish DNF; this is all just a big joke, right from day one.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Be fair. Will Wright has successfully produced plenty of excellent games. That's not to say that Spore will necessarily be the earth shattering game experience that same people are saying it will, but I think someone like Mr. Wright has at least earned the benefit of the doubt that he'll release a game, and that it'll likely be at least halfway decent.
For better or worse, you can't just secretly develop a product in a basement somewhere and then suddenly have them lining store shelves the next day. One company that tries really hard to do that is Apple, and they're constantly getting bashed from many directions due to their obsession with secrecy.
While I'm not making any judgements about you personally, the reality is that consumers as a whole seem to enjoy the hype just as much as the marketing departments do. There are piles of websites dedicated to finding and sharing advanced info, future product hints, and scheming up potential company directions. Any time there's a demand for such information, someone's going to provide it. The fact that that creates an opportunity for cranks and charlatans to scam a few bucks is just a side effect.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Sure something of more substance could have been #10.
If it had substance, surely it wouldn't be vapour...
Blank until
2)Make big fuss over sequal
3)Don't deliver, but make big deal for next decade
4)Once DNF is a household name, deliver
5)Profit!!
Seriously though, 3D Realms has found a good formula to get its namebrand out. I mean, what gamer hasn't heard of Duke Nukem Forever? It's the most famous non-game in gaming history. Weight for weight, DNF has more name recognition than even probably Halo. It almost behooves them to release it. It will turn every gamer's head 180 with "WTF?! DNF is finally been released!". Even if the game is say 7/10, you can guerentee a lot of copies would be sold just out of name recognition alone.
The project was only announced in 2005! How can they have a "usual fog of hype"? Isn't two years to bring something like that to fruition pretty damn reasonable?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Maybe they didn't want to piss off Sam and Ivan Raimi since that line was stolen from Army of Darkness.
I would be nice to see some changes to it. I was using it for several months until they changed it to display only 50 messages at once. I couldn't stand pressing the "More" button 10 times per story so I stopped using it.
;-)
I really don't like the old system after using the new one but I can't stand the 50 message limit. They should make the "50" be adjustable to include 50,100,200,300,400,500,unlimited. While there was certainly problems with their Javascript timing out for big threads it wasn't too bad most of the time. They certainly still have work to do to optimize the code but the adjustable number of messages feature would certainly help in the mean time.
Hopefully the Taco will see this message and make the adjustment
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.