Wired News: 2006 vaporware awards

I am sick of hearing about Duke Nukem. Its vaporware status used to be funny, now its just BORING. I don't even care if they're still making it or not, honestly. The Duke Nukem series had one good game...10 years ago(I didn't care much for the side-scroller versions).

Why Spore will not live up to the hype:

1. The average video game hardcodes the relationship between objects. For example, the peon object may absorb the wood object and turn into a peon-carrying wood-object.

2. Spore will change this through 'procedural synthesis' - you instead have an object with movement and interaction capability that for the sake of argument is treated like a peon, and may interact with absolutely anything, including any object similar in form and use as wood. In other words, complete freeform beyond what anyone has seen. In theory, that is.

3. In practice, it is virtually impossible to define and program a utility system that prioritises between tasks like a human, and there is an incredible number of differences in material properties (and hence what the 'procedural system' must take into account) between something as simple as iron vs steel vs stainless steel vs aluminum. For this reason you end up with a 'freeform' priorities and action system that neverthless has a _lot_ of hardcoded exceptions in it. Every item and object will need a hardcoded exception.

4. The gameplay experience will therefore much resemble that of those who went down path 1, just by taking a lot more time and with much more buggy and bulky code.

I wrote this a year ago and can't see the conclusion changing.

The now cancelled Starcraft Ghost

I'm calling it: Duke Nukem Forever will never be released. Gaming trends, game engine technology, and gamer expectations are all advancing faster than DNF's glacial development team can keep up; as a result, every couple of years they scrap everything and start development over from scratch, which only puts them further behind.

Fortunately, the last person who cared about DNF died in a nursing home in 2004, so it's not like there's any real rush. Although I do feel kind of sorry for the editors of http://www.planetduke.com, which first went live on January 22, 2000 with a screenshot showing "a church level 3D Realms is currently working on for Duke Nukem Forever (DNF)." Imagine having to find enough news to keep that site going for 7 years.

Why don't they just take DNF off the list? It's not coming out.

But Spore was NEVER coming out in 2006.

I imported the Japanese version, but how about an American version of Mother 3?

It's so lame that Sony hyped up the PSP Grand Tourismo so much. Lots of PSPs were sold on that vaporware promise.

Metroid Prime 3

about 1 million others (and no, i don't think that figures an exaggeration) would agree with me

I pray they don't do to MP3 what they did to Metroid Prime Hunters, that one was delayed a solid year from its initial predicted launch :(

I just realized that the initials for Duke Nukem Forever are the same as the results for a car that doesn't finish a race - DNF (ie, Did Not Finish).

I wouldn't count Spore as vaporware yet, since it was only delayed once or twice. I mean, WoW: Burning Crusade falls in that category, right? Delays can be a good thing, if the final product is just that much better.

That said, I vote for Starcraft: Ghost too. I was really looking forward to that. Hopefully a Starcraft 2 and maybe a Diablo 3 in the near future will make up for that. ;)

A fairly disappointing list. I mentions a few items that really haven't been in development all that long... yet it misses Starcraft: Ghost? Unless I missed the update that it was officially canceled, Ghost should've been on that list somewhere in place of something that's been in development for a shorter time.

WhiteTiger, Ghost was officially cancelled.

I don't get the inclusion of the iPod killer. All those MP3 players they listed were released, with the features they were expected to have. Low sales is not the same thing as vaporware.

I cant believe the Phantom wasnt on there. Or did they get that award for 2005?