Wired examines the death of Duke Nukem Forever

I still don't understand how it took 12 years to realize it wasn't coming out.

I can understand wanting to top Duke Nukem 3D, but they should have just shipped it. I feel bad for all those employees at 3DR. Great studio.

When Take-Two eventually gets the IP rights to Duke, I hope they don't ruin it, but I do want to play some more Duke.

Duke with the Crysis engine?

It's not dead just missing in action.
Always bet on Duke pathetic sensationalist blogs!

A sad story to be sure. Oh well, slap Dead Space girl's face on one of those monsters and we'll all be happy again.

That image is pretty much Dukes of War.

Using the acronym DNF in the article made me realise that DNF can also stand for Did Not Finish. Seems appropriate.

The amount of work thrown away with so many do-overs must have been staggering. In software development, at some point you simply need to put a stake in the ground and say "we're going with this." People don't care about the bleeding edge so much as they care about fun, quality games.

The 2001 trailer was amazing. The fact that they couldn't make it work is a modern tragedy and cautionary tale of bad project management.

Um...doesn't death imply that it was living at some point?

This game was an empty shell that never had any working compnents.

Once Take2 gets the rights to Duke Nukem Forever then it will finally be back on track. People believe that the original studio was being lazy but to me it looks like this whole time they were trying to gain something unique for the audience and go beyond what other developers could have. But unfortunately it did not go so well and i still applause them for trying. I want this whole dispute to be finally solved and have this damn game developed. I want to kick ass and chew bubble gum...

The problem was that Brossard was too wrapped up in making the perfect game to realize that it would never be finished. It was only when the company was running out of money did they shut down development.

If they hadn't run out of money, I bet that DNF would be in development forever, since it could never be the perfect game due to the continually changing technology used in games.

Dude, joystiq, link the story next time plehz.

K nvm sry

Hm, I'd say it took 12 years 'cause the developers had no idea what to do with the game. They kept changing things whenever newer tech released, probably to keep experiences fresh and new. (WoW probably had a place in slacking off somewhere as well.)

With a decade old fiasco, hopefully Take Two will get the rights to it. After all, they did put some several million dollars into the studio over the years.

Hey, I can examine it too:

They worked for 12 years and didn't make a fucking video game.

Done. Paycheck, please.

Just last night, a magazine caught my eye when I was going through a bunch of old junk in my basement. It was a PC Gamer, from 1999. Guess what was on the cover? Duke Nukem Forever, with the caption: "Miss me?"

This is an incredible documentary waiting to happen.It could be called Forever Duke or Duke Nukem For Never. The doc starts by chronicling the birth of the Duke Nukem series, working it's way to the try meat of the Doc. Duke Nukem Forever. There's just too much of an untold story in that 12 year nightmare, that needs to be told some day.

You get Troll Comment of the Night Award!


Congratulations!

Duke only dies if we let him.

A little thing like a dead developer won't stop him.

I recommend people actually read the article that was linked. It is quite interesting to see the constant changes to the game, all because of the pressure from the first one. In short, they had no real deadlines, and always tried to adapt to new technologies. Publishers trying to get games out the door might seem like a bad idea, but there needs to be some sort of general deadline or you get a Duke Nukem Forever (the most ironic name in video games?)

Thus is the fate of a company that lacks strong financial leadership. I could have gotten 3DR to get DNF out the door. "This is how much money we have. This is how much we spend. This is when we run out. Get it ready to ship a year before that or you just wasted 1/4 of your life."

Problem solved.

Eventually someone will write an epic book on the whole thing and I'll buy that.

A 12 year plus development cycle for a single game is kind of ridiculous. Sure, update the game if the engine is out of date-- once, but not multiple times. Once you enter a development cycle of over 7-10 years, then you have to hit it out the park, just to get a return on your investment. And assuming it were released, the core audience that was once there waiting for a sequel has probably moved on, gotten married, and had five kids by now, so you're dealing with having to basically start from scratch promoting yourself to an audience that never played the original.

At the same time, if the game were almost complete, and Take Two who never invested in the game originally, and only acquired the distribution rights through an acquistion of another company can't spare 6 million to finish the game, then they're just as ridiculous as the developers. Why not invest in the game to get it the door and bring in revenue-- of course, make sure the contract says it must ship by so in so date.

...but then again, times have changed, the economy took a turn for the worse. Pair that with Take Two being one of those companies that struggles outside of GTA releases, and I can see why it turned out the way it did. I still think Take Two itself is a take over target.

In the end, everyone is at fault. And nobody wins with litigation pending the publisher shut down.

1. Buy the rights to the game
2. Put it in the hands of a capable developer
3. Release game
4.??????
5. PROFIT!!!

This was the biggest cluster **** in gaming.

Funny comment from someone with the name HaloIsOverhyped. It was slop, it was always slop, anyone associated with the project should be ashamed, and we should honestly never hear about this trash again. It's asinine to see news about it again at this point, it should just go away.

This game stopped being interesting years ago. Especially these days, I can't help but think it would've just been another run of the mill FPS. Too little, too late even if it does come out. Incidentally I'm feeling much the same way about Starcraft 2. How long has it been, and we're only getting 1/3 of the game when it releases?

The longest running joke in gaming history is dead, long live the longest running joke in gaming history!

That article really left me feeling sad by the end. It's a good read.

That's what books do too. Then they make the movie.