New Duke Nukem Forever screenshot and trailer....huh?

[elmuerte]

I had a lot of fun playing all duke nukem games, DN3D was simply great fun. DN3D really set a milestone for interactive worlds.

I think DNF will simply be a nice game to play, with an acceptable story and a lively world. But I don't care if it never gets released, I rather have a good release than a game rushed to a release. 3DR has done a good job keeping complete control over their project.

[Karimi]

*Sigh* If only Black Isle or Troika were given this much time to make games. Why cruel world must the crappy companies be given sooo much ?!

I am a duke nukem 3d fan , and I was looking forward to DNF. But I don't think its going to be any good.

"On March 21, 2006, 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller stated that "and of course as soon as Duke is done we'll begin a new one." [49]" - wikipedia

Great news, so I guess my grandkids will have something to wait for too.

On a side note though, it was announced ,what, 11 years ago ?

[elmuerte]

just over 10.5 years ago (was the first announcement, april 2007). It's getting close to Prey's age (expect that DNF has been in development since the beginning, no pause).

I don't think giving that much time would be a good thing, but game studios should be given enough time to properly finish the game. But at some time you simply have to cut your loses (as investor).

[Nachimir]

How exactly is this supposedly funded?

Unless they've found some complete cretins to invest in them or are pissing away a mountain of their own money, there's absolutely no way 3DR can have an adequately sized development team working on DNF.

At the length of development that's been going on so far, and assuming it's ever had more than a tiny prototyping team working on it, they would have passed beyond any hope of breaking even years ago. The only past I can see for the project is getting shitcanned and turned into a myth.

[ThunderPeel2001]

As mentioned they're paying for it themselves, so they have nobody to answer to (which is probably a good thing). Your crude maths seems to assume that they would have had a full development team working full time on it for 11 years. I reckon they've probably had only a handful at various times, or else, as you say, they surely must have gotten too far into the red by now.

[vimes]

As mentioned they're paying for it themselves, so they have nobody to answer to (which is probably a good thing). Your crude maths seems to assume that they would have had a full development team working full time on it for 11 years. I reckon they've probably had only a handful at various times, or else, as you say, they surely must have gotten too far into the red by now.

Apparently, they had "22 to 31" people working on the project since 2002... I'm not sure it can be considered as a small team. And even without that they still spent money to :

• purchase UE2
  
• develop a proprietary engine around its script and network component
  
• purchase a license for the karma engine
  
• purchase a Meqon license
  

[ThunderPeel2001]

From 2002 is "only" five/six years. I guess that's how they've managed to keep going?

In April 1997 (when they expected the game to be released in 1998) the entire Duke Nukem Forever team comprised of:

Todd Replogle (lead coder)

Allen Blum (associate producer & lead level designer)

George Broussard (project manager)

Dirk Jones (artist)

Brian Martel (artist)

Brian Cozzens (texture artist, modeller and sketch/concept)

Michael Wallin (artist)

Stephen Cole (mapper)

Keith Schuler (mapper)

According to Broussard it was "the strongest, most talented Duke team yet".

[vimes]

OK, my bad, I didn't know.

[Nachimir]

Ah, pissing away their own money it is then.

[BigJKO]

What's with the negativity?

Not that I'm expecting a masterpiece when this is released but Team Fortress 2 has already proven that "vapourware" can still end up awesome. So, lighten up. I'm just glad they're able to "piss away" money to spend enough time to make the game they want to make.

[elmuerte]

Apparently, they had "22 to 31" people working on the project since 2002... I'm not sure it can be considered as a small team. And even without that they still spent money to :

• purchase UE2
  
• develop a proprietary engine around its script and network component
  
• purchase a license for the karma engine
  
• purchase a Meqon license
  

Karma engine was included in UE2. But it's worse than that: Quake2 -> UE1 -> UE2. They might even licensed UE3 to take out bits and pieces to included in their current tech (like irrational did with bioforge).

[Nachimir]

What's with the negativity?

Not that I'm expecting a masterpiece when this is released but Team Fortress 2 has already proven that "vapourware" can still end up awesome. So, lighten up. I'm just glad they're able to "piss away" money to spend enough time to make the game they want to make.

Good point. I'm being far too harsh on 3DR given what they did with Max Payne and Prey. Of course it's good when people have time and resources to do the projects they want, and execute well on them.

I just think there's something a bit suspicious about the nature of development and business around DNF (and the dev history of Prey).

Maybe I'm infected with business (and will soon begin to "realise synergies" and "leverage" things), but it seems to me that dragging development through several generations of technology without hitting the point where you can grow a team and crank it out is pretty sloppy. At the very least, it's appallingly dumb/naive to announce projects then find you haven't got the resources to follow through on them.

Again, I'm being pretty harsh. There could be a lot of reasons for this, from not finding the right financial backing, wanting to hold on to the IP, etc. This comment from the dev history of Prey is interesting:

Later, on an internet discussion board head engineer William Scarboro would comment that "In hindsight, portal tricks such as these should be used as tricks, not as an engine paradigm."

It could be read a lot of ways. The pattern put out by 3DR projects is one of perpetual delays and projects being reworked for successive generations of technology. It can be viewed as risky, courageous experimentation, or just sloppy. I'd buy their games, but not their shares.

There's something awry. Human Head Studios were "commissioned" to make Prey. That suggests that 3DR have a humongous pot of cash somewhere, but it seems unlikely. I find it really hard to believe they have enough cash banked to develop a current generation game - profits from the mid 90s? No. Profits from Max Payne? Doubt they'd be sufficient. Profits from the mobile Duke games? Definitely not. That suggests that though 3DR had intellectual property rights for Prey, Human Head were probably able to negotiate royalties much larger than normal ("normal" being "nonexistent" for nearly every game).

Given their publishing history since 2000 it seems like a miracle they can afford to do any game development at all. Added to this comment on the Wii it just murders any confidence I might have had in them:

"My prediction for this new round of consoles is that the Xbox 360 and PS3 will wind up about equal in terms of sales, with Nintendo's Revolution coming in a distant third," Miller writes. "Perhaps this will be the last console from [Nintendo]."

Though they make good games, they're not very good at producing them. Everything suggests that 3DR are pretty bad at business.

Lack of business skills is a major reason for the UK now having around 150 development studios as opposed to >300 around the year 2000 - while many developers were good at making games in the 90s, they became big business and the bar was subsequently too high for a lot of developers to get over (It's important to clarify that the remaining studios employ many more people than they did in 2000). While the US isn't exactly like the UK or EU, games still went through the same changes. Epic and Id were around before that time, and got through it by licensing technology. In this respect 3DR seem to be a real anomaly.

Nonetheless I've warmed to them after reading more about the studio. They obviously care a huge amount for their projects and will do anything to keep them alive, including scaling a team down to just one person. If they were owned by any other publisher rather than also being one themselves, DNF and Prey would both have been canned years ago and the studio probably shut down.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is another good example - it was a ropey game that got out of development hell eventually and only became stable with the later graphical bolt ons turned off, but the cultural outlook the developers infused it with turned it into a compelling game for me. I really hope they're doing something amazing with DNF, but as far as video games go, up against things like Mass Effect and Half Life 2 a character like Duke just seems a decade out of date.

Then again, a games festival director said to me this year "You and I, are perhaps not the best barometers of popular taste"

So there you go. I've thought about it quite a bit and do have reasons for being so negative, but I'm also very sorry if I've pissed on anyone's joy over this. I didn't mean to.

[brkl]

3D Realms did nothing with Max Payne except fund it. Pretty much the same story for the Prey that was released.

[elmuerte]

3drealms was involved in development for both Max Payne and Prey. And afaik 3drealms didn't even fund Max Payne, it was GoD.

[BigJKO]

So there you go. I've thought about it quite a bit and do have reasons for being so negative, but I'm also very sorry if I've pissed on anyone's joy over this. I didn't mean to.

Long, precise and good post, Nachimir. Don't worry, you've got a pretty good and valid reason to be a bit negative. And so does anyone else as well.

My point is only that we dwell a bit too much on the business and professionality side of things. And all the while we're complaining about games being rushed when here's a developer that just says, so famously "When it's done." And if it were a perfect world, that's what every developer should have room to do. Make their games and get them done, proper!

Maybe the fact that 3D Realms can allow themselves the freedom, with an out-dated character (what with this feminist world we're evolving into, hopefully for the best) and perhaps old gameplay goals of interactivity, when other studios (Troika and other studios mentioned before) could've used the money to complete their games.

But you can't fault 3DR for being good at funding themselves. And when I say people are being negative I mean comments like they're "pissing away" money. I wish I could piss away money like that making my dream game.

[Nachimir]

I guess they're not "pissing away" that much of it given the way their projects tend to have skeleton crews. It's a bad sign in terms of business.

The relationship between time, quality, and money is a strange one. That guy's conclusion is:

If the game is not a quality game - then it won’t be worth publishing.

I can't disagree with him from an artistic point of view, but...

Blitz Games and Oxygen Games are both (UK based) combined developers and publishers, the latter publishing other people's work as well as developing in house, and Blitz concentrating on very diverse in house development. Blitz have four divisions and a headcount of around 200. They don't license their technology, they've acquired other firms in the past five years, and they're still expanding. Oxygen also don't license their own technology, they have about 35 of their own staff across both development and publishing, and are expanding aggressively worldwide.

Both are prolific, but they churn out fairly cheap and cheerful games.

I really want that quote above to be true, but when Transformers can get to number one (and be produced by the same company that did Lego Star Wars!!), it's a little bit heartbreaking. It's possible to do good business and good games, but very few companies manage it. The way business, products, and the market interact for the games industry just seems mental.

[Marek]

3drealms was involved in development for both Max Payne and Prey. And afaik 3drealms didn't even fund Max Payne, it was GoD.

3D Realms did nothing with Max Payne except fund it. Pretty much the same story for the Prey that was released.

Actually both of you are wrong. 3D Realms partly funded both Max Payne and Prey. Remedy developed Max Payne with 3D Realms taking the role of producer (marketing, some game design, getting a publisher, etc.). They also sold the Max Payne IP to 2K Interactive for $10 million in cash and a whole bunch of stock. I don't know how much of that went to 3D Realms but that's probably one thing that's kept them afloat. Prey was developed entirely by Human Head.

I believe 3D Realms is still working with a variety of developers in a producer role, building IP. Kind of like a consultant / middleman. I don't know which developers, but I do know that's what they do. They're probably hoping to repeat the Remedy success.