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How Duke Nukem Forever Failed: Unlimited time, budget and ambition
- electromagnetic 17y agoI think it was a major case of student syndrome. With no date set to deliver, they had no incentive to finish. If you hire me to paint your house, I'll say "sure, happy to help." If you hire me to paint your house by Friday, I'll say "where's the paint can?"
- dschobel 17y agosee also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law
- est 17y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1003060 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1003060
- randallsquared 17y agoBut we also hear "Ship it when it's ready." These conflicting messages are so confusing... ;)
- colinplamondon 17y agoYou have to have to pre-define 'ready' with your team to be able to know when to ship.
- aaronblohowiak 17y agoTime or scope. Pick one.
- msg 17y agoRands in Repose: Incrementalists & Completionists http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/08/05/incrementalists_completionists.html http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/08/05/incremental...
- tetha 17y agoSoftware never is "ready". Software might just be "ready enough", whereas "ready enough" depends on audience and domain, I think. For example, an in-house alpha test version for a game might be "ready enough" if the software can display a ball the user can control, while a mars rover control system is "ready enough" for actual mars deployment after years and years of testing.
- swombat 17y agoDuke Nukem Forever isn't dead. It's just hanging out with Elvis for a little while, before the time to come back is right.
- colinplamondon 17y agoIt seems like the big problem was that they were trying to be on the cutting edge by licensing other engines. But, by the time a engine is available for licensing, the flagship title (Doom 3, Half Life 2, whatever) has already shipped and set the new standard. At the same time, they wanted to have the best looking game available, despite always being behind the curve in their base technology.
- dkarl 17y agoSheer hubris. They had a certain sense of humor, they had Duke, and they had a knack for creative physics ideas that affected gameplay, like Duke 3D's cameras, mirrors, and shrink-ray. They could have made a really fun game that was a year behind on the graphics and physics engines. But they wanted to be the best at everything.
- snprbob86 17y agoMost of the best games on those engines were produced by teams who used the engine as a starting point and built their own tech on top. Many games even contribute back to the parent engine project. Some that stick out in my mind are Soldier of Fortune (complete new damage system for Quake 3), Bioshock (advanced water effects for Unreal 3), Counter Strike (more reliable networking for Source), but there are countless more examples.
- defen 17y agoAnother great example is the original Half-Life - built on an extremely heavily modified Quake (1!) engine.
- krakensden 17y agoOr the Call of Duty games- 1 and 2 were both heavily modified Quake 3, even CoD 3 was still a Quake 3 base with a brand new rendering engine.
- TeHCrAzY 17y agoSource Engine is essentially the original HL engine + years of heavy duty modification. (This may somewhat fall afoul of the "replace all the parts in the robot one by one, is it still the same robot?" identity problem). I've never ceased to be amazed at just how flexible the orignal HL engine turned out to be!
- maukdaddy 17y agoFail early. Fail often.
- sfk 17y agoFour legs good, two legs bad. Or the other way round.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoI don't think the points on this comment should be negative. To expand - the message I take from it is that it's easy to mouth platitudes (and indeed, "mouth platitudes" is a platitude that I've just mouthed) but in some cases they just don't apply. The big game business cannot work on the basis of "Fail early. Fail often." and to trot out that aphorism smacks of cargo-cult thinking. Such phrases as "Fail early. Fail often." are to be regarded as starting points, something to consider, not as implacable, infallible advice. Unfortunately all too often it is taken as such. My advice - to be taken with a pinch of salt - is that everytime you hear a well-worn phrase, stop. Is it really applicable in this context? That's the message I get from "Four legs good, two legs bad." Probably you'd get the same message if you stopped and thought about it. In this forum, it's a shame if you didn't.
- RevRal 17y agoSome comments are victims of drive-by downvotes, and it is annoying. I see this problem a lot with nested comments, where people fail to read the comment within the context of the parent. I would really like to see more people explaining their downvotes. Maybe, through this, they'd figure out the source of the quote and its point would be brought into better focus.
- jodrellblank 17y agohttp://lesswrong.com/lw/k5/cached_thoughts/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/k5/cached_thoughts/
- vaporstun 17y agoSingle Page: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1
- woid 17y agosecond system effect? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect
- abossy 17y agoI definitely think so. I remember reading an Gabe Newell interview in a 1999 PC Gamer magazine about this. Newell stated that, after the excellent critical acclaim of Half-Life, that he wasn't eager to begin Half-Life 2, because, "our fans will expect it to be the best game ever." Alas, six years later, Newell and Valve was able to deliver a worthy sequel. The Duke crowd certainly had the same problem, but perhaps lacked the managerial skills and vision necessary of such a project.
- jcl 17y agoThe same is true of Team Fortress 2, which took Valve ten years and multiple from-scratch rewrites but was eventually released to wild success. It's like the DNF story rewritten to have a happy ending.
- arohner 17y agoDoes anyone have numbers on how much those 10 years cost, and how much they made on TF2? I got TF2 for free with the orange box, which I bought primarily for portal and HL2e2.
- msg 17y agoI don't know, but I bought Orange Box for TF2, and was surprised to find Portal lurking in there.
- ricree 17y agoYeah, it would definitely be tough to figure the numbers out. I got the orange box mostly for TF2, and I'm sure I'm hardly alone. But other than the actual TF2 only purchases, it's tough to separate how many units TF2 really shipped.
- gkoberger 17y agoI feel this is extremely relevant to startups. Most startups have no "end"- at least Duke Nukem had a goal ("release"). With startups, they really just go on forever. No startup will ever be finished, and it is far too easy to just keep toiling away with no real goal. If startups had a set end date where the developers moved on, I would argue that we'd have more useful projects coming out of the Bay Area.
- dkarl 17y ago"The way a program looks in the end is not important because there is rarely an end, and if there is one it isn't planned." -- Richard Gabriel Developers should think and work with this quote in mind, but management (whether it's company management or a person's internal monitor) has to steer them to specific milestones and release points. A release schedule with feature goals imposes a peristaltic rhythm on development, which prevents developers from getting stuck on one aspect of development or straining for a too-distant goal.
- swombat 17y agoThat's easily countered by launching as early as possible.
- gkoberger 17y agoSure, you can launch. But then what? You still have nothing but time. You can set milestones, and releases. However, since there will never be a "shipped" or "finished" product, many startups end up having no direction. After all, they have forever to get it right.
- Retric 17y agoIMO, software has cycles. Early systems have lot's of known issues that can be quickly fixed. Then mid cycle have little or nothing minor wrong and so you tackle one or more major issues. Then your back to having lot's of little bugs to fix. Microsoft has discovered you can sell both parts of the cycle both new features aka Vista and then bug fixes Windows 7. But, when people talk about the minimum valuable product what they really mean is the smallest cycle where you get something people will pay for at the end. The secret is to setup your cycles so you make enough money to keep going and or know when to let a product keep without investing in the next cycle. EX: Windows ME. Or Coke with sugar, new Coke with corn syrup, Classic Coca-Cola with corn syrup. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola
- Quarrelsome 17y agoI felt like crying. What a terribly, terribly sad tale. :(
- sutro 17y agoReminds me of another deeply troubled project out of the Dallas-area FPS community circa 1999: John Romero and ION Storm's development of "Daikatana," as described by this excellent Dallas Observer article: http://www.dallasobserver.com/1999-01-14/news/stormy-weather/ http://www.dallasobserver.com/1999-01-14/news/stormy-weather...
- nickelplate 17y agoThis article in Geoff Keighley's "Behind the Games" series: http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/ http://www.gamespot.com/features/btg-daikatana/, provides a more complete account of the story of Daikatana. Without Eidos, and had Romero been as rich as 3D Realms at the time, I am convinced that Daikatana would have ended up as another DNF.
- abossy 17y agoDaikatana basically did end up like DNF, although it was finally shipped after nearly three years of delays to critical disappointment. The time frame of the original was similar to DN as was the hype. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana
- nickelplate 17y agoWell I wouldn't label it as another DNF, precisely because it shipped. But I get your point.
- Ygor 17y agoWhat do you think about all those developers who, as the article says, spent a decade working on a project and now have nothing to show for it? Do you think they really have nothing to show for it? Do they take a part of the blame? I mean, they still have a decade of experience in 3D game development and, as it seems, working with some of the newest technologies out there. Would you consider hiring them, or would you rather hire someone who spent a decade working for someone who was a better leader than Broussard and actually finished some projects?
- potatolicious 17y agoIn the game industry the standard metric is "titles shipped" - you will see this as minimum requirements for various job postings. Not having enough titles shipped on your belt is deadly. It's hard to get people to even look at your resume.
- snprbob86 17y agoIt appears that the studio leadership allowed the artists to showcase some of their work to help them find jobs: http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=70670 http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=70670 Programmers might not have been so lucky...
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoWouldn't "developer for Duke Nukem Forever" carry a certain cachet in the industry?
- jonursenbach 17y agoFeature creep is never a good thing.
- messel 17y agoPart of our psychology as humans needs a deadline then. I shall go forth and create by Friday then!
- gvb 17y agoThursday. Friday is Christmas, Santa will deliver.
- jmtame 17y agoWow. If you watch the trailer, the gate that closes on a monster actually crumples where the monster gets stuck underneath it. This seems like one of those guys who really nit-picks down to the very last detail. It's probably like having a Steve Jobs around, except without the sense of urgency for shipping the actual product. Saying to your team "we could build for 5 years and not deliver anything" is probably not the right attitude you want to instill in a gaming upstart. I was really blown away when a friend showed me that you could blow up parts of buildings in a recent popular game, and then I realized that the effect wasn't all that glamorous after buying the game. It wasn't as if you were dynamically destroying buildings, they just had pre-calculated bits and pieces that would fall off if you shot near them. Broussard would have said "no, the buildings have to be destroyed dynamically" and at that point, the game would never have been shipped. On top of that, 18 developers? The effects they were after seemed really cool, but as the article pointed out, game teams are growing: "The long grind began to wear on the staff. The Duke Nukem Forever team was unusually small; by 2003, only 18 people were working on it full time. This might have been adequate back when the game was announced in the mid-’90s. But in the years that Broussard had spent tweaking Duke Nukem Forever, games had become bigger and bigger. It wasn’t unusual for a developer now to throw 50 people or more at a single title. In essence, 3-D games had grown up: It’s as if Hollywood had evolved from tiny hand-cranked three-minute reels to two-hour epic blockbusters in half a decade." I don't think this guy had anywhere near enough people to get this done.
- drawkbox 17y agoWell considering it was pre-production and research, many game titles start off with teams this small. Blizzard only had 20-25 on World of Warcraft before it went into produciton (i.e. the systems ready to start producing assets in). Now they have thousands, but before you get to production game teams are pretty small. Even to this day here is their team: Interesting Internals at Blizzard on World of Warcraft Team: - team structure max 5-8 people - 32 programmers total - 51 artists total - 10 production total - 37 designers total Output: - 5.5 million lines of code - 1.5 million assets - 900,000 web files Points of interest: - leads still work (art lead creates art, programming lead codes) - structure team around employee skills and strengths - 20,000 computer systems - 1.3 petabytes of storage Total people supporting (only 120 people actually making the game) - total 4600 people support http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25307 http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25307
- diggboard 17y ago"I've got balls of steel"
- alanthonyc 17y agoThe worst case of procrastination ever.
- elblanco 17y agoThe problem is likely that Broussard wanted to make the DN game that would last forever. It would be perfect and without flaw. He did this instead of just shipping one in a series of polished games (which he could have made over the last decade+). I remember when one of my friends was hired at 3DR and lamented when they were going about one of their engine changes. None of the art assets were usable after the change, meaning they could have just finished up the old game, shipped and then started work on the next one and shipped that too.
- jurjenh 17y agoThat first statement kinda reminds me of Xanadu... (wonder if they're ever going to call it quits) The main problem with doing a sequel to a top-selling paradigm shift project is that the sequel by its very nature will not be able to repeat the paradigm shift and still stay true to the original. Or at least its so hard that there are very, very few examples. I'd imagine that being part of that original team blinds you somewhat to the practicalities of releasing a sequel. What I would love to see though, is all that unfinished work (if it is still around) being released to the public, so that duke enthusiasts can collaborate and "finish" some of the work to a playable standard...
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- johnl 17y agoThat why it's a good thing to get rid of the founder when the company gets to a certain point some times. Broussard was never really running a business. It may have been a lot of fun, but never really a business.
- 10ren 17y agoOne of the terrible things about being your own boss is you have no one to push back against, and ridicule for their moronic opinions about cashflow, release it ready or not etc. Instead, you have to play that role too.
- bkbleikamp 17y agoIf you've never read the book Predictably Irrational there is an interesting chapter regarding a professor who performed an experiment with deadlines for his 3 papers due in the semester. [simplified] Class 1: Set your own deadlines Class 2: Strict deadlines from the professor Class 3: No deadlines Guess who performed best? Strict deadlines. [edit] Also, I highly recommend the book : http://www.predictablyirrational.com/ http://www.predictablyirrational.com/
- rapind 17y agoWould be interesting if they open sourced it. Maybe some of the original developer's would get involved.
- jlgosse 17y agoThis story is great and all, but it isn't complete. Why don't they mention the original, side-scrolling Duke Nukem games for the PC? I'm pretty sure I remember owning 2-3 side-scrolling, baddy-shooting Nukem games, and they were equally as awesome.
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