7 ms·

Duke Nukem Forever Gets Delayed... again

133 points by mrschwabe 16y ago

bron 16y ago
Mis-read the title as 'Duke Nukem Gets Forever Delayed'
huyegn 16y ago
Part of me thinks this is a genius marketing ploy. Seriously, outside of the few remaining die-hard fans, who even knew that Duke Nukem forever was still being developed? I certainly didn't before this piece of news, and I'll now be watching when they release the thing to see how it goes.
pauldisneyiv 16y ago
Sounds like Duke hasn't run out of gum yet....
michaelty 16y ago
I hope I can pass this experience on to my grandchildren.
- iwwr 16y ago
  Like the Second Coming of the Messiah, the arrival of DNF (The Second Shipping (or third, if we count the apocryphal side-scrolling Duke)) will be a basis for a future religion.
  - ShardPhoenix 16y ago
    There were two Duke Nuk[ue]m side scrollers.
    - iwwr 16y ago
      Heretical tales not part of the Canon...
- bluedanieru 16y ago
  I hope my grandchildren get to play DNF.
cryptoz 16y ago
The Duke Nuken Forever List is my favourite place to check out at times like this. > Things that have taken less time than Duke Nukem Forever's Development: The United States' entire program to put a man on the moon, from Kennedy's challenge to the landing. http://duke.a-13.net/ http://duke.a-13.net/
- jamaicahest 16y ago
  Elite IV migh find it's way onto that list, if they keep up this pace.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- boredguy8 16y ago
  > Steve Jobs was still running NeXT when Duke Nukem Forever was announced. And xkcd has a "a list of things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written", but that was in 2009. http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/05/07/duke-nukem-forever/ http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/05/07/duke-nukem-forever/ So it's almost time for "A few things that happened since 'a list of things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written' was published."
joelackner 16y ago
"duke never comes early" cheeky bastards.
JoelMcCracken 16y ago
Yes, but games always get delayed. It isn't surprising that the new developer is subject to the same forces that delay everyone else.
jedsmith 16y ago
I've never worked on a AAA game, with a fancy engine and an art department and motion capture and so on. That said, I can't help but wonder how this has been in development 14 years. What failures of management and process took place here? It seems like once Gearbox got control, there was an entirely brand-new development effort (I could be wrong, that's what it seems like, though). Importantly, could Programming, Motherfucker have fixed this? Or could the game have been so far ahead of its time that they were waiting on hardware able to run it? Or -- my personal theory -- were they not working on it for 14 years, and they just told the public they were ... some kind of 20% project that ended up having press releases and screenshots?
- eli 16y ago
  If you're curious: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1
  - jedsmith 16y ago
    Thank you, I am; that's on my list for reading at home this evening. From skimming, it looks like managerial incompetence, which is unsurprising.
    - artmageddon 16y ago
      Ultimately it can be boiled down to that kind of incompetence, but I got the impression that they HAD to be the best by the time they released... but the bar kept getting raised each time a new game came out(Quake, Unreal, Quake II, etc), and thus got delayed to perpetuity.
      - larrik 16y ago
        The root issue is that they interpreted "the best" to be "the best at every single feature," which is completely ridiculous. The fact is that the Duke3d had an atmosphere, depth, and immersive-ness that most games since haven't matched. They definitely should have been able to release a game within a few years that was the best game for its time. Tycho at PennyArcade wrote a great piece about it yesterday: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/3/23/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/3/23/
JanezStupar 16y ago
Well I for one welcome our always late to the party overlord. Wanna speculate about stealth April 1st launch?
- spydum 16y ago
  I wondered that myself.. you still get the free PR for claiming to be late (which everyone expected), but then you get MORE PR for being early, and an April fools joke.. who knows..
SaltwaterC 16y ago
Darn. I though I could play a GNU Hurd port of this title somewhere around this year. Tough luck ...
- tjr 16y ago
  Yeah, but we did see the release of Volume 4A.
  - samatman 16y ago
    It remains to be seen, however, whether we'll actually get A Dance with Dragons.
arnorhs 16y ago
It's pretty obvious that this delay is a pure marketing stunt. It's a pretty obvious one, but I mean, developing this title, you kind of have to!
- mrschwabe 16y ago
  Hmm, I don't think it was a pure marketing stunt. They simply embraced the situation - and leveraged it for some extra publicity.
dgallagher 16y ago
Personally I was hoping for a February 29th release date this year.
zavulon 16y ago
I feel even more confident about my 2011 prediction: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970634 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970634
charlief 16y ago
Another good resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_history_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_history_of_Duke_Nuk...
9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago
Alright, which one of you keep sending ID software boxes of Bazooka Joe bubble gum?
qwertymaniac 16y ago
I now get the joke with 'forever'.
- Refringe 16y ago
  Really? Just now?
raniskeet 16y ago
Let's admit to ourselves. We don't want duke nukem forever to be released. It's legendary.
- ilovecomputers 16y ago
  But we were so close this time. We even had demos at a game conference!
- dkersten 16y ago
  Of course. If it ever gets released, it will be a giant let down. Nothing they release now, no matter how good, will live up to 14 years of expectations.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    I played DNF at PAX. The graphics are a bit dated, but goddamn is it fun. In an era where every shooter has to be hyper-realistic and penned by Tom Clancy himself, Duke is kind of a breath of fresh air.
    - jamesbkel 16y ago
      Second that. Graphics were passable but it was damn fun.
      - dkersten 16y ago
        Sure, but I've played games that were incredibly fun and had a tiny (or none at all) budget and were finished in a matter of months. DNF will have to be very special to make up for the 14 year wait. If people make fun games in 6 months, I'd expect DNF to have a lot more. I still play Genesis games, so graphical flash isn't something I put much value on, usually, but after such a long development time, I'd expect DNF to be at least on-par with the current generation of high end game AS WELL AS being fun and addictive, having replayability, great storyline, physics, AI, dialogue whatever. So (IMO) my point stands: no matter how great DNF really is, it will never live up to the expectations built up by 1) previous DN games, 2) marketing and hype, 3) the 14 years of development and 4) the amount of money 3D Realms and Gearbox Software put into it. Thats my opinion anyway.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
olegious 16y ago
haha
- olegious 16y ago
  how is it not funny that this game, that has been years in the making, is delayed again? I think they're trying to go for the Daikitana record...
  - newobj 16y ago
    John Romero started writing the design for Daikatana in February 1997 and it shipped in April 2000. I don't think that's much of a record.
    - iwwr 16y ago
      3 years development (2 if we discount the abandoned Quake engine work) is standard for a large project with lots of content. Although, around 1996 there was little experience in what a big project entailed.
caf 16y ago
Surely this is the classic tech "dog bites man" story.
jonursenbach 16y ago
I'm convinced that it's not actually delayed, but rather Gearbox is trolling all of us.
jacques_chester 16y ago
I'm glad to see that the new development team will stay true to the source material.
Semiapies 16y ago
Idle, evidence-free speculation: I suspect that Gearbox completely started the project over when they got the trademarks. I suspect that they didn't use a single line of whatever morass of code in various stages of abandonment or obsolescence that they got out of acquiring the property. I think they dove in and built a game from the ground up. Perhaps there were art assets worth using, but perhaps not even that.
jacques_chester 16y ago
It boggles the mind how much money this would have cost in forgone earnings. Perfection comes at a high price. Duke had and retains the power to be an absolutely massive franchise. With a steady tick-tock development model, you could pump out new Duke games every 18 months and be raking in hundreds of millions per release by now. And that's before considering movies, tie-ins and merchandising. Perfection has destroyed value.
thatusertwo 16y ago
Duke Nukem Forever Delayed

133 points by mrschwabe 16y ago

bron 16y ago

Mis-read the title as 'Duke Nukem Gets Forever Delayed'

Part of me thinks this is a genius marketing ploy. Seriously, outside of the few remaining die-hard fans, who even knew that Duke Nukem forever was still being developed? I certainly didn't before this piece of news, and I'll now be watching when they release the thing to see how it goes.

pauldisneyiv 16y ago

Sounds like Duke hasn't run out of gum yet....

michaelty 16y ago

I hope I can pass this experience on to my grandchildren.

iwwr 16y ago
Like the Second Coming of the Messiah, the arrival of DNF (The Second Shipping (or third, if we count the apocryphal side-scrolling Duke)) will be a basis for a future religion.
- ShardPhoenix 16y ago
  There were two Duke Nuk[ue]m side scrollers.
  - iwwr 16y ago
    Heretical tales not part of the Canon...
bluedanieru 16y ago
I hope my grandchildren get to play DNF.

cryptoz 16y ago

The Duke Nuken Forever List is my favourite place to check out at times like this. > Things that have taken less time than Duke Nukem Forever's Development: The United States' entire program to put a man on the moon, from Kennedy's challenge to the landing. http://duke.a-13.net/ http://duke.a-13.net/

jamaicahest 16y ago
Elite IV migh find it's way onto that list, if they keep up this pace.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
boredguy8 16y ago
> Steve Jobs was still running NeXT when Duke Nukem Forever was announced. And xkcd has a "a list of things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written", but that was in 2009. http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/05/07/duke-nukem-forever/ http://blag.xkcd.com/2009/05/07/duke-nukem-forever/ So it's almost time for "A few things that happened since 'a list of things that happened since the List of Things That Have Happened Since Duke Nukem Forever Was Announced was written' was published."

joelackner 16y ago

"duke never comes early" cheeky bastards.

JoelMcCracken 16y ago

Yes, but games always get delayed. It isn't surprising that the new developer is subject to the same forces that delay everyone else.

jedsmith 16y ago

I've never worked on a AAA game, with a fancy engine and an art department and motion capture and so on. That said, I can't help but wonder how this has been in development 14 years. What failures of management and process took place here? It seems like once Gearbox got control, there was an entirely brand-new development effort (I could be wrong, that's what it seems like, though). Importantly, could Programming, Motherfucker have fixed this? Or could the game have been so far ahead of its time that they were waiting on hardware able to run it? Or -- my personal theory -- were they not working on it for 14 years, and they just told the public they were ... some kind of 20% project that ended up having press releases and screenshots?

eli 16y ago
If you're curious: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1
- jedsmith 16y ago
  Thank you, I am; that's on my list for reading at home this evening. From skimming, it looks like managerial incompetence, which is unsurprising.
  - artmageddon 16y ago
    Ultimately it can be boiled down to that kind of incompetence, but I got the impression that they HAD to be the best by the time they released... but the bar kept getting raised each time a new game came out(Quake, Unreal, Quake II, etc), and thus got delayed to perpetuity.
    - larrik 16y ago
      The root issue is that they interpreted "the best" to be "the best at every single feature," which is completely ridiculous. The fact is that the Duke3d had an atmosphere, depth, and immersive-ness that most games since haven't matched. They definitely should have been able to release a game within a few years that was the best game for its time. Tycho at PennyArcade wrote a great piece about it yesterday: http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/3/23/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/2011/3/23/

JanezStupar 16y ago

Well I for one welcome our always late to the party overlord. Wanna speculate about stealth April 1st launch?

spydum 16y ago
I wondered that myself.. you still get the free PR for claiming to be late (which everyone expected), but then you get MORE PR for being early, and an April fools joke.. who knows..

SaltwaterC 16y ago

Darn. I though I could play a GNU Hurd port of this title somewhere around this year. Tough luck ...

tjr 16y ago
Yeah, but we did see the release of Volume 4A.
- samatman 16y ago
  It remains to be seen, however, whether we'll actually get A Dance with Dragons.

arnorhs 16y ago

It's pretty obvious that this delay is a pure marketing stunt. It's a pretty obvious one, but I mean, developing this title, you kind of have to!

mrschwabe 16y ago
Hmm, I don't think it was a pure marketing stunt. They simply embraced the situation - and leveraged it for some extra publicity.

dgallagher 16y ago

Personally I was hoping for a February 29th release date this year.

zavulon 16y ago

I feel even more confident about my 2011 prediction: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970634 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1970634

charlief 16y ago

Another good resource: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_history_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_history_of_Duke_Nuk...

9ec4c12949a4f3 16y ago

Alright, which one of you keep sending ID software boxes of Bazooka Joe bubble gum?

qwertymaniac 16y ago

I now get the joke with 'forever'.

Refringe 16y ago
Really? Just now?

raniskeet 16y ago

Let's admit to ourselves. We don't want duke nukem forever to be released. It's legendary.

ilovecomputers 16y ago
But we were so close this time. We even had demos at a game conference!
dkersten 16y ago
Of course. If it ever gets released, it will be a giant let down. Nothing they release now, no matter how good, will live up to 14 years of expectations.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  I played DNF at PAX. The graphics are a bit dated, but goddamn is it fun. In an era where every shooter has to be hyper-realistic and penned by Tom Clancy himself, Duke is kind of a breath of fresh air.
  - jamesbkel 16y ago
    Second that. Graphics were passable but it was damn fun.
    - dkersten 16y ago
      Sure, but I've played games that were incredibly fun and had a tiny (or none at all) budget and were finished in a matter of months. DNF will have to be very special to make up for the 14 year wait. If people make fun games in 6 months, I'd expect DNF to have a lot more. I still play Genesis games, so graphical flash isn't something I put much value on, usually, but after such a long development time, I'd expect DNF to be at least on-par with the current generation of high end game AS WELL AS being fun and addictive, having replayability, great storyline, physics, AI, dialogue whatever. So (IMO) my point stands: no matter how great DNF really is, it will never live up to the expectations built up by 1) previous DN games, 2) marketing and hype, 3) the 14 years of development and 4) the amount of money 3D Realms and Gearbox Software put into it. Thats my opinion anyway.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

olegious 16y ago

haha

olegious 16y ago
how is it not funny that this game, that has been years in the making, is delayed again? I think they're trying to go for the Daikitana record...
- newobj 16y ago
  John Romero started writing the design for Daikatana in February 1997 and it shipped in April 2000. I don't think that's much of a record.
  - iwwr 16y ago
    3 years development (2 if we discount the abandoned Quake engine work) is standard for a large project with lots of content. Although, around 1996 there was little experience in what a big project entailed.

caf 16y ago

Surely this is the classic tech "dog bites man" story.

jonursenbach 16y ago

I'm convinced that it's not actually delayed, but rather Gearbox is trolling all of us.

jacques_chester 16y ago

I'm glad to see that the new development team will stay true to the source material.

Semiapies 16y ago

Idle, evidence-free speculation: I suspect that Gearbox completely started the project over when they got the trademarks. I suspect that they didn't use a single line of whatever morass of code in various stages of abandonment or obsolescence that they got out of acquiring the property. I think they dove in and built a game from the ground up. Perhaps there were art assets worth using, but perhaps not even that.

jacques_chester 16y ago

It boggles the mind how much money this would have cost in forgone earnings. Perfection comes at a high price. Duke had and retains the power to be an absolutely massive franchise. With a steady tick-tock development model, you could pump out new Duke games every 18 months and be raking in hundreds of millions per release by now. And that's before considering movies, tie-ins and merchandising. Perfection has destroyed value.

thatusertwo 16y ago

Duke Nukem Forever Delayed