Sorry kids, it looks like the fairytale is over.  3D Realms has closed its doors due to a lack of funding.  The Studio was famous for bringing you the dude who kicked ass and chewed bubblegum (when he had it that is), Duke Nukem, and published other hit games such as Max Payne and Prey.  In recent years it became harder and harder to bring 3D Realms into a conversation without someone complaining on how long it was taking them to develop Duke Nukem Forever, a title which had been in the works for 12 years and 9 days. Now that the studio has closed its doors, it’s time we here at Go Gaming Giant search for answers, get our kick-ass crystal ball and try to predict the future. Is DNF ever going to be finished? Join us after the break.

So why did Duke Nukem Forever take so long to make? To answer that question you have to go way back to when the game was first announced, April 28th 1997, and look back at the development in retrospect. When announced, DNF was set to utilise the then state-of-the-art Quake II 3D engine. In June 1998, 3D Realms confirmed that DNF would be rocking the first Unreal engine and it was stated that the game would be out in 1999. That year came and went, as did the millennium year, and there was still no Duke. We got our first look of gameplay footage from DNF in a trailer shown at E3 2001. This trailer has been embedded below.

This is where the story gets interesting. The following is a forum post by someone who claimed to be an ex-3D Realms employee:

“The 2001 trailer was 100% scripted cinematic, and not actual gameplay. They built specific demo maps just to record video from to make a trailer. Everything you see in that trailer was phony.

The typical work flow there went something like this:
Designer would be assigned a task (build a new map, rebuild an old map, polish a bit of a map, etc.). Designer would work on said task for two, three weeks, a month, all the while lower management would be looking over it and making sure it was going in a “good general direction.” Designer would move on to another task. A month or two later upper management would finally look at the work and say, “It’s all wrong, do it again.” Rinse, repeat.

Entire maps would be done from the ground up, almost to beta quality, and then thrown out simply because no one would make decisions early on in the process. (Read up on Valve’s ‘orange box’ method of design — that’s how you make games)

Another example of  WTF  is the fact that there was one part of one map that was being worked on before I started working there. Nineteen months later and the same designer was still working on the same part of that same map… I’m not blaming the designer, it wasn’t his fault.

I think the biggest problem that the company had in general is being self-funded. When you’re a developer working directly with a publisher and you have milestones to meet it’s a whole different ballgame. If you don’t meet those milestones, you don’t get any money. That right there will keep your project on schedule. If, however, you’re funding it yourself, you don’t really have anyone to answer to except yourself and you can quickly lose sight of just how much money is going out the door.“

This claim was then countered by an official response on the 3D Realms forums:

“It was originally posted on Something Awful, and I posted a followup. Unfortunately the guy who posted it wasn’t there when the trailer was developed, and he’s mistaken.

Everything but the sandworm and the “talking” parts were just clips of gameplay from the game as-is, other than some effort to polish them up. The talking parts were written for the trailer, but were accurate representations of the story being told and were intended for real use.

So while those bits were “scripted” they would be scripted in the final shipping game too, but all the rest (vehicles, weapons, AI, games, etc) were straight from the production playable game.“

So who’s telling the truth? I’ll leave you to be the judge of that one.

Welcome to 2007. We’re on the 5th game engine change, have had two or three teeny-weeny-eye-strain sized screenshots posted on 3d Realms job adverts and still, Duke Nukem Forever fails to appear on store shelves. Out of nowhere, on December 19th a teaser trailer is posted online (see below). It shows off some sleek, High-Def graphics and Duke pumping some iron. The trailer ends with two words which seem to sum up the game’s development up until this point, “Stay tuned”.

The internet goes bananas. This excitement is the heightened when in June 2008, The Jace Hall Show manages to snag an interview with 3D Realms head honchos George Broussard and Scott Miller. The interview concludes withs Jace getting to test DNF at its current state. Blurred off-screen footage ensues.

Who would have thought that a few months later, a global economic crisis would begin and that 3D Realms would be forced to close due to lack of funding just under a year after the above video was released.

So going back to my original question:

Why did Duke Nukem Forever take so long to make?

Well, a big chunk of the problem was the fact that the game had gone through five different game engines. Once a company buys a new game engine, they need to take time to get to know how to get the most out of it. Now multiply that time by five and that’s almost a year, if not two years, of the development time right there. So what were they doing for the other ten years? If you believe the forum post by the ‘ex-employee’, the work ethics  at 3d Realms meant that things had to be done perfectly or not at all. If it’s not perfect it’s scrapped and you start again. That’s the beauty of funding your own project, you have no boundaries when it comes to release time frames. Sadly, this is a downside when you exploit the ability to start again several times and the result is a game 13 years in the making.

So will the game ever be released?

According to the game’s producer George Broussard just last month, the game was 90% complete. The following is a quote from his twitter feed:

Closing out a milestone this week. 71 more tasks to do and we started with probably 800-900. Been a good push. Next one starts Monday.

He had also sent the following image on twitter 2 months earlier, showing that the game was entering the stage of tweaking the User interface, usually done towards the end of a games development cycle.

With a game so close to release, what’s going to happen to it? The truth is, I don’t know. Nobody in the blogisphere knows. The only people with the power to make a decision are Take Two, the game’s would be publishers. If the game were to be released, the project could go two ways, they could either release the source code to the public for them to pick up the pieces, or pass it on to another developer and let them finish it. The second option would be more viable, but then again, who would want to fund a project that has taken so long to develop, even if it is so close to completion. If the source code was release, only hardcore indie games developers or software pirates could continue the work as most of the files would require industry standard software to get anything decent out of it.

What have 3D Realms (or what’s left of them) got to say about this?

Nothing, Just a simple goodbye. oh and the photo below. People who’ve had the game pre-ordered for the last 12 years may want to print it out and put this on a dartboard.

So, unless someone gets off their backside, that’s the end of Duke Nukem?

Not entirely. Remember, we still have the Duke Nukem Trilogy on PSP and DS to look forward to. But once that’s released, yes, this is the end of Duke Nukem.

Sorry guys, Duke Nukem Forever is a game that, as of this moment in time, is destined to stay at 90% completion. It took 12 years to make and there was never going to be a way of meeting the level of hype and frustration surrounding the game.  There were jokes, too many jokes, but in the end DNF should have stood for Did Not Finish. We were close, but alas, no cigar for our buddy Duke.

…Or is there?