George Broussard needs to STFU IMO.

May 7, 2009 3:17 AM

It was announced on April 28th, 1997. The plan was to use the cutting edge Quake 2 engine. Its gameplay trailer was shown in 1998. The plan was to use the cutting edge Unreal engine. Its gameplay trailer was shown in 2001. The plan was to use the cutting edge Meqon physics engine. The plan was to a use custom, cutting edge engine. The plan was not to use the cutting edge Doom 3 engine. The plan was to use a heavily-modified Unreal engine. Its gameplay trailer was shown in 2007. The plans didn't pan out. But some other stuff happened on the way.
posted by duende (94 comments total)

Damn. We'll need a new running joke, then.
posted by eriko at 3:20 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Looks like they're all outta gum.
posted by Mikey-San at 3:31 AM on May 7, 2009 [17 favorites]

Damn. No free Dr. Pepper for this one.
posted by qvantamon at 3:31 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Its not quite dead. The source ain't being opened, and Take Two is still holding onto the name rights. But, yeah, they haven't said that they're going to actually do anything with it.

13 years later and "active development" has stopped.

What I want to know is how can I get into a sweet deal like that. They went 13 years, getting funding, and produced bupkis. Even televangelists have to get on TV every week. The DN4 team didn't even do most trade shows, just tossed out the occasional press release or bit of concept art.
posted by sotonohito at 3:44 AM on May 7, 2009

That's one doomed space marine games developer.
posted by greycap at 3:54 AM on May 7, 2009

Shake it, baby!
posted by slimepuppy at 3:55 AM on May 7, 2009

Yeah, that's kinda infuriating. I'm not going to expire from disappointment at missing out on another Duke Nukem game, but I do feel like there should be some sort of rule where other groups can now develop a Duke Nukem game without being sued into oblivion. The record of Broussard's involvement is extraordinary. It's difficult not to feel (although perhaps not justifiably) that the game would've been out long ago if not for him.
posted by Ritchie at 3:59 AM on May 7, 2009

How could it still be infuriating after all these years? I don't know anyone for whom Duke was anything more than something to chuckle at at this point.

I'll miss duke.a-13.net more than I'll miss Duke Nukem.
posted by CRM114 at 4:01 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

for some previous mefite discussions, here is a discussion about vaporware in general, but you know - duke nukem forever is the prevailing topic - and here we are last summer.

but! don't despair nerds who believe like a 4 year old on christmas, dreams don't die.
posted by nadawi at 4:08 AM on May 7, 2009

Bruce Campbell was unavailable for comment.
posted by Smart Dalek at 4:09 AM on May 7, 2009

Wired might have to hire someone to write their vaporware list this year instead of just reprinting the previous one.
posted by tommasz at 4:15 AM on May 7, 2009

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a laser trip mine but a whimper.
posted by permafrost at 4:34 AM on May 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

To quote that last link:
"World War II and the entire Manhattan Project. Yes, even the complete development of the atomic bomb took less time."

Wow. Broussard, you suck.
posted by opsin at 4:34 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

I guess that not only is he all out of gum, he's all out of kick-ass too now
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 4:38 AM on May 7, 2009

Don't worry, this non-existent game isn't gone as long as it continues to non-exist in our hearts.
posted by DU at 4:39 AM on May 7, 2009 [4 favorites]

.
posted by cjorgensen at 4:49 AM on May 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

Perhaps we should get Valve to develop it instead. They've got a good track record of popping out good FPSes, after all, with compelling storylines and excellent gameplay. And they even finished Team Fortress 2, a once preeminent member of the vaporware community, 2 years ago - incidentally, an excellent game, with the added bonus of a thriving MetaFilter community playing it.

Come to think of it, there are some similarities between the Half-Life series and Duke Nukem - one man with enhanced alien-fighting capabilities running around bashing, shooting and blowing aliens up. True, the characters are quite different (action hero vs. strong, silent type), but the trope is there. In both worlds, the aliens start enslaving humanity.

So, at the very least, Valve knows how to make a (good) game involving a man shooting aliens. A REAL game, too. One that is actually played by people.

The difference between 3D Realms and Valve is that one became successful and influential while the other... well, apparently the other burned through piles of money and played lots of WoW.
posted by WalterMitty at 4:58 AM on May 7, 2009

Duke Nukem is going on. According to Kotaku

"Deep Silver and Apogee Software are not affected by the situation at 3D Realms," reads the statement. "Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned."

posted by sien at 5:03 AM on May 7, 2009

It's really a shame. I got to play the game and it was awesome. You can see ever coarse stiff little hair on the pig men and they don't sweat because pigs don't sweat but if they did they would glisten and when you fired a rocket at them the sweat would blow off them and in that little droplet you could behold the who environment hanging there upside down in the smoke. There was this alien. Man you got to see it. It was like a crude dude and really macho and it was probably like 4 stories tall and had a gun for a mouth. There was this weapon that turned enemies into frogs and another weapon that turned frogs into enemies and another weapon that turned enemies into spikes and another weapon that shot spikes and another one that would shoot enemies into spike. If there were spikes around.

There were toilets and strippers the strippers would dance even during a gun battle. They had really realistic gyrating AI. Like if a pole was slippery with blood from an expoded pigman they wouldn't try and spin upside down from that pole. There was a grenade that when it exploded shot out grenades and those grenades shot out spikes. What Family Feud is to Jeopardy Duke Nukem forever is to the Pope. Oh and at the end of the game Duke sees a piece of trash on the ground and he has a singular tear (they developed his character to care about the environment) but the best part in the tear the graphics are so good that you can see everything reflected in the tear and there are so many spikes.
posted by I Foody at 5:04 AM on May 7, 2009 [61 favorites]

After a few days of R&R, he'll be ready for more action!
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 5:20 AM on May 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

Hail to the king, baby.*

*COMMENT ALSO APPLICABLE TO SAM RAIMI THREAD
posted by shakespeherian at 5:34 AM on May 7, 2009

I would like to express my sadness with a . but my developers think they can make a better . if we use a different graphics engine so please be patient while I work on my .
posted by caution live frogs at 5:38 AM on May 7, 2009 [10 favorites]

What I want to know is how can I get into a sweet deal like that. They went 13 years, getting funding, and produced bupkis.

They were self-funded, largely through selling the rights to Max Payne for tens of millions of dollars.
posted by dng at 5:48 AM on May 7, 2009

Not Surprised.
posted by Mastercheddaar at 5:51 AM on May 7, 2009

Perhaps we should get Valve to develop it instead.

Jesus Christ NO. Duke Nukem Forever is a jokey giant turd that will never see the light of day, and I don't need Valve wasting time on it. Plus, Valve is slow as shit, and I'm already impatiently waiting for Episode 3.

Duke Nukem is going on.

That's not DNF, that's Apogee republishing the old 2d games, I think.
posted by graventy at 6:15 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

sotonohito, sadly the devs didn't even have the sweet deal you dream of:

"We can confirm that our relationship with 3D Realms for Duke Nukem Forever was a publishing arrangement, which did not include ongoing funds for development of the title," said Take-Two VP of communications Alan Lewis in a prepared statement. (Shacknews)

And without that sweet Take-Two funding, I'm sort of impressed they continued development as long as they did. Well, we have to take their word for that they actually worked on the project until now.

Oh, and .
posted by Glee at 6:16 AM on May 7, 2009

This is actually a good thing. Let's face it, When Duke Nukem 3d came out, he was already an ironic throwback to 80's action heroes, and it sort of worked for the cartoony looking 3d game. But that kind of hero is pretty stupid these days. To the extent major release FPS games even have identifiable heroes, they tend to be antiheroes like Gordon Freeman ir whats-his-name from Grand Theft Auto 4. The more realistic the game looks, the more realistic the hero has to be given the context. A "badass alien ass kicker" or whatever the trailer called him is beyond juvenile at this point. And the whole stripper thing is laughable. Wow, strippers. In GTA, players are soliciting hookers.

It's a stupid concept, and obviously George Broussard cannot be trusted to run a lemonade stand. He's probably committed fraud by telling people it's almost finished when in fact it likely never was. I hope he goes to jail, simply for wasting the lives of the developers who were brought on board thinking they were going to be the team to push DNF out.

So what's left? Nothing. Is the custom 3d engine (if there is such a thing) even up to the level of the open source cube 2 engine? Is it even on par with quake 3? It's certainly isn't going to be id tech 5 or Half-Life, I think we can assume that.

Is there anything interesting about the maps, or alien models? Probably not. There appears to be nothing new or interesting here that even the community could benefit from, except for a gigantic case study in poor management.
posted by Pastabagel at 6:23 AM on May 7, 2009

It's a stupid concept, and obviously George Broussard cannot be trusted to run a lemonade stand. He's probably committed fraud by telling people it's almost finished when in fact it likely never was. I hope he goes to jail, simply for wasting the lives of the developers who were brought on board thinking they were going to be the team to push DNF out.

What? I'm pretty sure they were self-funded, and getting hired to work on something doesn't mean that thing is ever going to be released. Any software developer would have a pretty good idea how far along a project is, it's not like you're going to be sitting there writing code and no have any idea how close to "done" you are.

And furthermore, Working on DNF would be probably be a pretty good gig. They obviously were not under a lot of pressure to get things done. At a lot of game companies you're expected to be able to put in 80 hour weeks to get things out the door. That obviously wasn't happening here. And you'd have the chance to get things 'perfect', rather then simply 'done'.

Unless it was the case that the software just didn't work at all, or something.
posted by delmoi at 6:44 AM on May 7, 2009

This allegedly first-person account from the Penny Arcade forums tells a different story

In my best interest, I'm going to be somewhat candid for now. I will, however, elaborate a bit on some things:

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.

posted by minifigs at 6:58 AM on May 7, 2009

Prey took them 11 years to develop and release after numerous false starts. But it was successful. (It's still available through Steam, I believe.) Prey 2 was due in December -- if 3D shuts down, will Take-Two and/or Apogee pick up that title and release it?

Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned."

Which is of course, why they have been announcing its imminent release for years. I pity their publicists.
posted by zarq at 7:07 AM on May 7, 2009

And the whole stripper thing is laughable. Wow, strippers. In GTA, players are soliciting hookers.

To be fair, you get strippers in GTA also. I had to take my cahsin there several times to see their 'beeeg american teeties'.
posted by graventy at 7:13 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

In racing, "DNF" means "Did Not Finish", just FYI.

"FYI" means "Free Your Intestines".
posted by LordSludge at 7:20 AM on May 7, 2009 [3 favorites]

There was a grenade that when it exploded shot out grenades and those grenades shot out spikes.

Neill Cumpston, is that you?
posted by adamdschneider at 7:21 AM on May 7, 2009

In other news "Chinese Democracy" finally released.
posted by caddis at 7:26 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Prey took them 11 years to develop and release after numerous false starts. But it was successful.

Note that Prey only became a reality when they outsourced the development to another studio in 2001. Maybe they should've learned from that lesson.
posted by ymgve at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2009

So it turns out that you actually have to produce something? Wow, it's like the tech bubble finally crashed for Broussard.

To the extent major release FPS games even have identifiable heroes, they tend to be antiheroes like Gordon Freeman

Buh? Gordon Freeman is 100% hero.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:12 AM on May 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

The two Mars rovers, Spirit and Opportunity were proposed, authorized, announced, designed, launched and successfully landed upon Mars where they have been exploring the surface for over 2.5 years.

You fail Broussard, you fail hard.
posted by ScotchRox at 8:15 AM on May 7, 2009

It's a pretty astonishing story about a complete failure of project management. The movie business has lots of stories like this too, just a little less hype pre-release.
posted by Nelson at 8:16 AM on May 7, 2009

"Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned."

And by "as planned", they must obviously mean "with no clear plan or roadmap whatsoever", right?

Because if the "plan" really was to switch 3d engines that often and to take over a decade to make a game... It's not such a good plan.
posted by splice at 8:17 AM on May 7, 2009

To the extent major release FPS games even have identifiable heroes, they tend to be antiheroes like Gordon Freeman

Buh? Gordon Freeman is 100% hero.

And even if he wasn't, the Master Chief in the Halo series is also 100% "hero". You can't comment on major release FPS games and not include Halo, whether you're a fan of the series or not...
posted by Pantengliopoli at 8:57 AM on May 7, 2009

What a shame. I think I'll play some Duke 3D from Xbox arcade today, and think about what was obviously never going to be.

Honestly, it seems rude to stop lying to the public at this late point. Just go to your graves saying "90% done, out next fall."
posted by paisley henosis at 9:04 AM on May 7, 2009

The Duke Nukem franchise doesn't need to be dead, there is still hope; Valve could pick up the naming rights, but instead of actually developing the title, they could inject Duke into the next Half Life episode, but instead of playing him as a character, he is like the Man in the Suit from the first game, where you are just catching glimpses of him as you run through the levels.

Periodically, you'd get close enough to hear him offer up some quip while he killed an alien then ran away.

Finally, in the end, you'd get to meet him, and right before the last challenge, when you should team up with him to overcome the last bad guys, you pause, take a deep breath, and get to brutally kill him by beating him to death with your crowbar.

I think that would pretty well satisfy everyone.
posted by quin at 9:26 AM on May 7, 2009 [4 favorites]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
posted by Artw at 9:27 AM on May 7, 2009

Master Chief is identifiable? he's like a generic power armour dude.

/never really got Halo.
posted by Artw at 9:30 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

"Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned."

And by "as planned", they must obviously mean "with no clear plan or roadmap whatsoever", right?

Because if the "plan" really was to switch 3d engines that often and to take over a decade to make a game... It's not such a good plan.

You guys are misreading. Duke Nukem Trilogy is a game (series of games?) for one of the handheld systems, being put together by other development studios entirely. That quote is simply them saying that their plans aren't affected by 3d Realms shutting down.

For what it's worth, I don't even know how I'm going to face the world without the ability to joke about DNF's vaporware status. No non-existent game will ever be the same.
posted by Caduceus at 9:35 AM on May 7, 2009

Still, at least this way it will live on as legend - who remembers Daikatana now?
posted by Artw at 9:47 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

So it turns out that you actually have to produce something? Wow, it's like the tech bubble finally crashed for Broussard.

Oh don't be silly. Duke Nukem is the software version of the Moller Skycar. And if Moller can have investors creaming their pants for decades over some tethered demo models, I'm pretty sure we'll be seeing versions of Duke Nukem for another 15 years or so.
posted by happyroach at 9:53 AM on May 7, 2009

Is there more information about Valve's method of design brought up by minifig?
All my googling comes up with is PS3 glitches, product pages, and reviews.
posted by now i'm piste at 9:56 AM on May 7, 2009

A sad souvenir from Reddit.
posted by rokusan at 10:11 AM on May 7, 2009 [6 favorites]

I can't find any great links, but in listening to the commentary tracks for Portal and HL2:E2, they reiterated how deep their QA process is, and how much that fundamentally changes levels. I think that's one thing they put a lot more money into than other companies do.
posted by graventy at 10:15 AM on May 7, 2009

The big thing holding Half-Life back from greatness for me is the way it's always so locked on rails. There is almost always exactly one direction to go and one goal to meet, sometimes with a clock ticking... and I feel like I am just being pushed ahead, rather than exploring or getting engaged in the story. The very rare time in which you can backtrack actually feels special, which is just weird.

In Portal, this linear progress is acceptable since the story itself is built around a level-by-level structure, and that's why Portal is a real A+ game in my book. But in HL2 the "plot" always feels forced to me, because of the way I'm just shoved through it, and that keeps the "world" from ever feeling fully fleshed out. Just forward, kill stuff, forward, kill stuff, forward, forward...

I'll keep buying them, but they're B+ games for me.
posted by rokusan at 10:22 AM on May 7, 2009

Metafilter: I'm gonna rip off your head and shit down your throat.
posted by bardic at 10:23 AM on May 7, 2009

/never really got Halo.

It's Marathon with a bigger budget.

(Marathon needs a high-res remake. Heck of a story, but it's just too hard to play today at the cheesy flat 3d resolution. Funny how our eyes get spoiled by candy.)
posted by rokusan at 10:23 AM on May 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

Marathon had character. Halo just seems so generic by comparison.
posted by Artw at 10:24 AM on May 7, 2009

So this means that Kevin Shields won't be doing the soundtrack?
posted by fnerg at 10:30 AM on May 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

Because I am in the middle of a 3 month game dev cycle, dealing with critical delays and limited funding, the news of this made me CHOKE on my muthaf***ing coke.

Somebody give me a xanax.
posted by erinfern at 10:51 AM on May 7, 2009

You guys still have free soda?
posted by Artw at 10:57 AM on May 7, 2009

Freedom Fighters. There's a game that deserves a sequel goddamit and GET OFFA MY GAMING LAWN.
posted by bardic at 10:57 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Marathon had character.

PFFFT, Pathways into Darkness was better.
posted by hellojed at 11:02 AM on May 7, 2009

Here's something interesting: The Chair Story.

DNF being a monster hit is fine, but it wouldn’t make “forever” history. As you can tell from the name and what I’m about to describe, Scott and George apparently had this idea from the very start but weren’t sure they were going to act on it, but there wasn’t any harm in using a name that would play into it. So in order to make “Forever” history there was only one way to do that, and that is to turn it into something completely unprecedented in the industry. Turn it into the sort of thing that will be talked about 100 years from now

Apparently the development of DNF has Dan Brown-esque levels of intrigue.
posted by hellojed at 11:06 AM on May 7, 2009

Marathon wasn't the staggering commercial success that Halo is. I haven't played it but supposedly Marathon was updated for Marathon: Durandal's XBox Live release. Perhaps meriting a FPP despite not really being news, it was open sourced and continues to be developed as Marathon: Aleph One.
posted by christhelongtimelurker at 11:15 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

You guys still have free soda?

Enough to put 20 donkeys in a coma.
posted by erinfern at 11:16 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Balls of steel.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 11:26 AM on May 7, 2009

I haven't played it but supposedly Marathon was updated [for XBLA]

Yep. We redrew all the art assets, aside from the chapter screen, added a new gameplay mode with four new maps, rewrote the engine itself to support the 360 hardware, added real multiplayer support, and there's even DLC netmaps. Oh, and it's got 5.1 surround sound. (And it defaults to a more modern FOV. Cough, cough.)

You can still toggle the "old school" textures and original FOV, if you're looking for the Real Thing(tm), but the high-res textures are really nice.
posted by Mikey-San at 11:28 AM on May 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

addendum:

Our (and Bungie's) overall goal was to keep it as close to the original experience as possible, rather than try to "remake it" and lose the original feel and charm. The idea was "this is where Bungie came from". It's certainly a game from a different era, and most gamers these days probably can't get into it like we did years ago, but that's their problem. :)
posted by Mikey-San at 11:31 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Heh -- I forgot that Mikey-San was involved in the Marathon XBLA conversion... your team did a nice job with it.
posted by Pantengliopoli at 11:36 AM on May 7, 2009

who remembers Daikatana now?

I do, mostly just because of this. (NSFW)
posted by Dr-Baa at 11:36 AM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Marathon XBLA conversion

Ohh. Crap. I thought he was involved in the original game.

I guess I can't take back that embarrassing mefi mail I just sent...
posted by hellojed at 12:00 PM on May 7, 2009

Marathon XBLA conversion

Playing that again made me so happy. Durandal always knew just what to say to make me want to get my side-by-side lever action shotguns smoking.
posted by quin at 12:36 PM on May 7, 2009

That Chair Story is awesome. Charlie now works at the same studio as myself, I really should hit him up for more details. I recall very well that particular E3 and the GoD booth that I had no chance of getting in to at the time.
posted by hellphish at 1:24 PM on May 7, 2009

Wait... the chair story is real? Come on...
posted by danny the boy at 2:25 PM on May 7, 2009

In the same year that DNF was announced, Valve Corporation decided that their pre-release candidate for Half Life was so unsatisfactory that they scrapped it and set out to rework the game from the ground up. Rather than try to hire an "overall godlike" game designer like Broussard or John Romero, as everyone advised them to do, they instead formed a gestalt game designing group, chosen from a cross-section of their company. They call this approach The Cabal. The Cabal first comprised a writer, a level designer, three engineers, and an animator, and for the first five months of reworking Half Life, it held six-hour-long sessions, four days a week, to brainstorm, oversee, and troubleshoot every aspect of the project (even spawning "mini-Cabals" within departments).

Over the course of Duke Nukem Forever's "development", Valve has released a string of successes including Half Life 1 & 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, as well as the Steam digital distribution system, and the Cabal has been codified into Valve's design philosophy.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:31 PM on May 7, 2009 [2 favorites]

Buh? Gordon Freeman is 100% hero.

Not if you played Half-Life like I did, and popped all the scientists and security guards in the forehead after cynically exploiting their security clearances. Dr. Vance only survived the horror of Black Mesa by the good grace that Gordon hadn't yet found a weapon.
posted by neckro23 at 2:41 PM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Interestingly what they did with Half Life seemed to be remove every bit of the levels that doesn't have a point to it, so you are moving from task to task without so much running back and forth over levels. I think this has really worked for it, but I could see that it leads to the complaint that HL is a bit railsy.
posted by Artw at 2:43 PM on May 7, 2009

Glad you guys liked the conversion. We had a lot of fun working on it, despite how difficult it ended up being. Several of us were long-time Bungie community nerds, so it was one of those "who cares how much work this is going to be, this is a dream" situations you never thought you'd get to do. We spent countless hours in high school being jerked around by Durandal and playing every community map that was worth a damn (sup Frigidman) . . . and then lots and lots of things came together and we were all in the same place working on it. Nuts.
posted by Mikey-San at 2:44 PM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Also, for those interested:

After we shipped, Mark Levin wrote a postmortem for Gamasutra. It's pretty cool, check it out. :)
posted by Mikey-San at 2:48 PM on May 7, 2009

It's Marathon with a bigger budget.

Not unless you're being really cynical about what 'bigger budget' does to end product. I like Halo plenty, but Marathon is a much deeper, nuanced game that scared the shit out of me at times-- and a good number of hours were put into just reading the terminal screens. It was like interactive fiction combined with an FPS which, although it's got some nifty alien exploding, Halo can't come anywhere near.
posted by shakespeherian at 2:59 PM on May 7, 2009

The big thing holding Half-Life back from greatness for me is the way it's always so locked on rails. There is almost always exactly one direction to go and one goal to meet,

There is always the next objective in all games, so I think the idea of open world idea has been kind of a falsity. I'm sure in GTA you could do things like ignore the objectives of the game and make your own up, like getting as much money as you can or some such. Even if a game is on rails you could do that. Say like Galaga, I could just try to get as far as I could while dodging all attacks.
posted by P.o.B. at 3:09 PM on May 7, 2009

A lot of the open world games seem to consist of the player roaming the countryside, looking for a set of rails to latch on to, like GTAs missions.
posted by Artw at 3:15 PM on May 7, 2009 [4 favorites]

"Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned."

Which is the same as saying, "Nothing is happening." Which also means that they've preserved their right to have DNF continue to compete in all the vaporware categories it's eligible for!
posted by Hylas at 3:58 PM on May 7, 2009

Hylas - different project.
posted by Artw at 4:03 PM on May 7, 2009

It's Marathon with a bigger budget.

Not unless you're being really cynical about what 'bigger budget' does to end product. I like Halo plenty, but Marathon is a much deeper, nuanced game that scared the shit out of me at times-

Yes, I meant everything that a bigger budget implies in the Hollywood sense.

Take a great thing, give it a big budget, and you get.... a very pretty thing full of explosions that doesn't really have the appeal the original did.
posted by rokusan at 4:05 PM on May 7, 2009

that scared the shit out of me at times

Man, I was terrified the first time I played 343 Guilty Spark in the original Halo... I think the sequels suffered a little more from the "mass appeal" than the first one did, overall having the weaker storyline in H2 and 3. Still great games though.
posted by Pantengliopoli at 4:07 PM on May 7, 2009

Yeah, to make it clear (I used to get confused a lot too)

Duke Nukem Trilogy and Duke Nukem Forever are different products, being developed by different companies.

Duke Nukem Forever has (had) been in development for over a decade, to be finished "when it's finished", by a company that has now collapsed.
Duke Nukem Trilogy has been in development for a little over a year now, to be finished in Fall of this year, by a company that is still in business.
posted by Bugbread at 4:35 PM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

I think the idea of open world idea has been kind of a falsity

The limited open world of _Far Cry_ worked pretty well. You could take multiple routes to the same end points, and do intermediate things in any order, and skip them, and so on. OTOH, the Far Cry storyline isn't anywhere near as good as Half-Life's.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:57 PM on May 7, 2009

Far Cry always sounds a bit like Hunter to me. Man I loved Hunter. It was like the 16bit GTA 3.
posted by Artw at 5:00 PM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Gotta say I'm a fan of games on rails where appropriate. Too much sandbox and I find myself wandering around wondering what I'm supposed to be doing. FPS really do benefit from some guidance, because generally speaking I am not a gun-toting maniac our to free anyone from their overlords, and need all the pointers I can get. The Valve titles work well for me in that regard (although if I never play another vehicle level it will be too soon. Stupid dune buggy).

Anyway, DNF is still being developed. It's legend status now, like how King Arthur sleeps below Avalon and waits to save England. They can say it's dead, but what do they know? Somewhere is a secret consipiracy of game developers, faithfully tending the flame until the right descendant of the orginal guys emerges to lead them all to glory.
posted by Jilder at 6:59 PM on May 7, 2009

Marathon is a much deeper, nuanced game that scared the shit out of me at times

One of my big secrets that I'll reveal here is that the first time I was honestly and seriously scared by a video game was playing in a dark room well past midnight, with pair of headphones providing stereo sound, and I was clearing a tight, claustrophobic room in Marathon when I suddenly heard from a container right next to me, a voice say in a terrified hoarse whisper; "They're everywhere!"

Shit. At that point I didn't even know that Mac games were capable of clear, real voices. And after that it didn't matter at all, I wasn't thinking about the technical skill in what just happened, I was just hoping that I wasn't about to die in some horrible, alien way.

It sent chills right through me and made me turn on every damn light in the house.

And get the family dachshund to wake up and sit on the couch so that he could protect me.
posted by quin at 9:02 PM on May 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

the first time I was honestly and seriously scared by a video game was playing in a dark room well past midnight, with pair of headphones providing stereo sound

Same scenario here, I hadn't slept for 2-3 days, and I was playing Myst. Creeped the crap out of me, I had to turn on the lights, the stereo, AND the TV.
posted by mrbill at 9:41 PM on May 7, 2009

I remember Clive Barker's Undying. I was playing in a dark basement while I ran through tunnels and catacombs. Everything was just fine until I found a room where the indicator lit up, showing that there was something to be seen using the game's Scry ability. I cast the spell and saw bloody handprints on the walls, along with the message "BE EVER VIGILANT OR THE UNDYING KING WILL LIVE AGAIN."

...I forgot to save.
posted by Pope Guilty at 8:18 PM on May 8, 2009

Aw, Duke Nukem 3D was a big part of my childhood. I'm sad to see that DNF has finally evaporated. Yeah, the character was pretty stupid, but I still maintain that Duke3D has the best level design of any first-person shooter. I think this because part of their design philosophy was to produce maps that were excellent for both single player and multiplayer deathmatch, and that dual focus isn't really done any more. Each level had a strongly identifiable theme (a sushi restaurant, a movie theater, etc.). The single player focus made it so that there would be a plot-like progression through the level, constantly unlocking new parts of the theme environment. But then the multiplayer focus made it so that each level would need to loop around and be non-linear. Usually this would be accomplished by making it such that when you were reaching new places near the end of the level, you could blow out walls and return to areas you'd previously been to. (Returning the familiar is always satisfying, like a running gag.) This gave a real sense of compressed space without giving up the sense of progression. Most games since have either veered too far toward the sandbox or too far toward railsiness. DN3D somehow hit the perfect balance.

But I'm definitely biased: I loved Duke Nukem's Build engine in high school. I used to have arguments about who was the better level designer: Levelord or Allen H. Blum III. (Blum all the way!) When I was 16, some guy who had downloaded my levels off of Compuserve contacted me and told me that he wanted me to create a 3D representation of Lake Erie for the Center of Science and Industry of Toledo, Ohio. Their plans were to design fake little submarines that museumgoers could go into and cruise around a virtual representation of Lake Erie. I'm not sure they ever went through with it. I suspect not. There was no way the Build engine was up to that. But, I took the art they sent me and did it anyway. The two grand they paid me was a lot of money for a teenager.
posted by painquale at 11:17 PM on May 8, 2009

Incidentally, the Empire State Building was built in 13.5 months.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:47 AM on May 9, 2009

And now... the lawsuit(s) and accusations begin:

We all saw this coming, didn't we?

The creators of Duke Nukem Forever fired back today at publisher Take-Two, detailing the costs of developing the never seen game and saying they haven't closed the studios.

3D Realms, the studio behind the legendarily delayed Duke Nukem Forever claimed in a statement today that Take-Two, the publisher now suing the studio, provided $2.5 million in funding, a fraction of the $12 million described in the publisher's lawsuit. Most of that money went to other companies long since uninvolved with the game.

The studio did confirm that the DNF team has been let go, but expressed a desire to "co-create" games based on the character in the future.

In their statement, 3D Realms accuses Take-Two of failing to offer the team a reasonable deal to continue developing the game and instead trying to attain the Duke Nukem Forever game from 3D Realms earlier this month in what amounted to a "fire sale."

So... no DNF team. No funding. Can we tag it vaporware and move on, yet?
posted by zarq at 7:48 AM on May 19, 2009

no DNF team. No funding. Can we tag it vaporware and move on, yet?

I'd call it Noware.

I'm trying to understand who's left at 3D Realms to file a lawsuit.
posted by Nelson at 8:33 AM on May 19, 2009