Duke Nukem Forever Wins The True Lifetime Achievement Award For Vaporware: Coming Out Never
from the duke-nukem-for-never dept
As plenty of folks know, the video game Duke Nukem Forever has long topped Wired's annual vaporware list. It's been promised for over a decade, and has always been a work in progress. Wired actually got so sick of having it at the top of the vaporware awards that it tried to push it off the list by giving it a "lifetime achievement award." But that was way back in 2003... and the fact that it stayed vaporware for a while meant that it came back on the list. However, it appears the game has now transcended all vaporware and officially become permanent vaporware as the developer working on it has shut down. At this point, it's hardly a surprise, but it does sorta make you wonder what they were working on for the past twelve years...
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Filed Under: duke nukem forever, vapor ware
Companies: 3d realms
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But Duke Nukem Forever demonstrates the danger of a 'Its done when its done' attitude in the creative industry; a lack of enforced deadlines can mean something is never really finished.
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Duke Nukem Forever is the extreme scenario, not the norm.
Sometimes a game takes forever to come out and is still broken such as Darkfall.
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So how do you define 'rushed' and how do you define 'complete'?
A gamer who finds a bug that causes a fatal crash might complain the game wasn't complete or well tested, but consider this; you could put 1'000 man-hours of testing into a game and have it exceeded by 10'000 hours of play-time by your customers in the first week of release (what's more customers with a far more varied combination of technology then you had available to test with).
So you run beta's and you squash what bugs you can, but there's really no such thing as perfect code even if your engineers will happily waste months of time trying to create it.
But these are simply technical challenges. There are artistic challenges in coming up with an idea but not releasing a game around it for years; what seemed innovative originally becomes dated by release. That's what happened to the infamous Daikatana. This is also what has happened to Duke Nukem Forever; they kept 'updating' the graphics engine to keep it looking modern, in the process throwing away years of work.
If you listen to the developer commentary of the Half Life 2 games the developers mention a bunch of features they'd originally intended to be in a title but (due to un-realistic expectations of development time or complexity) had to shelve for future titles. A fan might consider this evidence of an uncompleted game, but good managers know better.
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What kinds of things mean rushed? Failing to acknowledge flaws when they are found, insufficient periods of beta testing (and insufficient periods of open beta testing) are certainly 2 things that are extreme indicators of this. Doing short open/closed betas is not only bad for development but bad for marketing as well.
Other things: making sure things are consistent, having games tested by testers internally (not by employees, but tested at the company by external individuals) are all extremely important facets.
Other things: How about proper hardware support/keeping a as trim/optimized as possible (demigod is an example of releasing too early with that). People recognize it's not going to be perfect out the door but "not horrible" is expected if not required.
When a game has huge gamebreaking inherent flaws, that would be rushing to production. When you pull a game at the last minute and say "we're releasing it next month instead", that shows that you're not rushing. So it is just as much people's perspective as it is legitimate issues.
I myself have done gaming beta testing hired by companies, volunteer, open beta, and other forms for 13 years, and I'm only 26 (I started with Konami/Virgin). There are ways to do this well, and of course larger companies have easier resources to do so.
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link to the review:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/reviews/2006/04/forever.ars
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title
"what they were working on for the past twelve years..."
I think they were playing the latest release yes, the old one) to see what needs to be improved...
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Oops. Yes. Fixed. Thanks.
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Nothing, really. The last game 3D Realms developed internally was released in 1997; since then, they've mainly been publishing others' games.
3D Realms deserved to die.
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"Deep Silver and Apogee Software are not affected by the situation at 3D Realms" and that "Development on the Duke Nukem Trilogy is continuing as planned."
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The joke is on you.
Congratulations Techdirt, you're in good company.
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Ars
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Hmm seems to me
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Re: Hmm seems to me
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or that the DNF source code is like the hope diamond.
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It isnt hard to see how this could happen, its just unfortunate that it does.
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However, there was a certain amount of laziness you forgot to factor in. DNF started out with a Quake2 engine, if my memory serves me. Because the engine and physics were already set, there was simply no reason DNF could not have been released within a year.
Sure when the Quake3 engine was released, they decided to change gears and start all over again. However, once again, DNF could have been released a year later.
And when it switched to the Unreal engine, once again, it could have been released a year later.
Sure their drive for perfection was a huge problem, but clearly their completely lack of actual work on the game led to its downfall too.
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The mythical release
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Wut have I missed guise?
But recently, I've been eyeballing this $399 iMac Mini tho. Her OS will shut up in 10 seconds when I tell her to, and warm up in 27 seconds flat.
These things will put a warm spot in you too, guaranteed.
She's super cute too. I'll get her all the perephials she wants.
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Re: Wut have I missed guise?
Secondly, I don't want your warms spots in me, thank you very much.
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I appreciate your warm response and will keep it in mind going forward.
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Ironically,
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$3T was found elsewhere. If he's such a geek as the media makes him out to be, he'd understand...
Then again, he still hasn't showed up to get his Stan Lee signed copy of Spiderman at Colbert yet either.
Hmm. Priorities... Yes, let's spend $3T on whatever the hell sounds good. Has anyone torn apart the new budget yet?
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Working on the engine
I don't know how much stock I put in it, but it's a nice theory... ;)
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It always looked impressive so it lead me to ask what else needs to be done to release to market? Just release the whole thing as open source and let the community finish it.
Enough is enough I want to play it now while I am still young enough.
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Part of me wants to beleive its all a PR stunt.....
dammit, I really wanted to play this thing :(
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Meet techdirt's stds
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If you're going to quote Duke, do it right..
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