Wired has a very interesting article detailing the demise of 3D Realms and Duke Nukem Forever, the iconic game that never was. "It was never completed. Screenshots and video snippets would leak out every few years, each time whipping fans into a lather - and each time, the game would recede from view. Normally, videogames take two to four years to build; five years is considered worryingly long. But the Duke Nukem Forever team worked for 12 years straight. As one patient fan pointed out, when development on Duke Nukem Forever started, most computers were still using Windows 95, Pixar had made only one movie - Toy Story - and Xbox did not yet exist."
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I found this article already yesterday on Slashdot and read it through. Loved it. I grew up playing Apogee/3D Realms games, like Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D, and those actually were very good games back then featuring lots of action, all kinds of wacky moments, there was a lot of variation between levels making the game enjoyable for a long time.. Oh, and I loved the epic boss fight on the football field in Duke Nukem 3D!
That said, I too was hoping for Duke Nukem Forever to arrive. Made me really sad when I heard the project got shot down finally.. I do hope someone picks up the franchise and makes something good out of it. Duke Nukem is a bull-headed, stupid, pervert and narsistic piece of utter macho bullsh*t, which makes him such an awesome character to play and slaughter with, and I hope that if there ever comes out a new Duke Nukem game they'll do it as well as Duke Nukem 3D was done in the olden days. He has lots of potential for a long-lasting, popular series of games, perhaps comics and even a movie, but it takes someone with the right kind of twisted imagination and drive to make it good.
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So basically, all these years and excitement were over vaporware. As any consumer and even the publisher can not actually use the game, its useless. And it seems that 3D Realms had the wrong idea from the start when depending on another company's rendering engine. If they had their own engine team, there would be no waiting, and updating would be done in-house. Instead, several times they "rebooted" and had to scrap progress to gather new features.
There are operating systems that I can think of that are attempting the same thing:
- Lofty goals
- Small team
- No corporate backer
- No deadline
- Faster processors
- Fast changing OS world
