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Duke Nukem Forever Once Scheduled to Go Gold on April Fools' Day (No Joke)
by Chris Faylor, Apr 01, 2010 3:11pm PDTHad everything gone according to plan, 3D Realms' long-coming (and now legally-troubled) shooter Duke Nukem Forever was meant to have gone gold--meaning it would have been complete and off to manufacturing--on April Fools' Day 2010.
"By the 3DR/TTWO development schedule, April 1st, 2010 was supposed to be the day Duke Nukem Forever went gold," Shacknews alum and former DNF producer Jason Bergman revealed via Twitter. "Totally intentional. It was going to be hilarious."
"Not an April Fool's gag," he affirmed in our comments. Bergman, a trustworthy fellow, served as producer on the game while working at Take-Two subsidiary 2K Games.
But as hardcore fans are quite aware, things didn't go according to plan. Developer 3D Realms laid off its internal development staff in May 2009, leading to a messy legal feud with publisher Take-Two over the game's incomplete state. Since then, 3D Realms has pledged that development on DNF is continuing somewhere, as well as teased that "there are numerous other Duke games in various stages of development."
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Well it took 10 years, this difference between the screw ups with regards to TF2 and DNF is quantitative not qualitative and quite small at that when measured in term of development time. Yet Valve probably didn't get even 1/10th of the flack during TF2's development and that was mostly innocent jokes compared to the vitriol that 3DR and in particular GB have received during the development of DNF.
"I think that should affect our assessment of them as a developer. There should be some fallout from that. "
Agreed. But I don't think our assessment of them as a development studio should cloud our judgment on them as a company as a whole. There are people out there who let DNF effect everything they hear about 3DR, whenever 3DR has some news/announcement they always say stuff like "Why is anyone listening to them?" or if it is a new game that is announced "We will play that in 2050 using holodecks" and stuff like that. When reality is that internal development has practically been a side business for them and the wrong choices they have made with DNF have virtually completely avoided with the 3rd party games and going forward 3DR won't do ANY internal games again. So how can people dismiss announcement of 3rd party 3DR games with reference to DNF when none of the DNF problems have characterized their efforts in that area, despite 20+ years of very successful endeavors of that kind?
So basically 3DR failed(but by all signs rectified those problems) with internal development and took the consequences. So all the people claiming stuff like 3DR being the worst failure in the industry(Really? They could afford to waste over 10 years of development by virtue of being the biggest failure in the industry?) are chastising 3DR for making some mistakes(albeit some big ones) and rectifying them.
There are a lot of obvious double standards in a lot anti-3DR / anti-DNF rethoric. 3D Realms is in no doubt one of the most successful established companies in the industry both critically and financially. They are one of the pioneers in the industry and have been a major factor in the history of this industry and not just in some past era but quite recently, just think of the studios that had their start in the industry or who had their first success with the help of 3D Realms. 3D Realms deserves some HUUUUUGE credit for all their work and yet they are subject to some of the most intense hatred in the entire industry.
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