It needs to be said:
Duke Nukem was the Jean-Claude Van Damme of the gaming industry. At first he was ubiquitous; his face everywhere, and the starring vehicles were pretty darn good. Then, just like Mr. Van Damme, the Duke underwent some changes during his storied career, and eventually wound up homeless. While it looks like Mr. Van Damme has kicked the coke for good, gotten off the street, and found happiness with his third/fifth wife; whether the Duke will find redemption is anything but clear.
But why should we care that the Duke is no more? It all comes down to the thing that makes the world go ‘round (and I’m not talking about love); Money.
In an age where the cost of development is so high for AAA titles that only the biggest companies can afford to develop new top level titles, it’s sad to see the probable death of a top name in the industry. Not because Duke Nukem Forever would have a guaranteed success, or even a good game for that matter. But simply because of the sheer amounts of money that has been poured into the title over the last 13 years.
At some point along the way, it had to become clear to someone at 3DRealms that the Duke was never going to see the light of day again. When that occurred, some form of a “Plan B” should have become the immediate course of action.
The first option clearly should have been to pin down what worked in the development done so far then break down the plot into segments and go episodic. This is clearly a workable plan these days. Selling the first 1/3rd of the game online would have brought in scads of money to continue the next segments. When this was decided against, it should have triggered a “sell off” of game assets to either the publisher (as 3DRealms tried to do before shutting down when it was far too late) or another development house, to get as much out of the completed work as possible.
It’s not at all that DNF will never see the light of day, it’s simply that there are a tremendous amount of very good titles coming from small shops that could be made even better, or marketed more actively with just a little additional funding. And while small shops struggle to get their great work noticed, 3DRealms was like a giant black hole for millions of dollars worth of cash. If more of that money had been put towards other titles, we’d see more “make a great game, and you’ll find a big name publisher”, like The Witcher.
Let’s hope the industry learns from this lesson, and that companies stop pouring money into vaporware titles, and focus on products that can achieve something more than being the butt to a ton of industry jokes.