Still, the fact that 3D Realms was completely self-funded by its game sales and licensing of the Duke Nukem IP and Build engine meant that there was no immediate pressure on the company to release a product. “One day, Broussard came in and said, ‘We could go another five years without shipping a game,’” said an anonymous employee. “He seemed really happy about that. The other people just groaned.”
After several years of development with little to show, the team grew antsy. For many, they felt it would damage their careers if the game never shipped. Additionally, the company paid its employees less than its competitors by dangling profit-sharing incentives when the game finally released. “Their business model was to pay the developers very low, but with a potential payday at the end that was pretty substantial,” noted Schuytema
Several employees left 3D Realms in 2006, prompting Broussard to finally take a serious approach in completing the game. The developer's staff doubled to 35, and project lead Brian Cook was particularly vital by taking a “a fractured and demoralized project that lacked direction, milestones, or cohesion” as he put it, and pushing it forward. However, 3D Realms was finally running out of money and requested publisher Take-Two grant them $6 million to finish the game; the legal dispute between the two companies began here, but the important part is that they did not get the money and were forced to let go of their creative staff on May 6, 2009, and it seems likely that Duke Nukem Forever will never see the light of day in its current form.
Duke Nukem Forever is one of the more curious games in the history of the industry – this editor remembers reading about it in an issue of PC Gamer more than a dozen years ago while in high school. Perhaps if nothing else can be drawn from this, it shows how a studio culture can eventually drag down a game; just like how they talk about a “culture of losing” in sports teams, a “culture of delaying” could be equally poisonous for a game developer.
1 Comments
December 23, 2009
DNF=Does not finish.