Duke Nukem Developer 3D Realms Shuts Down (??)

well honestly, is anyone surprised? they havent released shit in over 10 years

I hope a disgruntled ex-employee leaks the latest build and the E3 2001 build. I've wanted to play that game shown in the E3 trailer so badly ever since I saw it. D:

This is fucked.

This is the saddest day ever for the games indusrty .

Quote from Minotauro

This is the saddest day ever for the games indusrty .

This ain't shit compared to Looking Glass or Origin closing their doors. 3D Realms, as 3D Realms, haven't actually made a single game.

There goes my main forums. Every day for years it's been alt-d, f, down, enter.

Son of a bitch.

HP, it's real.

Seems like a lot of guys got their start thanks to Duke3D maps.

One "Marty Howe" said he started off with ROTT, learned about John Woo, got hooked on Hong Kong cinema, then got to work on Max Payne for 3 years.

End of an era.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

I hope a disgruntled ex-employee leaks the latest build and the E3 2001 build. I've wanted to play that game shown in the E3 trailer so badly ever since I saw it. D:

Yup, can't wait to hear some ex-employees spill the beans on the madness it must have been to work on that project...I'm also wondering if a different studio will pick it up and continue development

I am suprised they survived this long. 13 Years on one game? Really? That must have been a hell of a budget.

They could have made a fortune with sequels over those 13 years, instead they didn't even got a single thing out.....

Incorrect. There has been:

Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project

Max Payne

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne

Prey

Along with announcing Earth No More, Duke on XBLA, and I thought a Prey sequel too.

It's not development, but they haven't been idle.

They didn't made those themselves. There is no excuse for spending 13 years on one title really. That is just gross gross mismanagement.

Not surprising at all. Surprising was that they could go on with their obviously flawed development scheme for so long.

And tbh the latest bunch of screenshots didn't looked very hot (at least not for what you would expect from a game that is so long in development). My guess is that they after 12 years still failed to deliver and then someone finaly pulled the plug.

Quote from Steppenwolf

Not surprising at all. Surprising was that they could go on with their obviously flawed development scheme for so long.

Indeed. Part of me had been waiting for something like this to happen, but on the other hand then it seemed like they just had a never ending pile of money they could grab from.

Anyway, now Take2 has the curse!

Quote from FrieChamp

Yup, can't wait to hear some ex-employees spill the beans on the madness it must have been to work on that project...I'm also wondering if a different studio will pick it up and continue development

Here's a couple snippets I've read so far:

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In my best interest, I'm going to be somewhat candid for now. I will, however, elaborate a bit on some things:The 2001 trailer was 100% scripted cinematic, and not actual gameplay. They built specific demo maps just to record video from to make a trailer. Everything you see in that trailer was phony.

The typical work flow there went something like this:

Designer would be assigned a task (build a new map, rebuild an old map, polish a bit of a map, etc.). Designer would work on said task for two, three weeks, a month, all the while lower management would be looking over it and making sure it was going in a "good general direction." Designer would move on to another task. A month or two later upper management would finally look at the work and say, "It's all wrong, do it again." Rinse, repeat.

Entire maps would be done from the ground up, almost to beta quality, and then thrown out simply because no one would make decisions early on in the process. (Read up on Valve's 'orange box' method of design -- that's how you make games)

Another example of :wtc: is the fact that there was one part of one map that was being worked on before I started working there. Nineteen months later and the same designer was still working on the same part of that same map... I'm not blaming the designer, it wasn't his fault.

I think the biggest problem that the company had in general is being self-funded. When you're a developer working directly with a publisher and you have milestones to meet it's a whole different ballgame. If you don't meet those milestones, you don't get any money. That right there will keep your project on schedule. If, however, you're funding it yourself, you don't really have anyone to answer to except yourself and you can quickly lose sight of just how much money is going out the door.

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Helter Skelter posted: As I understand it, they made a shitload of money off the Max Payne franchise.

Yes, this helped them out quite a bit.

The sad thing is the game had some really cool shit in it and had some really fun gameplay. The shrunken stuff was fun, vehicles were fun... oh well. (edit) and, I need to add, the best goddamn water in any FPS to date. I'm dead serious about that. It was beautiful to look at and interact with.

Then again, there was some other stuff that got put in that made most of us facepalm

vvv I need to dig out my NDA and re-read it. Trying to be cautious here until I do so

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I left 3DR in 2006 along with roughly half of the dev team.

http://gamingisstupid.com/2009/05/06/th ... y-revival/

Duke was before my time. However I loved Scott Millers blog, shame he hasn't updated it for a long time though, but early writing is ace. For people interested here is the blog.

http://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/archives.html

Blood was better than Duke3d

[Blocked Image: http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/3885/dnfpreorder.jpg]

GOLD!

This feels so unbelievable....