What could have justified Duke Nukem's development time?

[Mathak]

They should have just put a Bulletstorm disc in each DNF box.

 

[Nomanslander]

I'd say a good game would have been enough, truth of the matter is the one's that have been waiting are really a minority, 30and+ years old PC gamers since the 90s. Honestly how many of you fill that billet?

Not even I do, I didn't start gaming on the PC till the early/mid 2000, I didn't get onto the DNF joke until a year and a half ago, and I'm 30.

Truth is the majority of gamers don't really follow what's on the waiting list, they only hear about a game once they start advertising it's release in the coming weeks. Those of us that investigate and look into upcoming games for the next 2 years are a very small group, and the die hard DN fan that's been actually waiting for the last 12 years, an even smaller minority.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

World of Warcraft took roughly 10 years to make and the game is massive. 12 years worth of development that produces a true 12 years of depth would be amazing.

If you consider all the time since release, World of Warcraft represents roughly 10 years of active development time. At time of release, the Warcraft franchise was only ten years old.

As far as what justified the development time, I think it simply boils down to the fact that they wanted to make the best game ever made. They changed engines (the actual piece of software responsible for making images appear on the screen and sounds play and so forth) at least twice (I seem to recall it started in Build, the engine running Duke Nukem 3D, and it certainly shifted at least once before ending up on Unreal Engine 3), they recreated the assets used in the game time and again and often found they did not have the best game around so they kept working.

I think that people seem to have trouble recalling that game technology, especially in the FPS genre, advanced at a blistering pace. And in the early days of the FPS, it was often the game with the best technology that was played by the most people. The same year Duke launched for example, Id launched Quake and barely a year later online deathmatch was an easy enough proposition for the masses to join in on. Quake 2 included polygon counts more than an order of magnitude higher (along with technical flourishes people don't even think about like the ability for a world object (called a "brush") to rotate). Duke itself was a huge step in technology over the Doom engine in that it allowed for more complex moving spaces, the most primitive basis for scripted sequences and level over level (In doom one could not place a room directly above another room). From there we had Half-Life with it's advances in AI, Unreal's amazingly adept engine, the huge open Spaces of Tribes and all of that was in the span of less than four years. Trying to be the best at everything is what torpedoed the project, ultimately.

 

[zeldafan1593]

You know what, I feel pretty lucky about Duke Nukem Forever. Being currently 15 however turning to 16, I wasn't old enough to grasp a concept such as a video game when it was released. Truly, I hadn't even heard of Duke Nukem until just a few years ago. My wait was only about 2-3 years. So the justification for the release date of Duke Nukem Forever for me would be a stable game...Now I just need to purchase Duke Nukem Forever and play it on a computer that can play it, seeing as I don't have any USB ports on a crappy laptop.

 

[Shirokurou]

The game never coming out and the devs citing the overly-long development hell as a reason.

 

[Daniel Hailey]

Start with Duke 3D. Update graphics to 2011 standards. Change nothing else.

Would have easily justified twelve years of development for me. As well as justify throwing down the $60 for it. Really, if they wanted to change anything else, it should have just been the story, the jokes, and maybe the level design as long as they kept the same design philosophy as Duke 3D. Which is to say, long, branching levels with exploratory puzzles and tons of secret paths/areas.

http://www.dukenukemreloaded.com/

I didnt buy Duke Nukem Forever because id rather send the development team of DN3D:R a $60 donation

 

[Pumpkin_Eater]

If the game was released after the first year and the other 12 were additional content (think EVE and TF2).

 

[OutcastBOS]

Oh! The lead designer got the disk with all the info lost in his couch cushions!
[sub]Lame, I know...But it's an idea.[/sub]