Why Gearbox is not to blame!

[Hyper-space]

And his point still stands. You don't release a product when it doesn't live up to a good standard. If for some reason Gearbox did not have the funds to build most of Duke Nukem from the ground up (which is bullshit, they're not a small company) then they should not have bought the rights to the game in the first place. Because really, expecting the Duke Nukem 3D Realms had made to be anywhere near a quality product was just absurd. Gearbox should have built it from the ground up. They have the funds to do it, there's no reason to cling to whatever terrible design decisions 3D Realms made. Their company tanked for a reason.

Yeah! cause screw reality! we have enough funds to spend a lot of money and time on a game AND THEN NOT RELEASE IT.

Failing at your job doesn't always mean you won't get payed.

Yeah, sometimes developers make mistakes or things go wrong, yet they get paid. That's just how real-life works.

 

[Hyper-space]

You know people need work, right?

Those developers have families to feed, meaning that *GASP* the same people that make all those terrible movie-games and shovelware probably do not have the luxury of being able to work on their dream projects or rejecting a paycheck.

Not every developer can have the infinite funds of Valve or Blizzard.

That's a rather silly attitude.

If they put out sub-par products, they are less likely to be paid in future to to a damaged reputation.

If anything, these devs should be working even harder to make sure their product is great as if it fails they're fucked.

Every developer tries to make a great game, but not every developer is given enough time and money to deliver on said game. So its not silly, its simply the cold, hard truth behind video-game development.

Making a great game is easier said than done.

 

[RedDeadFred]

If half the code they received is shit, then they should have started from scratch.

That's like saying it's not the chef's fault if his vegetables were half-rotten when he got them, but served them to the customer anyway.

Hurray for perfect analogy!
In all seriousness though. I'm sure people could have waited another year for this game. Most people I think had lost hope that it was ever going to come out. So really. Would the extra year really have been noticed?

 

[Internet Kraken]

And his point still stands. You don't release a product when it doesn't live up to a good standard. If for some reason Gearbox did not have the funds to build most of Duke Nukem from the ground up (which is bullshit, they're not a small company) then they should not have bought the rights to the game in the first place. Because really, expecting the Duke Nukem 3D Realms had made to be anywhere near a quality product was just absurd. Gearbox should have built it from the ground up. They have the funds to do it, there's no reason to cling to whatever terrible design decisions 3D Realms made. Their company tanked for a reason.

Yeah! cause screw reality! we have enough funds to spend a lot of money and time on a game AND THEN NOT RELEASE IT.

What? You're argument makes no sense. What I'm saying is this; Gear Box should have built the game from the ground up. If the Duke Nukem 3D Realms gave them wasn't something they could work into a quality product, they should have scrapped it and built a new game from the ground up. If for some bizarre reason they did not have the money to do that (why wouldn't they? Borderlands was a pretty successful game), then they shouldn't have bought the Duke Nukem IP in the first place. You can't not blame Gearbox if they release a mediocre product. It's their game now. They are responsible for it.

 

[Korolev]

If gearbox release a bad game, they release a bad game. They could have just as easily decided to NOT release it if they thought it was bad. Sure, maybe they didn't make the bulk of the game - but after seeing it, working with it, developing it, they decided to release it, and whether or not the game is good or bad reflects on their ability to judge quality.

I haven't played Duke Nukem Forever, and unless you work at Gearbox or 3D realms, you probably haven't either. I can't say whether or not the game is any good yet. But Gearbox made the ENTIRELY voluntary decision to resurrect the game from death, so they have to live with whatever reception the game gets, positive or negative.

If you take the angle that they bought the game just so that they could get the IP.... that doesn't make sense. They could have just as easily decided to shutter it the day after they bought the rights to the IP. They aren't obliged to release Duke Nukem Forever.

Regardless, even if DNF turns out to be trash, I won't hold Gearbox responsible for making it trash. I'll hold them responsible for deciding to release it as trash, but the fact of the matter is that 3D Realms was responsible for that joke of a development cycle. Hell, that DNF is even being released in a form that DOESN'T resemble "Big Rigs Over the Road Racing" is a monumental triumph!

EDIT: And if you say that they have to release it "as is" because they bought it and it cost them too much for them to NOT release it..... then why did they buy it without checking the quality? To use the chef example: Imagine if a Chef bought some ingredients without even checking the quality of the ingredients to use in a dish, and then finds out that the ingredients are awful. Straight up, he's a bad chef. If Gearbox bought DNF without checking to see what condition it was in and without being willing to do more work on it if necessary, then they're really.... really..... really stupid. Smart people don't buy things without checking the quality of those things first, and if Gearbox bought DNF blind, then that doesn't speak well of their business practices.

 

[RedDeadFred]

That's like saying it's not the chef's fault if his vegetables were half-rotten when he got them, but served them to the customer anyway.

Can we please end all these shitty analogies? They don't make your point valid.

But that one made complete sense...

With all the shitty analogies on this forum to make fun of, he goes after the one that makes perfect sense.

It doesn't make sense........but we shall labour the metaphor until it dies an alliterative death.

The chef doesn't have a choice because in this circumstance they've forked out a minor fortune to buy these vegetables believing them to be at least serviceable. However, when they were delivered the chef realised to his horror that the vegetables were not up to standard and now they had hundreds of hungry customers waiting for a meal outside, customers who would be very rude and nasty if they were suddenly told the meal wasn't going to be ready for another few years.

Here lies a tortured metaphor, let us spare it a thought!

And they should wait. They would be paying money for a terrible meal that might make them sick.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Every developer tries to make a great game, but not every developer is given enough time and money to deliver on said game. So its not silly, its simply the cold, hard truth behind video-game development.

Making a great game is easier said than done.

If Gearbox couldn't make a good game out of what they were shown by 3D Realms then they either shouldn't have bought it or they should have rebuilt it from scratch. Borderlands was a great in-house game, and quite a success too. It's not like they couldn't do it.

If you buy a used car from a dealership and it falls apart on the first day, you're hardly going to yell at the previous owner.

 

[Vibhor]

So it's not their fault that they blamed consloes for their game sucking? It's not their fault that they said they could take over the project? It's not their fault that they promised it would everything the old fps crowd loved and more? It's not their fault that they're relaesing a game that's obviously not upto their standards?

Sorry, but I'm not buying it.

GEARBOX NEVER BLAMED CONSOLES FOR SUCKING OR MADE ANY PROMISE THAT THE GAME WILL BE WHAT EVERYBODY WAS WAITING FOR.
These words where spoken by 3D REALMS people at a time 3D REALMS was still working on DNF.

Gearbox just got the game after 3D REALMS bankrupted,fixed the bugs,made the multiplayer,and are now going to release a 3D REALMS game.

Explain why didn't they edited it to make it fun. One year seems long enough time to make a game fun. Especially if its 80% complete.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

That's no excuse, you don't release products until they're great, no matter what state you acquired them in.

QFT, I don't see how people don't get that. People act like they had some incredibly finite date to get the game done by. As it has been said in one of the other bazillion threads about this: Gearbox acquired the game 2 years ago. That is plenty of time to look at what 3D Realms did, and then if it was messed up, they could just start from scratch and use some of the ideas and remap the game to gave such things like health packs and the ability to carry 10 guns.

snip

Snip

As I point out above, they have had the game for 2 years. Most games these days get just around half that and come out fine and have the things that DNF doesn't have and should. And those games are started from scratch, Gearbox got a partial project, they had plenty of time to fix the stupidity of regen health and only getting two weapons at a time "if" it was 3D Realms in the first place that intended it to be that way.

If Gearbox had a problem with 3D Realms' decision on that, they could have easily changed it. By easy I mean plenty of time, and as I said above they even had time to take 3D Realms' ideas and just start from scratch and build a game from 0%.

 

[Durananrananrananran]

If half the code they received is shit, then they should have started from scratch.

Am I the only person who thinks they did start from scratch? 14 years my arse...

It's nothing to do with the code. The code they wrote seems to work well. It just has been subject to bad design decisions.

Of course, ladies, gentleman, bitches and butches, the demo could be a clever joke. I can imagine a commander type character giving you a power up a little later in the game and saying "enough of this 2 weapon shit, but you have to keep ironsight aiming as pandering to the console demographic". As if...

 

[Elementlmage]

That's like saying it's not the chef's fault if his vegetables were half-rotten when he got them, but served them to the customer anyway.

Can we please end all these shitty analogies? They don't make your point valid.

Actually, yes they do. A valid analogy, such as the one above, can be used in place of a direct argument to serve as an example. It is a perfectly legitimate logic device.

 

[Korolev]

Also, I find it difficult to believe that they did buy DNF blind. The jokes about DNF were legendary, EVERYONE knew what a tortured game it was. Anyone with half a brain cell in their skull would approach buying the rights to the game very, VERY cautiously. Any product with a 14 year development cycle replete with delays, cancellations, revisions and reboots with not a cent to show for it would raise alarm bells in the head of ANY sensible business person.

Randy is either a very shrewd businessman who knows what he is doing and has calculated that he has something to gain from this deal, or he's a colossal idiot. Seeing that he's the head of a major studio, I don't think he's an idiot - he has worked the angles on this one: He knows that a certain amount of people will buy DNF SIMPLY BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN RELEASED. He also didn't have to spend that much putting it together and the game pretty much advertises itself (everyone who is anyone knows about DNF by now). So even if the game is mediocre, he will release it because he will stand to make money off of it, as well as gaining good publicity for being the man who "saved duke!".

 

[Pearwood]

I'm amazed a small studio like Gearbox has this many fanboys, it's their game, they're responsible for the quality of it.

 

[Elementlmage]

It doesn't make sense........but we shall labour the metaphor until it dies an alliterative death.

The chef doesn't have a choice because in this circumstance they've forked out a minor fortune to buy these vegetables believing them to be at least serviceable. However, when they were delivered the chef realised to his horror that the vegetables were not up to standard and now they had hundreds of hungry customers waiting for a meal outside, customers who would be very rude and nasty if they were suddenly told the meal wasn't going to be ready for another few years.

Here lies a tortured metaphor, let us spare it a thought!

Now, here we have an example of the Fallacy of False Analogy. (Yes, analogy, not metaphor)

You cannot use elements of both situations to paint an analogy as it is absurd. Any decent chef would apologize to his customers and tell them what happened, while he had one of the cooks run down the market to fetch more vegetables.

-edit-

Also, use a dictionary please! An alliterative death, really? Do you even know what alliteration is?

 

[Durananrananrananran]

Also, I find it difficult to believe that they did buy DNF blind. The jokes about DNF were legendary, EVERYONE knew what a tortured game it was. Anyone with half a brain cell in their skull would approach buying the rights to the game very, VERY cautiously. Any product with a 14 year development cycle replete with delays, cancellations, revisions and reboots with not a cent to show for it would raise alarm bells in the head of ANY sensible business person.

Randy is either a very shrewd businessman who knows what he is doing and has calculated that he has something to gain from this deal, or he's a colossal idiot. Seeing that he's the head of a major studio, I don't think he's an idiot - he has worked the angles on this one: He knows that a certain amount of people will buy DNF SIMPLY BECAUSE IT HAS BEEN RELEASED. He also didn't have to spend that much putting it together and the game pretty much advertises itself (everyone who is anyone knows about DNF by now). So even if the game is mediocre, he will release it because he will stand to make money off of it, as well as gaining good publicity for being the man who "saved duke!".

A voice of reason. Have a reason cookie.

 

[rdiggs]

Why do we even care about a Duke Nukem game, much less the quality? I assume we care because there are people who truly enjoyed it back in the day or the bizarre reality of the whole 3D Realms business but this game doesn't and hasn't had anything to offer for over a decade now. It is practically a retro title.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

Thank you OP.

Personally, i think that Gearbox left it at only 2 weapons on purpose, because they didn't want to mess with everything that 3d realms did for their final game.