Why Gearbox is not to blame!

[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.

 

[sheic99]

To whom it may concern,
Dont assume its going to be shit before you play it. By that logic, Mass Effect 3, Skyrim, GTAV (if it exists yet), Serious Sam, Saints Row 3 etc etc are all going to be shit...even though IVE NEVER BLOODY PLAYED THEM!
People dont give things a chance nowadays
If you are all so scared of jumping into the great unknown then just wait for the reviews to come out. Then you can sit and say "I told you so" whilst wallowing in the fact that you have absolutely zero personal opinion

The demo was released early for anybody who bought the GOTY edition of Borderlands. I assume that means quite a few people do have personal experience about this game.

 

[Lightning Delight]

Man a lot of people seem to have contracted virulent forms of "Dumb as shit" and "Unrealistic expectations" all at once.

It was known from the very beginning that Gearbox wasn't doing anything other than dusting off what 3D realms failed to finish and putting it all together. Thats it. Why did they do it? Randy Pitchford, the owner of Gearbox, likes Duke Nukem and didn't want to see it go unreleased; He wanted the 3D realms game people have been waiting 12 years for to be released, keeping to their original vision as much as possible. Its also a quick paycheck for this rising company - They do next to fuck all and are pretty much guaranteed to get some profit from it.

Blaming Gearbox for the games dated shittiness is completely unreasonable - They inherited the shit from 3D realms and their team of howler monkeys. If gearbox had started from scratch not only would it of defeated the point (as it would no longer be the 3D realms duke people had been waiting for) it would of taken an extra 2-3 years and would of required a significantly greater financial commitment from Gearbox. I do not blame them for not wanting to sink years of time and millions of dollars into an irrelevant franchise to please nothing but stupid fan boys and aging gamers.

And besides, what the fuck were you expecting? This game has been in development since the time when being able to look up and down in FPS's was considered pretty damn modern. How stupid do you have to be to expect this 12 year old game to have modern graphics, modern gameplay elements or Modern anything? If you honestly expected DNF to be anything but "Dated" from the moment you started playing you may as well just hand your brain in at your local Hospital; you are clearly not using it.

Why gearbox isn't to blame is obvious.
Why gearbox took on this minor project is obvious.
Why the game is shit is obvious.
Why OP is 100% right is plain to see.

But if you don't like the game, simply don't buy it - Pre order, play the demo then cancel the pre order. Easy as piss.

You, sir, have a lot of pent-up anger.

A company cannot just go for the easy pay-check and expect what happens to be not their fault. It is all fine and well if you want to completely take credit for the game, both positives and negatives. But you cannot expect to reap the rewards of profits and publicity whilst dodging any of the complaints associated with a bad product.

And, to further the analogy war, I offer you this:

That is like going to a failing bicycle shop and buying all of their bikes, then selling those bikes to other people. Then, when all the bikes break, trying to blame the bike shop you bought them from, while keeping all the profits from the bikes.

 

[Dukenstein]

The only problem with the demo is that it was very short and a year old. Judge a game on a final product, not a demo. Also, people went into the demo expecting the entire game, I just don't get some people.

 

[Dfskelleton]

There's been rather a lot of hoo-hah on these forums about Gearbox ruining Duke Nukem or at least making it a massive clone of other current gen games. Let me just iterate one small, niggling, rather bloody important point Gearbox got the code for Duke Nukem half finished.

It's probably a fair assumption that some of the faults with the game probably stem from this fact. This probably sounds like I'm making excuses for Gearbox but if you look at their track record they have consistently made pretty good games.

So chaps and chap-ettes let's not hit Gearbox with the terrible stick of mild wrath......unless you think this argument has about as much validity as a hippo in a tumble-dryer then beat on them all you want!

I dunno, Hippo in a Tumble Dryer seems pretty valid to me.

If the Tumble Dryer was in space and on fire, that would leak validity from all sides!

 

[Jerome9157]

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

You don't yell at the previous owner if you get a shit car from a second hand dealership.

This. That's all I have to say.

 

[viranimus]

I honestly dont blame gearbox. I also think releasing the completed version of the 3d realms game is a good and important idea. I would rather see a subpar shooter (which I would hazard over 50% of all shooters released are subpar) released instead of trying to bury what was built and then have it develop into some cultish nonsense. Sorry, do not want another VanBuren.

 

[Crazycat690]

Gearbox is still to blame lol.

 

[FallenRainbows]

To those saying they shouldn't release it:

You all know how much games cost, millions upon millions in R&D, development, employment and many other areas. would YOU throw away millions of pounds just so some people don't get pissy? Play the game, I know the demo was a bit sub-par but give it a chance before you direct SO much hatred at it. Heck. It might ever be good. If not, yell at 3DRelms not Gearbox.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

The only problem with the demo is that it was very short and a year old. Judge a game on a final product, not a demo. Also, people went into the demo expecting the entire game, I just don't get some people.

Such are the perils of limited access in the internet age.
Guy 1 "Hey, I played it and I liked it!"
Guy 2 "Hey, I played it and I didn't like it because it has such and such."
Guy 3 who hasn't played the game - "This game sucks because it doesn't have such and such. This is a travesty!!!!"
Guy 4 who also hasn't played the game "Two out of three people said this game sucks, so I'm not buying it. Damn shame."
Guy 5 says nothing because he's already made a decision he's not going to buy it until professional reviews come out.

Then professional reviews come out and everybody buys it anyways, forgetting all the time wasted saying it was crap. See discussions related to every Smash Bros sequel, Zelda iteration, Call of Duty, and so on.

 

[Azaraxzealot]

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

You don't yell at the previous owner if you get a shit car from a second hand dealership.

wow. you REALLY didn't like the demo, huh?

i guess i'll just wait until it's about 15 bucks to buy it... used.

 

[Pedro The Hutt]

Hey @KnowYourOnion , when the damn CEO of Gearbox goes on record with this. [http://www.gamefront.com/gearboxs-randy-pitchford-reviewers-who-dont-like-duke-nukem-forever-will-be-held-accountable/] Then they can damn well be to blame when the game is not everything they've been bragging about. And if they deep down knew the game was no good, guess what, don't give yourself just half a year to finish the game up, push the release date further ahead so you can rework it into something presentable. After fourteen years I'm sure we could've waited 'til the holidays.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

And besides, what the fuck were you expecting? This game has been in development since the time when being able to look up and down in FPS's was considered pretty damn modern. How stupid do you have to be to expect this 12 year old game to have modern graphics, modern gameplay elements or Modern anything? If you honestly expected DNF to be anything but "Dated" from the moment you started playing you may as well just hand your brain in at your local Hospital; you are clearly not using it.

For what it's worth: my problem with the games, as far as I've seen in the demo is not that it's dated. It's that it has a lot of modern crap in it. I don't want sprint, regen health, 2 weapons juggling, iron sights, vehicle sections and gun meelee in a Duke game.

The problem in short, for me is: the game is not dated. It's too modern. If I wanted all that crap in a game I'd go play a console shooter. I don't, because I don't like it. I wanted a proper Duke game. 10 guns galore, Mighty Foot, health packs and no iron sights.

And as for who I blame? I blame Gearbox. It says Gearbox on the tin, ergo they are responsible. Had it said 3d Realms and the game was the same, I'd blame them. But it's Gearbox' responsibility. They released the game as it now is. They could have stopped all those terrible design choices.