Why Gearbox is not to blame!

[Pvt Dylan]

It's great to see my prediction come true. You all laughed at me when I said DNF was going to suck, now look at you.

*haughty laugh*

You're not exactly a psychic, there was 2 general choices.. good or bad.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

It doesn't really matter whose fault it is, the point is IT SUCKS!!

 

[V8 Ninja]

Ahh, hate and judgmental people. Besides a better place, what would the internet be without them?

OT: And so Duke Nukem Forever turns out to be a major disappointment to fans. Did anyone NOT see this coming? Besides the fact that fanboys are impossible to please, said fanboys have been waiting on this game for over a decade. When you wait on something for so long, you get illusions that the product is really worth all that time you've waited for it when in reality it's not. The only thing that I'm wondering is what new game will take DNF's place as the "King Of Vaporware".

 

[Hansinkdu]

(Personal opinion on DNF and most unreleased games)

Regardless of all the reviews and opinions, until I play the actual game itself it is considered unreleased for me. Have some faith, buy game or rent game, hold breath, play game, continue to play because you are enjoying it or refund it.

I'm not going to have some demo stop me from playing the real thing.

 

[dancinginfernal]

But, but

I enjoyed the demo. It's the same exact thing from last year's E3 is all. They didn't show off any of the good shit.

 

[Treblaine]

20% remaining is enough to add a proper weapon inventory.

Jesus Zombie Christ, we aren't so dense that we can't handle more than 2 weapons at a time. Stop so shamelessly copying Halo for no damn reason other than "me too" bullshit. By ALL MEANS have a quick-button for two-weapon switching, but least give us an inventory so we don't have to run around looking for that rocket launcher every time you encounter a big monster.

When I get this on PC I expect the first mod to be a multi-weapon-inventory "patch".

 

[Stabby Joe]

What's to blame for? A game that isn't even out yet?

 

[Lightning Delight]

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.

I don't think anyone here is saying they shouldn't release it. They are saying that you should not release a bad game, and that if you do, it is your fault, regardless of how far along it was when you received it.

The only thing that I'm wondering is what new game will take DNF's place as the "King Of Vaporware".

Half Life 2: Episode three.

 

[Saviordd1]

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!

Edit: Added at the behest of a chap further down the page

Thread starter,please add at your first post that all design decisions for the single player where made by 3D REALMS.
Gearbox got the game 80% finished,and what they did was to align the levels,record Duke's voices and fix some bugs. The gameplay,the story,the levels,etc where all designed by 3D REALMS.
Gearbox just fixed what was already done but was unfinished.

Its both their faults. If its shit, dont release it "It was the other guys" is not a valid excuse

 

[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.

I don't think anyone here is saying they shouldn't release it. They are saying that you should not release a bad game, and that if you do, it is your fault, regardless of how far along it was when you received it.

The only thing that I'm wondering is what new game will take DNF's place as the "King Of Vaporware".

Half Life 2: Episode three.

To do so would cost millions, not to mention people would be mad it was delayed AGAIN they'd be a laughing stock not to mention the cost of re-hauling the graphics (which a lot of people are complaining against) would be VERY expensive.

 

[GinraiPrime]

I haven't played the demo yet but from what I have seen it looks perfectly fine to me, what I expect of a newer version of Duke. The humor is still there, the weapons are still there and it looks fun. I won't make any judgements until I've played the actual finished game.
What I really wanna point out here, because no-one else seems to have pointed this out about the recent demo release.......ITS A DEMO!!!!!!!

Its not meant to include everything that the main game has, otherwise what would be the point of it? You all get a free game and alot of their money for advertisements and manufacturing copies of the game goes down the crapper. Okay to some here that sounds ideal but whatever. Don't be so bloody judgemental on a demo because its a demo. I dunno if it really is a new one or the one from PAX but regardless, if you enjoyed it hey, more power to you and ya got a game to look foward to. If you didn't enjoy it fine. Just save us the trouble and don't keep ranting ON AND FUCKING ON ABOUT IT!!!

 

[Lightning Delight]

I haven't played the demo yet but from what I have seen it looks perfectly fine to me, what I expect of a newer version of Duke. The humor is still there, the weapons are still there and it looks fun. I won't make any judgements until I've played the actual finished game.
What I really wanna point out here, because no-one else seems to have pointed this out about the recent demo release.......ITS A DEMO!!!!!!!

Its not meant to include everything that the main game has, otherwise what would be the point of it? You all get a free game and alot of their money for advertisements and manufacturing copies of the game goes down the crapper. Okay to some here that sounds ideal but whatever. Don't be so bloody judgemental on a demo because its a demo. I dunno if it really is a new one or the one from PAX but regardless, if you enjoyed it hey, more power to you and ya got a game to look foward to. If you didn't enjoy it fine. Just save us the trouble and don't keep ranting ON AND FUCKING ON ABOUT IT!!!

Forgive me, but isn't a demo supposed to serve as an indicator of how the rest of the game should be? I mean, isn't it there so we can make judgements about it, and decide from there on whether or not we want to buy the complete game?

 

[MasterV]

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.

Gearbox got the game 80% finished,and what they did was to align the levels,record Duke's voices and fix some bugs. The gameplay,the story,the levels,etc where all designed by 3D REALMS.
Gearbox just fixed what was already done but was unfinished.

Too bad the remaining 20% of the game was copy/pasted from Halo and not from Duke Nukem eh? Seriously, I've had it with defenders of developers stupid enough to think that we're idiots and then try to sell us sugar-coated shit. It's still shit under that sugar coating.

Now, I'm not saying Halo is shit. Au contraire, it is successful for a reason. BUT! This is Duke Nukem we're talking about. This game was supposed to be a throwback to the good old days of thearcadey action FPS. But they removed basic things from the recipe.

How would you react, dear OP, if Valve said:"In Episode 3, Freeman will not have his iconic melee weapon. He will also not carry more than 2 weapons." Would you trust them? Would you say that this is the way Episode 3 should be?

 

[GinraiPrime]

I haven't played the demo yet but from what I have seen it looks perfectly fine to me, what I expect of a newer version of Duke. The humor is still there, the weapons are still there and it looks fun. I won't make any judgements until I've played the actual finished game.
What I really wanna point out here, because no-one else seems to have pointed this out about the recent demo release.......ITS A DEMO!!!!!!!

Its not meant to include everything that the main game has, otherwise what would be the point of it? You all get a free game and alot of their money for advertisements and manufacturing copies of the game goes down the crapper. Okay to some here that sounds ideal but whatever. Don't be so bloody judgemental on a demo because its a demo. I dunno if it really is a new one or the one from PAX but regardless, if you enjoyed it hey, more power to you and ya got a game to look foward to. If you didn't enjoy it fine. Just save us the trouble and don't keep ranting ON AND FUCKING ON ABOUT IT!!!

Forgive me, but isn't a demo supposed to serve as an indicator of how the rest of the game should be? I mean, isn't is there so the we can make judgement about it, and decide from there on whether or not we want to buy the complete game?

That is true but not every demo does have everything thats what I'm saying. I never usually bother with demos most of the time, just wait for the main thing and usually try it like at a shop or if a mate's got it but I'm still reserving judgement.

 

[Atmos Duality]

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.

Good points, except the blame shift at the end. Gearbox has to stand behind the product they hype and market; because they purchased it with the intent on releasing it. No excuses.

Gearbox must endure part of the blame because of this: Nothing justifies putting out a shitty product. Not even costs. Unless Gearbox wanted to intentionally damage their reputation and customer relationships, they would not have purchased the Duke Nukem franchise.

At this point, we should really stop pointing fingers and wait on the end result: If it's shit, it's shit. If it's good, it's good. Simple as that.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

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.

I like how everyone acts like gearbox has nothing else to do but this game, there busy little bunnies you know, there not like treyarch-bungie-IW and well ic ant be arsed to name more, but end of the day them devs work on 1 game and thats it, gearbox got fucking loads on the go

And that's an excuse for releasing a shitty game?

I'll remember that excuse next time I've got lots of exams to revise for.

 

[II2]

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.

Just for an alternate perspective, here's a music analogy.

Someone comes up to you, Miracle of Sound, and say "Hey, nice tunes, would you mind doing the final mix on an unfinished album? Sadly, the band and their old producer all died in an auto-erotic circle jerk... BUT... There's a nice wad of money in it for you and the band used to be big enough that it should sell itself. Just do the best you can."

So you get a some DVDs, but oh no - the stupid bastards wanted a retro feel, but they've already bounced down everything but the vocal tracks and cranked the brickwall limiting to compete in the loudness war. There's a few unsorted MIDI riffs and an old 8 track tape, but really all that can be done for it is try and subtractively EQ some dynamic back into it and record in the vox, before mastering it and sending it on its way, even though you know there's parts of it that you'd do differently, but you'd have to re-write entire tracks from the ground up and on and on and on...

...

Now, I do agree with you, they should strive for excellence and have rethought what people will want - ideally... but since it was slated to come out so soon after they acquired the Duke license AND they needed more time suggests they were very short on time and money to get everything finalized; I'd speculate they probably spent more time trying to go back over 3D Realm's code and do bug fixing during QA testing on a game that wasn't their baby to begin with, than giving priority to reworking mechanics, level design choices, GUI elements and all other niggling factors that had probably already passed the "OK" in the focus groups and in the eyes of the Publisher.

I think mostly I just was itching to make a music analogy at you... but otherwise, while I agree OVERALL... Videogame development is incredibly complicated and annoyingly bureaucratic at times, so I'm willing to bet there was probably more than one person within Gearbox that was echoing the same grievances everyone else is now, before anything was shown.

 

[FuktLogik]

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!

Edit: Added at the behest of a chap further down the page

Thread starter,please add at your first post that all design decisions for the single player where made by 3D REALMS.
Gearbox got the game 80% finished,and what they did was to align the levels,record Duke's voices and fix some bugs. The gameplay,the story,the levels,etc where all designed by 3D REALMS.
Gearbox just fixed what was already done but was unfinished.

How else am I supposed to dry my hippo?

As for the game, I'll decide whether or not they ruined it once I actually get to play the damn thing.

 

[cainx10a]

Could care less about who the developer/publisher is at this stage. Gearbox stepped up to put a product that otherwise would never have been released. And DNF sounds like that one project with the jinx on it, so I really wouldn't want to see Gearbox go bankrupt because they had to start from scratch.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Just for an alternate perspective, here's a music analogy.

Someone comes up to you, Miracle of Sound, and say "Hey, nice tunes, would you mind doing the final mix on an unfinished album? Sadly, the band and their old producer all died in an auto-erotic circle jerk... BUT... There's a nice wad of money in it for you and the band used to be big enough that it should sell itself. Just do the best you can."

SNIP

It would then be me and the label who released it that people should get pissed at it if sounded shit - not the original artist.