If there is one
game that the entire gaming community thought would never actually come out, it was "Duke Nukem Forever." The game was and arguably still is a sequel to the very old game "Duke Nukem 3D," a classic in the FPS genre. However, after about a dozen years in development mire, constantly being reworked from scratch, it came to the point where the prevalent thought among gamers that are old enough to remember is that DNF was "going to take forever to come out." Indeed, the story of how the game got to where it currently is has been one mishap and miscalculation after another.
It first started with It all began John Romeros development company which earned its money from games like "Doom" and "Duke Nukem 3D". Enough money was earned for the company to continue operations for the next decade without having to release another game. The companys philosophy was solely focused on the designer. This meant that the developers of the game were given total control over a project without having to argue with game publishers who try to impose their demands on the creation of the product or even its release date.
In theory, this meant that the designers had the freedom to implement as many fun things into the game as they wanted, with enough time to do so. In practice, it meant that terrible management could delay a game indefinitely. To be fair to Romero, the game was being developed at a decent pace using a licensed version of the then-advance Quake Engine. At some point in the process, they noticed that the Unreal Engine was vastly superior, tossed out all the work that had already been done, licensed the better code and set about working on everything from scratch. In theory, this should not have caused the game to mire in development hell for more than a decade. In practice, it did not.
Each time a new game engine came out that proved superior to the one the company was using, the practice was to drop everything that was already done and start from scratch. The result of all this was a game that was always getting near completion, but never actually getting there. Romeros obsession with making the game perfect rather than simply getting the game out was not doing the damage it should have since the company had a massive amount of cash to spend. The only time finances ever really became an issue was then they put out "Daikatana," which had failed to even be remotely playable and ended up costing the company money..
At some point, Romero finally began to notice that his hefty pocket was noticeably slimmer. Apart from the few jumbled demos and loads of useless materials, he had no product to show for all the years of development. He tried to find financers to give "Duke Nukem Forever" one last shot, but it didnt work out. By this time, initial investors gave up and just turned over the intellectual property to another company. Promising to get the game out, Gearbox took control.
Now it has a current May 6 2011 release date and a trailer that looks like it can at least be playable if it ever comes out. Thats the big question, though. Gamers dont have high hopes for it to ever come out, let alone think itll be a good game. As the trailer itself admits, after 12 years in development, the game had better be damn good.
