When Duke Nukem Forever was first announced, it was the highly anticipated follow-up to one of the most popular first-person shooters of the 90s. Since then, however, it has become one of the most famous examples of a game getting trapped in “development hell.” After a protracted development period of 15 years, Duke Nukem Forever finally released to negative reviews. The public consensus on the game was that the prolonged development time had left every aspect of it outdated when it finally launched.Recently, however, a playable build of Duke Nukem Forever from 2001 has appeared online. It appears to be the same version of the game that was originally shown off at E3 in 2001. And although the build is currently just a few tests levels, there is enough there for the modding community to build something resembling the Duke Nukem Forever that could have been.Scott Miller, one of the creators of Duke Nukem and the original founder of Apogee/3D Realms, has taken the game’s early build leak as a chance to reveal “the truth” behind Duke Nukem Forever’s development. In a blog on Apogee’s website, Miller explains how the studio was understaffed and that the resulting slow development meant that gaming technology was advancing quicker than the game itself. This caused Duke Nukem Forever to be essentially re-booted multiple times, which in turn increased development time.
Scott Miller also used this blog post to explain the impact Duke Nukem Forever had on the studio and cites it as the main reason the 3D Realms license was reluctantly sold to an investor in Denmark. However, these claims are disputed by another former 3D Realms developer that worked on Duke Nukem Forever, George Broussard, the original game director. The Duke Nukem Forever developer is known for tweeting his options on the video game industry and responded to Scott Miller's blog post by calling it “nonsense” and implying that the loss of the 3D Realms licensing and IPs was due to the actions of Scott Miller himself.
It is difficult to know which version of events more accurately represents what happened. What is clear is that the prolonged development of Duke Nukem Forever was a mistake the previous iteration of 3D Realms could not come back from. Perhaps had the game been finished in its 2001 build state and released sooner, the original studio could’ve been salvaged. Even if the 2001 version of the game was poorly received, it might have been better to released sooner rather than being another video game stuck in development hell, becoming what Scott Miller describes as “a constant money pit for the company [that] eventually killed the original 3D Realms.”
After selling of its license and video game IPs, Miller and other members of the first 3D Realms reformed under the name Apogee, which is what 3D Realms was originally called. However, most of the developers that were with the studio before Duke Nukem Forever have not returned.
Duke Nukem Forever is available on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.
Source: Apogee