Duke Nukem Forever Studio Founders Discuss What Went Wrong

gamerant.com:

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 The public consensus on the game was that the prolonged development time had left every aspect of it outdated when it finally launched.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.

Duke Nukem 3D Player is Creating a Mod That Encapsulates All Things British

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