Why are we still so interested in DNF?
#1 Posted 10 November 2019 - 10:36 AM
For example, sequels I found very disappointing include:
Carmageddon 3,
Alien vs. Predator 2010 (well, it wasn't a sequel as such, but it was another in the franchise so it was bound to be compared to the really good first two PC games),
Alien: Colonial Marines,
Perfect Dark Zero (a mediocre sequel to the best game of all time, in my view),
Bioshock: Infinite (a pretty great game, really but massively inferior to it's two prequels, and very disappointing compared to it's earlier pre-view videos, before they decided to dumb the game's theme's and gameplay down),
Unreal Tournament 3,
Deus Ex: Invisible War (not a terrible game, but it's a sequel that somehow didn't include many of the things that made the original game so beloved, such as experience points, having to upgrade your weapon skills as you start off pretty useless, a really good story, really memorable characters, etc),
Thief 4 (basically a lesson in how to ignore one of the largest, most vocal, and talented fan-bases in the gaming world, and their many forums and fan-sites, and instead lock yourself away, guess what it is about the previous games that make them so eternally popular, get it all wrong, and kill the franchise stone dead),
But I'm not really interested in reading about the reasons why those games turned out to be so disappointing, yet for some reason DNF's convoluted and mistake strewn production fascinate me. It's all the more surprising because I'd have preferred some of the above games to have been great than for DNF to be great. So why does DNF history interest us so much, when for most similar gaming sequel disappointments, you just get accept it and never think of the bad sequel again?
#2 Posted 10 November 2019 - 03:00 PM
A lesser but still relevant difference between DNF and most of the games on your list is that most of those games are the third or later entry in the series. By that point, people are starting to expect a series to decline and it's not that big of a deal. Duke 3D was the 1st entry in the first person shooter Duke franchise, and DNF was understood to be the second real entry. Yes, there were expansions, and yes there were other spinoff games, but DNF was the true sequel and everyone knew it, so expectations were high.
So really, none of those games on your list are relevantly similar to DNF. Deus Ex: Invisible War probably comes closest, but it came out only 3 years after the original without a reputation for being in development hell.
#3 Posted 11 November 2019 - 08:05 AM
People were taking apart every single quote from 3DRealms, projecting their own expectations on them. A news moratorium meant 3DRealms never denied false rumors either, so the expectations kept growing uncontrolled. The game had been speculated about from 1997 to 2011, and when it was released, it obviously fell short of the insane assumptions people had made. That made it look like the worst game ever. It wasn't, but it was certainly the game with the highest negative gap between expectations and reality. That meant people kept talking about it even after it was released, and it became a meme.
This post has been edited by Altered Reality: 11 November 2019 - 08:34 AM
#4 Posted 11 November 2019 - 05:45 PM
People play DNF now, and in their minds, rightly or wrongly, they still feel that the original game that was advertised back in the 2001 E3 trailer was never delivered to them. The game that they waited for all those years was never released. What we got instead was a pale imitation of what was promised and teased.
Duke fans feel that they have been a victim of a huge bait and switch.
This post has been edited by Tea Monster: 11 November 2019 - 05:48 PM
#5 Posted 12 November 2019 - 08:14 PM
Tea Monster, on 11 November 2019 - 05:45 PM, said:
I still feel like the ORIGINAL game, the one that was supposed to use the Quake2 engine, that was advertised on PC Gamer in 1997 and at E3 in 1998, that was meant to come out early in 1998, was never delivered to me.
And you know what's funny? If you go back and read the original interviews, you'll notice that DNF wasn't originally meant to be the ultimate experience that was hyped for far too long. It was meant to be a stopgap, a brief project to keep gamers occupied while 3DRealms was preparing the real revolution, the real ultimate experience: Prey.
I still remember how I felt when I read that infamous June 15, 1998 press release, where George announced the switch to Unreal. I felt like I was living the end of a beautiful dream, and since I could crosscheck the dates with the Preyweb documents, I realized I was right. That was the moment everything fell apart, that was the beginning of the end.
On April 28, 1997, Scott stated that the goal was to release Duke Nukem Forever no later than mid-1998, and Prey late in 1998. Meanwhile, the internal Prey schedule reveals that a Prey demo was supposed to be released between April and June of 1998, confirming that Prey was supposed to be released between September and October 1998. But George's decision to scrap the Quake2 version of DNF and start from scratch with Unreal put an end to all those plans. Remember how DNF was supposed to be a stopgap to keep gamers occupied before Prey? Restarting the development of DNF put 3DRealms in a position where they had no stopgap, while the real revolution was still "many months" away.
Work started with the Unreal engine, and by the time Prey was supposed to be released, an even worse realization struck 3DRealms: Prey, the game they had hyped up like the next big thing, suddenly looked worse than the supposed stopgap. You can notice that right when Prey was supposed to be released, at the end of September 1998, the Preyweb updates stop. Shortly after that, Paul Schuytema and William Scarboro leave 3DRealms, William Scarboro becomes disillusioned about portal technology, the rest of the Prey team is reassigned to DNF, and the next November 15, George announces he hired Corrinne Yu to develop a new engine for Prey.
That was a real chain reaction of events, triggered by George's idiotic decision to switch engines, that doomed 3DRealms. I think it was 2013 when George tweeted he would never switch engines again. Congratulations chump, it was only 15 years too late.
#6 Posted 12 November 2019 - 09:01 PM
#7 Posted 13 November 2019 - 06:35 AM
tsunstealer, on 12 November 2019 - 09:01 PM, said:
That disgraceful decision to switch engines means that ultimately George buttfucked himself.
And no, this is not a case of "hindsight is always 20/20", because at the time I wasn't the only one stating this in the 3DRealms forum. It's a case of faith turning people into blind idiots, since most people (ironically, those who experienced the most disappointment when DNF came out) chastized anyone pointing that out, inviting them to "have faith" because "3DRealms never disappointed the fanbase".
Now it's deja vu with Cyberpunk 2077.
#8 Posted 14 November 2019 - 02:27 AM
This post has been edited by Tea Monster: 14 November 2019 - 02:27 AM
#9 Posted 14 November 2019 - 05:32 AM
Simple. It gives the jilted fanboys an opportunity to put on their game developer insider cap and tell us how they know whats best. Just like when a legal question pops up they put on a suit, grab a briefcase, sit down at the keyboard and pretend to be a lawyer. But... its hard to fault them. They had the rug pulled out from underneath them with a sub-par game that had been massively hyped.
This post has been edited by Mark: 14 November 2019 - 05:33 AM
#10 Posted 14 November 2019 - 07:38 AM
Tea Monster, on 14 November 2019 - 02:27 AM, said:
I know. However, the Quake 2 iteration of DNF was supposed to come out in 1998, when Quake 2 graphics was the norm, while Unreal graphics was something extraordinary. Half-Life and Sin both have Quake 2-level graphics, they both came out in 1998, and nobody said their graphics looked obsolete. Sin was panned because the CD literally contained an unstable beta version rather than the final version that was in the developers' possession, while Half-Life was praised sky high.
Tea Monster, on 14 November 2019 - 02:27 AM, said:
Don't amass me together with THEM. Even though I appreciate old games, I hate pixelated graphics and nostalgia. I play every game in stereoscopic full HD. Whenever I play Duke Nukem 3D, I use the Polymer renderer and the HRP. I wouldn't touch the vanilla versions of Quake 1 and 2 with a ten-foot pole, but Darkplaces and Quake2XP, with all their additional effects, are sweet.
However, I played the out-of the-box OpenGL version of Quake 2 for the first time in 1999 when I got a Voodoo 2, and I loved it because it was so advanced, compared to what I could play with only a Trio32 video card. Had I gotten the Quake 2 iteration of DNF as well, BACK THEN, I would have loved it as well.
This post has been edited by Altered Reality: 14 November 2019 - 07:39 AM
#11 Posted 15 November 2019 - 03:31 AM
Altered Reality, on 12 November 2019 - 08:14 PM, said:
And you know what's funny? If you go back and read the original interviews, you'll notice that DNF wasn't originally meant to be the ultimate experience that was hyped for far too long. It was meant to be a stopgap, a brief project to keep gamers occupied while 3DRealms was preparing the real revolution, the real ultimate experience: Prey.
I still remember how I felt when I read that infamous June 15, 1998 press release, where George announced the switch to Unreal. I felt like I was living the end of a beautiful dream, and since I could crosscheck the dates with the Preyweb documents, I realized I was right. That was the moment everything fell apart, that was the beginning of the end.
On April 28, 1997, Scott stated that the goal was to release Duke Nukem Forever no later than mid-1998, and Prey late in 1998. Meanwhile, the internal Prey schedule reveals that a Prey demo was supposed to be released between April and June of 1998, confirming that Prey was supposed to be released between September and October 1998. But George's decision to scrap the Quake2 version of DNF and start from scratch with Unreal put an end to all those plans. Remember how DNF was supposed to be a stopgap to keep gamers occupied before Prey? Restarting the development of DNF put 3DRealms in a position where they had no stopgap, while the real revolution was still "many months" away.
Work started with the Unreal engine, and by the time Prey was supposed to be released, an even worse realization struck 3DRealms: Prey, the game they had hyped up like the next big thing, suddenly looked worse than the supposed stopgap. You can notice that right when Prey was supposed to be released, at the end of September 1998, the Preyweb updates stop. Shortly after that, Paul Schuytema and William Scarboro leave 3DRealms, William Scarboro becomes disillusioned about portal technology, the rest of the Prey team is reassigned to DNF, and the next November 15, George announces he hired Corrinne Yu to develop a new engine for Prey.
That was a real chain reaction of events, triggered by George's idiotic decision to switch engines, that doomed 3DRealms. I think it was 2013 when George tweeted he would never switch engines again. Congratulations chump, it was only 15 years too late.
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I mean this. The Build sequel with these voxels by Dirk Jones. Allen Blum said once he had levels for this game. I'm still curious if any of these exist in some form (there was a heavy denial they didn't end up in World tour, despite my weird feelings about Glden Carnage).
I also agree with you the Q2 engine Duke. I think that looked more like a natural successor for D3D.
This post has been edited by The Watchtower: 15 November 2019 - 03:31 AM
#12 Posted 16 November 2019 - 12:56 PM
But Daikatana's gestation didn't take anywhere near as long, wasn't a sequel to a very popular game (unlike DNF, where the DN3D fans were really expecting a great sequel), and didn't leave us pining for earlier versions of the game (whether they were playable or mocked up screenshots and videos) that we still hope, knowing it's almost certainly futile, exist and will one day be running on our PCs.
I mean, two years to make a game as innovative as DN3D, and six times as long as that to make the mediocre and consistently bland and uninspired DNF. You can't help wondering how little of DNF's development time was spent actually developing something (even if it was then thrown away when they changed engine or something), and how much more time was wasted doing something other than working on the fantastic, innovative game that they were supposed to be delivering to us.
Did they work for two hours a week, or something?
And then to top it all off, Randy Pitchford ends up owning the rights to Duke Nukem. Why, when 3D Realms still owned the rights, didn't they farm out sequels to other developers, like they did with Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, or Time to Kill on the N64 and Playstation?
#13 Posted 18 November 2019 - 10:25 AM
Kerr Avon, on 16 November 2019 - 12:56 PM, said:
Did they work for two hours a week, or something?
It's not that they didn't spend enough time developing the game. It's just that whenever they showed their progress to George, he always said "okay, very good, that's the way to go..." until he suddenly decided that the technology they were working on was obsolete and ordered them to restart from scratch.
Kerr Avon, on 16 November 2019 - 12:56 PM, said:
They are two different things. When 3DReams worked as a producer for those third-party titles, those companies were working FOR 3DRealms, which paid them to develop Duke Nukem games. 3DRealms, however, kept the rights for the IP and received some money for every sold copy. On the other hand, 3DRealms ran out of money in 2009, so it actually sold the IP rights to Gearbox. 3DRealms got an undisclosed sum, while the money for selling every copy of DNF went to Gearbox and not 3DRealms.
#14 Posted 25 November 2019 - 05:18 AM
2 weapon limit
Regenerating health
On rail hallways
Checkpoint saving
It was just another COD/Halo game.
And there's more. A lot more. Matt McMuscles covers it perfectly in his wha happun epidode. Give it a watch. It's entertaining.
#15 Posted 25 November 2019 - 09:47 AM
#16 Posted 25 November 2019 - 09:54 PM
Altered Reality, on 11 November 2019 - 08:05 AM, said:
I'm not aware of anything that was ever talked about during the development that wasn't live on disk at the time of discussion. This is one of the honorable aspects of that project's development I still take away from it.
Predictions about where things were going to go timeframe wise were FLAGRANTLY off the the mark, but I would be genuinely interested in hearing about anything you feel marketed that was *made up* as in it didn't exist... versus was scrapped/changed/discarded to the point of the original commentary being irrelevant. I know it's a bit nuanced. Same as a functional car you were pitched that you never get to drive is for all intents and purposes a fraud.... but if someone was driving the car somewhere then it wasn't made up... it was hoarded.
Kerr Avon, on 16 November 2019 - 12:56 PM, said:
Did they work for two hours a week, or something?
Most of the people were working greater than 40 hour weeks. A non-trivial number *ahem* slept at the office frequently (and voluntarily, because treats and projector and well... uhhh... nerds) and their hobby was the project.
Altered Reality, on 25 November 2019 - 09:47 AM, said:
I'm sure he was looking at the burn rate (even at that small of a team size) and looking at their income rate and putting two and two together. You know who did that well? Infinity Ward with CoD2. You know what CoD2 wasn't? Very innovative over its source material.
This post has been edited by OccludeOlga'sOcculus: 25 November 2019 - 10:21 PM
#17 Posted 26 November 2019 - 06:09 PM
OccludeOlga, on 25 November 2019 - 09:54 PM, said:
Predictions about where things were going to go timeframe wise were FLAGRANTLY off the the mark, but I would be genuinely interested in hearing about anything you feel marketed that was *made up* as in it didn't exist...
Let's start from the first press release 3DRealms issued about DNF. It stated "3D Realms Licenses id Software's 'Quake II' Engine for `Duke Nukem Forever'". That wasn't true. At the time, 3DRealms had only obtained a license to use the Quake 1 engine, which is what the first public screenshot, as well as the November 1997 PC Gamer screenshots showed. I concede that 3DRealms was planning to obtain a license to use the Quake 2 engine, but as far as having the license, they had to wait until December 1997.
Also, George tried to weasel out of a clear statement about the engine by making references to the "Quake/Quake 2 engine" in the interview from April 27, 1997.
Fast-forward to late 1997, when PC Gamer interviewed George to write the first article about DNF. George stated "Duke Nukem Forever is far enough out that we don't want to give all our ideas away."
So, George's concept of a game being "far enough" consisted in not even having the engine they were planning to use yet.
June 1998, Computer Gaming World interviews George. He states that the game is "fairly planned out". Um... NO. Unless he had already decided to restart development multiple times, make 3DRealms go bankrupt, get sued by Take2 and sell the IP.
#18 Posted 27 November 2019 - 01:50 AM
#19 Posted 02 December 2019 - 12:26 AM
Altered Reality, on 26 November 2019 - 06:09 PM, said:
It was true. If this is your opening salvo, my point stands very firm.
You're arguing that 3DR showed Quake 1 era screenshots that existed on disk while they had also openly declared they had a Q2 licence. It's almost like... exactly what I said... that what was shown and/or talked about was always legit on disk. 1998 E3 put the Q2 efforts on disk to bed... what are you going on about hooker?
Altered Reality, on 26 November 2019 - 06:09 PM, said:
We had a white board on the wall that outlined every year that DNF design would change direction and how much money George expected to lose. It was meticulously planned out.
WTF is wrong with you?
This post has been edited by OccludeOlga'sOcculus: 02 December 2019 - 12:29 AM
#20 Posted 02 December 2019 - 03:34 AM
OccludeOlga, on 02 December 2019 - 12:26 AM, said:
I'm arguing that 3DRealms claimed to have a Quake 2 license, while they only had a Quake 1 license.
OccludeOlga, on 02 December 2019 - 12:26 AM, said:
I'm assuming that statement to contain the same amount of truth as the Chair Story.
This post has been edited by Altered Reality: 02 December 2019 - 03:34 AM
#21 Posted 02 December 2019 - 05:41 AM
You can have a license for something that states as a condition that you won't get immediately access to the source code. That was the case here. 3D Realms DID enter into a licensing agreement with id for the Quake 2 engine in early 1997. They just didn't get the source code until after Quake 2's release.
#22 Posted 02 December 2019 - 01:02 PM
Altered Reality, on 02 December 2019 - 03:34 AM, said:
You're wrong.
Altered Reality, on 02 December 2019 - 03:34 AM, said:
You're right.
#23 Posted 02 December 2019 - 03:29 PM
#24 Posted 01 January 2020 - 07:59 AM
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That has been ironic since the beginning. Since April 28, 1997, 3DRealms had been a lot more vocal about DNF than it had been about Prey, because it was assumed that Prey would come out after DNF, so there had never been much interest in Prey in the 1990s. Apart from Lon Matero and a couple of other sites (Preyground and prey.net) there was no echo chamber about Prey, it was all DNF, DNF, DNF. Even gaming magazines only talked sporadically about Prey, and almost considered it a myth, not something that was certain to come out.
Even I wasn't interested in it (and I still facepalm for not saving the 360° screenshots): it was only after Prey had been released that my interest in its history began. The maximum irony is that, for all I'm concerned, Prey has had much lasting power than DNF, because Prey has a kick-ass level editor and DNF doesn't, despite George's repeated promises that DNF would come out with a level editor.
This post has been edited by Altered Reality: 01 January 2020 - 08:12 AM
#25 Posted 01 January 2020 - 08:17 AM
Altered Reality, on 01 January 2020 - 07:59 AM, said:
George talked more about irrelevant "restarts" than the corrosive gradual iteration.
Altered Reality, on 01 January 2020 - 07:59 AM, said:
Can't argue with your general premise there.
#26 Posted 01 January 2020 - 09:01 AM
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Not openly. He was masking his words so that it would look like DNF was about to come out, and it's only now that the general public knows what's going on, that we know every time George said something positive, it was code for "we just restarted".
He said "Pigs are growing wings" in 2003. Now everyone knows what he REALLY meant was "we ditched all we showed you so far and we're restarting from scratch because nothing of what we have works with real-time lighting", but back then, everyone interpreted that as "pigs are about to fly", a metaphor for "DNF is about to come out".
I'll quote a 2006 interview from 1UP:
Quote
GB: [Laughs] I think it'll be out when pigs fly. But it's definitely going well now. Things are together; we're in full production. We're basically just pulling all the pieces together and making the game out of it. There's a lot that's finished. All the guns are finished. Most of the creatures are finished. And as I said, we're just basically pulling it all together and trying to make it fun. We've kind of got all these disassociated elements that make up a game, and you put them together and things happen. And then you just tweak it and polish it until it's fun, and that's kind of the phase we're in now, just trying to make something that is really fun to play and interesting.
See what he was doing? He was going "that's finished, and that too is finished, and that other thing is finished" to deceive people into thinking "and the whole game is finished too", when what he REALLY meant was "we only have the assets, what we lack is the whole game."
#27 Posted 01 January 2020 - 09:37 AM
I was happy with the mediocre DNF 2007 version because I played the version that got me hyped again with the 2007 trailer.
But even when I finished it for the first time in 2011 I was like that was it?
Being a kid and still relatively new to games and seing that DNF trailer in 2000 (thats when I saw the 98 trailer lol) and then the second trailer 2001 I got so hyped and impressed that anything other than those 2 versions was destined to fail in my eyes lol
What I want to say is that in my view there are 3-4 games we waited for... that's DNF 1998, 2001, 2004 and 2007 versions... : P
And again that 2001 trailer looked so epic and dark and seing it back then it felt as it will be the best game to be released no matter what came before or after. And instead I only got the 2007 DNF without a glimpse of that epicness and mostly cartoonish and silly...
So yeah till I play all those builds I don't think I will feel like DNF has been released lol
#28 Posted 01 January 2020 - 02:59 PM
Altered Reality, on 01 January 2020 - 09:01 AM, said:
Look. I stormed out of the office. I slammed doors. George never masked his words. He predicted things that didn't happen but he never masked himself.
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We knew what he was doing and we did our best.
#29 Posted 01 January 2020 - 03:16 PM
OccludeOlga, on 01 January 2020 - 02:59 PM, said:
Were chairs thrown?
OccludeOlga, on 01 January 2020 - 02:59 PM, said:
George never masked his words. He predicted things that didn't happen but he never masked himself.
In your view, what was it? Enthusiasm? Just poor estimations on how things were going to pan out? In the recent interview Scott Miller did, he made it sound like George simply wasn't open to hearing it. On the other hand, I don't really see that Scott offered a better alternative. If 3D Realms had doubled up the team size to finish the game, that would have only bled the studio faster, and it wouldn't have done anything to solve the infinite iteration crisis. That's how the situation has come to read for me after the more recent revelations.
#30 Posted 02 January 2020 - 11:41 AM
Another better alternative? Downsize ambition and make do with what Quake2 could do.
This post has been edited by Altered Reality: 02 January 2020 - 11:41 AM