[Ronin]

Fox, on 29 February 2020 - 03:21 PM, said:

I don't think Randy really care about what some fans have to say. If he did, he would have stopped working on the industry long ago

I'm half joking about this, you never know with some people.

Fox, on 29 February 2020 - 03:21 PM, said:

Maybe. Randy has already displayed some SJW inclination. Is he compensating for something?

It's one thing to release something like the world tour or release Duke 3D as they can be dismissed as products of a bygone era and another to do a really new Duke game in this climate of sensitivity, Randy like most sjws is a fake (The lady doth protest too much, methinks) and will sail in whatever direction the wind blows because as you said it will be profitable. We are now seeing a true backlash to woke posturing in media so it's only a matter of time before characters such as Duke will become more in demand in the main stream, in fact I think they already are.

Duke Nukem is a God fearing, masculine, nationalist, American hero archetype, powerful forces would Id' imagine would spend a lot of moolah suppressing this kind of character.

[Fox]

Ronin, on 29 February 2020 - 03:35 PM, said:

It's one thing to release something like the world tour or release Duke 3D as they can be dismissed as products of a bygone era and another to do a really new Duke game in this climate of sensitivity, Randy like most sjws is a fake (The lady doth protest too much, methinks) and will sail in whatever direction the wind blows because as you said it will be profitable. We are now seeing a true backlash to woke posturing in media so it's only a matter of time before characters such as Duke will become more in demand in the main stream, in fact I think they already are.

Duke Nukem is a God fearing, masculine, nationalist, American hero archetype, powerful forces would Id' imagine would spend a lot of moolah suppressing this kind of character.

Dunno

DNF already included that bizarre scene of Duke watching the twins being killed by alien tentacles while joking that they are "fucked"

Maybe it's worse if they try to keep Duke "edgy"

[Ronin]

Fox, on 29 February 2020 - 05:13 PM, said:

Dunno

DNF already included that bizarre scene of Duke watching the twins being killed by alien tentacles while joking that they are "fucked"

Maybe it's worse if they try to keep Duke "edgy"

That just fell flat, there's a line between being edgy and jumping into the abyss. That was not funny and sounded more psychotic than anything else as well as character assassination. I always found the Duke character whilst being OTT still more wink and elbow than full 4chan edgelord.

Imagine a game where Duke is portrayed like Master Chief or the perfect boy scout, just like every other generic army shooter out there, his super power is his ego and violence he has to be edgy. You could argue that the Doom 2016 approach could work but it wouldn't, where's the character? Sure it could be a good game would it wouldn't be a good Duke Nukem game.

[Jimmy]

gemeaux333, on 29 February 2020 - 09:51 AM, said:

And what about VR ressurecting Duke, it works with Half-Life, so I don't see why it woudn't worl with Duke, there are plenty of possibilities in Duke with VR setup, and not only punching things in aliens balls and faces !

Half Life: Alyx isn't even out yet, mate. It could be a critical failure (although it will surely make enough money to be worth doing for them.)

Radar 100 Watts, on 29 February 2020 - 10:46 AM, said:

Look at what happened with Doom 2016. Miracles can happen.

Doom 2016 wasn't a miracle though. It took dedication, hard work, love, and clever direction. id approached that game from the stance of "THIS HAS TO BE GOOD." No experimenting, fucking around, being lazy, following the crowd of nameless FPSes coming out, etc. They took an established franchise and really thought "What made this good and what can be made relevant in a modern experience without massive deviation?" It had to work. Doom 3 was a good game, but it deviated too much and that's why it failed to carry the franchise. Doom 2016 delivered what most people expected. And now we see in Doom Eternal, they have established trust and now they can deviate. It's a risky move, but a smart one.

DNF did the opposite of all of this. It never had a clear direction and some of the ideas had been there for 10 years with zero deviation or thought to how they even fit in the game, franchise or were even relevant to the world/time it was released in. It was just shit out. George Broussard is a profoundly talented aesthetic director but in no way a good project director. The game was only finished because Broussard was removed, but in spite of that, it wasn't finished properly. A middle ground with George's involvement would have produced a better game.

Ronin, on 29 February 2020 - 02:30 PM, said:

The only way forward I see would be Gearbox selling off the licence, can't see it happening though especially in these clown world times. AAA game developers would shit themselves trying to bring Duke back because of the pressure and expectation along with the main stream games media just waiting to bury anyone that tries to do anything not ticking enough woke boxes these days. You would need a new young team with balls and just the right level of naivety to pull it off. I see Randy holding on to the IP and doing nothing, even if just to spite the community that I believe he detests or maybe he just feels a moral obligation to keep a new Duke Nukem game from the world... but we all know Randy is not a moral man by any reasonable standard.

I feel many things about Randy, but one thing I don't believe to be true is that Randy hates Duke Nukem or the fan base. I believe he wants to do what is right but other forces, and his own timidity over money, prevent him from doing things he wants to do. That dude would LOVE to be the guy who made DNF Betas happen. But Take-Two is seriously holding anything DNF hostage.

Fox, on 29 February 2020 - 03:21 PM, said:

Maybe. Randy has already displayed some SJW inclination. Is he compensating for something?

$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$

Ronin, on 29 February 2020 - 03:35 PM, said:

Duke Nukem is a God fearing, masculine, nationalist, American hero archetype, powerful forces would Id' imagine would spend a lot of moolah suppressing this kind of character.

They tried to suppress DNF. But even they could not stop that hype machine.

Fox, on 29 February 2020 - 05:13 PM, said:

Dunno

DNF already included that bizarre scene of Duke watching the twins being killed by alien tentacles while joking that they are "fucked"

Maybe it's worse if they try to keep Duke "edgy"

People look at this too much in a modern context. Duke 3D was edgy for the 90's. In a world where pedophile drag queens can rub their cocks on five year olds in classrooms, pixelated gore and nipple pasties don't really stack up. Hell, the word "fuck" was even bleeped in the game!

People who complain about Duke Nukem being toxic, "edgy", etc etc are ACTUALLY protesting the return of a culture where something like that can get made and be relatively successful with little backlash, mostly amounting to people only being worried about little Tommy accidentally playing the game. No matter how annoying soccer moms were back then, they didn't want to outright ban adult materials, they were just tHiNkiNg Of ThE cHiLdRen!!11 (It's that slippery slope that led to today of course, with exploitation by malevolent forces weaponizing the soccer moms.) These SJWs realize how benign Duke Nukem actually is and want to get rid of it because benign culture is problematic for them; It can't be exploited outside of a clown world, yet benign culture is what people yearn for in a clown world.

[Ronin]

Jimmy, on 29 February 2020 - 05:41 PM, said:

I feel many things about Randy, but one thing I don't believe to be true is that Randy hates Duke Nukem or the fan base. I believe he wants to do what is right but other forces, and his own timidity over money, prevent him from doing things he wants to do. That dude would LOVE to be the guy who made DNF Betas happen. But Take-Two is seriously holding anything DNF hostage.

I hope you're right and I'm wrong, however the amount of justified shit and ribbing he got for his carry on surrounding Duke must have have had a negative effect on how he views the community and the franchise and he's already rich as fuck.

A man in his position surly if he wanted could try to bring back Duke, the fact that he has not at this point speaks volumes.

[Jimmy]

I don't think that's fair. He has tried, he just doesn't know how to do it. He's been going about it the wrong way and now he's at the "umm okay this isn't working." phase.

Also, you forget he's "rich" by my and your standards. He, and everyone else on his level in the industry, is on a hamster wheel chasing those dollars, man.

[OpenMaw]

Jimmy, on 29 February 2020 - 06:07 PM, said:

I don't think that's fair. He has tried, he just doesn't know how to do it. He's been going about it the wrong way and now he's at the "umm okay this isn't working." phase.

Also, you forget he's "rich" by my and your standards. He, and everyone else on his level in the industry, is on a hamster wheel chasing those dollars, man.

Randy has a nasty habit of throwing other people under the bus. Whether it's Valve, who basically gave him his start as an indy developer, or Jim Sterling, or SEGA, or the third party developers he outsourced A:CM to.

He's terrible in his leadership position because he does not give a fuck. He seriously does not care. I know that for a fact. Just look at the media blitz behind Colonial Marines. Those AWFUL "candid" interviews they did talking about all the shit they were doing and how much they cared and blah blah blah. His commentary over canned footage talking about the Aliens advanced AI system (Doesn't exist at all in the game, by the way.) and then compare how he talked about the game after. Essentially 'It got roasted, but it was totally a mediocre game, but not terrible.' Who talks about their game like that? If it wasn't the best it could be, why the fuck would you release it, and why wouldn't you take the time after its release to do damage control?

Answer : He don't give a shit. And his attitude as a director of a game studio doesn't just hurt him. His behavior with Aliens : CM made the landscape for Alien games at that time very sour. People didn't rush to Isolation in large enough numbers to secure the planned sequel.

As Scott Miller pointed out, Randy wasn't willing to put the money behind DNF to actually get it totally finished. They limp-dicked that games' release. Randy wanted to push it out, make back what could be made back, and he hoped it would be "good enough" that they could jump onto another Duke game with a clean slate. The problem is, you can't develop games like that. You just can't. Good enough is a bar too low and it always leads to mediocre-leaning-to-terrible releases.

He's tried, sure, but it has been incredibly half hearted.

[Jimmy]

I think you actually over-estimate how much power he has. I'm not defending him, but his position is rather average for the industry.

[OpenMaw]

Jimmy, on 29 February 2020 - 07:48 PM, said:

I think you actually over-estimate how much power he has. I'm not defending him, but his position is rather average for the industry.

First off I actually meant to mark you up. Fuck.

Second. You may be right. From my own experiences with the man, and what I saw him do publicly just have not left me with happy joy-joy thoughts about him.

[oasiz]

I think Jimmy pretty much summed up what my thoughts were..

Randy does get a lot of hate but I think a lot of it is also unjustified and is merely a result of people looking to blame someone for everything, it isn't really that simple.
WT, sure, it was plagued with it's share of issues but on paper? Bring 3 of the most influential duke3d devs back to work on an expansion with archaic tech and little to no help.
I don't think an expansion pack 20 years later after the game's original release with 3 key devs could have a better ring to old time fans.
We all know that the end result could have been better but it could have been so much worse, like a NW tier outsourced mess of an episode. To me it shows that there is at least someone there who tries to do the right thing but is kind of paralyzed now on the whole franchise as every move he makes gets met with even more backlash. Not really a motivating position.

[OpenMaw]

oasiz, on 29 February 2020 - 11:36 PM, said:

I don't think an expansion pack 20 years later after the game's original release with 3 key devs could have a better ring to old time fans.
We all know that the end result could have been better but it could have been so much worse, like a NW tier outsourced mess of an episode. To me it shows that there is at least someone there who tries to do the right thing but is kind of paralyzed now on the whole franchise as every move he makes gets met with even more backlash. Not really a motivating position.

It was a bit of a disaster though. Of the official levels, WT is some of the most uneven in terms of quality, and the gimmicky art doesn't help that. Shit looks like minecraft at some points.

I could agree more if Randy didn't have a long history of:

Pulling resources away from projects like Aliens, and everything Duke, in favor of Horderlands
Saying one thing, doing another.
Making promises he can't live up to.
Hyping shit to high heavens and then shrugging his shoulders post release.


Over and over, he has done these things. At some point he deserves the shit sandwich he gets. All that, plus the shady shit with the USB drive, man-handling and assault, and verbal bullying of other devs, along with his spastic outburts on twitter "YA FUCKED MEHHHH!!!" He's... A bit of a turd..

[Jimmy]

But was it Randy that decided to put resources from one thing into another thing?

I guarantee you its the Big Money behind him counting on the money they will make from Borderlands. He answers to them. He also takes their flak. It's his job, I'm just not sure if he understands it.

The AAA industry is Hell.

[Player Lin]

Jimmy, on 01 March 2020 - 12:16 AM, said:

The AAA industry is Hell.

...and it doomed. (no pun intended...okay, maybe a little. )


I don't know, everything is possible and sure Randy has to answer his "BIG MONEY" boss(es) so he can't do what's he actually want...

But that still doesn't mean he can give us promises and/or hypes then just walk away after something just fucked up, yeah, it may not totally fair to Randy or other Gearbox devs./out-sourced devs. but to the fans of Duke Nukem, where the fair is?

[oasiz]

Commando Nukem, on 29 February 2020 - 11:57 PM, said:

It was a bit of a disaster though. Of the official levels, WT is some of the most uneven in terms of quality, and the gimmicky art doesn't help that. Shit looks like minecraft at some points.

Yes, a lot of the same can be said about various musical or TV comebacks. WT was never going to make much money, everybody who really wanted duke3d already had it.
I see it as more fan service, I doubt anyone younger would care about a married with children reunion special with original cast but I'd watch it in a heartbeat, just because.
Twin peaks also took a turn that certainly pushed many off but to me it's a trip back to a mind that made it happen in the first place, opening actual new chapters instead of rehashing old ones to obvious conclusions.
End result might always not be what I expected but I know for sure that legit personal decisions and heart was out in to it. (In this case I did enjoy S3 a lot though)
Things were uneven for sure but 3DR was a bigger team with actual unsung heroes doing a lot of background adjustments and game play changes that really helped shape the final product to the one we know.
IMO This is about as close to such as it will ever get.
Anyway... remember, 20 years here was a gap, not 20 years in the making, let alone in the mapping scene. Who knows, maybe someone from the community will pick this up once a better port exists and polishes this up to better standards to give a nicer send-off ?

[Radar]

Maybe I'm blind, but WT was NW tier.

[Fox]

Like Jimmy said, you guys are exaggerating.

Pitchford is just a businessman. He throws money in some projects and oversees them. It's not a crime if some products turns bad. He just investing, and expecting that most of them turn into profit.

You can criticize him for some misleading statements, but he says what he thinks will sell.

[Outtagum]

He's also a magician.

[NightFright]

Radar 100 Watts, on 01 March 2020 - 03:43 AM, said:

Maybe I'm blind, but WT was NW tier.

Not by a long shot. NW has shitty artwork and bad levels. Even reused the first levels from Hollywood Holocaust. WT had fairly decent levels, just the new weapon, the boss and overall setup of the episode (without real coherence) sucked. OK, the engine, too. And you can't just put aside Lee's great new songs.

[Radar]

NW also came out in 1997. Yes that is an important detail.

[gemeaux333]

You know how the saying goes : "By constantly following the wind, the only thing you get is the destiny of a dead leaf."
So to survive you either have to face the wind like everything else, or like river to flow (is this approach really productive in the end ?)...

[Jimmy]

Radar 100 Watts, on 01 March 2020 - 03:43 AM, said:

Maybe I'm blind, but WT was NW tier.

Yes. Lack of planning. Rushed execution. Inexperienced (with Duke3D) team. Bad artwork. Bad programming.

I'm sure a lack of funding and time was involved. In the past Nerve has done excellent work. So have Blum and Levelord. Their new maps aren't terrible, but it's clear they have not touched Build in a long time. They should have done some practice exercises first, releasing free levels to the community and gauging feedback, like Romero did before Sigil.

Outtagum, on 01 March 2020 - 09:00 AM, said:

He's also a magician.

Literally the Mysterio of the games industry. I am not defending him in this thread but rather understanding him, he's an actor in a larger play. Understand the director of that play and you understand the entire industry.

[NightFright]

Well, Romero's pre-Sigil exercise levels were quite good. Didn't look to me as if he got "rusty" in regards of map design. Considering that, Levelord and Blum might have done better, too. But again, I'm OK with the new maps in general. There are a lot of community maps and episodes that are a lot better, though. It's also not worth paying 20 bucks for. As a free release like Sigil, it would have been perfect fan service, but that chance was missed.

Ultimately, I mainly paid for Lee's music, also to have a definitive digital rendering of all the original tracks.

[Jimmy]

You do have to take into account that John Romero was still designing games very recently when he made Tech Gone Bad and Phobos Mission Control. It is undoubted in my mind that Romero, Blum, and Levelord are level designer whizzes. Romero used Doom Builder to make those two maps, which really isn't quite unlike modern tech. Blum and Levelord used Mapster. Which is a great tool, but let's face it, it's very old school. It's quirky. Do I really think that either of them had used it in 20 years or remembered it extremely well? No. It's not about being rusty in level design, but rather rusty in the tools and player expectations. Romero had to have learned a lot with those two maps and the wealth of information it gave him for building Sigil is probably immense.

[OpenMaw]

If i'm not mistaken, Romero was also playing Doom stuff still. So he knew what the community was producing to boot. Knowing the expectations is, very important.

[Mike Norvak]

Daily reminder about Duke IP is dead.

[MusicallyInspired]

I like WT. Levels and all. Just the boss is gimped.

[Fox]

Jimmy, on 01 March 2020 - 03:21 PM, said:

You do have to take into account that John Romero was still designing games very recently when he made Tech Gone Bad and Phobos Mission Control. It is undoubted in my mind that Romero, Blum, and Levelord are level designer whizzes. Romero used Doom Builder to make those two maps, which really isn't quite unlike modern tech. Blum and Levelord used Mapster. Which is a great tool, but let's face it, it's very old school. It's quirky. Do I really think that either of them had used it in 20 years or remembered it extremely well? No. It's not about being rusty in level design, but rather rusty in the tools and player expectations. Romero had to have learned a lot with those two maps and the wealth of information it gave him for building Sigil is probably immense.

Blum and Levelord weren't experienced when they worked on the original Duke 3D either. They were just hired to do the job.

Personally I don't want them to "keep up" with modern user maps or TCs.

Jimmy, on 01 March 2020 - 11:42 AM, said:

Yes. Lack of planning. Rushed execution. Inexperienced (with Duke3D) team. Bad artwork. Bad programming.

I'm sure a lack of funding and time was involved. In the past Nerve has done excellent work. So have Blum and Levelord. Their new maps aren't terrible, but it's clear they have not touched Build in a long time. They should have done some practice exercises first, releasing free levels to the community and gauging feedback, like Romero did before Sigil.


Literally the Mysterio of the games industry. I am not defending him in this thread but rather understanding him, he's an actor in a larger play. Understand the director of that play and you understand the entire industry.

AFAIK there was no lack of funding.

[Jimmy]

If you look at pre-release materials it's clear they became experienced. Hence why I suggested they should have released some test maps, just as Romero did. I never implied that they should have "kept up" with anything. People wanted a classic style episode released. A "Duke 3D the Way 3DR Did" of sorts. It fell short. Blum and Levelord were the strongest links. Think of how bad it could have been with other people making the levels. As for funding, if there wasn't a lack, then it surely shouldn't have been rushed out the door so fast. I get it, "20th Anniversary" is great for marketing. A good game is even better though.

[NightFright]

As an anniversary episode, WT fell short, no doubt about it. Any of the new maps could have been released separately for free. They would have probably received more attention and appreciation that way.

Now we are struggling to get the whole thing working properly in EDuke32 since years since Gearbox is sitting on the code. It's sad. I still believe a "Duke3D The Way 3DR Did" could and should be made, but by the community. Well, maybe for the 25th anniversary.

[gemeaux333]

Perhaps Duke Nukem VR could be the new Boneworks...

If making a new Duke game is a money issue... I guess they could easily think about the EGS option...