[Matthew]

On a scale between the Rick Roll meme and the Burger King Foot Lettuce Meme, how dead do you think the Duke IP is in Gearbox's hands?

Me, personally, I don't think Gearbox has it in them to make a proper Duke game. They're too cowardly and Randy is just a fuckwit half the time. The other half is an annoying pandering SJW. They don't have the balls to make a game like DN3D. They'll somehow shoe-horn in a progressive narrative into the game like a netflix special does as they wait to go full on orangemanbad.exe during the second season. And in today's cancel culture, victimhood olympics, and starvation for attention, the fuckwit would cave in to any pressure in seconds. The only hope we'll get a new and proper Duke game is with another studio. Gearbox has to sell the rights to someone else with balls. That's the only way I can see another Duke game being made, and I don't think its very likely.

What are your opinions? Do you have any hope, or have you already given up?

[gemeaux333]

Duke is not neat, he just decided to take a few years of RNR and run for president !

It will be either Gearbox (when they will be less busy in stacking 11 billions crates and guns) or an independant (we won't have bleeding edge graphics but strong gameplay, heart and soul) who will work on Duke Nukem soon enough

[Master O]

Matthew, on 25 November 2019 - 05:30 AM, said:

On a scale between the Rick Roll meme and the Burger King Foot Lettuce Meme, how dead do you think the Duke IP is in Gearbox's hands?

Me, personally, I don't think Gearbox has it in them to make a proper Duke game. They're too cowardly and Randy is just a fuckwit half the time. The other half is an annoying pandering SJW. They don't have the balls to make a game like DN3D. They'll somehow shoe-horn in a progressive narrative into the game like a netflix special does as they wait to go full on orangemanbad.exe during the second season. And in today's cancel culture, victimhood olympics, and starvation for attention, the fuckwit would cave in to any pressure in seconds. The only hope we'll get a new and proper Duke game is with another studio. Gearbox has to sell the rights to someone else with balls. That's the only way I can see another Duke game being made, and I don't think its very likely.

What are your opinions? Do you have any hope, or have you already given up?

Sell it to Voidpoint!

[Jimmy]

God I hope it's dead.

[DisgustedGrunt]

Duke is not dead, he's just tied up in Gearbox basement, they have a clone of him for crappy cameos.

The Doctor Who Cloned Me was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

[NightFright]

From Gearbox you won't see any Duke-related game any more, not after the mess that was DNF and also World Tour. They know what they are good at, and that's Borderlands, Borderlands and... Borderlands.

The only thing they can (and should do) is to involve an external studio. Selling the IP to someone who knows what they are actually doing would be best under the given circumstances, though.

[Radar]

Duke isn't dead. He's just been put to pasture.

[Danukem]

Radar remembered my old pasture poster!

Here's a philosophical question: Is there actually any difference between being dead and being in suspended-animation?

Consider: Let's say someone is frozen in a cryo chamber, with the plan to thaw them in 1000 years. Let's say the technology exists to do that, but it never happens. Is it correct to say that the person died when they were frozen, or do we say that they were just in suspended animation for all eternity? It's a distinction without a difference. If they had been revived, then most people would say it was suspended animation and not death. But the internal state of the body is the same when frozen whether it gets revived or not.

As a commercial franchise, Duke is in suspended animation. He could be revived, but he may never be. It makes no difference whether we call this death or not.

[oasiz]

P.s. Duke is dead!

[DisgustedGrunt]

Stage 1: blame George Broussard.
Stage 2: blame Randy Pitchford.
Stage 3: repeat Stage 2. FOREVER.

[Radar]

Trooper Dan, on 25 November 2019 - 12:01 PM, said:

Radar remembered my old pasture poster!

I remember everything.

Trooper Dan, on 25 November 2019 - 12:01 PM, said:

Here's a philosophical question: Is there actually any difference between being dead and being in suspended-animation?

Consider: Let's say someone is frozen in a cryo chamber, with the plan to thaw them in 1000 years. Let's say the technology exists to do that, but it never happens. Is it correct to say that the person died when they were frozen, or do we say that they were just in suspended animation for all eternity? It's a distinction without a difference. If they had been revived, then most people would say it was suspended animation and not death. But the internal state of the body is the same when frozen whether it gets revived or not.

Trooper Dan, on 25 November 2019 - 12:01 PM, said:

As a commercial franchise, Duke is in suspended animation. He could be revived, but he may never be. It makes no difference whether we call this death or not.

Everyone knows Duke is stranded on WGRealms, living the rest of his life in humble retirement.

[Steve 64]

Duke is not dead it just Gearbox Software doesn't have the skill to make one.

[gemeaux333]

After Ion Fury, Randy Pitchford sure will give credit to Voidpoint by letting them working on Duke Nukem, just hope it won't end like Manhattan Project (with 2 devs going bankruptcy)

[NNC]

You are bitching at Randy, but you gave him 50 likes for his first comment on this forum: https://forums.duke4...272-duke-nukem/
Is that a record?

[Radar]

Yeah we were idiots for thinking he was gonna do anything.

[gemeaux333]

Just like Winona Ryder always says : "In present day only high budget super zeroes movies happen quickly, the other productions are taking years."
You can apply this principle to videogames by degrees

[Altered Reality]

gemeaux333, on 26 November 2019 - 02:01 PM, said:

After Ion Fury, Randy Pitchford sure will give credit to Voidpoint by letting them working on Duke Nukem

Oh no. Duke Nukem 3D was so good because it was so innovative. It was breaking new ground all the time, while Voidpoint is the opposite of that. Voidpoint is all about giving nostalgics what they already got 20 years ago. Imagine the train wreck Duke Nukem 3D would've been, had it pandered to nostalgics of 1976 video games!
If Gearbox wants to save Duke Nukem, they should commission games to Flying Wild Hog, or id.

[gemeaux333]

Actually I would have chosen ID for the Terminator: Future Shock/Skynet remake, as the new Doom games seems to fit perfectly when it comes to engine, atmosphere and gameplay...
But for sure Flying Wild Hog would do a great job on Duke Nukem when you look at their Shadow Warrior reboot...

I don't worry, because just like Schwartzy, Duke will be back.

[Perro Seco]

Altered Reality, on 27 November 2019 - 05:27 AM, said:

Oh no. Duke Nukem 3D was so good because it was so innovative. It was breaking new ground all the time, while Voidpoint is the opposite of that. Voidpoint is all about giving nostalgics what they already got 20 years ago.

I prefer a Duke sequel meant to be nostalgic rather than "innovative". All the good stuff has already been done decades ago, and today innovative only means better graphics or unnecessary gameplay/story complexity. I also see lot of people claiming "they need to sell the rights to Voidpoint", so maybe is not a bad idea after all.

[necroslut]

Altered Reality, on 27 November 2019 - 05:27 AM, said:

Oh no. Duke Nukem 3D was so good because it was so innovative. It was breaking new ground all the time, while Voidpoint is the opposite of that. Voidpoint is all about giving nostalgics what they already got 20 years ago. Imagine the train wreck Duke Nukem 3D would've been, had it pandered to nostalgics of 1976 video games!
If Gearbox wants to save Duke Nukem, they should commission games to Flying Wild Hog, or id.

Like id would even want Duke – they've already got Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein whatever, they've got their hands full and if they wanted to advance things they have all the opportunities they need. FWH tried to move "forward" with SW2, sure, but they also failed quite spectacularly in doing so.

Still, your core argument ("Duke Nukem 3D was so good because it was so innovative. It was breaking new ground all the time") is of course true. On the other hand, Voidpoint is a small barely-studio and they do what they can (and really well), but they don't have the resources to do what you want. They also could never ever "buy Duke", even if GBx wanted to sell.

[Mark]

( puts on dev/marketing expert hat) Personally, I don't think any new Duke game is going to be a top seller. The market is so flooded with titles that might be considered great except they get thrown in with 126 other similarly great games for next to nothing thru GOG and Steam. Players whip thru all these to the point it becomes hard to stand out with something. Add to that the differing opinions on where and how Duke should move forward and you have another game with mediocre sales. As I say in every other thread this subject comes up in, I would like to see Duke spread out into new territory. No more space stations, moon bases, or same old aliens. (takes off dev/marketing expert hat)

[Radar]

This probably goes without saying, but Duke himself was a caricature of 90s tropes. The character went through so many changes from DN1 to DN2, and in DN3D they made him into a Willis/Arnold hybrid thing. A good Duke game probably couldn't be made today without dissociating the character from most of his 90s personality, which begs the question as to why anyone would consider using the character in the first place.

[Mark]

I'm sure you know why. Name recognition alone will get you a certain percentage of sales.

[Radar]

After the fiasco that was DNF, do you really think a AAA Duke title would sell well? I'm not saying it wouldn't, just pointing out that any potential developer can see the risk too. If you're going through all that effort to make a good shooter anyway, why not pick a character without all that extra baggage?

[Mark]

I don't play modern games so I need to ask. Are there any iconic characters today similar in stature to Duke, Caleb, LoWang and Serious Sam? If there aren't, it may be even tougher to come up with a new one as opposed to another try with Duke.

[Tea Monster]

Mark, on 28 November 2019 - 08:21 PM, said:

I don't play modern games so I need to ask. Are there any iconic characters today similar in stature to Duke, Caleb, LoWang and Serious Sam? If there aren't, it may be even tougher to come up with a new one as opposed to another try with Duke.

This is the really galling point: Most of these characters are still kicking in successful modern games. Even Lo Wang, who everyone wrote off as completely unmarketable in the modern PC climate, has enjoyed two modern sequels. Wolfenstein, and Doom games have been top AAA titles. With a careful approach to how the character is treated, someone could replicate that success with Duke.

There is Randy joking about how he drew the short straw in buying the Duke IP, and there are all the IP's that Duke shared the charts with in the 1990's basking in financial and critical acclaim with new, modern games. Wolfenstein: The New Order made close to 5 million sales, as many as Borderlands 3. 2K and Gearbox are sitting on a potential gold mine and they have no clue what to do with it - hell, even what it is they are holding. There aren't enough facepalms in existence to respond to this scenario.

[Kristian Joensen]

"2K and Gearbox are sitting on a potential gold mine and they have no clue what to do with it"

What has 2K to do with it? AFAIK they have no right to anything Duke beyond DNF.

[Tea Monster]

Gearbox usually use 2K as a publisher. They have for both Battleborn and Borderlands. I can't imagine that any plans on a new Duke game won't involve them in some capacity.

[hismasterplan]

The success of BL3 could fund Gearbox to publish Duke 5 themselves visa GBX publishing. However, I don’t know the numbers and resources required.

[OpenMaw]

hismasterplan, on 29 November 2019 - 05:04 AM, said:

The success of BL3 could fund Gearbox to publish Duke 5 themselves visa GBX publishing. However, I don't know the numbers and resources required.

No.

Everybody knows I am a huge life long Duke Nukem fan.

The only way he's alive is with us. This community. Those who keep modding and mapping and porting.

he lives on in spirit with games like Ion Fury and Hellbound.

But yeah. Duke Nukem, the franchise? The big badass franchise that existed at the end of the millenium? That's gone.


And as far as big iconic characters like Duke and wang being around now in gaming? Not really. Lo Wang's return wasn't exactly a HUGE seller. BJ was probably the only one to (initially) return resembling himself, but they took that franchise right off the rails by over politicizing it. DOOM while successful, is not entirely a character. He's an Avatar.

So, no. There are pretenders and such, but there's nobody like Duke out there. He was, and is, one of a kind... and I absolutely do not agree with the notion that he would need to be dramatically changed to fit in. If anything he should go right back to his 1995 design like nothing ever happened. The Demolition Man concept could work for him, as one of our fellow forums suggested. The world of today and the near future is rife with opportunities for Duke's personality to clash.