[Kathy]

X-Vector, on 03 March 2014 - 05:12 AM, said:

No, I just occasionally need to vent some sarcasm to prevent my system from overloading.
I thought the line about Radar would give it away.

Yeah, it should have. The first thing I thought was "that can't be right", but still replied in a serious tone.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

Much as I felt with the announcement of Satya Nadella as the new CEO of Microsoft, I have no meaningful objections at this time. I want to see a sense of direction before I pass judgment.

[Kathy]

3dRealms was so non-existent by this point that it doesn't matter much.

[Trebor_UK]

Does Scott Miller have a twitter?

And I guess we can now call Interceptor 3DR.

[Forge]

The Commander, on 02 March 2014 - 03:11 PM, said:

Still trying to work out how some two bit company could have bought 3DR when all they have had to show is a broken game on Steam and screenshots of another failed project.

Don't be silly, Interceptor did not "buy" 3DR.
George threw the title to 3DR and his lunch (five cheeseburgers) into the pot to stay in a game of texas hold'em. He had a jack and a four in his hand; he figured that duke-four was a good sign.
His only regret was the loss of his cheeseburgers. With only two pounds of chilli-cheese fries and a diet soda left to his name, he went to bed hungry for the first time in over a decade.

[Green]

Quote

Investment Firm Behind Interceptor Entertainment Acquires 3D Realms

Aalborg, Denmark - March 3rd, 2014 - Danish investment firm, SDN Invest, has acquired Apogee Software, Ltd d/b/a 3D Realms (not to be confused with Apogee Software, LLC - publishers of Rise of the Triad) SDN Invest is part-owner and principal investor in Denmark-based game studio and Rise of the Triad developer, Interceptor Entertainment. Effective immediately, the new CEO of 3D Realms will be Mike Nielsen. Mr. Nielsen also serves as Chairman of the Board at Interceptor.

SDN Invest was founded by Nielsen when he stepped down as CEO of Coolshop.com - a leading online retailer in Northern Europe which he co-founded in 2002 - to focus on investing in companies with potential.

“3D Realms is legendary for its contributions to the gaming industry.” Remarked Nielsen, the newly appointed CEO. “As both the pioneer of the shareware model and an always generous partner who has provided both funding and guidance to game studios such as id Software, Parallax Software, Remedy Entertainment, and many others. 3D Realms has also developed, co-developed, and co-financed such hits as Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein 3D, Rise of the Triad, Raptor, Shadow Warrior and Prey. There are only a handful of independent studios with a better track record of original games. Yet even with this stellar track record, we hope we can take the company to new heights."

“3D Realms has always been a defining part the PC games industry.” Added Frederik Schreiber, CEO of Interceptor Entertainment. “Getting 3D Realms under our wings is a huge step for us and we are extremely excited about the acquisition.”

Scott Miller, co-founder of 3D Realms concluded, “My long time partner George Broussard and I are extremely proud of our past, especially as developers who always tried to partner with up-and-coming studios who just needed their break. Our history shows we did that throughout the 1990s & 2000s, and I expect the new 3D Realms to continue with this tradition in full force. Our industry needs more good guys, who honor the profession and fellow hard-working developers."

[NUKEMDAVE]

I just remembered part of the lawsuit where Gearbox claimed that Interceptor was tricked into making Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction by 3D Realms. Look how credible that accusation looks now.

[Kyanos]

Trebor_UK, on 03 March 2014 - 01:11 AM, said:

I wonder if Miller & Broussard will still work at 3DR after all of this?

http://www.gamefront...ired-3d-realms/

Some quotes in here from Mike Nielsen, the new CEO of 3D Realms.

Quote

“Scott and George will still be connected to 3D Realms,” Nielsen continued. “Scott has worked with Interceptor on our new project, that has yet to be formally announced by us.”

[Green]

Quote

Mike Nielsen, the new owner of 3D Realms, has told Eurogamer that he remains determined for the embattled company to continue despite the ongoing lawsuit with Gearbox Software over the rights to make Duke Nukem games.

In an interview this afternoon Danish investor Mike Nielsen said he was unable to go into the specifics of the dispute with Gearbox, but did issue the following message to Duke Nukem fans: "we're not all out of gum yet."

According to Gearbox's complaint, "Interceptor's new game 'Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction' will make unlawful use of Gearbox's IP, including characters, marks, and copyrights in violation of Gearbox's rights under the APA, and federal trademark and copyright law."

Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction is the game Interceptor Entertainment, which Nielsen part-owns, teased last month with the AllOutofGum.com website.

The website included a countdown timer that was set to end on 25th February, and artwork showing an "Original Kick-Ass" flavour of bubblegum, the favourite chewing product of Duke. But the Gearbox lawsuit forced Interceptor to put a halt to the countdown.

The page had asked for 10,000 people to Like the game's Facebook page in order to translate a block of "alien text" with details of the game. But the code - a simple substitution cipher - was quickly cracked by fans. It read:

"The King makes his next-generation debut in Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction. A top-down action role-playing game for PC and PlayStation.

"Duke Nukem kicks ass across planets in an Unreal Engine-powered galactic adventure to save the President from an apocalyptic alien threat."

Speaking to Eurogamer, Nielsen insisted Interceptor had not announced a new Duke Nukem game.

“We have not officially announced anything, other than we're doing a game,” he said.

“We've left some hints online. There have been a few leaks. We were going to announce it on the countdown but due to the lawsuit that has arisen, we have been unable to comment on it. And because of the lawsuit we can't comment.

“The only thing we can say is we're big fans of Duke. That's all I can say. I have to be careful on this subject.

“Obviously the lawsuit isn't ideal. We'd love to see it go away and have a peaceful resolution to it, but it's not something that scares us.

“Our only message is we're not all out of gum yet.”

Nielsen said he intends for 3D Realms to act as a publisher, with Danish studio Interceptor doing development work.

“We would like to use the 3D Realms brand,” he said. “We still think that brand carries an enormous value. I know there has been some controversy, but for me it still stands as a shining beacon with some of the founding fathers of the modern computer game industry. That weighed heavily with us.

“They still have several IPs that are interesting to work with. One of the things we want to focus on is creating new content and new IPs with 3D Realms. It will be a split between those two things, without giving any percentages on what that split is exactly. The focus on new IPs will be a big part of it.

“3D Realms is more in the publishing position right now. The organisation is small. That's all I can say. Going forward Interceptor will be developing a lot of the products coming from the studio - at least the higher end games. That's part of why it makes sense to me as an investor in both of these companies.”

As for 3D Realms co-founders Scott Miller and George Broussard, Nielsen said Miller will continue to work with 3D Realms as a “creative consultant”. Miller is thought to have been heavily involved in Duke Nukem: Mass Destruction.

Broussard's future is unclear, however. Nielsen declined to comment on his status at the company following the sale.

[Eurogamer]

[Steveeeie]

Green, on 03 March 2014 - 08:57 AM, said:

[Eurogamer]

So ... Interceptor is part owned by this individual and now this individual owns 3D Realms...

Seems like Mike owns 3D Realms .. not Interceptor .. or am I missing something?

Its like saying ID own Arkane.

[blackharted3]

This all sound cool and confusing all at once.

[Jimmy]

From the height of gaming excitement to.... this. The ever continuing saga of 3D Realms is endlessly amusing.

Yatta, on 02 March 2014 - 02:26 PM, said:

He never apologized to us for everything he did to hurt the community. After five years, I am still waiting for his apology to the fans and to the former employees of 3D Realms. Do not allow the new 3D Realms to be tarnished by this man's, in my opinion, failed image.

I would like others in the industry to do business with 3D Realms, but I don't see that happening if George Broussard is in any way attached to the new business entity, even as a mere "consultant." If you want the new 3DR to succeed, do this when you are making big decisions for the company:

Ask yourself, "What would George Broussard do?"

Then do the exact opposite of that, and profit.

Scott Miller is just as guilty, if not more so, than George. Scott let George run loose like a child with a loaded handgun.

Kathy, on 02 March 2014 - 03:57 PM, said:

Apogee Ltd is 3dRealms. Apogee LLC is another thing with hell knows what rights to Apogee Ltd's games.

LLC had licensing for Ltd's games.

[necroslut]

Am I the only one that doesn't feel personally offended by George Broussard/3D Realms? I hope they make good use of the years of experience and knowledge Miller/Broussard have aquired. After all, they've been involved with a great part of ALL truly good 3D shooters ever made.

[MusicallyInspired]

It'll be nice to see 3DR's logo on games more often now. At least it won't disappear into oblivion like Sierra did. What a travesty that company suffered. From industry leader to absolutely nothing. I hope this aquisition means that 3DR will remain a credible name and not disappear.

Again, I reiterate others' feelings; keep the 3DR logo intact. It just looks awesome.

[necroslut]

I have no idea what their financial situation is like, but I hope they keep up the 3DR legacy of giving new developers a break. Gaming would certainly have been worse off without 3DR working with devs like Remedy.

[Kathy]

Jimmy, on 03 March 2014 - 11:09 AM, said:

Scott Miller is just as guilty, if not more so, than George. Scott let George run loose like a child with a loaded handgun.

Miller wasn't really involved much and tried to do his "big" thing outside of 3dRealms. In the end he was just too much talk-talk rather than walk-walk. 3dRealms and Miller simply became insignificant, yet he acted like some kind of an industry expert on too many things his own company failed to achieve.

Seriously, what the hell went wrong when in 1998 they had quite a potential being, there I say, on the front of e3 with their upcoming games. Well, management went wrong. The thing Miller was mostly talking about in his blogs went way way wrong.

[Jimmy]

Indeed. It was Miller's business sense that made Apogee what it was. He wasn't able to keep that success going. Apogee was his baby, his business models not only made his company extremely successful, but revolutionized the industry. It's a certain kind of irony when the man who built the company was also responsible for running it into the ground.

[-Rhetro-]

It's starting to seem like another lateral move by 3DR to keep in the game. If Scott and George will still be connected that is. (as per quote above).

This may be stupid, as it literally just came to mind, but by selling 3DR to Interceptor does that transfer all liability in GBX lawsuit to solely Interceptor? I may be mixed up so I stand to be corrected but if that was the case quite a shrewd move.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

My understanding was that Apogee/3DR has always had incompetent management (if you read 3DR's retrospective on Blake Stone, you can tell the devs were pissed about how Apogee kept delaying the game even though Doom loomed overhead), but it really started to show after DN3D was finished. DNF alone is a sign that their management was garbage, but it was evident as early as when Shadow Warrior was being worked on, when SW's devs went to wrap up development, but instead essentially remade the game under 3DR's direction. If the unused maps in the beta are any indication, it wasn't that good, but it didn't warrant remaking it in a time period when 2.5D and shareware were on their way out. Blood 1, which was being handled by 3DR at one point, also has a cheat code sassing Broussard.

[Jimmy]

In any company any problem is a management problem. A shitty manager hires shitty employees. A good manager hires good employees. It's that simple. Broussard was only the manager of development, but Scott was manager of the entire business.

You've also got the whole debacle as to why Apogee stopped publishing id Software titles. They wouldn't update to a new computer system, and with their shitty pen and paper system they couldn't keep up with anything. So id was like fuck it, we can do this by ourselves. And they did. And you're right about Shadow Warrior. That game suffered from lack of level designers. 3D Realms was fucking stupid to ever let the Levelord go.

[Alithinos]

Apogee / 3D Realm's mistake was scrapping all work done in a game to restart it from point zero all over again.
They made 4 builds of DNF,and every time they would reach near completion they would abandon the work they already had,to start all over with a new engine.
They could instead just finish the games they already had,and they would have had released 4 games in these 12 years,that would have kept them making money and be alive today.
Think of it. There were 4 DNFs and 3 of them died without getting released.If each version of the game we had seen had been published,we would now expecting Duke Nukem 7,and 3DR would have tons of money to keep them going for another decade.
And even if they were so stubborn to keep doing this over and over,they could keep licensing Duke games to other devs,like they did with Time to Kill and Zero Hour.
That would make them money too,and fuel the development of the DNF,while Duke would still stay popular with newer audiences.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

Jimmy, on 03 March 2014 - 02:31 PM, said:

In any company any problem is a management problem. A shitty manager hires shitty employees. A good manager hires good employees. It's that simple. Broussard was only the manager of development, but Scott was manager of the entire business.

You've also got the whole debacle as to why Apogee stopped publishing id Software titles. They wouldn't update to a new computer system, and with their shitty pen and paper system they couldn't keep up with anything. So id was like fuck it, we can do this by ourselves. And they did. And you're right about Shadow Warrior. That game suffered from lack of level designers. 3D Realms was fucking stupid to ever let the Levelord go.

The more I read about Apogee, the more I feel they simply lucked out with the shareware model and by cashing in on PC sidescroller phase than through actual long term competence.

[Kathy]

-Rhetro-, on 03 March 2014 - 02:19 PM, said:

It's starting to seem like another lateral move by 3DR to keep in the game. If Scott and George will still be connected that is. (as per quote above).This may be stupid, as it literally just came to mind, but by selling 3DR to Interceptor does that transfer all liability in GBX lawsuit to solely Interceptor? I may be mixed up so I stand to be corrected but if that was the case quite a shrewd move.

As I understand, GBX is just asking to stop working on a game, nothing else.

Jimmy, on 03 March 2014 - 02:31 PM, said:

You've also got the whole debacle as to why Apogee stopped publishing id Software titles. They wouldn't update to a new computer system, and with their shitty pen and paper system they couldn't keep up with anything. So id was like fuck it, we can do this by ourselves. And they did.

Yep. For a company that was at the forefront of digital distribution yet never tried to evolve it was laughable. In the end, they run their business into the ground. How the hell by fucking 2006 do you realise that the project needs department/section/unit leads instead of GB's being the only one for the whole game? How fucked up is that?

Sure, Valve seems to be doing great with their utopia structure, but they are an exception and it's not like Gabe micromanage all the shit anyway. They also allegedly have an exceptionally high criteria and salary budget for that.

[Alithinos]

Jimmy, on 03 March 2014 - 02:31 PM, said:

In any company any problem is a management problem. A shitty manager hires shitty employees. A good manager hires good employees. It's that simple. Broussard was only the manager of development, but Scott was manager of the entire business.

You've also got the whole debacle as to why Apogee stopped publishing id Software titles. They wouldn't update to a new computer system, and with their shitty pen and paper system they couldn't keep up with anything. So id was like fuck it, we can do this by ourselves. And they did. And you're right about Shadow Warrior. That game suffered from lack of level designers. 3D Realms was fucking stupid to ever let the Levelord go.

id didn't went to publish games on their own.
they just partnered with Activision and stayed with it until Bethesda bought them.
id was working on RAGE for like 7 years ? Well Activision having seen how CoD performs wanted annual releases,and Bethesda could accept long development cycles seeing how their BGS studio has been making a new game every 5 years yet still every new game they made was bringing more profits than the past one.
But it didn't turned out to be the case for RAGE unfortunately,and the new id Engine proved to be so buggy game still is not stable after all that time.
I guess Bethesda was willing to sell id Tech licenses and that that would have been a reason for buying id,but it seems id Tech is so bad,the studio that is working on RPGs prefers to keep their old engine,and while the new Wolfenstein game is made with id Tech the newer projects worked by Bethesda owned studios like Arkane seem to adopt Cryengine instead.

But even id isn't what it used to be. Romero had left years ago,and this year Carmack left too.
Carmack joined Oculus,and Oculus formed up a software studio to build first-party software for the rift.
So perhaps we might see spiritual successors made by Carmack on the Rift in the future.

[MYHOUSE.MAP]

Kathy, on 03 March 2014 - 03:02 PM, said:

As I understand, GBX is just asking to stop working on a game, nothing else.


Yep. For a company that was at the forefront of digital distribution yet never tried to evolve it was laughable. In the end, they run their business into the ground. How the hell by fucking 2006 do you realise that the project needs department/section/unit leads instead of GB's being the only one for the whole game? How fucked up is that?

Sure, Valve seems to be doing great with their utopia structure, but they are an exception and it's not like Gabe micromanage all the shit anyway. They also allegedly have an exceptionally high criteria and salary budget for that.

The ironic thing about 3DR and digital distribution is that they refused to get onboard with things like Steam even after it was evident that it was going to be a major force in gaming, despite laying the foundation for things like Steam. It took them until their Apogee spinoff before they finally released their games digitally, and even then it was only a part of their catalogue. They reluctantly made all of their back catagloue available digitally after success on GoG, but it was limited to their stupid website instead of places people actually go to, like Steam or GoG. They waited until 2013 to actually get some of tgeir games on Steam, which is fucking pathetic. Even then, that was because of Interceptor and Devolver Digital, not 3DR.

[Jimmy]

Alithinos, on 03 March 2014 - 03:16 PM, said:

id didn't went to publish games on their own.
they just partnered with Activision and stayed with it until Bethesda bought them.
id was working on RAGE for like 7 years ? Well Activision having seen how CoD performs wanted annual releases,and Bethesda could accept long development cycles seeing how their BGS studio has been making a new game every 5 years yet still every new game they made was bringing more profits than the past one.
But it didn't turned out to be the case for RAGE unfortunately,and the new id Engine proved to be so buggy game still is not stable after all that time.
I guess Bethesda was willing to sell id Tech licenses and that that would have been a reason for buying id,but it seems id Tech is so bad,the studio that is working on RPGs prefers to keep their old engine,and while the new Wolfenstein game is made with id Tech the newer projects worked by Bethesda owned studios like Arkane seem to adopt Cryengine instead.

But even id isn't what it used to be. Romero had left years ago,and this year Carmack left too.
Carmack joined Oculus,and Oculus formed up a software studio to build first-party software for the rift.
So perhaps we might see spiritual successors made by Carmack on the Rift in the future.

I'm talking about way back in the 90's, honey.

[randir14]

Quote

Look for the rest of our interview with Interceptor – which includes the Rise of the Triad developer’s publishing plans and overwhelming desire to acquire the Blood IP – very, very soon.

http://www.rockpaper...oxduke-lawsuit/

[Hank]

randir14, on 03 March 2014 - 06:53 PM, said:

http://www.rockpaper...oxduke-lawsuit/

You are the second one that posted the link - we will have to wait and see, or in my case, wish them good luck and move on.

[Kathy]

MYHOUSE.MAP, on 03 March 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

The ironic thing about 3DR and digital distribution is that they refused to get onboard with things like Steam even after it was evident that it was going to be a major force in gaming, despite laying the foundation for things like Steam. It took them until their Apogee spinoff before they finally released their games digitally, and even then it was only a part of their catalogue.

https://en.wikipedia...ent_delivery%29

[Yause]

MYHOUSE.MAP, on 03 March 2014 - 02:27 PM, said:

but it was evident as early as when Shadow Warrior was being worked on, when SW's devs went to wrap up development, but instead essentially remade the game under 3DR's direction. If the unused maps in the beta are any indication, it wasn't that good, but it didn't warrant remaking it in a time period when 2.5D and shareware were on their way out. Blood 1, which was being handled by 3DR at one point, also has a cheat code sassing Broussard.

From what's been said, 3DR adopted a heavy handed approach to development after Duke Nukem 3D. Instead of helping creators bring their concepts to life (the old Apogee model), Broussard began taking over their work and imposing his vision. For instance, Jim Norwood never wanted the Shadow Warrior redesign, and a similar change would've happened to Blood had Monolith not stepped in to buy rights.

During the 90s, 3DR could never hang onto employees - people would always leave in a huff and take colleagues with them. Part of it was creator ego (these were young guys tasting success for the first time; some would admit to experiencing a reality check later on), along with the fact that investors were throwing money at new studios, but Miller/Broussard seemed worse at managing staff than their competitors.