[MusicallyInspired]

Inspector Lagomorf, on 02 June 2016 - 08:02 AM, said:

Was this quote from an otherwise well-written post really worth downvoting the post twice over? Seriously, I've seen worse content on here that goes otherwise unnoticed.

I don't care if it's well-written (it was, btw). Having a well-written post to me is just common sense and common courtesy. I disagree with it. So I downvoted it. I expect no less from anyone else for my posts.

[icecoldduke]

Kathy, on 02 June 2016 - 07:57 AM, said:

Evidence to what? They switched to GoD because GT was being bought.

Did George or Scott cite this as being the reason for the switch? They could have easily stayed with GT who later became Infogramers Entertainment.

[Kathy]

Why should I care why they changed it? They obviously couldn't have self-published it - Joe wouldn't be able to ship million copies.

Are you saying, contrary to what 3dr was always saying, that they received funding from publisher to develop DNF?

[icecoldduke]

Kathy, on 02 June 2016 - 08:57 AM, said:

Why should I care why they changed it? They obviously couldn't have self-published it - Joe wouldn't be able to ship million copies.

Joe wouldn't have had to ship a million copies, as they already had a publisher . My point was, the as it was a few posts up, is Take Two could have offered to give 3dr a bunch of money for the publishing for DNF. Who knows if this is true, but I was using this possibility to justify my reasoning for whatever I posted about previously.

Kathy, on 02 June 2016 - 08:57 AM, said:

Are you saying, contrary to what 3dr was always saying, that they received funding from publisher to develop DNF?

All I said was $20 million dollars for 10+ years of game development sounds too low to me.

[Kristian Joensen]

It does indeed sound low, but on the other hand for large periods of time the DNF development team was small, even tiny. IIRC they started with 4 people and for a long time they were in the 10 - 20 people range. I think they started to ramp up more in the 2002 - 2004 period or so. Then there were the departures of 2006 bringing the number back down. Then they replaced the departed people and were around 30 people until they let the team go in May 2009. Then there are the rumors that they were paying relatively low salaries, was that ever debunked by Wieder or anyone?

A quick and dirty calculation, if each person, including overhead cost them $100000/year($50000 in salary + $50000 in various forms of overhead) and they had an average of 20 people working on the game in the 1997 - 2009 period then that comes to $24 million in total. That is certainly $20 million+(some people tend to forget that +).

[Kathy]

It depends on how you interpret that 20 million number. Maybe the company were losing money from some point and both decided to fund it from their pockets/budget. The company was 30+ employees and not everyone was working on DNF. It depends on many things. Also, it might have been larger since 3dr never had a proper plan and thus budget. The game was in development for more than 10 years. Any publisher would have buried it already if it was its money with team missing all milestones.

[icecoldduke]

Kristian Joensen, on 02 June 2016 - 09:15 AM, said:

A quick and dirty calculation, if each person, including overhead cost them $100000/year($50000 in salary + $50000 in various forms of overhead) and they had an average of 20 people working on the game in the 1997 - 2009 period then that comes to $24 million in total. That is certainly $20 million+(some people tend to forget that +).

Your also missing another ~1.5 million for licensing idtech 2 and then ditching that and going with Unreal.

Kathy, on 02 June 2016 - 09:17 AM, said:

It depends on how you interpret that 20 million number. Maybe the company were losing money from some point and both decided to fund it from their pockets/budget. The company was 30+ employees and not everyone was working on DNF. It depends on many things. Also, it might have been larger since 3dr never had a proper plan and thus budget. The game was in development for more than 10 years. Any publisher would have buried it already if it was its money with team missing all milestones.

Normally publishers just stop paying milestones when studios start to miss deadlines. I agree they could have dropped the game completely earlier on, the question is why they didn't. The other question is when Take Two and 3dr settled, what was the basis of Take Two's argument against 3dr? Was it just failure to meet contractual obligations or was it because Take Two helped fund DNF, and Take Two wanted to reclaim there investment? If it's the latter then they would be able to claim losses as a result of 3dr's failure to produce. If it was the former then 3dr must have written a poorly written contract when they signed on Take two.

[Kathy]

Kristian Joensen, on 02 June 2016 - 09:15 AM, said:

Then there are the rumors that they were paying relatively low salaries, was that ever debunked by Wieder or anyone?

They weren't so subtle about it, when offering loyalties based on sales. So it's pretty much a given that salary was a bit lower because of future loyalties.

[icecoldduke]

Kathy, on 02 June 2016 - 09:20 AM, said:

They weren't so subtle about it, when offering loyalties based on sales. So it's pretty much a given that salary was a bit lower because of future loyalties.

That's why you never take royalties in place of a proper salary .

[Kristian Joensen]

icecoldduke, on 02 June 2016 - 09:17 AM, said:

Your also missing another ~1.5 million for licensing idtech 2 and then ditching that and going with Unreal.

It is just a really rough calculation, based on questionable assumptions. I am not really making any claims of it being accurate in any way. But when I said "overhead of various kinds" I had that in mind as well. $1.5 million in licensing fees comes down to $6250/person/year using the aforementioned questionable assumptions. Leaving $43750/person/year in other forms of overhead(rent, software and hardware purchases, utilities, various government fees). Now remember 3D Realms only claimed to have used $20 million+ of their own money on the game. We know that they got a $400000 advance as a signing bonus from GT back in the 90s. Later GT/Infogrames/Atari sold the publishing rights to Take Two. That was a deal between the two parties for $6 million up front + $6 million upon DNF shipping.

That was purely a deal between those two publishers, 3D Realms saw none of that money. (Later Atari and Take Two renegotiated that deal so that it wasn't tied to DNF shipping any more, in exchange for the $6 million being reduced to a lesser amount). In 2007 3D Realms renegotiated their deal with Take Two, such that 3D Realms regained the publishing rights that Take Two had gotten to a DNF sequel + a Duke game based on the Duke movie they were working on. 3D Realms also got a $2.5 Million advance that was repayable if DNF didn't ship by (I think it was) December 31, 2012. In exchange Take Two got the publishing rights to Duke Nukem Begins.

So in summary we have a (claimed/estimated) $20 million+ of their own money + $2.9 million in publisher advances being spent on DNF's development. We don't know how big that + was, but if we say it was $24 million. That puts us at a $26.9 million total. Given the questionable(implausible even?) assumptions of 20 people on average for that 12 year period that is a cost of $112083 1/3 per person per year. Is that low? I ask because I have no idea.

[icecoldduke]

Kristian Joensen, on 02 June 2016 - 09:42 AM, said:

I ask because I have no idea.

Only people who were on the project could answer that one. It seems like they would need more then 20 people, but now were speculating more then we should .

[Kristian Joensen]

icecoldduke, on 02 June 2016 - 09:52 AM, said:

Only people who were on the project could answer that one. It seems like they would need more then 20 people, but now were speculating more then we should .

I was talking about the cost per person number, is that out of whack? As far as the number of people on the project goes, I don't know how accurate that is, as I haven't done any calculation of the average. But 3D Realms had bio pages on their website from the project start to maybe sometime in 2001/2002 or so and for the rest of the period we can piece together information from resumes and the like.

Here are the credits for the E3 2001 trailer as an example of how small the DNF team was at times: https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing

Edit:

Here is a version of the 3DR bio pages from December 1997, at a time when they had two development teams, DNF AND Prey: http://web.archive.o.../bio/index.html

Edit:

I count 9 names on the DNF team mentioned here: http://web.archive.o...w.3drealms.com/

[Jimmy]

DNF was clearly chopped and screwed. DNF design docs that leaked from the 2009 fallout were recent and pertinent to the ongoing design. Something happened between the Triptych and Gearbox periods. My guess is Triptych tried to make a tighter version of the game. Gearbox should have realised that was a mistake, but as we all know GBX loves selling some DLC.

[Kathy]

Btw, weren't bio pages open for a brief time in 2009? I remember seeing as they went down they gave a public access to it. But I might be wrong.

[Kristian Joensen]

Kathy, on 02 June 2016 - 11:18 AM, said:

Btw, weren't bio pages open for a brief time in 2009? I remember seeing as they went down they gave a public access to it. But I might be wrong.

I think you may be right, I am not sure but it does sound familiar to me.

[TerminX]

The situation is changing. It's looking like appearances can be deceiving and Gearbox is actually not interested in being evil here; some new facts have come to light and they seem willing to try and negotiate again despite the Twitter pissing match between Randy and I.

I will have more of a statement to make later. Let's put the pitchforks down for the moment and see where things go from here.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'm quite happy to be proven wrong. It's not like I enjoy hating on the people who own Duke Nukem (and who made Opposing Force). I just want to see them do right by their community for once. Mind's open.

[Kathy]

TerminX, on 02 June 2016 - 12:17 PM, said:

The situation is changing. It's looking like appearances can be deceiving and Gearbox is actually not interested in being evil here; some new facts have come to light and they seem willing to try and negotiate again despite the Twitter pissing match between Randy and I.

I think they're quite accustomed to Randy doing "whatever the fuck he wants", so no wonder your back-and-forth isn't a problem.

[Kristian Joensen]

TerminX, on 02 June 2016 - 12:17 PM, said:

The situation is changing. It's looking like appearances can be deceiving and Gearbox is actually not interested in being evil here; some new facts have come to light and they seem willing to try and negotiate again despite the Twitter pissing match between Randy and I.

I will have more of a statement to make later. Let's put the pitchforks down for the moment and see where things go from here.

I am VERY glad to hear that, I hope things work out for you and wish you well

[Steve 64]

can't wait to see what happens

[Jolteon]

TerminX, on 02 June 2016 - 12:17 PM, said:

The situation is changing. It's looking like appearances can be deceiving and Gearbox is actually not interested in being evil here; some new facts have come to light and they seem willing to try and negotiate again despite the Twitter pissing match between Randy and I.

I will have more of a statement to make later. Let's put the pitchforks down for the moment and see where things go from here.

That's good to hear. I hope everything works out for you.

[Fox]

Guys, Duke Nukem 3D was not planned. It was so good by pure luck. The personality of the protagonist was one of the last things that were added to the game. Unsurprisingly DNF couldn't reproduce the success.

Tea Monster, on 02 June 2016 - 04:43 AM, said:

All the stuff post 2009 is damage limitation and salvage efforts.

The people at the original 3DRealms should have got their fingers out of their asses, stopped spending the day playing WoW, or whatever they were doing for a decade, and actually got the god-damn game done like they were supposed to. If that had happened, then none of the aforementioned shenanigans and BS would be an issue.

That's not fair. 3DRealms employees were sleeping in their office to work in the game for years. It was bad management. I presume that by changing to modern engines, it requires resources 3DRealms did not have to make the game.

[Matthew]

Fox, on 02 June 2016 - 03:48 PM, said:

Guys, Duke Nukem 3D was not planned. It was so good by pure luck. The personality of the protagonist was one of the last things that were added to the game. Unsurprisingly DNF couldn't reproduce the success.


That's not fair. 3DRealms employees were sleeping in their office to work in the game for years. It was bad management. I presume that by changing to modern engines, it requires resources 3DRealms did not have to make the game.

It was also inability to stand up to the management. Everyone should have went to George when he suggested they switch engines again and told him to shove it. That's what you do with an unreasonable manager. I remember one of my earlier jobs was washing dishes at some burger joint. One day i got called in on my day off to "attend to a problem". That problem turned out to be the men's restroom. For some reason i still don't know, each toilet backed up and the whole bathroom was covered in liquid shit. The smell was awful, and i absolutely refused to do it. I was fired several moments later. I walked out smiling. Minimum wage just isn't worth it, especially when it involves human shit.

[Fox]

If you want to know how a place threats its customers, check the bathroom. It's not illegal for pissed off customers to crap everywhere in the bathroom, so they use it to take revenge on the estabilishment.

[Hank]

Matthew, on 02 June 2016 - 04:06 PM, said:

Everyone should have went to George when he suggested they switch engines again and told him to shove it.

Hindsight is 20/20.
I think the team tried to do the right thing by sticking with 3D Realms and learning Unreal. I know I would have.

[Tea Monster]

The engine change isn't why things went to Hades. It dosen't take 10 years to recover from that.

Good luck TerminX. I hope things work out.

[Fox]

They used 3 different engines in the first 8 years. It was an endless cycle which they tried to stick to the most modern engine that was available, but by the time they got the game working their engine was outdated. The lesson here is that if you care about the quality of your product, it will take time to make it, and it won't be using the newest features by the time it's released.

In Gearbox's case, they just stitched what was already done. Their objective was to get it done, not to make it the most awesome product.

[Jimmy]

Someone once made the analogy that DNF was a house, and the gaming industry was a boat on a river in front of the house, and every time the boat got ahead of the house they'd stop and try to build a new house, instead of just focusing on building the best house they could.

[PokeThePower]

Matthew, on 02 June 2016 - 04:06 PM, said:

It was also inability to stand up to the management. Everyone should have went to George when he suggested they switch engines again and told him to shove it. That's what you do with an unreasonable manager. I remember one of my earlier jobs was washing dishes at some burger joint. One day i got called in on my day off to "attend to a problem". That problem turned out to be the men's restroom. For some reason i still don't know, each toilet backed up and the whole bathroom was covered in liquid shit. The smell was awful, and i absolutely refused to do it. I was fired several moments later. I walked out smiling. Minimum wage just isn't worth it, especially when it involves human shit.

What makes you think people didn't get fired for standing up to the OWNER?

Not just piddly manager. And for something they loved. Not shit.

Bugger off.

[PokeThePower]

icecoldduke, on 02 June 2016 - 09:25 AM, said:

That's why you never take royalties in place of a proper salary .

Depends on your priorities and what you are able to make for yourself out of the situation.

Given everything I know now and hindsight... I'd send quite a few developers I know and respect to 3DR circa 1998-2006.