More like ‘Duke Nukem Never’
TEXT OF STORY
Steve Chiotakis:
Give this a listen:
[Sound effects for Duke Nukem 3D]
Sound familiar? If so, you’re probably a long-time video gamer. That’s from Duke Nukem 3D, one of the biggest action games of the 90’s. The company that made it, 3D Realms, has been promising a sequel called “Duke Nukem Forever.”
And they’ve been promising it forever — 12 years, in fact. Now gamers wonder if a better title might be “Duke Nukem *Never,” as Rico Gagliano reports.
Rico Gagliano This week, 3D Realms confirmed it’s laid off the entire development team for “Duke Nukem Forever,” due to lack of funding.
George Jones, editor in-chief at GamePro magazine, says it’s just the latest disappointment for fans.
George Jone:s I think it was like April of ’97 when they announced the sequel. And uh, 12 years later, there’s nothing. It’s pretty amazing.
But what’s could’ve possibly taken so long? Jones says the team working on the game was understaffed, so they kept falling behind the moving goalpost of cutting edge technology.
Jones: The way you build games is you kinda have a core foundation of technology, it’s called an engine. And the engines change every three or four years, so they become more elaborate. And it sounds like they got into a place where they had to chase the technology three or four times and completely restart.
3D Realms says it still intends to create games around the Nukem franchise. But now it has to contend with a lawsuit from a company called Take-Two. That outfit owns the rights to market and distribute “Nukem Forever,” and it’s not happy about another delay. Knowing our legal system — the lawsuit could be resolved in about, oh, 12 years.
In Los Angeles, I’m Rico Gagliano for Marketplace.
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