Duke Nukem Forever the victim of high expectations, says Gearbox
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford talks about how years of anticipation set expectations too high for Duke Nukem Forever, but he's still proud of putting out the product.
Duke Nukem Forever received a pretty icy critical reception, including in our own review, but that doesn't bring down Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford. The passionate developer says he's still very proud of putting out the game, and that its poor response was the product of high expectations.
"There are a lot of people who were perfectly gratified by the game," Pitchford told The Verge, "and there were other people, because of the development effort or because of the way it’s been upsold throughout the years, there is just no possible way to meet or exceed such expectations."
Despite the critical reception, he says the studio is extremely proud of the project -- though it sounds like his pride is mostly in finally bringing it to fruition. "It's like, it is a miracle. The game exists and we get to see that content with what those guys have been working on for so long. And I love the game, I think it is hilarious frankly."
Looking to the future, Pitchford also talked about how working on Aliens: Colonial Marines feels when so many developers have borrowed from the franchise. "You can feel the influence, you can feel the inspiration, it is not just subtle, it is in your face to the point where the sergeant from Halo is the sergeant from Aliens. It is like the same exact character trope and all the designs of the dropships and stuff, it is all there."
Aliens: Colonial Marines will be shown at PAX East, starting on April 6 in Boston.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Duke Nukem Forever the victim of high expectations, says Gearbox.
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford talks about how years of anticipation set expectations too high for Duke Nukem Forever, but he's still proud of putting out the product.-
"The Doctor Who Cloned Me" DLC felt more fun than the stock game, though not by much. And even that used recycled bits snipped out of the main game. That said, I'm greatly looking forward to what Gearbox does with a sequel. Duke, as a character and a universe can still be fun. Just needs a fair shake. :)
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Yeah i mean its perfectly ok over the years for people to remind us constantly why those games are so fucking awesome, if we disagree then we're fucking trolls.
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If you had fun playing DNF, is the DLC worth buying?
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I bought it in a Steam sale but haven't tried it yet. I've heard it was fun.
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Yeah, it's slightly better
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The DLC is actually better than the main campaign, it still has too many puzzles, though.
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They just disrupt the action. Duke is all about action.
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Did you play the first one? There were puzzles, and lots of secrets to figure out.
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i didnt have high expectations for it at all, all i wanted is a fun game, i couldn't play it for more than 30 minutes
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Yeah, but it was missing the "fun" part.
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The key is that those sequences are so easy to mess up. Portal 2 is essentially nothing but a FPS platformer and it managed to do it quite well. HL2 had an even longer driving sequence, but again, it was crazy fun. DNF did neither well and that's why those segments stand-out as being particularly bad.
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I agree. Knowing some of the history of the game, I kinda understand why those elements were added because of the various "fads" going on during the years the game was in development. But surely someone at Gearbox could have done something to help those segments or rework them completely.
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The most accurate statement thus far. Yes, the Noobs don't understand the nostalgic value of Duke and Gearbox did a great job IMO putting together the broken pieces left by 3DRealms.
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I don't know, Duke3d hit a note that was just right in terms of absurd, juvenile humor. Like it was almost ironic. DNF tried to ratchet it up to 11, and it felt like it faceplanted with a resounding thud because it just came off as trying too hard.
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haha what. If anything the new game was aimed towards noobs.
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DNF was the pinnacle point of gaming that showed that gaming in general is now forever lost to the console generation and the mentally challenged people who work in the game journalism industry.
It is the end of the era moment for PC Gaming from 1996-2011 -
Quite honestly it wasn't "high expectations" - we know from history that the odds of an often-delayed game getting universally positive reviews, especially one with the troubled development history this one had, are pretty slim. It was the fact that every single impression you had of the game had to be seen through the lens of "it took them [13/14/15] years to do this?"
Same way Chinese Democracy would have been a fine album in a series of fine albums from Guns N' Roses had it been released in 1997 or something. Instead you're left with "well that was good but... 17 years of good?"
I still want to play the Quake 2 engine version.-
Hmm, I've listened to Chinese Democracy quite a lot and I really like it. While it was a bit of a joke when in production, once it came out I didn't care how long it took to make and judged it for what it was. It is a good album, even if other people managed to make more albums in the same amount of time.
OTOH, I played the demo of DNF with extremely low expectations and it didn't even meet those. It seemed like a complete pile of shit, whether it was made in 2 years or 17. Unless the full game was really different to the demo (but it wasn't from what I read).
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I think people were WAY too hard on this game. Yes, it had it's flaws, parts of the game were horribly dated by today's standards... but it was still a fun shooter. There were plenty of cool things to see and do in the game and honestly... it didn't look half as bad as some people made it out. There were some levels which actually looked pretty damn good. And there were also parts which were pretty funny. I had fun with the game and I'm VERY glad, personally, that I was able to play game. If the game had just never come out I would have this somewhat sad nagging feeling for the rest of my life... just a little bit of sadness never having gotten to play the game I followed for so many years.
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I think one of the reasons the game wasn't "fun" for many people is that a lot of the jokes are based on pop culture from the era. Some of the cutscenes that should've been in place in some of the levels weren't added because the noobs would've never gotten the reference. I still love the idea that the game finally came out and that perhaps Gearbox will start a new one from scratch.
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"Shipping is really important," Pitchford told Vox Games. "It is not about making the perfect thing. It is about sharing something that we’ve created with the world and getting feedback from that [...] We want that information as immediately as possible so it can affect us and help us do a better job next time. So shipping a lot gives us a constant stream of feedback and helps us improve our decision-making process and our craftsmanship.
"Basically, we like shipping things."
Or - "We like charging you $60 for crap so we can give you more crap for $60"-
Haha agreed
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Worst single player FPS campaign since SoF 2. To each his own though.
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Sorry to say, the game was rubbish.
I can't quite figure out why though.
I can't see how the original was so much better... perhaps it was to do with level design.
perhaps its a similar contrast to Doom 1&2 vs Doom 3. Something just didnt feel right.
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I really liked it after the Duke Dome.
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I commend Gearbox for trying, they did something great for us fans of Duke. While meeting the expectations would have been astronomically difficult for any developer, I encourage them to move forward and revive the Duke IP with another game that includes that classic Gearbox flavor.
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It's not about expectations. An "okay" game could have been released and the fans would have been pleased so long as it did a good job following in the footsteps.
Duke 3D was a fast paced strafe'n'shoot with emphasis on destruction. Duke Forever was not this. It was a frankenstein monster that tried to mix some of the interactive elements of Duke3d with modern cover shooter mechanics. Its jokes were subpar. Honestly the game did not need a strong narrative. Part of the charm behind the one-liners of Duke3D was that they were properly integrated into the game. They were short and sweet and delivered with timing. This existed in Duke Forever, but most of them were long and unfunny.
Duke's Interactivity was also done wrong. When interactive elements were used in Duke 3d, they were also fast to the point where they enhanced the primary mechanics of shooting and blowing shit up were complimented. Think of bathrooms in Duke 3d. You walk in kill aliens, and as collateral damage, a toilet stall blows up, bursting the plumbing into a fountain. Walk into a bar, shoot some aliens, one of your bullets hits a pool ball and the whole rack of balls ricochets. Quick use key allows you to give a dollar to a stripper still doing her job through it all. All interactive elements were short and sweet.
Compare that to duke forever where you are drawing on a board or lifting weights or playing pinball. These are all afterthoughts and something to do aside from the game. They don't compliment with other elements of the game. They are just there and they are boring. Sometimes they make it necessary to do these things in order to gain ego. That's plain stupid and wrong. People play Duke to shorten their attention span, not go on a meticulous scavenger hunt.
I just think that the developers didn't understand what made Duke 3D fun. They only knew that it was fun and saw just the surface of the game and nothing else.-
A number of the items in this game like that would have been neat or revolutionary even in 1998 when this game was supposed to be out. Instead, DNF was the Microsoft Word of the game world in that most of the people who worked on the game at the end of 3DR's life were in no way connected to the beginning of the development and so a number of things like you describe were brought forward without a real clear understanding of what the point was.
I think the problem is, and I mean no disrespect to George Broussard, but he was the main problem. Every single mistake you can think of, 3DR made. From switching engines and thinking it would add ~6 months to the development time to using a no-name physics middleware engine from a company that died to having no clear vision for what the game was even supposed to be for a long time.
Gearbox saw an opportunity - purchase an established IP that worked well at one point in time, as well as a mostly-finished game they could polish off, port to consoles, and release within a year. And that's why they still made money with it - the $22M or so was already a sunk cost on someone else's dime. It was a really smart move - they get to release a new product, they get some more old school cred for being able to finish the last great game of the late 90's Dallas Gaming Mafia scene and deliver it to market, we get to see what the game was like, everyone wins.
I mostly find it amusing that the game's quality makes people angry. If you're legitimately pissed at DNF for being a bad video game, it may be time to find a new and less stressful hobby.-
Duke 3d is likely one of those flukes where the developer (3d Realms) made something really awesome and possibly didn't understand why it was awesome.
They couldn't establish a solid gameplay philosophy throughout development and that's likely the main problem at hand.
To be fair though, 1997-2005 saw a very rapid rate of tech and gameplay evolutions that it was really hard to keep up. Prey fell victim of this but ultimately, released a solid game. In fact, I've said this a thousand times playing through Prey: "reskin the art assets and personality of this game to Duke, and you've got a very very cool Duke Nukem game." -
Prey:
Music ? Check
Aliens? Check
Boss fights? Check
Creative weapons? Check
Awesome Level Design? FUCK YEA!
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Way to drum up this bullshit again Randy
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Duke Nukem Forever victim of being shit.
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You should push back the tears and challenge dognose to a dance off once and for all.
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Yes they did. They created DNF.
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I didn't get it because of the dumb half-life crowbar joke in the demo.
DNF is the epitome of trying too hard.-
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I said this exact same thing before reading this, and therefore we're forced to conclude that it's true!
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The execution of game speaks for the game regardless of when released.
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Nice. That's a great strategy...pump up a sequel for years (well a decade) and then if/when it sucks blame it on "to much hype" the game was shit, no excuses. I game it 30 mins and that's all I could do. Randy is full of shit.
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Hey hey now.
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i have to agree.
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http://www.shacknews.com/article/68139/duke-nukem-forever-footage-laces
Here is randy lying through his teeth, but even he struggles to talk about what's good about the game.-
thats not interesting. what would be interesting is footage of him NOT lying
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We won't be alive to see it
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LMAO I called out Duke back when nothing was shown for seven years and remember I took a lot of shit on these very forums and had my username nuked....all for being right. Here's another one I'm gonna call right now, if nothing is shown at E3 VALVE, YOU'RE NEXT (you know what fucking game I speak of)
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KICK HIS ASS SOLIDBASS
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the loneliest forum rageboner :(
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Valve is really not next. Why? Easy. They scrapped and rewrote tons of shit in Portal 2. It's a totally different game in the end. Did they do constantly over the course of a decade? No. Was the game outdated when it was released? No. Was it fun as shit? Yes.
Valve more than has the resources and talent. The only thing they can't control is expectations. -
Not in podcast form, do not care.
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If only Idle Thumbs said DNF was going to be crap, then it would have never come out!
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Rooster?
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OMG congratulations, here is your I'm Right medal!
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I wanted to like Duke Nukem Forever, but it is really a game for a different era. If this would have came out a couple years after Duke Nukem 3D this would have work lot better. There are too many things in the game that don't work. I would have liked nothing more than have a humorous fps.
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If it wasn't named "Duke Nukem Forever" and instead was named "Butch Deadlift Kicks Ass", it would have been heralded as a throwback triumph.
DNF was a fun game that was crushed under the weight of it's history.-
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Ok, fine, maybe not a triumph, but it certainly would have stood on its own two feet and been seen as a successful attempt to bring back retro-action-FPS games.
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Care to explain what exactly made it a 'throwback' other than the Duke character himself?
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You're supposed to rate this game as if it came out in the year 1911. It would have been awesome.
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Randy Pitchford has **** for brains for half the crap he says.
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Yes but I write like mad libs.
Insert your own four letter word here.
Randy Pitchford has eggs for brains.
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The gunplay was about the only thing that was even marginally fun about this game, and you got to do so little of it in the game (At least compared to walking around solving terrible puzzles or watching lengthy and terrible scripted sequences) that it ended up at a net negative.
The expectations are completely separate from the criticisms this game deserves. The pacing was shot to hell (With 5 seconds of intense firefight followed by 30 minutes of walking around aimlessly), the game obviously wasn't designed for 2 weapons (With secrets to find weapons in that have no point because you can't keep them), the art direction was bland and uninspired and the jokes were lazy and predictable. -
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This was one of the few if only 'Preorder Canceled' games of mine.
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I agree with Randy. There are a lot of people who were perfectly gratified by the game and there were other people for who, there is just no possible way to meet or exceed such expectations.
I don't deny that theres people belonging to both those groups. But let's face it, main reason people thought it was a bad game is because it was a bad game.
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You guys made us wait 10 fucking years and you think the expectations were low ??? If thats the mindset you went into when making this game then that explains why it was such garbage...
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I wish we could do a Fark "Obvious" Tag on this...
I'm not sure which game should get title of worst delayed, overhyped release. Anachronox or DN:forever
I saw Duke in the PS3 bargain bin for $20... I didn't buy it . lol
"Hey guys, we're not sure why, but our decade and a half year old game didn't sell that well!?"
Good project management skills there George rofl.. make sure you put Dukeforever on your resume.
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DNF was a horrible game and expectations had nothing to do with it. Pitchford blatantly mislead consumers during the hype campaign leading up to its release. For that, DNF ranks right up there with Brink as two games that left me feeling like an idiot for buying them. Perhaps, I am indeed an idiot for spending my money and believing the lies. That does not mean Pitchford gets a pass. I think he is a fake ass mother fucker.
