Retro Gaming Australia

3D Realms announced that they were working on a successor to Duke Nukem 3D in April 1997. The name of the game was Duke Nukem Forever. A month later at E3 1997, 3D Realms announced that they would be licensing the Quake II engine for the game, rather than producing their own technology. At this point in time, 3D Realms expected to ship the game in 1998. 3D Realms were financing the game themselves, with GT Interactive set to act as a distributor.

The US edition of PC Gamer got the scoop on the game for its August 1997 issue. George Broussard later revealed on the 3D Realms forums that these images were mock-ups done in the Quake I engine to keep the masses interested – they didn’t get the final Quake II engine code until November 1997, right before Quake II was released. For the majority of 1997, most of the 3D Realms team was focused on completing Shadow Warrior – work on Duke Nukem Forever was being done ad-hoc while they waited on the engine code.

At E3 1998, 3D Realms revealed the first trailer for Duke Nukem Forever (see below). Critics were blown away by the trailer, but Broussard was unhappy with the progress they had made. While everyone focused on the explosive action in the trailer, Broussard felt that the game’s visuals needed improvement.

After the positive reception to the trailer at E3, 3D Realms shocked everyone by announcing that they had licensed the Unreal engine, and were in the process of switching everything over. Some questioned whether the game they saw in the trailer was real or not. Broussard stated that it wouldn’t take them more than a couple of weeks to be back on track for release in 1999. The switch to Unreal was rationalised by the fact that Epic’s engine was better at rendering wide open spaces, which the team wanted in and around Forever’s Las Vegas locales.

3D Realms went dark with Forever after the engine switch, until late in 1999, when they released the first media from the Unreal engine version of the game, announcing at the same time that they had switched up to a new version of the engine that had driven Unreal Tournament. A month later, the 3D Realms Christmas card indicated that they expected Forever to be released in 2000. History repeated itself a year later, when the Christmas 2000 card from the company indicated a 2001 release date.

Duke Nukem Forever resurfaced in a new trailer (see below) that 3D Realms presented at E3 2001. The trailer was a huge success – the game looked brilliant, the level of interactivity was beyond anything else on the market and it had that all-important Duke Nukem feel to it. Everyone was blown away, but the new release date of “When it’s done” raised many eyebrows.

That trailer would be the last time Duke Nukem Forever was seen for many years. In 2002, 3D Realms went on a hiring spree, bringing in fresh blood and throwing out an estimated 95% of the work they had done on the game. They switched over to an early version of Unreal Engine 2, though it is believed that 3D Realms had basically rewritten everything except UnrealScript and the net code. Broussard stated that they were never less than two years away from release on the Unreal Tournament engine.

From this point, Duke Nukem Forever began its descent into development hell. It became the butt of all industry jokes, winning Wired Magazine’s Vapourware award eleven times, having been removed from contention for a period (first, when it given the lifetime achievement award, and second when the project was thought to be dead in 2009) until it was added back by popular demand. Broussard got into public spats with publisher Take Two Interactive after CEO Jeffrey Lapin mentioned that he didn’t expect the game to ship in 2003 or 2004.

Development on the game continued, but Broussard refused to show the game to the public, preferring to tease the denizens of the 3D Realms forums. By 2006, reality had begun to sink in – Miller and Broussard became aware of the ridiculousness that Duke Nukem Forever had become. Broussard admitted to journalist Tom Chick in 2006 that they had thrown everything out and started again. Eventually, members of the game’s development team started to leave the project, fearing it would never be completed.

It wasn’t until Brian Hook joined the development team that the project began to gain direction. Broussard went on a hiring spree in order to get the game done. Hook was the first person who pushed back when Broussard questioned adding new features. The size of the team doubled from 18 to 35 and the push toward finishing the game began. Footage of the game leaked at Christmas 2007 as part of a company Christmas card.

All was not rosy at 3D Realms, however. Years of continued development of Duke Nukem Forever had taken a toll on the company’s finances – development of the game was estimated at about $20 million at this point, and they had little to show for it. Shadow Warrior was the last game the company had developed internally, and although they made money selling the Max Payne and Prey IPs, it was getting to be a long time since they had any injections of cash. In October 2007, they headed to New York to strike a funding agreement with Take Two. The deal with Take Two brought them an advance royalty payment of $2.5 million for the development of Duke Nukem Forever against sales of a new Duke Nukem game called Duke Begins, which would be developed by Gearbox Software and published by Take Two by mid 2010.

The October 2007 was enough to keep development going for a short time, but not enough to get the job done. Between January and April 2009, they visited Take Two seeking an addition $6 million in funding to complete Duke Nukem Forever for the PC, and commence work on an Xbox 360 port. Work on the port had commenced after Take Two promised additional funding for said port. Take Two initially agreed to the same, then lowered it to $5 million, then slashed it in half to $2.5 million. 3D Realms walked away from the deal, and in early May of 2009, released all of their internal development teams.

Lawsuits were flung from both sides – Take Two claimed that they were owed the $12 million they paid to Inforgrames to gain the publishing rights, and tried to wrestle the Duke Nukem IP away from 3D Realms as payment. 3D Realms countersued, claiming that Take Two had purposely scuttled development of Duke Begins in order to avoid having to pay further royalties to 3D Realms.

Despite having the development team having been laid off from 3D Realms, work on Duke Nukem Forever continued. Duke co-creator Allen Blum and eight other ex-3DR employees worked on the game from home.

The lawsuit between 3D Realms and Take Two was settled and dismissed in May 2010. 3D Realms approached Gearbox Software to see if they would be able to help Blum’s team complete the game and port it to consoles. Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford had previously worked on Duke Nukem: Atomic Edition at 3D Realms, and briefly worked on Duke Nukem Forever before leaving the company. Pitchford picked up the project and provided offices for Blum’s team, now called Triptych Games, to work in. He also approached Take Two label 2K Games with a plan for completing and releasing the game. Suddenly, Duke Nukem Forever was happening again.

The news was announced to the public at the Penny Arcade Expo in September 2010. The game was publicly playable for the first time ever, and received a riotous response. Gearbox heavily promoted the game in the following months, with a May 2011 release eventually revealed – though a slight delay caused a slip to June 2011. After 14 years in development, Duke Nukem Forever will be available this Friday.