Development of Duke Nukem Forever

Take-Two Interactive, which owns the Duke Nukem Forever publishing rights, filed a lawsuit in 2009 against 3D Realms over their "failure to finish development".

Commander Keen was met with great success and inspired the development of many sidescrollers for the DOS platform, including many developed by Apogee and using the same engine that powered the Keen games, and Wolfenstein was highly successful, popularizing 3D gaming and establishing the first-person shooter (FPS) genre.

Broussard described Duke as a combination of the film stars John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Unreal Engine was more realistic than Quake II and was better suited to producing open spaces; 3D Realms had struggled to render the Nevada desert.

[4] By the end of 1999, Duke Nukem Forever had missed several release dates and was largely unfinished; half of its weapons remained concepts.

3D Realms employees would joke that they had to stop Broussard from seeing new games, as he would want to include portions of it in Duke Nukem Forever.

[4] At the same time, GT Interactive was facing higher-than-expected losses and hired Bear Stearns to look into selling the company or merging it.

[15] Following the death of one of Gathering of Developers' co-founders and continuing financial problems, in 2003 their Texas offices were shut down and absorbed into the parent company, Take-Two Interactive.

[4] The video showed a couple of minutes of footage,[17] including a Las Vegas setting and a demonstration of the player interacting with a vending machine to buy a sandwich.

[4]IGN reported on the graphics: "Characters come to life with picturesque facial animations that are synced perfectly with speech, hair that swings as they bob their heads, eyes that follow gazes, and more.

One former employee said that Broussard and Miller were still operating on a "1995 mentality", before games became large-team, big budget development affairs.

Because they were financing the project themselves, the developers could also ignore pressure from their publisher;[4] their standard reply to when Duke Nukem Forever would ship was "when it's done".

[24] Soon after 3D Realms replaced the game's Karma physics system with one designed by Meqon, a relatively unknown Swedish firm.

[27] In January 2006, Broussard said that many of Duke Nukem Forever's elements were finished, and that the team was "basically pulling it all together and trying to make it fun".

[28] Later that year, Broussard demonstrated samples of the game, including an early level, a vehicle sequence, and a few test rooms.

Duke Nukem Forever was the only 3D game many had ever worked on, giving them little to put on a resume, and as much of 3D Realms' payment hinged on profit-sharing after release, the continual delays meant deferred income.

[4] By August 2006, between 7 and 10 employees had left since 2005, a majority of the Duke Nukem Forever team, which by this point had shrunk to around 18 staff.

[4][32] While Shacknews speculated that the departures would lead to further delays, 3D Realms denied this, stating that the employees had left over a number of months and that the game was moving ahead.

[33] Creative director Raphael van Lierop, hired in 2007, played through the completed content and realized that there was more finished than he expected.

[4] On January 25 and May 22, 2007, Broussard posted two Gamasutra job ads with small screenshots of Duke Nukem and an enemy.

[34][35] The team quickly doubled in size; among the new hires was project lead Brian Hook, who became the first person to resist Broussard's requests for changes.

Filmed entirely on hand-held cameras but not originally expected to be publicly released,[38] the video showed host Jason Hall playing of a level at 3D Realms' offices.

The footage was shot six months prior to the episode air date; according to Broussard, it contained particle and combat effects that had since been replaced.

[4] 3D Realms laid off the Duke Nukem Forever staff on May 8, 2009, due to lack of funding; inside sources claimed it would operate as a smaller company.

[42] Previously unreleased screenshots, concept art, pictures of models and a goodbye message from 3D Realms were posted by alleged former employees.

[43] In 2009, Take-Two filed a lawsuit against 3D Realms over their failure to complete Duke Nukem Forever, citing $12 million paid to Infogrames in 2000 for the publishing rights.

[63] A playable demo of Duke Nukem Forever was released by Gearbox,[58] with some differences from the versions available at PAX and Firstlook.

[72][73] Duke Nukem Forever holds the Guinness world record for the longest development for a video game, at 14 years and 44 days,[74] though this period was exceeded in 2022 by Beyond Good and Evil 2 and in 2024 by Kien.

[87] With the game since in development at Gearbox Software and a subsequent playable demo, Duke made a comeback with an unprecedented 11th place award on Wired's 2010 Vaporware list.

[88] When the GameSpy editors compiled a list of the "Top 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming History" in June 2003, Duke Nukem Forever placed #18.