Just wanted to come back and say that Turbo Overkill is indeed a fun game.

SimplyMonk wrote on May 12, 2022, 02:00:
Serious Sam is still a thing and those are pretty much just Duke Nukem Lite. Same with Shadow Warrior being Duke Nukem: Hentai Edition.

Serious Sam is probably the closest thing to Duke now. Shadow Warrior reboot was a fun game in itself, but didn't really hark back to the original game, dropping most of the exaggerated chauvinistic stereotype. But Serious Sam is also getting a little long in the tooth, the USP of having lots of enemies reducing it into a slog rather than a joy to play (and that new engine from what I heard needs some SERIOUS optimization).

I'd say many gamers in the below 40 age group probably don't have much love for this character. And it's not like the movie industry where you do a new scan and HD/UHD release every 5 years for a reasonable cost and get good returns on it - Even a straight remake of Duke 3D in a modern engine would cost hugely in terms of new art assets.

I'm certain there's a lot of blame to go around in this scenario. Even if you weren't involved in the making of the game, you partly owned the company and therefore, have accountability for what happens under you. But that said, Scott Miller has re-formed Apogee with another long-time business partner and they are publishing some great stuff like Turbo Overkill, with more coming. Meanwhile, George Broussard doesn't seem to do much except whine on Twitter and certainly hasn't contributed anything of note to gaming since his own fiasco of mismanagement (which you'll notice, he also doesn't admit culpability in.) They might both be jerks, who knows. But one is back at getting games out, the other's just bitter.

Beamer wrote on May 11, 2022, 12:35:
This feels like one of those things where the problems leaked for decades, and seemed to match the behavior of both in public, and it doesn't feel like there's much mystery around how 3DR collapsed under the weight of DNF.

DN3D seems like lightning in a bottle. Right product at the right time. Literally the right time, because had it been 6 months later it would have probably been crushed due to how dated the tech was. Don't get me wrong, I far preferred DN3D to Quake, but tech was moving so quickly back then that it had a narrow window to hit. But while Quake pushed tech, Duke pushed immersion, to use a word I hate.

The pressure to follow up a megahit was enormous, and a company that was never bleeding edge, and had never developed an enormous hit prior, was suddenly under immense pressure to make something industry leading rather than just really damned fun. Compound this with massive amounts of corporatisation changing how games were made, in ways good and bad (it certainly streamlined process and brought ways to manage rapidly growing dev teams), and a small company was destined to sink.

It's no coincidence that id also struggled in this time, releasing basically nothing from Doom 3 in 04 to Rage in 2011, with it being acquired in 2009. And id had the power of Carmack and the revenue from licensing. id released major titles in 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 04, 11. The early 2000s were a tough place to be an independent pc developer. Epic thrived mostly by guessing right on the importance of consoles and, again, right product at the right time.

You might be right but that doesn't make what George said any less true. Both George and Scott actually sound like giant douchebags.

sir wrote on May 11, 2022, 22:24:

Fantaz wrote on May 11, 2022, 17:06:
Interesting news how they wanted the Canadian developers Digital Extremes to develop DNF. They did the original Unreal with Epic so I think it could've been made really well by them

But the Duke style is just something from the 90's or early 2000s, I dont think new Duke games in the franchise would fly well by today's standards. R.I.P.

Perhaps not, the kidz use Duke audio on those tak tik videos

Serious Sam is still a thing and those are pretty much just Duke Nukem Lite. Same with Shadow Warrior being Duke Nukem: Hentai Edition.

Fantaz wrote on May 11, 2022, 17:06:
Interesting news how they wanted the Canadian developers Digital Extremes to develop DNF. They did the original Unreal with Epic so I think it could've been made really well by them

But the Duke style is just something from the 90's or early 2000s, I dont think new Duke games in the franchise would fly well by today's standards. R.I.P.

Perhaps not, the kidz use Duke audio on those tak tik videos

Enahs wrote on May 11, 2022, 17:59:

RedEye9 wrote on May 11, 2022, 16:39:

Jivaro wrote on May 11, 2022, 16:10:
They both have reputations for being the asshole....I find it incredible that their friendship lasted 40+ years tbh.

We don’t know how long their friendship lasted.

We do if we read the snippet Blue posted.

Doh

RedEye9 wrote on May 11, 2022, 16:39:

Jivaro wrote on May 11, 2022, 16:10:
They both have reputations for being the asshole....I find it incredible that their friendship lasted 40+ years tbh.

We don’t know how long their friendship lasted.

We do if we read the snippet Blue posted.

At one point, Broussard literally admitted that himself and what I assume was most of the development team getting distracted by WoW for months.
They did not take time management seriously at all and somehow managed to keep that going for years and years.

Interesting news how they wanted the Canadian developers Digital Extremes to develop DNF. They did the original Unreal with Epic so I think it could've been made really well by them

But the Duke style is just something from the 90's or early 2000s, I dont think new Duke games in the franchise would fly well by today's standards. R.I.P.

Jivaro wrote on May 11, 2022, 16:10:
They both have reputations for being the asshole....I find it incredible that their friendship lasted 40+ years tbh.

We don’t know how long their friendship lasted.

Jivaro wrote on May 11, 2022, 16:10:
They both have reputations for being the asshole....I find it incredible that their friendship lasted 40+ years tbh.

I think we see now that the friendship ended when the money ran out and betrays the quality of it.

They both have reputations for being the asshole....I find it incredible that their friendship lasted 40+ years tbh.

What we have here is a classic "he said vs he said" with very little in the way to verify anything anyone is saying.

The Half Elf wrote on May 11, 2022, 14:35:
I think Beamer nailed it. But also throw in the sign of the times. Ya had a raunchy soldier guy with one liners with exploding monsters and titties. It was a playable 90's action movie. But times changes, we grew up and out of Duke Nukem.

Yeah. I loosely remember being a DNF fanboy in the early days, like 2004, so I searched my post history and didn't see evidence of that.
However, there was the big rumor for a while that DN4 would be a story in which Duke had actually aged and was an old man dealing with the fallout of a life long steroid and painkiller addiction now having to come out of a painful retirement to save the world, dealing with the fact that he's a relic.

That could have been a fun story. But playing it straight, as if it was 1996 again, and bringing in the ideas so bad that they would have been cringeworthy in 1996, such as Bombshell and Dr. Proton, seems really misguided. To your point, they didn't keep up with tech, and they didn't keep up with culture.

I think Beamer nailed it. But also throw in the sign of the times. Ya had a raunchy soldier guy with one liners with exploding monsters and titties. It was a playable 90's action movie. But times changes, we grew up and out of Duke Nukem.

Two peas in a pod.

Surely they both deserve some blame.

Uh oh. Let the geeks get geeky.

RedEye9 wrote on May 11, 2022, 12:20:
It’s never too early for

Uh, sir. Could you please pass some? 🙂