"Duke Nukem Forever" is one of those games that many players actually thought would never come through. Debatably a sequel to the almost ancient "Duke Nukem 3D," this game is a noted classic in the FPS genre. It’s got a long-drawn-out history that gamers who are old enough to remember were, in fact, convinced that DNF was "going to take forever to come out. Finally, after more than a decade of perpetually being reworked from scratch, all’s well that ends well.
It first started with It all began John Romero’s development company which earned its money from games like "Doom" and "Duke Nukem 3D". Enough money was earned for the company to continue operations for the next decade without having to release another game. The company’s philosophy was solely focused on the designer. This meant that the developers of the game were given total control over a project without having to argue with game publishers who try to impose their demands on the creation of the product or even its release date.
In theory, this meant that the designers had the freedom to implement as many fun things into the game as they wanted, with enough time to do so. In practice, it meant that terrible management could delay a game indefinitely. To be fair to Romero, the game was being developed at a decent pace using a licensed version of the then-advance Quake Engine. At some point in the process, they noticed that the Unreal Engine was vastly superior, tossed out all the work that had already been done, licensed the better code and set about working on everything from scratch. In theory, this should not have caused the game to mire in development hell for more than a decade. In practice, it did not.
Every time a new engine that was proven to be more superior was introduced, the company would drop everything that was already done to start from scratch with the new game engine. As a result, as the game was about to be finished, it would go back to zero completion. Since the company had a lot of money to burn, the damage wasn’t grave and serious. Romero’s obsession to perfect the game rather than just release it didn’t do the company the harm that it could have done to others who did lack the money. They only time they had a concern with finances was when they released "Daikatana", which proved to be an unplayable game. .
Over time, Romero finally started to realize that he was running out of finances. He had no product to show for all the years of development other than a few chaotic demos and useless materials. So he tried to find investors to support the company, so it could push DNF for the last attempt. Unfortunately for Romero, they failed miserably. By this point, investors gave the intellectual property over to another company that could get the game out. And this is where the design house, Gearbox, would come out.
Now, the game is set to be released on May 6 2011 and its trailer seems promising. After 12 years of development, there are only high expectations left for the game.
