Duke Nukem Forever

Development

Duke Nukem Forever became notorious for having been fifteen years (!) in development, marked by changes of developing teams, repeated announcements, delays, retractions, and cancellations.

The game was originally in development under 3D Realms; George Broussard, one of the creators of Duke Nukem 3D, first announced it in April 1997. In 2001, the company stated that the game would be released simply "when it's done". In 2009, 3D Realms suffered financial losses, dismissing the development team and ending the work on the game. In September 2010, Duke Nukem Forever began development under Gearbox Software, resulting in a long overdue release in June 2011.

According to Scott Miller, the reason of the long development time was the self-funding and the subsequent small team size. They fell behind the current technology and tried to catch up in order to deliver the perfect game. Because of the too small team, this cycle repeated multiple times. Only when they finally started to work with a publisher, they could bring the team up to size. Also according to Miller, about 95% of the PC single-player campaign was developed by 3D Realms. Gearbox did the console ports and multiplayer.

References

• After a kill in the chapter "Vegas in Ruins", Duke will prompt "Tonight, you dine in Hell." This is a reference to the movie 300, where at one point Leonidas says "Tonight, we dine in Hell!"
• In chapter 2: "Damn! It's Late...", at one point Duke will find an actor yelling at someone, shouting phrases like "Do you want me to trash your mics? DO YOU?" and "You're a nice guy, you really are but you're a fucking amateur". This is a reference to Christian Bale, when he freaked out on the set of Terminator: Salvation.
• In "The Hive" chapter, at one point the player can come up to a dead EDF soldier, who is wearing Isaac Clarke's (the main character of Dead Space) helmet. Upon revealing him, Duke will prompt: "That's one dead space marine." Duke Nukem has a similar line in Duke Nukem 3D when he comes across the bloodied top half of the protagonist of Doom in the third level of the first episode and remarks "That's one doomed space marine."
• In the "Vegas In Ruins" chapter, in the beginning the player will come up to a van with weapons, which also contains the same armor that the player carries in the Halo series. When a nearby standing EDF soldier suggests Duke to pick up the armor, Duke responds: "Power armor is for pussies."
• In the chapter "Duke Nukem's Titty City", in the room where the player can microwave the popcorn, there is a desk where he can use the security camera. On the desk is a spinning top, just like the one Leonardo DiCaprio uses in the movie Inception.
• On random occasions, Duke may shout "Duke wins, Fatality!", as such making a reference to the Mortal Kombat series of video games.
• In "Duke Nukem's Titty City", above one of the urinals the player can find a graffiti which reads "Jenny - 867-5309". This is a reference to the Tommy Tutone song "867-5309/Jenny".
• In one of the levels, Duke will have to climb up a set of stairs and dodge exploding barrels along the way. When finally getting to the top of the stairway and discovering the pig cop who was throwing the barrels, Duke will say the following line: "Huh, I was expecting a monkey." This is a reference to Donkey Kong.

Awards

• PC Games (Germany)
  • Issue 01/2012 - #3 Biggest Disappointment in 2011 (Readers' Choice)
• PC Powerplay (Germany)
  • Issue 02/2006 - Delay of 2005
  • Issue 02/2006 - #1 Hype Disappointment
• Vaporware Awards (wired.com)
  • 2000 - #2
  • 2001- Winner
  • 2002 - Winner
  • 2003 - Lifetime Achievement Award
  • 2005 - Winner
  • 2006 - Winner
  • 2007 - Winner
  • 2008 - Winner
  • 2010 - #11 of 10 (honorable mention)