Generally, I don’t let the fact that certain highly-anticipated gaming titles sometimes have protracted development cycles. Anyone familiar with PC gaming is no doubt aware of the ordeal behind Duke Nukem Forever. The game’s coming up on its ten year anniversary of development, easily earning the status of the all-time vaporware champion. Recently, 3D Realms (the game’s developer) has been leaking little tidbits of news including some thumbnails of the game that look quite promising, and assuring us that DNF hasn’t been forgotten and will in fact meet or exceed our expectations.
Even more recently, an announcement was made of the company’s next title, a game called “Earth No More”, apparently a multiplayer-based first person shooter. I’m guessing most fans weren’t actually expecting it to be a DNF announcement. I wasn’t. Now, I know 3D Realms needs to make money in order to finance the development of their big baby, and I’m also keen to wait for it, but I’m wondering where the fuck they get off consistently delaying DNF over the better part of a decade and still have the nerve to announce their involvement in the development of yet another interim game, even if they aren’t developing it solely on their own.
I can wait to play DNF, but this just strikes me as the software developer equivalent of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “Oh, you want this, eh? I bet you do. It’s really good. It’s great, actually, and maybe one day before the sun boils off our atmosphere in five billion years, it just might be yours, but in the meantime, howzabout this instead?” Yes, worrying about this nonsense is useless because it’ll be “done when it’s done”, but I think us gamers owe it to ourselves to collectively rise up and boycott 3D Realms … by not buying any of their games until DNF is finished. Perhaps by being completely irrational, we can send them a message. Something like STOP WORKING ON NEW GAMES AND JUST FUCKING FINISH DUKE NUKEM FOREVER ALREADY. *
Who’s with me?
- With utmost respect to George Broussard, Scott Miller, and the rest of the 3DR team, of course …