Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Forever coming soon?

There was an interesting trailer, or should I say teaser trailer, that was released today. It appears that Duke Nukem Forever, a game that started development in 1997, is still in development and they have released a sneak preview of the trailer that they will be releasing soon. Their site is http://www.3drealms.com/, and if you are a fan of Duke Nukem you will be pleased by this news. How can a game take so long to create? I am sure Coffee Quest fans want to know this as well, though in my defense I can point out that I am a single person working on multiple projects without a budget in my spare time. In Duke's case, I believe it is the marketing equivalent of an infinite loop. The quality level required for a AAA commercial game is very high. When a project takes longer to develop when the game is near ready, the quality level may no longer be AAA levels so the decision is made to take a bit longer and up the quality of the graphics, sound, game play, or whatever it is that is lacking compared to other titles. Since you have more time, the coders might as well add new features to the game as well. This feature creep causes the revised game to be late and when it is finished it is no longer AAA worthy so the cycle starts again.

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