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Sep
15
Our Exclusive Duke Nukem Forever Interview with Scott Miller
Thanks to our news-sniffing community member Mr. Green, we've been able to gather up some QAs with 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller, who was one of the original guys responsible for the Duke Nukem franchise before the intellectual property rights were transferred over to Gearbox. Enjoy!
> Q1. I read recently that Duke Nukem Forever was actually being developed on
> the build engine at one point, if this is true how much was done on the
> build engine?
> Q2. What would you say caused the long development time of Duke Nukem
> Forever?
A few things. First, we were always short-handed with developments
because our background was that of using very small, but super
talented teams. We were slow to adapt to an industry in which team
sizes were growing almost 50% each year. We were ALWAYS behind the
curve, and always under-staffed. Only in the final year or so of
development did we finally correct this issue.
We lacked a true Project Leader. George Broussard is a creative
leader, and not a good project manager. Everyone knows this, but the
problem was finding a project leader with a strong enough personality
to take over the project and drive it forward, without always getting
bogged down with creative issues. Again, we finally had this critical
person in place during the final year of development, when we hired
Brian Hook in this role.
Lastly, as odd as it sounds, our success with Duke Nukem 3D and Max
Payne bought us way too much time to pursue perfection. DNF was an
entirely self-funded project, with no financial help from our
publisher. No one is self-funding triple-A games anymore, or in the
last 10 years. We did, because we could, and we wanted absolutely
creative authority. In the end, we gave ourselves too much freedom to
pursue the perfect game, and we never could get there.
> the build engine at one point, if this is true how much was done on the
> build engine?
I don't think we ever started the game on the Build engine. That
engine had a lifetime window of only 2-3 years, and after Quake came
out and set the new bar for 3D engines, we didn't want to make DNF in
anything less than the best engine possible. So, in the beginning,
Duke was being made using the Quake engine, and we first demo'ed this
version of the game at E3 '98 I think, after just 3-4 months of
development.
engine had a lifetime window of only 2-3 years, and after Quake came
out and set the new bar for 3D engines, we didn't want to make DNF in
anything less than the best engine possible. So, in the beginning,
Duke was being made using the Quake engine, and we first demo'ed this
version of the game at E3 '98 I think, after just 3-4 months of
development.
> Q2. What would you say caused the long development time of Duke Nukem
> Forever?
A few things. First, we were always short-handed with developments
because our background was that of using very small, but super
talented teams. We were slow to adapt to an industry in which team
sizes were growing almost 50% each year. We were ALWAYS behind the
curve, and always under-staffed. Only in the final year or so of
development did we finally correct this issue.
We lacked a true Project Leader. George Broussard is a creative
leader, and not a good project manager. Everyone knows this, but the
problem was finding a project leader with a strong enough personality
to take over the project and drive it forward, without always getting
bogged down with creative issues. Again, we finally had this critical
person in place during the final year of development, when we hired
Brian Hook in this role.
Lastly, as odd as it sounds, our success with Duke Nukem 3D and Max
Payne bought us way too much time to pursue perfection. DNF was an
entirely self-funded project, with no financial help from our
publisher. No one is self-funding triple-A games anymore, or in the
last 10 years. We did, because we could, and we wanted absolutely
creative authority. In the end, we gave ourselves too much freedom to
pursue the perfect game, and we never could get there.
[ Read the rest... ]
