Warframe developer Digital Extremes COO has come forward to address why it pulled out of developing Duke Nukem Forever. In the end, it probably was for the better, to be fair.
Speaking to Eurogamer, COO Sheldon Carter revealed the game studio was simply swamped by other projects — it was already working on BioShock and The Darkness 2 at the time, so taking up a third project would be kind of insane to do when this was the early 2000s gaming industry. In the end, Carter laughs it off, saying there’s an alt history where it all worked out.
“What can I say about this… I mean these are still those stories that are tough, tough to tell. I would say the things that were neat were that we definitely got to see it all, and we got to have meetings with George [Broussard, co-founder Apogee and 3D Realms] who was amazing and has always been a cool guy. It was an exciting time for us. I think in the end they ended up being published by 2K right? We were working on The Darkness 2 and BioShock, both were kind of cranking at that point. So, there’s an alternate history [laughs] on how that all worked out.
But I can’t imagine it could have been anything but George’s baby to be honest.”
Duke Nukem Forever would end up becoming the poster child of games with long dev cycles thanks to the constant change of developers, engines, and ideas. When it finally came out in 2011, the game was deemed not worth the wait and poor old Duke hasn’t seen any action since, though, he may show up on TV.
