If you pay attention to such things, you will have heard by now that 3D Realms, the developer of the Duke Nukem franchise, has finally run out of money. With it dies Duke Nukem Forever, the game industry’s most notoriously delayed product and perhaps the best definition of “development hell” anyone has ever had the misfortune to provide. Since the fold, the internet has seen a torrent of leaked DNF media, including animation reels and design documents (complete with typos), as ex-employees either show off their CV or try desperately to give the world something to show for their years of wasted effort. As it turns out, the catastrophic failure of Duke Nukem Forever has ended up being far more interesting than the finished game ever could have been, and I have been shifting through the fallout with some fascination, particularly the reports from frustrated ex-employees. I hope someone writes a tell-all book about the whole miserable story one day.
If you don’t know already, this is what Duke Nukem, the character, looks like:
That image tells you nearly everything you need to know: ie, that Duke is a vest-wearing, shades-sporting, gun-toting, ultra-ripped chisel-jawed all-American badass with a way with the ladies. He goes around “quoting” Evil Dead lines (and by quoting I mean “nicking”, much to Bruce Campbell’s distaste; even Duke Nukem 3D’s boxart is essentially a repaint of the original Evil Dead theatrical poster.) Duke’s missions tend to involve busting alien chops, having sex with strippers, and often a combination of the two. According to the leaked design documents, Duke Nukem Forever would have opened thus:
“After beating his own Video Game and having sex with the Holsom Twins, Duke must play his part in a Talk Show at his own Lady Killer Casino until the power goes out. Investigating the power disturbance, Duke acquires a Jet Pack from a young fan and jet packs up an elevator shaft. At the top Duke sees the Alien Mothership in the Vegas sky floating over the Lady Killer. Duke quickly locates his throne, riding it down to the secret Duke Cave hidden in the middle of the huge casino.”
I’m 23 as I write this– hello, older future self, by the way, hope you’re well– which made me 10 (just) when Duke Nukem 3D, which is the Duke game everyone knows and remembers best, came out. I played it, my dad played it, Brendan played it– hello Brendan, hope you’re well– every other pubescent boy (and his dad) played it. People swapped the shareware floppies in the playground. And it was brilliant. Duke said things like, “I’m gonna rip off your head and shit down your neck!” You could take a leak, and give money to strippers! And there were remote-detonated pipe bombs and holograms and laser trip wire mines, which were all amazing at the time if ultimately a bit useless, and jetpacks, and you could shrink enemies with the Shrink Ray and then squash their tiny diminished forms with your boot! (Speaking of your boot, you could also kick people, which is still novel in a first-person game.) And at the end, after you’d blasted the aliens back across the galaxy and saved Earth women from horny extraterrestrial tentacles, a woman said over the credits, “Come back to bed, Duke”. Look, it’s like sex! Did you hear that? They’re going to have sex!
But. Look. Here’s the thing. That was 1996. I was 10. It was the nineties. Things were different. I was different. Games were different. With all due sympathy to those chaps at 3D Realms now out of a job– and I can’t imagine how it must feel for director George Broussard particularly, who has for the last decade been the butt of every tired internet joke– I gotta be frank and say: good riddance, Duke. Thirteen years on, you represent everything about games I have come to despise: the apalling misogyny, the sniggering scatological humour, the obsession with firepower and violence, the aren’t-muscular-guys-with-shades-and-guns-cool character design– every ugly, dated stereotype about games and what game players are supposed to like. Your crude excesses do not help me convince girls that video games aren’t just sad, petty, ugly machismo-simulators for lonely nerds in darkened bedrooms, and that in turn doesn’t help me stop being a lonely nerd in a darkened bedroom.
It surprises– and encourages– me to realise this, but, as far as video games still have to go in proving their cultural worth and earning a wider acceptance in the arts, we really have come along way in the thirteen years Duke Nukem’s been gone. As huge as Duke Nukem 3D was in 1996, I don’t think Forever was ever going to sell very well, certainly not enough to recoup the enormous cost of its grotesque development period. Sorry, Duke, but you’re a dinosaur, and I am glad to have withdrawn my bet on you long ago.
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