“It’s like shaking hands with Bigfoot or riding the Loch Ness monster,” said Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford when talking about finally releasing Duke Nukem Forever. Look up the term ‘vaporware’ and Duke Nukem Forever will likely be used as an example, but it’s real and it’s coming to PlayStation 3 in just over a week. I caught up with Randy Pitchford to ask why you should always bet on Duke.

Duke is an all-American hero with the Stars and Stripes featuring heavily in the game’s art style. Characters like that haven’t always been so popular in Europe. Why is Duke an exception?

It’s because Duke is a caricature of all that – it’s silly! Duke Nukem takes place 12 years after Duke saved the world and he has leveraged that to live like a king. He’s walked on the moon, climbed Everest… he’s done it all. The only thing bothering him is that they were supposed to make a video game about him saving the world and it has taken 12 years for them to finish it. I think it’s that angle that makes it work internationally because we parody that image of America that exists in Duke’s world.

How do you meet the expectations and conventions of when the game was originally conceived and those surrounding its release, so many years later?

Because of the legendary development cycle of the game, it’s natural to imagine that we’ve just been sitting on parts of the game since 1997. That’s not true – it’s a modern game. The way you get a character like Duke is take all of the action heroes you can think of and then blend all of their most memorable traits and blend them together, and then exaggerate that even more. Basically, he is borne from the sum of all clichés.

If you look at the modern heroes currently being created for games and action movies, for some reason, they’re all taking themselves very seriously and trying to be more human. We [Gearbox] have done that too – just take a look at our Brothers in Arms games. We’re dealing with real human emotions and problems, but Duke doesn’t have any problems – he just goes around kicking ass.

What I’m getting at is that Duke started out as a cliché but now he stands out from the crowd, which is an odd thing to happen. I think that’s why he has become a meme despite there being no games about him for so long and Duke Nukem Forever leverages that. In some ways, games have come so far, especially when you look at what a machine like the PlayStation 3 is capable of, but there are still game experiences and mechanics that are kind of timeless, and we’re trying to hit a smart balance between that and modern sensibilities and technology.

How can you reassure our fans that the PS3 version of the game is going to be top-notch?

Gearbox has a lot of experience with the PlayStation 3 with Borderlands and Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway and the PS3 version of Duke Nukem Forever is something we’re really proud of. What I particularly like about it as a platform are the vibrancy of the colours you’re able to get, the great performance and just how open the PlayStation Network platform is.

Interestingly, most of the Duke games have found their way onto PlayStation consoles; in fact, there are more Duke games on PlayStation than on any other platform. Sony customers of this generation deserve to experience playing as Duke and I’m glad we’re able to do it so well.

How is that current generation you speak of going to ‘get’ Duke’s mythology know what he is all about?

The game is designed not to have any entry point so it doesn’t really matter if you’ve played the previous games or not. Anyway, everyone has heard of Duke if only from all of the memes I see going around like ‘Balls of Steel’, the ‘Ventrilo Harassment’ video and ‘Always Bet on Duke’, which is a funny joke because this game has been in development for so long that it’s the one thing you probably shouldn’t bet on, but now its here.

Duke Nukem Forever is surely one of the most talked about games, not least by you yourself, after such a lengthy press tour. Is there anything you haven’t revealed yet?

This game is massive and we’re only scratching the surface. I feel like we’ve put less out there than we did for Borderlands but such is the interest in the game that people are jumping on anything we announce and picking up the stories. Take the Penny Arcade Expo, where we announced that we were releasing Duke Nukem Forever, we didn’t tell anyone that we were going to be there or schedule any press, yet it became the number one trending topic on twitter worldwide.

You’ve told us before that some members of the original 3D Realms team have been working on the game; what’s going to be next for them?

Each person is their own individual but, as far as I’m concerned, Allen [Blum, 3D Realms Senior Level Designer] walks on water. He is Duke and he is one of the reasons I moved out to Texas in the mid-90s to join 3D Realms. I’m going to try and talk him into coming to E3. It has to be amazing to be in his shoes right now, to see the game finally coming out having been there for the whole ride. Then again, I can’t just single him out and I have to recognise the commitment that George Broussard, Scott Miller and others brought to the game. They’ve done so much for the industry – without Scott and George, we wouldn’t have had Wolfenstein and I don’t think the first-person genre would be as popular as it is today.

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Not so long ago, the whole of gaming faced a terrible evil – a threat so grave that few knew of its true scope, a threat so intense that even fewer were capable fighting back. The greatest video game hero – Duke Nukem, our King- was on the verge of being lost forever.

A world without Duke Nukem wasn’t something I even wanted to consider. I know that because of my history with Duke that I’m not objective about it, but I also know I’m not the only one. In the interests of full disclosure, long before Gearbox was founded, long before we developed our games for Half-Life, long before we created new brands including Brothers in Arms and Borderlands, it was working with Duke Nukem at 3D Realms (with Gearbox co-founder Brian Martel) that launched my professional career as a game maker.

That’s why, when bad things started to happen and the future of Duke Nukem Forever was hanging in the balance, Gearbox got involved. How could we let Duke die? The world needs Duke Nukem. Duke Nukem is the Ultimate Alien Ass Kicker. Duke Nukem is the World’s Greatest Hero. Duke Nukem is legendary and unimaginably fascinating. We believe in this. This is a game people have been waiting over a decade for and it’s a game we all deserve to play for ourselves.

(more…)

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In what some people were comparing to shaking hands with Bigfoot and riding the Loch Ness monster, I can now confirm (as if you didn’t know already) that Duke Nukem Forever is very real, it is coming to PS3 and I have played it.

I also grabbed this interview with the President and CEO of Gearbox Software, Randy Pitchford.

How does it feel to have this iconic character in the Gearbox stable?

It’s kind of surreal but I really have to forget about that and focus on the mission of finally releasing Duke Nukem Forever. I’m trying not to worry about pressure or expectations.

In what state was the code in when Gearbox first got its hands on Duke Nukem Forever?

The vision was certainly evident and there were several moments of brilliance scattered throughout the game. When 3D Realms shut down, there were eight guys that managed to take everything that had been worked on and stitch it together; they went through war to get it even to this stage. They now call themselves Triptych and they’re up on the 10th floor of our offices. They did an amazing job and they deserve a lot of respect.

Right now there’s a team based in Vancouver called Piranha and they’re working on some amazing optimisations for PlayStation 3. It was almost inconceivable, when we first received the code, that we could bring it to PS3 but we refused to accept that and have put in a huge amount of work to ensure that the software comes to that audience.

The nature of the project and the level of goodwill that surrounds it in the industry mean that we’ve had plenty of people willing to jump in and help.

Have you removed or adding anything?

A lot! It’s a complex piece of software and it would go well beyond the scope of this interview to detail the additions and omissions. Today, there are 70 people involved in the project, yet when 3D Realms closed its doors, there were 30.

In terms of the story, the design and the experience, it’s a 3D Realms game through and through.

Is the level of expectation around the game a blessing or a curse?

I don’t know yet. With Borderlands, the challenge was getting everyone’s attention. With Duke, we have the opposite problem.

Is there a sense of poetic justice in once again working with Duke?

Not justice at all – I was with Duke for a few years and there are so many people involved for longer than me. One thing I am pleased about is that Allen [Blum] is still involved. Allen created Duke; I feel honoured and privileged to be carrying the Duke Nukem torch but only because I’m carrying it with Allen and he is involved every day.

Are you including multiplayer?

Of course – I can’t imagine a Duke Nukem game without multiplayer. When 3D Realms was working on the game, they never got around to that side of things so Gearbox has enabled a huge effort on that front.

Do you see any discrepancies between the flavour of gaming of 12 years ago, when Duke Nukem Forever was conceived, and the tastes of modern gamers?

Sure, games have evolved in some ways but there are some areas where they’ve stagnated. For example, Duke Nukem 3D was really innovative, at the time, with its mix of combat and environmental puzzle solving. It was rich with interactive environments and plenty of secrets to discover if you veered off the natural path.

Not so many games bother with those any more. Half-Life does a good job with its pacing, I suppose, but hardly anything has the level of interactivity of Duke or does the hidden Easter eggs thing any more. Duke Nukem Forever does all of that.

When’s the sequel coming out?

I have spent zero mind share on anything beyond Duke Nukem Forever!

Finally and slightly off-topic, how is Aliens: Colonial Marines doing?

It’s looking great! We’ve been radio silent but we’re very excited. It’s funny you should mention it because if you go back and look at Duke Nukem 3D, we included facehuggers and there’s Aliens stuff up on the walls. I’ve been stealing from Aliens my entire career so it feels great to finally be involved in the canon.

Truthfully, the game was announced too early – the ink wasn’t dry on the contract and we hadn’t even written the first line of code, but we’re really committed and so is SEGA, and I’m sure that pretty soon we’ll be in a position to start talking again.

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