I do wonder what was going on at 3D Realms, actually. Not so much in a "how could they be so incompetent" way, more in terms of what the obstacles actually were that held back their project for so long.
Probably a combination of: - poor initial scope - change of scope mid-project to target a different market - mid-project changes to use prettier engines or other methods to compete with then-emerging titles - need to integrate multiplayer if it wasn't in the initial scope - changes of leadership - etc
Between Quake and today there seemed to be a period of making cheap, fun but not terribly memorable games based on the Quake or Unreal engines (e.g. Klingon Honour Guard), and DNF should have been one of those. Suddenly with HL2, Deus Ex etc, expectations for plotting and genre were a lot higher, and DNF was unable to compete in original format. Unfortunately it was so hyped by then (to the investors at least) that they couldn't can it.
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- poor initial scope
- change of scope mid-project to target a different market
- mid-project changes to use prettier engines or other methods to compete with then-emerging titles
- need to integrate multiplayer if it wasn't in the initial scope
- changes of leadership
- etc
Between Quake and today there seemed to be a period of making cheap, fun but not terribly memorable games based on the Quake or Unreal engines (e.g. Klingon Honour Guard), and DNF should have been one of those. Suddenly with HL2, Deus Ex etc, expectations for plotting and genre were a lot higher, and DNF was unable to compete in original format. Unfortunately it was so hyped by then (to the investors at least) that they couldn't can it.
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