As many as 10 team members from the long, long-delayed Duke Nukem Forever have left developer 3D Realms over the past year, fuelling rumors that the game has finally been scrapped. But could it really mean that the game is actually nearing completion?
A development team disbanding over this period of time is a common enough occurrence in the games industry - but where this PC shooter's legendary delays are concerned, it's fuel to the fire that Duke Nukem Forever may never actually be released.
3D Realms' response has been to wearily shrug it off, with Duke development head George Broussard offering a curt "We're just not going to comment about this," on 3D Realms' official forums.
Call us crazy, but we're taking the glass-half-full outlook and assuming the team's ramping down - and moving on to less mentally exhausting pastures - because Duke is actually, finally, approaching completion.
Having looked like a truly impressive game at various points during its development, and being guaranteed a few hundred thousand sales out of morbid curiosity alone, it would be a shame if this was truly the end for Duke again. And again.
This time next year we'll either be partying like it's 1997, or accepting that the glass was half empty after all.
August 31, 2006
