Interviews// Duke Nukem Forever - Marketing VP, Steve Gibson

SPOnG: You showed off DNF at PAX in 2010. Was there a worry that after taking so long on the game’s development that people would not have any interest? That they’d think Duke’s past his prime?

Steve Gibson: Yeah, we talked about this and we were scared. The thing that we thought about was - remember the movie Snakes on a Plane? You know how everybody talked about it, but when it arrived at theatres nobody saw it? They were like ‘Uh, fuck that. It was fun to make fun of, though.’

And we were wondering if people would do the same to Duke Nukem Forever. At PAX though, the line to see the game was huge. When we were talking about people’s reactions, we’d always thought it’d be somewhere between Snakes on a Plane - utter failure - and Borderlands which had waiting lines for an hour and a half.

When Duke happened, we got a line close to five hours! And we had more stations, and were passing more people through… so to us, that was the definitive answer. We realised people were going to show up, and people were going to care about this. If we deliver, the gamers will care.


SPOnG: Was there anything you learned from showing the public that demo at PAX? What was that early feedback like?

Steve Gibson: We had the producers and designers there, watching. We didn’t bring too much attention to that, but those guys were there and they learned things like… in the stadium scene, you know the smoke trail coming from the drop ship that gives you ammo? A lot of people didn’t notice that. The designers recognised this was a problem for some of these guys so they tweaked that.

Also, once the game was made public, we were having playtesters come in too. When we couldn’t announce it, we couldn’t have public playtesting, so PAX was really useful in highlighting the small things that you can only really learn from hundreds of people playing. We knew it worked, but after that we knew how to go and make things that little bit better.


SPOnG: Isn’t it massively daunting for you guys to finish this game off, because you’re fans of the franchise too, right?

Steve Gibson: Yeah, it was daunting. I remember having the discussion to carry the IP. It was a huge burden to take, and a lot of us were very apprehensive. We were wondering, ‘is this the sort of thing that sinks a studio?’ We were doing pretty well with Borderlands, Brothers in Arms and Halo (Gearbox developed the PC port), and this was pretty scary.

Once we investigated this we realised that we could do this. That fear and anxiety turned into inspiration for us. We knew that we could do this and that we could be the guys who get it across the finish line.

To use a Star Wars reference, we can be the guy in the Millennium Falcon who clears everything off at the last second. We’re not Luke. 3D Realms and the Triptych guys - they’re Luke. But we can be the guys who rids Vader at the last second so they can finish the job. It’s exciting to be a part of this amazing history, this crazy once-in-a-lifetime situation - really humbling, in fact.


SPOnG: It’s funny that Randy has mentioned Daikatana in the past as an example of how not to finish Duke Nukem Forever. That’s another game that took a while to make and then bombed when it came out. Is that a worry for you? Have you gone through the motions to ensure that doesn’t happen to you?

Steve Gibson: Yeah. Our opinion on this is that if you look at games and movies that take a long time to make, not all of them turn out to be trash. Red Dead Redemption took about five years to make, but now that it’s out and people like it, nobody’s talking about how long it took anymore.

On the other hand, if you look at the film Waterworld… remember that? Frickin’ train wreck. If you fail that hard, that’s when people keep talking about it. If you deliver - which we’re working really hard to do, and feel like we can - people aren’t going to worry about that. They’re going to just think this is a great game.


SPOnG: Back when Duke Nukem 3D came out a lot of people loved the level creation mods - is that something you might look into after the game’s PC release?

Steve Gibson: I imagine so - Gearbox actually has a history of trying to do things like this. For Halo on PC… there was actually nothing in the contract requiring us to do this, but we had a dedicated multiplayer server for that. You know… we get this. Whether a feature is important or not isn’t really a question for us, it’s more about whether we have the time, people and money to do it.

That sort of thing is expensive to do, it’s not just a dump of their code. It’s a big investment to try and get that done. But certainly, Gearbox has a history of looking at that and trying new things. That’s not really a committal answer I’m afraid, but at least it gives you an idea of where our mindset would be on it.


SPOnG: Judging by your history though, you do tend to do that sort of thing, so that would be something you’d look into?

Steve Gibson: Yes, it would.


SPOnG: Would you want to work with Triptych in the future? How would that situation work out if you decide to take the Duke Nukem franchise further?

Steve Gibson: That’s up to the Triptych guys and what they want to do. And it’s up to the HR guys and legal and stuff like that. That’s totally out of my hands. It’s a terrible answer, but I just don’t know!


SPOnG: Thank you very much for your time.

Steve Gibson: Thanks!

Duke Nukem Forever is hitting the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on 6th May.