I was going down a Google rabbithole and somehow ended up reading a Wired article on why Duke Nukem Forever was a failure. As I was reading it, I kept thinking "Oh no! Please don't do this CIG!" Haha. The article highlights that the three things that killed Duke Nukem Forever were: Perfectionism Too much money Feature Creep Basically, the head producer kept trying to add the latest and greatest technology, constantly revamping and adding to the engine, switching engines, adding new features, etc., and had the money to do it. With an almost unlimited budget, the project kept growing and growing and changing and changing until the money was gone and there was still no finished game. It's an interesting article and definitely rings some bells and highlights the danger of not defining and limiting your scope and feature set. There is always a chance for a sequel! Interesting read in what was a dark time for a highly anticipated game. "A" game was eventually released by a different developer but it was dead on arrival. https://www.wired.com/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/ I thought this section was interesting: "Broussard simply couldn’t tolerate the idea of Duke Nukem Forever coming out with anything other than the latest and greatest technology and awe-inspiring gameplay. He didn’t just want it to be good. It had to surpass every other game that had ever existed, the same way the original Duke Nukem 3D had. But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill. He’d see a new game with a flashy graphics technique and demand the effect be incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. “One day George started pushing for snow levels,” recalls a developer who worked on Duke Nukem Forever for several years starting in 2000. Why? “He had seen The Thing” — a new game based on the horror movie of the same name, set in the snowbound Antarctic — “and he wanted it. ...Worse, former employees say, he did not appear to have an endgame — an overall plan for what the finished product would look like, and thus a way to recognize when it was nearing completion. “I remember being very impressed by the features. It was incredibly cool technology,” says the developer hired in 2000. “But it wasn’t a game.” It was like a series of tech demos “in a very chaotic state.” ...Indeed, they even posted gleeful rants online about the evil of publishers and their deadlines. “When it’s done” became their defiant reply whenever someone asked when Duke Nukem Forever would be finished.”' I don't mean for this to be a knock on CIG or anything. The topic of feature creep and developmental delays comes up so often I thought this was an interesting retrospective on when those issues ultimately killed a project and how too much money actually hurt them rather than helped.