He was committed to Duke Nukem ”to the point of insanity”, with Duke ‘dead’ in 2009 with 3D Realms closure. He’d rather ”it burn” than have it suck.
Whilst speaking at a conference in London, Randy Pitchford recalled the terrible times surrounding the collapse of 3D Realms and the doom spelled for the Duke Nukem Forever project. It’s now been saved of course and due out sometime next year.
”There was the bad news in May 2009,” recounted Pitchford. ”You all saw the stories; 3D Realms was shutting down, Duke was dead. That sucked. It was tough being in Dallas, many of my friends lost their jobs.”
”I spoke to George Broussard and he said, ‘Randy, this is the worst day of my life’ but you could hear in his voice there was more. This was 12 years of his life… try and imagine what you’ve achieved in 12 years, Gearbox has made 15 games in that time.”
”George Broussard is not a poor man but I would estimate that he lost 20 to 30 million dollars of his own money on Duke Nukem Forever - I don’t care who you are, that’s a hell of a lot of money. He was committed to Duke to the point of insanity - and now Duke was dead.” Pitchford’s Gearbox has since taken over DNF’s development.
”He decided he would rather have it burn that have a bad version of the game come out.” Duke Nukem Forever releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC next year with Broussard having played a role at Gearbox on its development. A demo will hit beforehand.
