![]() ![]() Microsoft owned the rights to the series, having acquired them when it bought MechWarrior creator FASA Interactive in 1999. But as with Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza, there were complications. And like every developer, over the course of all those 11 years we were always dreaming of how we'd step out from work-for-hire and manage to make something on our own."Īnd they knew exactly what they wanted to make: MechWarrior. "We'd been making games and learning a lot, but it's really kind of impossible to get ahead. "It had been 11 years of work-for-hire and it was a tough slog out there," Bullock said. The end of their dedicated work-for-hire stint was 2011's Duke Nukem Forever, for which they handled multiplayer of all versions and ported the PC edition to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Over that stretch, they worked their way up from smaller projects to ports of bigger games. We'd been making games and learning a lot, but it's really kind of impossible to get ahead" Russ BullockĪs Bullock said, that project started them on an 11-year run of pure work-for-hire, a stretch that saw them produce games for Electronic Arts, Activision, and Take-Two, among others. "It had been 11 years of work-for-hire and it was a tough slog out there. Like many a mod team since, they received a cease-and-desist order from the people who actually own the rights to the property they were using (Fox Interactive, in this case), but instead of walking away from the idea, they spent eight months making demos and negotiating with Fox to make an official version of their project, which wound up being the 2002 PC shooter Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza. Speaking with recently, co-founders Russ Bullock and Bryan Ekman recounted the studio's 18 year history, starting with its humble beginnings as a team working on an unauthorized Die Hard mod in the Half-Life engine. Such was the case with Piranha Games, the Vancouver-based developer of the free-to-play MechWarrior Online. Other times, early movers are in an emerging field not by design, but because it seemed like the only way forward. When the game finally comes out this June we'll get to see exactly what all that effort has wrought.Sometimes, early movers in an emerging field are enthusiastic advocates and driven believers, people with a vision and a passion for realizing that field's potential. However the accounting works, a staggering amount of time has gone into the development of Duke Nukem Forever. Among them is Piranha Games, who Pitchford credited with, "building out the multiplayer game as well as preparing the game for PS3." That's a lot of responsibility but Piranha has a proven track record for collaboration on big projects having helped ship Need for Speed: Shift. Pitchford highlighted a couple of external teams that have added to the count with their help getting the game wrapped up. That's a familiar subject in the history of Duke Nukem Forever which has seen countless developers over the course of its lengthy development. But more interestingly, the concept of man-months in the world of software development introduces a whole discussion on whether adding manpower to a project in fact makes it later as proposed by author Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering. That would put Duke at 1,050,000+ man-hours. Wait hold up Randy, there's something like 6,000 or more man-months of work in Duke Nukem Forever? What does that even mean? Doing some quick math, a man-month equates to about 175 man-hours (40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year divided into 12 months). Meanwhile, by the time Gearbox ships the game we'll have put in another 2,500 man-months of effort." After detailing some of the partners that have helped out with the game (more on that below), he writes, "I have estimated that 3D Realms invested between 3,500 and 4,500 man-months of effort into the game, a lot of which has been lost to the ages. Over on the PlayStation Blog, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford posted some background on Duke Nukem Forever and the path it took to becoming a PlayStation 3. ![]()
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