The Thrifty Gamer

The epic tale of Duke Nukem Forever continues to be the golden goose for videogame journalists the world over, and while the story will have a hopefully happy ending when the game releases sometime next year, not everyone is coming out a winner. In a recent interview, Gearbox head honcho Randy Pitchford estimated that former 3D Realms CEO George Broussard spent “20 to 30 million dollars of his own money on Duke Nukem Forever.”

“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,” said Pitchford when asked about 3D Realms closing their doors.

“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.”

The crazy thing to remember here is that Broussard’s $30 million is presumably on top of the pile of money 2K dumped into the project. Hopefully someday a 500-page book will come out explaining in great detail the sheer insanity of the Duke Nukem Forever development cycle, and I’m going to be first in line to read it.

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