Why the studio itself is shutting down is an entirely different question, and one that has been answered ambiguously at best thus far. All that has been said is basically that the money has run out, and that there is nowhere to go but away at this point. Take-Two, the game's publisher has made a statement confirming that they were not funding the project at all, meaning the project was entirely self-funded. This I can believe, but like the bankruptcies that are all too prevalent and occurring in the marketplace in today's economy, I refuse to believe that this happened overnight. Joe Siegler said in an interview given the previous day that things were moving along, same generic statement any 3D Realms employee gives when asked about the game, and the very next day done. I can dig him not knowing, but the higher ups, I look at Scott Miller and George Broussard, not a chance.
Iv'e read some interesting articles that have spawned from the topic, chief among them Charlie Wiederhold's fantastic story following the success of the 2001 trailer (which looked amazing by the way) and his learning that the game was a puppet to pimp the unreal engine. Some of the things in that story are eye-opening and I have no idea how this hasn't spread all over the internet yet. From the mafia-like way the other devs did business to the feeling that the game you had poured your blood sweat and tears into for the past 3 years was PURPOSELY being held back, the story had me on the edge of my seat. That being said, the story is so outlandish that I can hardly believe that 100% of it is the truth and not at all embellished. Based in truth, certainly, exactly like that, probably not.
Another interesting tidbit comes from a now ex-3D Realms employee explaining the warped fashion in which development was conducted.
The 2001 trailer was 100% scripted cinematic, and not actual gameplay. They built specific demo maps just to record video from to make a trailer. Everything you see in that trailer was phony.
The typical work flow there went something like this:
Designer would be assigned a task (build a new map, rebuild an old map, polish a bit of a map, etc.). Designer would work on said task for two, three weeks, a month, all the while lower management would be looking over it and making sure it was going in a "good general direction." Designer would move on to another task. A month or two later upper management would finally look at the work and say, "It's all wrong, do it again." Rinse, repeat.
Entire maps would be done from the ground up, almost to beta quality, and then thrown out simply because no one would make decisions early on in the process. (Read up on Valve's 'orange box' method of design -- that's how you make games)
Another example of this is the fact that there was one part of one map that was being worked on before I started working there. Nineteen months later and the same designer was still working on the same part of that same map... I'm not blaming the designer, it wasn't his fault.
I think the biggest problem that the company had in general is being self-funded. When you're a developer working directly with a publisher and you have milestones to meet it's a whole different ballgame. If you don't meet those milestones, you don't get any money. That right there will keep your project on schedule. If, however, you're funding it yourself, you don't really have anyone to answer to except yourself and you can quickly lose sight of just how much money is going out the door.
Strange stuff huh? What does this tell me? Well one, I believe that the employees were being set-up to fail. What do I mean by that? Well between the intentions that George and crew clearly had from the first story to the fashion in which perfectly good levels were being thrown out with little explanation tells me that no matter what these game designers cooked up, it was going to be rejected so that the game could stay in development. Something weird was and still is going on in Garland, TX. An official statement will no doubt be made, and we will gain some more information, but as Joe said,
Not everything is information meant for the general public.
How do I feel about the news? To be quite honest, like someone has kicked me in the stomach. Though I UNDERSTOOD the whole time that the game may very well never release, I am not afraid to admit that I BELIEVED that the game would come out at some point in time. There would be no point carrying on this way and re-doing the game without putting something out, and I was going to buy it no matter how terrible it turned out to be. Also, when Jace Hall full on played it and reported back that the game was mind blowing, I thought progress was being made. Now the best we can hope for is the code being outsourced to a trustworthy house like Valve, id or Infinity Ward and salvaged into some kind of marketable form. I'd still check it out.
I could imagine a day when they came out with their hands up and said, "We admit it, there is no game," but for Apogee/3D Realms, a 20 year old company with a huge hand in the history of PC gaming to just close its doors out of thin air, truly unbelievable. That is probably why the news is particularly hard to swallow.
Lastly, check out this page. It is a comprehensive lise of all of the milestones, events and high profile releases of the past 12 years since development began. 12 years is longer time than one would think, and a whole bunch of stuff has happened during this time that is truly eye-opening.
