Randy Pitchford: Your questions answered

You submitted your Duke Nukem Forever questions, so here they are. Answered by Gearbox’s CEO Randy Pitchford, at an event with pole dancers, beer, DNF multiplayer kiosks and boobs (I had a blast BTW). Pitchford, the man that once argued that the Duke isn’t sexist because the Duke uses everything in his world as a plaything. This guy is as practised with his answers as a politician during election time, but his passion for the big fella was as hard to miss as the neon “Titty City” sign that graced the pole dancers stage.


John Lankston: When will the the DNF demo come out? When are FAC (First Access Club) going to get into the demo?

Good question. We’ll announced that very, very soon. The demo will absolutely come out before the game ships. All of the first access guys, all of them will be the first to get it and we are going to be taking care after those guys. There’s going to be more things that I can’t talk about today, but that’s going to be a very worthy club to be in. So everybody that is in that club, we will be taking care of them. They’ll be very excited to hear the news. We’re almost there.

Richard Elliott: What work was left to be done on DNF when you received the game data from 3D Realms?

Lots! There was a lot of great content there. There was an amazing vision and an amazing amount of stuff that existed. To bring the game on all of the platforms, to you know, support the spectrum of all the different PCs, to make it really hum on the Xbox 360, and to add a multiplayer component, and add the polish, to fit it all together. I think about the time we ship it, it will be about 25, 000 man months of effort – which is a lot of time.

Richard Elliott and Jeffrey Abt: What’s next for Duke after Forever finally gets its foot out the door? Will there be another Duke game in the future?

That is a great question! I know I can’t wait to figure out that stuff. But we haven’t spent any attention on that because we are responsible for shipping Duke Forever. So you can imagine that if someone says, “hey, what should we do after this?” its like “shut the hell up, let’s finish this”. The moment this game is done is a great time to start to ask ourselves that question. And as we make those plans and we commit ourselves to them, we’ll be excited to talk about that with fans.

Prefer Not To Leave A Name: Clearly women are not the core base for this game, but I’m wondering if there have been any last-minute changes that would make this game more appealing to the female gamer demographic?

(Laughs) I think that depends on the person. If you like shooters, where there is a balance between action and puzzle solving, it doesn’t matter what gender you are, this is one of the greatest games ever that does that kind of balance. If you loved Half Life or you loved Duke Nukem 3D, you are going to love this. It’s going to be incredible. If you enjoy satire and parody, and you like movies like the Hangover, then you are going to have a great time with this game. So I think it works for everybody. My wife thinks it’s hilarious. So, not everything is for everybody. It’s as funny as hell – it’s a good time.

Duke Nukem multiplayer impressions to come – currently embargoed until the 11th.