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The Miller's Tale: 3D Realms' Scott Miller
SM: There’s not much of a success rate – it’s a risky proposition. Publishers are spending a lot of money on new games. Nowadays, the budgets are probably averaging around ten million, if not higher. When you can attach an existing brand to it, a license to it, then publishers are thinking, “well, surely this will get us to at least break even.” My position has always been the opposite of that. They usually work against you because they come from linear media and don’t have the built in hooks for good gameplay. Most licenses, like Minority Report, Survivor or Da Vinci Code, don’t really have any inherent gameplay hooks that make them worthy of making a game out of. The only thing that has any interest is the license itself and I don’t think that’s good enough. GS: Pandering to fans? SM: Yeah. Another problem that publishers have is that they know the license is going to sell so they don’t make a good game in the first place. GS: Why spend the money when it’s going to sell anyway? SM: Yup. I know that for us it just makes sense to make an original game because you have a clean slate to begin with and you can make sure it has story and gameplay hooks. Everything is built from the ground up to work with the game market. That’s a way of reducing risk. It seems more risky to build something that wasn’t made to work in this market and try to reshape it to work in the game market. GS: There’s no real need to rehash the history of Duke Nukem Forever... SM: (laughs) Yeah. GS: What happened to the version that looked so good? I remember the screen shots that came out around the same time as Quake 3 Arena. Whatever happened to that? SM: The E3 video? GS: Yeah. SM: What you were seeing there was a bunch of incomplete level slices. What else can I say? I probably shouldn’t say much on that.
GS: Ok. Since it’s been so long since Duke 3D, do you think that will impact your interest with younger gamers? SM: Probably, but the way I see it was when Duke 3D came out it was an unknown brand – we only had the two sidescrollers. The fact that it was a great game made it a huge hit. As long as we make a great game, then I feel that Duke Nukem Forever is going to do the same thing. GS: What’s the biggest problem that 3D Realms has ever overcome? SM: Duke Nukem Forever, I guess you could consider our biggest problem. It’s hard to argue against that. GS: Are you guys actively looking at the PS3 and Wii for future content? Does the Wii fit into your plans at all? SM: We certainly haven’t ruled it out. The way we see it is that, with every game we make, if we can get it on as many platforms as possible, we’re going to try and do that. It’s just a matter of whether those platforms have the computing power or memory to handle it. If we can get it on there, and it still lives up to the original goals of the design that we want to accomplish, then we’ll get it on there. We don’t have a platform preference. The more the better is the way we see it. |
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