Special:
4Players: How do you feel to be responsible for destroying all those jokes, April's fools and running-gags which came up during the past twelve years?
Randy Pitchford: You know what? I was just like you. I was on the outside and a part of it. I mean...that part of a legend of this. Duke Nukem Forever (ab 13,91€ bei 
kaufen) is almost like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster. You know what I mean?
There's a bit of blurry stuff where some people claim that it's real, but c'mon...Loch Ness monster? C'mon! This is just some things they're doing to trick us. Duke is kind of unique in that way. It's kind of cool right now, too, to be able to take it and bring it to people. Now you can shake hands with Bigfoot. It turns out, Bigfoot is real! 
Randy Pitchford, president and CEO of Gearbox Software...and savior of Duke Nukem Forever.
4Players: So is it a relief?
Randy Pitchford: It's a pure relief when we ship it. I can tell you there is a lot of pressure and although the horizon is clear and we know what we're doing. And we're on the home stretch. But...there's gotta be some curse or something right? Something is gonna happen. I don't know what it is, but somehow we gonna get screwed. And I'm terrified! I just want to get to that point where I can go into the store and buy it myself and then I believe it myself. Here is the thing though: In spite of all the things that happened with Duke and all the broken promises for some reason we still care. I know how my heart felt when they cancelled it and I was like C'mon...really? I just love my Duke Nukem. Could you just figure this out, please.' We almost kind of need it to work out. It hasn't been games shipping that has kept Duke as an iconic figure in the industry. Cause it hadn't been any games would have shipped, right? It's just in the fan love and interests. Fascination with it. I don't know what it is.
4Players: He's a cool guy...
Randy Pitchford: Yeah...who doesn't want to be a guy who can play his own videogame while being pleasured by two women at the same time? I don't know how you get that world, but sign me up. I want that!
4Players: How much work does Gearbox actually do?
Randy Pitchford: A lot. It's difficult in the time that we gonna spend for me to be able to be accurate to the big complex game. There's a couple of things I can say that give your readers the right impression. And the first thing is that the game is the vision that was developed at 3D Realms. It is George and Alan, 3D Realm team's vision for Duke Nukem Forever. This is their game. And that's what's helping to follow through on that. Having said that, there's a huge amount of effort in order to follow through on that, that can't be trivialized. There are people working day and night, working their asses off to make sure that we can have this. And so that effort has to be respected. I calculated once that 3D Realms over the twelve years they've been working on the game probably put in between 3000 to 4000 man-months of time. Since Gearbox got involved we calculated our risk, our investment to finish it to be between 2500 and 3000 man-months to finish it. And we're tracking. That's proven true. So that gives you sense of like the relative...like man-months, but in terms of like the vision for the story of the game and what we do...and the content from the jokes to the action to the obstacles that was 3D Realm's vision.
4Players: So you didn't have to start from scratch...
Randy Pitchford: No. If I did, I wouldn't call it Duke Nukem Forever. Cause the game I want to play, is the game that I should have gotten. I wanna play that game. So now that I'm responsible for it that's what I should be helping to happen.
4players: You mentioned some new ideas during your presentation. Can you give an example?
Randy Pitchford: Well, you know there are some iterations in the design. One of the things that Duke 3D innovated on was the idea of pacing in a shooter. Going from having like a moment where we are shooting...and then we clear that area up. But then we have some kind of obstacle. Either we have to explore an area and find a path or we can clearly see there is an obstacle in our way and we have to think about how to get around that obstacle. Maybe use the
environment or change something in the environment or move things around. So there is a pacing to that and Duke Nukem kind of innovated there. We feel that kind of pacing in games like Half Life, where you have that pacing between action and puzzle solving. What I also like to mention is interactivity and secrets: These are not neccessary for the critical pass, but they both create entertainment and things that make it richer and more fun. So Duke Forever follows through with that general pacing structure or the balance between action and shooting and the other things. We add things that we have more and more recently in games, which is variety. In Duke Nukem 3D it was always Duke with a gun in his hand. And Duke Forever...there are times you get to hop into a vehicle or get on an alien ship. I mean...you gonna do some crazy shit. So much for the great design principle of pacing. But it does something differently: It takes the story in real-time. 
The aliens need to get their ass kicked...again!
4Players: In real-time?
Randy Pitchford: Real-time meaning like we come into it and Duke is twelve years after the events of Duke 3D. And the game begins with him on his couch, playing his own videogame and then very shortly after these moments the aliens come back. They say there are coming in peace and the president makes a deal with the aliens. He says We all gonna be fine. This time they've learnt their lessons, cause you kicked their ass last time, Duke and now we all gonna be friends. We have so much to learn from them and we all gonna be friends now and don't mess it up. Don't get involved, Duke. I got this', says the president. And of course...the aliens are aliens...they're not gonna play nice, right? Their plan...I mean...they gonna steal our chicks and use our women to breed an army of aliens. And of course Duke has got a big problem with that. He saved the earth, so he is the most famous guy in the world. He is the wealthiest guy on the planet. He succeeds in everything he does...and he has done everything. He is just the most amazing guy ever and you become him in his world and once again save the earth and save our women in this crazy story. We wanted that you see that story in real-time. So you don't have like oldschool stuff where you complete a level and at the end you have to hit a button. That's the past. We're not really immersed to this narrative. It's a real-time kind of experience.
4players: Can you also tell something about multiplayer?
Randy Pitchford: A little bit. I can tell you that it exists. The other thing about Duke is: We've been promised things so long. I could tell you all day about multiplayer but really I...I'm just...again I'm making promises. Right now we didn't have the time to show multiplayer but soon we'll be bringing multiplayer out, maybe even public and let people play a demo. And the best way for people to believe is to play it themselves. And to see it themselves.
Single player and multiplayer. When we decided that we are ready...we just took the game, we brought it here, brought it to people. We want people to play it. And that's the best way. We just said: "Here, it's playable. Go ahead". And the reason is because we've been promised too much. Too often. And we'll do the same with multiplayer. The thing is: You have to have multiplayer with Duke. I wouldn't feel good about being responsible for a Duke Nukem game which didn't have a multiplayer. I wanna get online and shrink my friends and step on them. I gotta do all those things. Also I want some new things. Like what Duke Nukem 3D innovated on multiplayer. I want some new fun things. What's fun right now? What's going on in the multiplayer scene? What are the things that people aren't doing? Where can we mix up a bit? When you do a game like this both with singleplayer and multiplayer, you have to do a fair amount of fan service. You have to love it for history. Because you care so much about it. If there was no pipe bomb in Duke Nukem Forever we would be pissed off, right? So you have to put that stuff in but you also can't only have that stuff. It actually has to be a new game. It has to be a modern game. Same is with multiplayer where you gonna have that certain feeling. But it is a new game. 
"I wouldn't feel good about being responsible for a Duke Nukem game which didnt have a multiplayer"
4Players: You talked about dancing on the boundaries regarding the rating boards. As you may know, the boundaries in Germany are a bit different compared to other countries - especially when it comes to violence...
Randy Pitchford: Yeah, a bit different. You know, in the United States we seem to be okay with violence. But we have a problem with nudity. You show a nipple and you're going to hell. This is North America. Whereas in Germany it's the opposite. My opinion on this is: I hate all censorship. So I'm against censorship. But if I had to pick between violence and sex, sex is clearly the lesser of the evil. That's the thing with it. We need to be responsible. We don't want to corrupt young minds. But he Ratings Boards has a role there. The role is to educate the customer and parents about what the options are. But just to say 'No, society can't see this, it's too dangerous'...c'mon...that's bullshit. We live in a world where we have the internet. We all have a magic window to infinite violence and infinite porn... We all have that. There are all these things in entertainment which test the boundaries and show us where the boundaries are. And sometimes when these things show up it doesn't really matter which century you are even talking about. You got literature in the Middle Ages...and sometimes these things move the boundaries further and sometimes you got society to react. I think we are in a world where the boundaries are moving out...I think we are getting more and more freedom. I think things like the internet are making that. The information age is making that just happen. And I think in Germany...you guys can do a lot. You can tell your government that this is bullshit. Help them to realize that they need to change their way of thinking as well. We have to stick to the law though.
4players: So you wouldn't have a problem to bring a cut version of the game to Germany?
Randy Pitchford: I don't have a problem with it. If the choice is: Germans don't get to play it at all legally or we create that option, we create that option. I don't make the rules. A lot of rules I hate. But I have to follow the rules or I get into trouble.
4Players: And do you have any plans for bonus content?
Randy Pitchford: We do that sometimes. But we are not talking about them yet. We have to make so many decisions about each thing. But we have got a plan and there is a timing for all of this. So we know it's gonna happen.
4Players: Thanks for your time.
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