3D Realms Use BitTorrent to Promote Duke Nukem Forever
Written by enigmax on December 30, 2007The PC game ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ has been in production for 10 years so one way or another, it must’ve cost the developers a small fortune. However, as 3D Realms have decided to release their latest teaser on BitTorrent, distribution of their advertising content by this method will be reduced to zero. Groovy.
It’s been in development for a decade already and won Wired’s Vaporware Lifetime Achievement Award. Undeterred, 3D Realms have just completed a new teaser to tempt the gaming masses. Quite whether further teasing is required after a 10 year wait is seriously up for debate, but tease they did.
Joe Siegler from 3D Realms said: “As promised yesterday (actually an hour earlier than promised), we are proud to finally bring you an all new teaser trailer for Duke Nukem Forever.” He continued: “We will try and update our list of downloadable links when we can, but with our server so swamped it might be difficult.”
Bandwidth woes. That’s gotta hurt.
3D Realms has offered a long list of places to download the teaser, but clearly with a keen eye on bandwidth costs, right at the top is ‘BitTorrent Download’. Using BitTorrent will allow them to distribute the promotional material for nothing, direct to their target audience of PC-owning, tech-savvy gamers, with a scalability to tackle even the most ridiculously hyped product at just a moment’s notice. And if it all goes horribly wrong, there’s no financial cost to the distributor as it didn’t cost anything in the first place – an ideal position for a company advertising a product for 10 years and getting no sales, for example.
3D Realms (and dozens of companies before them, this is nothing new) used Mininova to host the torrent and a combination of The Pirate Bay, SumoTracker, Denis Stalker and torrent.downloads.to to track the peers. All of these sites will have given their services for free too. I don’t expect any other organization involved with 3D Realms and the development of this semi-mythical game are ever this generous, so I guess it’s three cheers for those public trackers mentioned above.
Those who prefer to view their video through a small grainy box while running up bandwidth costs (and ad revenue) for YouTube, can go here, while BitTorrent users can get their video in all its intended HD glory from mininova.
Ahhh! That’s better!
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31 Responses
5 x Hooray
Wonder why didn’t they use Mininovas’ awesome distribution thing. Would spread way faster.
Some companies are cleaver now!
They advertise their products for free!
at least the knew power of BitTorrent :)
Always bet on Duke.
http://duke.a-13.net/
Great strategy by 3D Realms and I hope them the best of luck in their campaign.
[quote]Those who prefer to view their video through a small grainy box while running up bandwidth costs (and ad revenue) for YouTube, can go here, while BitTorrent users can get their video in all its intended HD glory from mininova.[/quote]
Bold words in your comments enigmax as true as it may be you should watch were your throwing stones.
SWEET JESUS! This news has got to be over 2 weeks old!
Thats kind of silly that they force their bandwith charges on the same people who’m their content is reaching. It shouldn’t me my job to cover their bandwith charges because such company doesn’t want to buy servers to distribute their content.
[quote comment="252098"]Thats kind of silly that they force their bandwith charges on the same people who’m their content is reaching. It shouldn’t me my job to cover their bandwith charges because said company doesn’t want to buy servers to distribute their content.[/quote]
There’s a better version on youtube than the one you posted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-RCsV0IyYY
gametrailers anyone?
I CANT WAIT!
I can’t believe you’ve done this.
“The PC game ‘Duke Nukem Forever’ has been in production for 10 years so one way or another, it must’ve cost the developers a small fortune. However, as 3D Realms have decided to release their latest teaser on BitTorrent, distribution of their advertising content by this method will be reduced to zero. Groovy.”
The last sentence doesn’t make any sense at all.
So does this mean, another 10 years before the game is available?
I thought Duke was Master Chief.
And that DNF was the best Nigerian 411 scam ever.
:P
actually, 3D Realms didn’t upload it there but forum’s moderator (who ain’t a person working at 3d realms).
i played the first Duke games and they were l8 then and behind ID but they had great humor and very enjoyable. they also added one big extra, you could shoot shit you couldnt in doom. so bins and windows and random stuff could be knocked about, it was fun
the phun of original Duke was they added a higher interactive environment than Doom and they had humor when Doom was all agony scary (but damned good)
this vaporware is what we want out of the digital marketplace, corporate marketing bullshit. makes me sick they buy the company and use it as a marketing tool for advertizing for 10 years
The reason I said bandwidth issues was that SO MANY people were hitting the site at once. It really wasn’t a bandwidth issue, since we were not hosting the video on our servers.
It was more a case of the crush of people coming to our site for info. I felt it was easier to say “bandwidth issues” than “server load issues”, and trying to explain THAT to your average n00b who doesn’t know the difference between a hit and a pageview. :)
Joe Siegler
3D Realms
I really don’t find anything offensive about what 3d realms did. Think out of the box, that’s what makes businesses successful. As for the trailer, kind of disappointing. :( The animations were fine, nice detail, smooth model movement, etc. What I found lacking in this teaser was not an ounce of gameplay. This leads me to think that the interactive part of the game doesn’t look like much anything shown in the trailer. :P though that is pretty typical of game developers, show off their cgi imagery and leave out the actual gameplay (though I dunno I could picture a really high end setup doing that). Let’s just all hope you aren’t forcing people to have direct x 10 to run that game, vista is awful :( I wouldn’t mind seeing a linux port of the game.
Gee that’s a surprise Joe Siegler checkin out torrentfreak….need any lab rats to test the playability of your game(s)?
Anyways I think someone there is a good thinker, I’m tired of seeing un-innovative minds running the show it gets quite disheartening…..this is a little refreshing and ‘ll actually make 3d realms stick in my mind.
P.S. I’m still pissed off that mr. carmack decided to take quake series back in the direction original quake was with playability and physics, I own all the quake games but nothing really compares to the fun that I had playin quake 2 rail only before that community died out to nothin :( Still waiting for something as fun as that to come but it just ain’t happening and I really don’t have the patience to sit there and make a mod. All of this focus on adding realism is sucking the fun appeal out of games, nothing compared to the adrenaline rush of fasthook instagib. U throw that in and I’m sure I’ll be a customer real quick. The skilled players out there enjoy a fast moving target, good maneuverability, and one shot one kill (or as with quake 2 it was fun picking an angle where you could get multiple kills with one shot, lol). Realism be damned. Details….hmmm…not so important in a fast paced environment.
Though it sure would be even nicer if old games had more replayability by allowing newer 3d engines to be integrated with them. It would be sweet if things were *that* compartamentalized that whenever a new game came out, all of my old purchases became new as well. That might make doing a sequel a little tougher but it sure would get a rather loyal group of followers. (ex: if I could purchase quake 4, but play quake 2 on it’s graphics engine and maps, I’d be a very happy customer). I guess that’s partially why I loved css, because it’s fans loved the game enough and just wanted better graphics, not a wholly new game, which is why all the classic maps are still in there (though the physics still changed a little). Still think about it, some of us would be happy to just sit there and play the same game forever….the way this industry has gone, it’s almost like the fun I had will never come back — so I play stepmania instead. :P As if it’d take anything less to make a sharp shot retire from 3d fps games.
Best part of Duke Nuk’em was the strip club :D “Shake It Baby!”
Hope stuff like that flows through to this version, but I doubt it, things are so watered down now days, wouldn’t want to offend someone now would you.
Cant wait till theres an actual torrent for the game! :-D
The original DN 3d was GREAT – if you want a game in the same spirit try the underrated Serious Sam games – the original two not the new one which is indistinguishable from a lot of fpss.
I was really excited for Duke Nukem Fornever 10 years ago. I think the Dolphins will win the Super Bowl before it is released. It must be awesome to pretend to your investers your creating the worlds greatest game while ingesting large quantities of pizza and weed on a daily basis.
The best way to promote and for free is by using bittorent.
Lets hope more will follow the same path.
That’s great except my ISP using packet shaping so anytime I try a torrent, legit or otherwise, my connection drops to nothing and I start getting disconnects.
Awesome.
The same bittorrent’s potential might also give some customers full game for free too, Hope it doesnt happens so.
What a joke.
[quote comment="252219"]actually, 3D Realms didn’t upload it there but forum’s moderator (who ain’t a person working at 3d realms).[/quote]
actually, 3D Realms didn’t upload it there but forum’s moderator (who ain’t a person working at 3d realms).
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