This is a blog post earlier posted here on my personal blog More Harman Than Good.
 

The latest issue of Game Informer (Australian edition) arrived the other day and there was an article in there by the local editor Chris Stead talking about Duke Nukem Forever and the ways in which it has divided the games press. This has been a topic I have been watching with a little interest because I’m not entirely sure I understand where a lot of the journalists are coming from in regards to some of their statements. The article then got me a little fired up with some of its suggestions regarding both how far the games industry has come since 1996 and also how far society has come.*

One of the big statements I hear about Duke is that somehow the jokes in Duke Nukem 3D were relevant in 1996 and that this relevance doesn’t translate to a more modern and mature society. Duke 3D was a self aware (if immature and misogynistic) parody of 1980’s action films and their heroes. It was released in 1996, 8 years after you could say that Die Hard sort of killed that brand of film. Basically, Duke Nukem 3D wasn’t exactly culturally current at the time, it was nostalgic parody. Do you know what Sylvester Stallone’s big film was in 1996? Daylight. The year after that he made Cop Land. Schwarzenegger? Eraser (hardly the type of film that Duke was taking on) and Jingle All The Way, a year later he made Batman and Robin. The brand of film that Duke was parodying just wasn’t really being made at that point in time.

So now that Duke is coming back, what has changed exactly? Well The Expendables made over $200 million dollars in worldwide box office and it was seen as a sort of return of the 80s style action film. Oh and Ian Spector has likely made a lot of money writing parody books about Chuck Norris, you know them, you might have even quoted them, if not, you can find them on Amazon or in a book store.

I will take the point that the games industry has evolved and the characters that are being developed for games are more rounded than Duke ever was but the industry still has a long way to go in that area. Big action still sells and sells big, just look at the Gears of War franchise. People buy games like Halo and Call of Duty and couldn’t care less about whatever story is being told in the sigle player, they just want to play online. I’d guess there is still a big audience out there who loves the immaturity that a Duke game would bring.

The key thing that has changed here is the games journalist, a lot of them grew up and a lot of the new ones are generally well read individuals who seem to have a good grasp on the ways in which games are evolving. This is a great thing because we are starting to see some well written articles that go beyond the standard reviews of games. I can see how Duke Nukem Forever would offend their mature sensibilities because they probably like to think that the industry and gamers are beyond that. The games journalist doesn’t reflect the games audience though. Society as a whole needs to be taken into account and I just don’t see the evidence that 80s nostalgia parody is outdated.

Duke Nukem Forever might be a bad game and if it is, the games press can take all the shots they want at it. This cultural relevance angle doesn’t really fly for me though other than the intelligent games journalist feeling ashamed of the game. That is fine, but they need to take into account that there is an audience there for this stuff. People’s nostalgia for 80s action is potentially even greater now than it was in 1996 (not to mention the games audience is bigger now) and if the gamers are there for that, they’re there. I think that society still likes that immature level of humour. I’d like to think I’m wrong and we’ll find out in May, but I’m not sure it will be the characters relevance that will keep the audience away.

*To be fair, Stead does examine some of these issues that I’ve explored here, I just took issue with his placement of Duke in a cultural historical sense.