Deadlines, especially in the videogame industry where new innovations and technology are constantly being developed, are sometimes hard to meet. Often times, developers will choose to push back release dates in order to add features, update gameplay, or fix bugs late in the process. Most gamers don’t mind this, and are thankful for the better end product. There is a certain point, however, that a game will stop being called a “delayed game” and will start being called “vaporware,” and the question people ask is not when a game will be released but if it even exists.

It is impossible to engage in any discussion of vaporware without mentioning Duke Nukem Forever, a game which has been in development for so long that the idea of its release has actually become a favorite joke among gamers. Originally slated for a 1998 release, it came as quite a shock to the gaming world when the game was recently given a new release date of summer 2011, and appeared at the Penny Arcade Expo with playable demos available on the showroom floor, confirming that the game will probably be released after all this time.

Duke Nukem Forever is actually the fourth installment in the popular Duke Nukem series of computer games first released in the early 90s. Notorious for its crude humor, violence, and sexual content, the series has long been controversial. In a press release for the upcoming game, publisher 2K Games described the titular character as “the interactive entertainment industry’s most irreverent and quoted character of all time.” The infamy of the game is familiar to many games, including Andrew Nagler, sophomore in biological sciences.

“It was really gratuitously violent, but it was a whole lot of fun,” Nagler said.

Senior in computer and electrical engineering, Kyle Bolton described the legacy of the series and it’s landmark status.

“Before [Duke Nukem] games were all text based,” Bolton said. “So this was one of the first big graphical videogames, and it had a good following. Duke Nukem, in a sense, founded the violent videogame genre. There would be ploys about him running off with women. You would see him with the beautiful women at the end of the game. There was the stripper scene where you can shoot the stripper and she would give you money.”

Despite controversy, however, the series maintained a strong fan base and positive critical reception. The vaporware status of the latest installment is due partly to perfectionism and the developer’s attempts to constantly update the game to keep up with the times, and partly to financial issues.

“The rights have been sold two or three times over,” Bolton said, “and every time it moves the [developers] will say ‘yeah, we’re going to develop it, yeah we’re going all gung-ho with it,’ and then it gets shut down for whatever reason.”

Developer enthusiasm alone wasn’t enough to save the project, however.

 ”In 2001, it was announced that it was going to be released ‘when it’s done’,” Bolton said, “and in 2009, [previous developer 3D Realms] was basically shut down and the publisher sued them because they hadn’t finished it yet.”

This long development period has left many gamers jaded, and some have lost interest in the game even if it does get released. Among them is Ernest Perry, a senior in computer science.

“You just don’t care until you see it on the shelf,” Perry said. “It’s not going to come out with the fanfare it would have. When you kill something that many times it is going to hurt it a little.”

As far as the content that made the earlier games so notorious is concerned, it is difficult to determine whether the new game will be as controversial. Gearbox is promising, however, that “The King is Back,” a statement that speaks for itself.

“You’re always going to have some consumer group saying little Jimbo doesn’t need to be seeing flying guts and gore,” Bolton said. “If they keep to a classic shooter and he’s shooting aliens, [the controversy] will be very low level.”

Whether the game will be as tasteless as expected, or as successful as the previous Nukem titles remains to be seen. Gamers can expect its release in summer 2011.