2K Games' Melissa Miller has been working in the games industry for nearly 10 years. In that time, she's helped ship both BioShock titles and a handful of licensed fare (Family Guy: The Game, among others). She even briefly worked on Borderlands.

Currently, she's a senior producer on Duke Nukem Forever -- a game laden with puerile boy jokes. At a recent press event, we asked Miller what it's like to be a woman working on a title that so blatantly relies on juvenile, sexist humor to engage players.

When Randy and Steve from Gearbox were in Australia last week, showing off Duke Nukem Forever, they spent an evening hanging out in the Mana Bar in Brisbane, answering gamers’ questions and revealing a little bit more about the game.

We were there, camera in hand, and managed to snag a whole bunch of the evening’s events – including some of Randy Pitchford’s personal gaming history, how he felt when Duke Nukem Forever “died” as a project, why he forked out the money to save the game from extinction, and a few bits and pieces about what we can expect when the game’s released. Steve Gibson also sheds some light on the elusive topic of the release date, even though they’re still being deliberately vague.

Although the quality might not be great, this four-part footage is straight from the camera to the internets and is well worth a watch (or at least a listen!).

Hi Guys,

Just wanted to let you know about my interview with Gearbox's Randy Pitchford and Steve Gibson from their recent public demo event in Brisbane, Australia.

We're very much a core-gamer site with our roots in first person shooters and I've been following Duke Forever's development rabidly for the past decade mostly thanks to Shacknews and Duke4.net so I thought you might be interested in this one as I really tried to hit them with a few questions that I hadn't already seen answered before:

http://www.ausgamers.com/features/read/2972677

I think the mod tools part might be of particular interest to your readers.

Cheers,

Dan Chenoweth / AusGamers
http://www.ausgamers.com

DB: Let’s talk about the PC version. Is that going to be any different?

SG: The game was of course originally developed for the PC years ago, and for us, by nature of the platform, it’s the one you’ll be getting the best graphics, the highest texture density, probably faster in all kinds of ways. The actual content though, outside of visual differences, it’s the same, roughly the same game.

DB: Can you talk about multiplayer at all?

SG: We can say just that we’re doing it. The whole thing is we’re trying not to promise all these features, right now it’s just let’s prove it’s real. We’re going to come back and hey, here’s multiplayer. Oh, and by the way, here’s the actual official release date too, we’ll have that.

Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford believes bringing Duke Nukem Forever back from the dead was something he had to be involved with, or he would have regretted not doing so for the rest of his life.

Asked if breathing life back in Duke Nukem was the biggest thing he'd done in his career, Pitchford said: "On a personal level, it's very big. I don't know what to expect when it comes out in America. I know I've got to do what I've have to do, and everybody involved feels the same way - like, we just have to do it.

"But on an emotional level, it's really big. It's kind of weird, if you think of all things you take a risk on and put money into, Duke Nukem Forever is probably the riskiest thing you could bet on! But I think you get a sense of the situation you're in, and the situation that unfolded, and how could we not? If I didn't get involved, if our studio didn't get involved, I would have regretted that my entire life."

The entire video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3qTjDERrU8&fmt=22

Just start watching after 2:30 minutes.

A few weeks ago, i played with the idea of a Duke Nukem 3D revision, made on Unreal Engine 3 Tech. Knowning that every other Duke project, not based on 3Drealms own technology (Build), has been knifed and cancelled, i didnt think it was possible to do.

But i still went for the idea and made a "Test" map, of what it might look like. Afterwards i took some screenshots, posted them on this board, for everyone to see - And all hell broke loose! Suddently the "News" of a Next-Gen remake, was all over the internet, even though the development wasnt approved by either Gearbox or 3Drealms.

I contacted George Brussard and Scott Miller, to start a conversation about the project - The shots managed to convice Scott Miller to a certain degree - But the project was only doable if Take-Two would approve it.

Thinking that Gearbox might have a better relationship to Take-Two, than 3Drealms, i contacted AdamF, who passed me through to PJ Putnam, Vice President and General Counsel of Gearbox Software.

Luckily Gearbox was interested in supporting the project, which resulted in a personal non-commercial license to Duke Nukem.