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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Garland, TX - February 25, 1997A recent press release from Activision, Inc. states that,
"...Hipnotic Interactive was founded...by a group of programmers, artists and level
designers who formed part of the core creative team responsible for Apogee Software/3D
Realms' Duke Nukem 3D." Apogee would like to set the record straight and correct this
highly erroneous statement.
Five members left Apogee to form Hipnotic, comprised of a level designer, two programmers
and two non-developers (they worked in our graphics layout department, making ads,
manuals, flyers and designing retail boxes). Note: We did not lose any "artists"
to Hipnotic.
Only the level designer, Richard Grey (a.k.a. The Levelord) was a significant member of
the Duke Nukem 3D team, having been brought on halfway through the project to help our
primary level designer, Allen Blum. Richard designed only one of the levels in the
shareware version of Duke Nukem 3D.
The two Hipnotic programmers had minimal involvement with Duke Nukem 3D, contributing
several modules such as the setup utility, sound code drivers and external device drivers,
mostly code that had previously been written for Rise of the Triad. The two primary
programmers for Duke Nukem 3D were Ken Silverman (engine and net code developer) and Todd
Replogle, who wrote the entire Duke game on top of the Build engine.
So, for Activision or Hipnotic to claim that Hipnotic is comprised of "...part of the
core creative team responsible for...Duke Nukem 3D" is stretching the truth well
beyond the breaking point--it's an outright lie.
A recent headline by NewsBytes (www.newsbytes.com) compounds this misinformation by
stating: "Activision Signs With Duke Nukem Team." This is certainly news to the
real Duke Nukem team, who is busily working on a sure-hit sequel.
"It's obvious that Activision and Hipnotic are both trying to capitalize on the
tremendous success of Duke Nukem 3D for their own good," said Scott Miller of Apogee
Software, Ltd. "It appears that Hipnotic is claiming a much bigger role in Duke's
success to increase their status, value and clout in the game industry. It looks like
Activision and some of the news media swallowed the bait whole."
"It's a crime against the real developers of Duke to see others claiming they were
responsible for Duke's success," adds George Broussard, Executive Producer of Duke
Nukem 3D. "The core developers for Duke Nukem 3D are still here and hard at work
developing Shadow Warrior and the next Duke. The only claim to fame for the programmers
that left us is one game: Rise of the Triad. Duke Nukem 3D should not be on their resume,
except as a footnote."
For more information, contact Scott Miller at [email protected].
Or visit our web site at http://www.apogee1.com.
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