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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Garland, TX - March 10, 1997In a March 5th press release from Activision, headlined
"The death toll rises as id Software and Activision ship QUAKE Mission Pack No. 1:
Scourge of Armagon' from Hipnotic Interactive," Hipnotic continues to take false
credit for developing 3D Realms' super hit, Duke Nukem 3D.
The offending line in this press release reads: "Based in Dallas, Hipnotic's talented
team has created some of the industry's most successful games including Duke Nukem 3D' and
Rise of the Triad.'" This claim distorts the truth well beyond the breaking point.
While it's true that three members of Hipnotic were developers while at 3D Realms, only
two of them, Jim Dose and Mark Dochtermann, were part of the Rise of the Triad team (along
with several other key developers, including Tom Hall, William Scarboro and Stephen
Hornback). Only one, Richard Gray, was a key member of Duke Nukem 3D. The above statement
suggests that Hipnotic was wholly responsible for the creation of both of these games,
which has outraged the real Duke 3D team.
Todd Replogle, the head programmer for Duke 3D, has this to say about Hipnotic's
incredible truth-stretching: "Ken Silverman, author of the Build engine, and I wrote
99% of the Duke 3D code. End of story. Jim supplied the sound engine which was previously
used in Rise of the Triad and other games. Mark provided the setup program that he was
already writing for Prey and some network code that was already mostly done for Rise of
the Triad. He helped integrate TEN code as well, but his overall help in Duke code might
have been one percent. Ken and I spent nearly two years each on Duke."
Allen Blum, lead level designer for Duke 3D, added: "Mark and Jim were part of the
core team of Rise of the Triad, not Duke Nukem 3D. I don't feel they should have been in
the team photo in the game's manual, but we try to include anyone who did anything so that
no one feels left out. During the time we were working on Duke, they were doing Rise of
the Triad and starting Prey. I don't see how they can claim significant credit for
Duke--it's just wrong."
Stephen Hornback, lead artist for Duke 3D, is also shocked: "This is very insulting
to us members of the core team. Only one person, Richard Gray, was a member of the core
Duke team. The real members of the core team were George Broussard, Todd Replogle, Allen
Blum, Ken Silverman, Dirk Jones, Chuck Jones, James Storey, Lee Jackson, Bobby Prince,
Greg Malone, and myself. Mark and Jim were not on the Duke team and contributed little
compared to the main team."
Adds Blum, "With the exception of Richard Grey, I would not consider anyone at
Hipnotic part of the Duke Team."
"I think Hipnotic was just trying to cash in on Duke," said Replogle. "They
should succeed or fail from their own projects, not those of others."
"They're using Duke Nukem 3D to bolster their own company," commented Hornback.
"I find they are even less ethical than I thought they were when they snuck out of
Apogee in the middle of the night quitting without giving notice!"
This is the second recent Activision press release that gives Hipnotic far more credit
than they deserve for developing Duke Nukem 3D. That first press release resulted in a
NewsBytes (www.newsbytes.com) headline, stating "Activision Signs Duke Nukem
Team," which is an incredible injustice to the 3D Realms developers who did the vast
majority of the work creating this game.
"It was a fan who alerted us to this recent violation of the truth," said George
Broussard, head of 3D Realms. The fan said in his email to Broussard: "It really is a
shame that Activision and Hipnotic must resort to such BS just to market a product. I'm
seriously considering boycotting Activision's products entirely."
Broussard and Miller said they expect a public retraction from Activision, giving credit
where it's properly due for the creation of Duke Nukem 3D.
LAST MINUTE UPDATE:
Just before this press release was released, we were notified by Activision of Hipnotic's
retraction and correction posted on BusinessWire (www.businesswire.com) as of March 10th.
They revised their boilerplate statement to read: "Based in Dallas, Texas, several
team members of Hipnotic were part of the development teams for such successful games as
Duke Nukem 3D, Rise of the Triad and Prey."
Comments Broussard: "So now they're trying to take some credit for Prey, a game that
will not be released for over a year and was restarted from scratch after they left. These
guys just don't give up. At least they admitted their mistake on Duke Nukem 3D."
[END]
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