When it comes to timing the development of a game, there's a lot to consider. Of course, the expectation is that if the developers spend a good deal of time working on it, then it would come out golden.

Not always the case, though, as multitudes of games have proven in the past. We need not go too far, actually. We have the likes of Alan Wake, which spent a good five years cooking in the oven. Then, there are the giant MMORPGS such as StarCraft II and Diablo III for Blizzard. The usual justification is that, hey, give the devs as much time they need to get it right. Rome wasn't built in a day, after all.

But they're not building Rome. They're building a game. And the unfortunate thing is that sometimes, when it bakes for too long, it become stale. Just take a look at Duke Nukem Forever. It's been teasing the minds of avid fans for literally the past decade. More actually, since technically speaking, the game's been in development since way back 1996. That's a full-grown, pimply teenager now at this point of release. Not that it was any singular company's fault. The game did encounter a lot of problems, getting tossed around from one company to another, until Gearbox Software finally rescued it from the cusps of utter vaporware-dom doom.

And then a last week, it finally happened. Duke Nukem Forever finally saw the light of gaming day, and one uber-loyal fan received a whopping bag of awesome swag from Gearbox for keeping his browned pre-order receipt from GameStop intact. And yet, the reviews weren't all that hot.

Mostly, critics were harsh about the development of Duke's character. Well, that, apart from the less than ergonomical console controles, design and more. PALGN said it straight, giving the game's Xbox 360 a score of five out of ten, justifying the score with the harsh conclusion that: "Duke Nukem Forever is a miracle. It's also a poor game, saved only by its humour and nostalgic value."

But that's just one example, and it does not necessarily represent the full paradigm. Bungie's Halo 3, for example, was first announced to be in development back in 2006. From the get-go, the developers made it clear that they won't be releasing it until 2009, that they didn't want to rush it. And when they finally came out with it, it became one of the most historic releases for this generation of consoles, and probably even beyond.

Recently, the trend is for developers to announce the game's development early, kind of like to get the hype running quick in the game. Fans are all excited and pumped up, and they'd be on their toes waiting for the littlest bit of teasing information that the publishers would have to offer.

With this spate of games proclaimed to be coming our way in no less than two to three years, it builds up the expectation, and rightfully so. I just hope it will be able to live up to the hype, otherwise, fans are just going to be cold. But what do you think? Where's that healthy balance of time development to actual release? Or should we all just accept the developer's policy (as in Blizzard), that the game will be ready "when it's ready" and bite our tongues in wait?

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