I ran into this article about Duke Nukem Forever and how it's been in development for seven years. I started thinking of ways to put that in perspective:

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?ar ... d=54963</a>

<ul>
<li>In the past seven years, FF7, FF8, FF9, FFX and FFXI have come out; it certainly looks like FFXII is going to beat it, too.
<li>In the past seven years, the .com boom boomed and then went bust.
<li>We've gone from Windows 95 to Windows 98, Windows Millenium, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
<li>Two Zelda games from two different systems have come out: Ocarina of Time for N64 and Wind Waker for GameCube.
<li>Even the Penny Arcade comic <a href=http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?d ... s=l>making fun of them for taking so goddamn long</a> is old.
<li>Three Metallica albums have come out.
<li>The development will have spanned three Presidential terms and two elections.
<li>Seven years ago, I was a sophomore in high school; that school year my family bought our first computer. Since then, I have:<ul><li>graduated from high school
<li>graduated from college with a degree in Computer Science
<li>I am now a Computer Science graduate student who teaches introductory programming labs
<li>And I bet I will get my Master's in CS before the game comes out, which means,
<li>I will have gone from "High school student with minimal knowledge of computers" to "Master's in CS" in the time it took them to make one game.</ul></ul></div>

[Anarky]

<div style='font: 11pt ; text-align: left; '>sweet fucking christ wow....</div>

[Ganath]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Think about it another way. You and I weren't even teenagers seven years ago. How's that for perspective?</div>

[Gentz]

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Hahaha. That title is deliciously ironic as well : )</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>That's pretty funny. Just imagine how many iterations of code they must go through over the course of 7 years of computer improvements.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I saw pictures and video when it was based on the Quake 2 engine; now it's "Unreal Engine-based." I don't know much about 3D engines, but that has to be a lot of code ripped out or rewritten.</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>I bet. And I personally think gutting and rewriting code is harder than starting from scratch.</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>lol, my gaming mag, CGM, used to make fun of it, too, but even that got old. Sad thing is that i remember playing DN 3-D 10 years ago and certainly would have bought it 7 years ago since 3-D rocked for its time.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I spent a lot of time with DN3D. Deathmatched with a friend of mine a lot, and we both made some maps with the editor. We played the hell out of that game.</div>

[Flip]

<div style='font: 12pt "Cooper Black"; text-align: left; '>WC2 and DN3D were about the only computer multiplayer games i played with friends in MS/early HS. My house didnt have internet until it was really popular</div>

[SineSwiper]

<div style='font: 10pt "EngraversGothic BT", "Copperplate Gothic Light", "Century Gothic"; text-align: left; '>A few examples:

Steroids not only made you quicker, but it got you out of being shrunk from the Shrink Ray, since the weapon was normally pretty badass. Thus, I would keep some 'roids and only take them when I was shrunk.

The freeze gun, since it was so hard to freeze people with, would give you an atomic health (+100; over the 100 health limit) when you kicked the guy from the frozen state.

The jetpack was a popular item but a chaingun would balance it out. (Auto vertical aiming so it was a lot easier to knock them out of the sky.)</div>