Having prehistoric mammals and birds roaming in the hidden arctic sector of the Dinosaur Planet of FMM UV-32, a hunting roster with some of the most cowardly AI where the predators will flee from the hunter, and a unique yet janky secret animal that would be known as the Yeti; Carnivores Ice Age has been seen as the weakest entry in the original Carnivores trilogy made by Action Forms. Although these faults often overlook the wonderful accomplishments made by Ice Age like having falling snow effects, a supply dropship to allow players to continue their hunts, and complex structures like bridges and mini-ice platforms, Ice Age does standout from the other Carnivores games due to a large collective belief within the Carnivores community that the game was rushed to be complete to explain why the game seems to been a lackluster finale. And there is a lot of reason to believe this as the production of Ice Age had an interesting history compared to the other Carnivores games due to several delays caused by outside forces, particularly around Duke Nukem: Endangered Species and the acquisition of GT Interactive by Infogrames .
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| Carnivores Ice Age, ōdī et amō. |
The Christmas Release...of 1999?
A commonly held belief and the most popular theory within the Carnivores community, with one of the largest supporters and spokesperson coming from the Carnivores YouTuber, Saurian Target, is that Ice Age was originally developed during the year 2000 and rushed near the end of October or November in hopes of getting the game into the markets around the holiday season as to boost sales. From an outsider's perspective, this idea does have a lot of ground in it as Ice Age went gold in January 12th, 2001 and released into stores on January 15th, 2001 alongside the wintry and colder landscapes with falling snow fitting better for the holiday season assoicated with snow compared to the tropical islands of the two previous games, Carnivores and Carnivores 2. Yet, this isn't the complete image as one just needs to visit the Action Forms (through the grateful works of the Internet Archive) and see that Carnivores Ice Age had several delays.
There were two plans of a December release, the December 2000 date given in an interview about Duke Nukem Endangered Species and the other one, found on the Action Forms website itself, is the December of 1999. This one is interesting as Ice Age was in production as Action Forms finished Carnivores 2 or even before the public release of Carnivores 2 as it states on September 29th on Action Forms’ news page of their brand new website;
Also, we're now working on an upcoming hunting title Carnivores Ice Age, which will be out in the end of year. Unfortunately, information about this one is not awailable yet, but it will be soon.
The first delay will occur sometime during this year as they would make a within the same September 29th post, it originally stated that Carnivores 2 was supposed to be released in the next week yet the game was shipped out on October 22nd and released on Halloween of 1999. This might have been a purposeful marketing strategy by WizardWorks to boost sales around the Halloween season but alongside allowing players to play/test out the Carnivores 2 demo that was released between the completion of Carnivores 2 on September 29th and the official launch of the game.
Meanwhile with Carnivores Ice Age, on January 27th, 2000, the first post about Ice Age’s launch being delayed was made. According to Action Forms, the game was delayed to be released in early March of 2000. There wasn't a specific date of what time in March although the sight of another delay can be seen on March 22nd, 2000, an interview took place with Igor Karev, co-founder and executive director of Action Forms, with GA-Source. Although he stated that he hope the release will be in March, the March deadline would have been no longer be the goal as it can be seen with the interview between Igor Karev alongside Denis Vereschagin, another Action Forms employee, and the Daily TeleFrag, a Russian video game website, taking place on April 14th, 2000, explaining that they were still working on the game at the time. The decision to try to release the game in December had a few reasons. The first reason was due to the production of Ice Age taking longer than thought at first as in the interview with STOMPED on Duke Nukem: Endangered Species, Igor Karev stated:
"Yes, we're getting emails from people asking the same question. There were even speculations that the project is cancelled. This is not true. There were several factors that influenced the delay of the game release. First, it took us more time to make Ice Age than we initially expected, because of the amount of new game material: five all-new hunting areas, updated weapons plus ten unique Ice Age animals with animations. The engine was upgraded too, allowing us to create more complex environments with weather effects."
The second reason, and most likely the reason for the game to be released in January instead of December, was due to the current merger of GT Interactive into Infogrames. As Igor Karev says:
"Second, there was a delay with WizardWorks, we think because of the GT Interactive / Infogrames deal."
This was something beyond Action Forms' control. This will be examine more later in Part II of the retroscpect but it is important to make note of this as finally, Karev farther the reason as several Action Forms employees felt like the time wasn't right, possibly due to not getting through with WizardWorks alongside having more sentimental ideas about the timing of releasing Ice Age as explained by Karev here:
"And one more thing, it's just not the great time to release the game with winter environments in spring. :) Seriously, it should be out by XMas or earlier."
And looking into the second attempt of a December release, it shows that the game wasn’t rushed to be finished, rather wanting to release the game. At this point, Ice Age was a completed product as the last things added into the game were simply menu graphics on November 10th and the majority of the content, specifically the animals and weapons, were created or modified between August 4th and August 23rd of 2000. And to farther support this, the archived WizardWorks website had Carnivores Ice Age available for sale, or possibly pre-order, on the New Products section at the earliest known date of December 10th, 2000. Yet, the mass release of the game would take place in the following month on January 15th, 2001.
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| A very broken yet archived screenshot of the New Products from the WizardWorks website on December 10th, 2000. |
.Although many Carnivores fans have feelings about Ice Age being rushed at the end to justify some decisions made by Action Forms, it is important to remember that Carnivores Ice Age did not exist in a vacuum, so one must step back as a way to look what happened during the producation of the game and see what was going on at the company and the publishers/holders of the company.
Duke Nukem: Endangering Ice Age?
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| The crusty screenshot of the cover art. |
Around the same time when Action Forms was developing and released Carnivores Ice Age, the company was working on another game, the now-canceled Duke Nukem: Endangered Species. In a nutshell, Endangered Species would have followed Duke Nukem going on the ultimate hunt across the world due to "a large rogue animal" has been going on its own warpath around the world, influencing other animals to go down the same path. Local polices aren't able to do anything so Duke Nukem was hired to take care of the situation, fighting bosses alongside hunting animals in each level up to the final level where he would have fought against the rogue animal. Of course, the game has been canceled but did this game play an influence in the development of Carnivores Ice Age?
Comparing the development history of Carnivores Ice Age and Duke Nukem: Endangered Species, Duke Nukem might have played a small role in the rushed development of Carnivores Ice Age although this can be contested. Let's first start from the start, not the announcement date, rather the first mention of the possible development of the Duke Nukem.
The earliest, or more accurately alluded, mention of Duke Nukem first appeared in the March 22nd interview. At the very end of the interview, John Bergerud, editor in chief of GA-Source, asked Igor Karev about any upcoming games that Action Forms would be working on. Igor Karev simply alluded to Duke Nukem by saying:
"We have already started the development of a new project, but it is a different topic for discussion. We are going to make a press release soon, and after that I think we shall be able to discuss it in details. I can only say that it will be an action game."
And this would been seen again with the April 4th interview with Daily TeleFrag as Igor Karev would say roughly the same thing:
"We are already working on the new project. Everything is quite raw yet and as soon as there will be something interesting I'll let you know."
Yet looking at the timeline alongside the screenshots seen both on their website and in the GA-Source interview, the majority of content was added into Carnivores Ice Age with some exceptions like possibly the supply ship and snow. Soon, Duke Nukem: Endangered Species was publicly announced on May 1st, 2000. Much of the game was still in development at the time, as the first screenshot of the game would appear in the STOMPED interview on August 24th, 2000.
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| The screenshot from the STOMPED interview. |
And prior to the interview, the last major modifications were added into Carnivores Ice Age as mentioned earlier with the .CAR files of animals, weapons, and the hunter being modified between August 4th and August 23rd of 2000. Possibly, this was due to Action Forms wanting to finish up on Carnivores Ice Age as they were interested in working on the Duke Nukem game as the game was planned on being released in the second half of 2001. And by the time of the release of Carnivores Ice Age, the Duke Nukem game was still being worked on and had not have much cover for several months since August 24th, 2000.
Although there has been some issues with Endangered Species as GT Interactive, the owners of the publishers for Duke Nukem and Carnivores, was bought by Infogrames. But farther more, there were issues around the development of Duke Nukem Forever as 2000-2001 were shaking times. In May of 2000, Take-Two Interactive bought Gathering of Developers, one of the developer teams behind Duke Nukem: Endangered Species, and soon Gathering of Developers would acquire the license and rights of Duke Nukem Forever alongside Duke Nukem: Endangered Species in December of 2000.
Within the year 2001, Duke Nukem Forever was having a lot of issues. The work environment at 3D Realms was struggling due the original head developer George Broussard's decision of going from the Quake II engine to the Unreal engine alongside being described as "still living in the 1995" as the development team was small alongside the majority of their budget was coming from George Broussard and Scott Miller, one of the creators of Duke Nukem. Duke Nukem: Endangered Species was seeing issues with itself too as the next public mention would appear in February 16, a month after the release of Carnivores Ice Age from 3D Realms. And sadly, this would be the last time that Duke Nukem: Endangered Species would been mentioned by 3D Realms.
As the consequences of Duke Nukem Forever becoming tje main focus of producation, or even a sinkhole in some outsider's eyes, by GoD, 3D Realms, and Take-Two Interactive alike, Duke Nukem: Endangered Species would been canceled by the end of December 2001. Almost a decade later, Duke Nukem Endangered Species would see the light of day for a few hours when the founder of the Duke Nukem wiki, Nach0, was given permission to play the prototype of Duke Nukem Forever by Andriy Sharanevych, a former developer of Duke Nukem: Endangered Species, although he would signed a non-disclosure agreement to not share the game or gameplay publically.
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| And we all know how Duke Nukem Forever went... |
Although Duke Nuke: Endangered Species played a small role in the delay of and the slight affects on the development of Carnivores Ice Age, in Part II we will be looking at the acquisition of GT Interactive by Infogrames and how it affected WizardWorks and the publishing of Carnivores Ice Age.
