July 3, 2018 • 32 mins
From computer games that never made it out of development to entire operating systems, we look at some of the greatest software that never made it to users.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
how Stuff Works in love all things tech. And in
the last episode, I've focused on examples of hardware that,
while promoted by a company, never actually made it to market,
(00:28):
at least not in the form that was promised. So
in this episode, I want to take a look at
software that did a similar thing, and so we're talking
about vaporware specifically in the form of software. Mostly in software,
there's some overlap here. So this episode is actually going
to go out to all the programmers out there who
(00:48):
have dedicated countless hours towards working on something that never emerged.
I cannot imagine how frustrating that must be, to dedicate
hours of your life toward a project only to see
that project fizzle. UM. Hopefully, those of you out there
who have been involved in such a thing, at least
I hope you got paid for it. If not, that's
(01:11):
even worse obviously, But one piece of software that is
not on this list anymore is, of course, the infamous
Duke Nukem Forever game for a decade that title topped
numerous vaporware lists, most famously WIREDS Hall of Fame for
Vaporware got inducted in two thousand three, I believe by Wired,
(01:34):
and that was because the editors got tired of including
the title in their annual Vaporware Awards feature. They said, listen,
we can't just keep putting Duke Nukem on this list,
so we're gonna put them in the Hall of Fame.
And then in two thousand five the raaders demanded that
they put it back on the list, so they did so.
George Bussard, who was a developer for three D Realms
(01:55):
UH and kind of a project leader, he first announced
work on Duke Nukem Forever back nineteen by n. Wired
was listing the game as vaporware because back then, two
years to make a computer game was an unusually lengthy
development cycle. Today it's not that unusual at all. Games
take millions of dollars and years to develop for your
(02:16):
your big Triple A titles, but back then it was
considered to be unusually, like ridiculously long. The game would
end up missing ship dates multiple times, largely because three
D Realms wanted the title to be a cutting edge
game that took full advantage of the latest hardware, and
hardware kept getting better and better while the game was
(02:36):
still in development, so they would change game engines a
couple of times, and that meant that a lot of
assets they had developed for the game had to be
completely scrapped and rebuilt. In other words, every time there
was a reason to change things, it's set everyone back
months or longer. The game did finally come out in
two thousand eleven, fifteen years after the initial announcement, and
(03:00):
by then the game was published under two K Games
and developed by Gearbox Software. So one thing I guess
I can say is that there's a possibility, maybe only
a slim one, that one or more pieces of software
I talked about in this episode could one day come
out after all. Just don't hold your breath now. Another
(03:22):
game that is frequently mentioned when the term vaporware comes
up is Star Citizen, But to be fair, Star Citizen
has been releasing updates to an alpha build of the
game regularly. Now, it's true there's no beta version of
this game in place yet, let alone a commercial version,
but it's also true that there are at least gameplay
(03:44):
elements that backers can you can play right now. If
you backed the project and you have access to it,
then you can actually play those gameplay elements. It's just
not a fully cohesive game yet. The story of Star
Citizen is such that it leaves many people purple next
once they start hearing details. So here's a quick overview.
(04:04):
The game's development began in two thousand eleven with Chris Roberts,
who founded a company called Cloud Imperium Games. Roberts had
previously worked on some really notable games like Freelancer and
Wing Commander, and his goal was to create a massively
multiplayer online space simulator. Players can own and operate space vehicles,
(04:26):
they can go on missions, they can engage in combat,
and they would have this enormous space environment to explore
and live in in that game. At least that's what
they'll be able to do once the game is finally finished.
In two thousand twelve, Star Citizen began to raise funds
both on Kickstarter and on its own site. Kickstarter's goal
(04:49):
was five thousand dollars, but their campaign raised more than
two million dollars. It was one of the most successful
campaigns at that time, and the game has raised funds
largely by selling in game assets to players, such as
special ships, including ships that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
I've listened to podcasts with hosts who have spent hundreds
(05:12):
of dollars on ships for the game. But spending that
much money for a virtual game that blows my mind.
But in two thousand eighteen, the company announced a package
called the Legatas Pack, and that includes one seventeen ships
with various add ons and skins for the game, all
for the low low price of twenty seven thousand real
(05:37):
world dollars. So you'd spent twenty seven thousand dollars for
virtual ships in a computer game. What an earlier completionist
pack sold for fifteen thousand dollars. In order to even
see the stuff that's included in the pack, you have
(05:58):
to be part of an elite group of enthusiasts who
have spent at least one thousand dollars one thousand real
world dollars on this game so far, a game that
only exists in alpha mode, and by that I mean
only parts of the game exists in alpha mode, or
or you could just call it the company and ask
about it. They'll tell you more over the phone, so
(06:19):
you don't have to spend the thousand dollars to get
access to that website. The game has raised more than
one hundred eighty six million dollars since it first started fundraising,
and while early goals were to have a full version
of the game available in two thousand fourteen, the company
has since backed off on announcing a date when the
game will be done. They got burned too many times
(06:41):
saying well, it's gonna be out at this time, and
then they missed that date. Some people have become pretty
cheesed off about this, going so far as to suggest
that the company has a game in perpetual development just
as a way to coax more money from hopeful supporters.
In other words, they don't ever have to deliver a
full game. They just have to keep people strung alow
to keep getting fundraising money from them. But there's no
(07:03):
denying that gameplay elements have emerged over time. There are
total sections of this game you can play, and other
games like Minecraft existed as a playable beta for years,
to the point where people didn't even care if the
game ever emerged as something more than a beta. Still,
this is a game that's currently an alpha, not even
(07:25):
beta testing, so there's no knowing when or if the
full game will be available. Now, I could do a
full episode about games that never came out, and maybe
someday I will, but for now, let's just go over
a few anticipated titles that have to this date not
made it out of development, and some of them have
been canceled. One of those would be Star Wars thirteen.
(07:46):
That was a game that was supposed to allow the
player to control the famous Boba Fette in an action
adventure style game. The title referred to a level inside
the enormous city planet of Correissant. Corressant just looks like
a huge planet filled with skyscrapers, and you would divide
the planet up not just by quadrants, but by level.
(08:07):
Was supposed to be a level filled with seedy underworld characters.
Early video footage was shown off at industry events and
looked really impressive. But then the Mouse House purchased Lucasfilm
and along with it Lucas Arts, the the game studio
that was developing this game. Disney made the determination to
stop all internal development for games at Lucas Arts, and
(08:30):
all the developers got laid off. Lucas Arts exists now
only as an entity to issue licenses to other game developers,
and so thirt thirteen was shelved. Disney chose not to
renew the trademark license in I plan on doing a
whole episode or two about Blizzard soon, but one thing
I will not be talking about is how their game,
(08:52):
StarCraft Ghost did once it went on sale, because it
never did that. It never got out of development. The
idea was to it a stealth based game set in
the popular StarCraft universe, and StarCraft is a real time
strategy game, but Ghost would be a different type of gameplay,
completely meant for consoles rather than PCs, and it was
supposed to come out in two thousand six, but it
(09:13):
wasn't until two thousand fourteen the Blizzard officially said, yeah,
this one's not coming out. Also, in a mysterious and
creepy demo for PlayStation four came out, and the demo
was for what was called pt PT stood for Playable Teaser,
And in this teaser, you would walk down the hallway
and you would encounter creepy and disturbing imagery and then
(09:35):
you would discover yourself at the beginning of the hallway
over and over again, and the creepy stuff would grow
even more disturbing, and it would change each time you
went down the hallway. At the conclusion of the trailer,
and was a video teaser for Silent Hills, obviously a
game in the Silent Hill horror series. Hideo Kajima, famed
video game designer, and Guillermo del Toro, the famous filmmaker.
(09:57):
We're working on the project with actor Norman Das, who
is providing voice and performance acting for the game. But
the game eventually got canceled. Cojima would leave the company,
or he was fired or something that's never been totally clear,
and then Cojima went on to develop the as yet
unreleased game Death Stranding, also starring Ritas. So what is
(10:21):
Death Stranding about? Beats me. I watched about ten minutes
of footage from and I still have no idea what
that game is all about. Other games that fall into
this category include Titan, which was another Blizzard title that
never made it all development. There were a trilogy of
games that were called Insane that was also supposed to
(10:41):
have Guillermo del Toro's involvement. Those never came out. Also
a game called Agent, which is an espionage game that
was supposed to come out from rock Star Games. It
was announced way back in two thousand nine, but as
of yet has not come out, But there have been
reports from as recently as ten that's some variation of
that game Miss still in development. So maybe we will
(11:02):
one day see Agent see the light of day. Next,
we're gonna turn our focus from video games to other
types of software. But first let's take a quick break
to thank our sponsor. Now, in the world of software,
there's an old example of vaporware that still gets reference today.
(11:24):
The example dates all the way back to nine three,
and that's when a company called Ovation Technologies announced a
suite of productivity software that it said would leave all
competitors in the dust. The company claimed it's Ovation Suite
included features like spreadsheets, word processing, data management, communication tools,
(11:46):
all of them integrated together. So it's going to be
a powerful tool for businesses, far exceeding the capabilities of
competing software that was just starting to get a foothold
in the market at that time. Ovation produced a demo
of its product Sucked, in order to show off what
it could do at various trade shows. The demo was
a video, and here's the thing. The video was filled
(12:08):
with false claims because there was no actual product to
show off. The video was just completely manufactured. It wasn't
supposedly showing off a concept, it was supposed to be
showing off a working build of the software. The truth
was the company had nothing to show yet. The demo
was created in an effort to convince potential investors to
pour money into the company. Presumably that money would then
(12:33):
be used to actually make the software that the company
was claimed to have built. But Ovation wasn't able to
stay above the waves of bankruptcy, and eventually they ran
out of money before they could ever produce anything real,
so it instead became an infamous example of vaporware and
smoke and mirrors. Some people going so far as to
say it was essentially a hoax or scam. Others are
(12:57):
a little more charitable, and they said, well, they didn't
intend for it to be a scam. They were just
trying to raise the money to build the thing they
wanted to build. And instead of saying it like that,
they said, hey, we have this thing, we've built it already,
invest in us and you'll make your money back. And
that was dishonest. When I did episodes about the Macintosh,
(13:18):
I talked about how Apple as a company was struggling
in the nineteen nineties before Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
You know, he co founded the company, but he was
then pushed aside and uh, John Scully essentially took over
and Jobs found himself leaving the company or being fired
from the company. It all depends upon whose account you believe.
(13:39):
And then he went to start a new company called Next. Meanwhile,
back at Apple, developers were hard at work trying to
create the next generation of the Mac operating system. The
preceding generation was called System seven and that launched back
in n It worked well, but it's still depended upon
old architecture that by design limited what users could do.
(14:03):
And the reason for these limitations was in order to
streamline processes. So, in other words, the stuff the operating
system could do, it could do really really well. But
largely it could do that stuff really well because the
developers were ignoring all the stuff the operating system could
not do. And one of those things was true multitasking.
You could kind of sort of multitask with System seven
(14:26):
mac os, but it was doing it in a way
that wasn't terribly efficient and wasn't true multitasking. Also, an
error could cause the system to crash, and if you
were running multiple programs at once, a bug in any
of those programs could cause the entire computer to crash
as a result. So instead of compartmentalizing each of these
(14:50):
instances so that if there's a problem, only that one
program crashes, it would affect the entire system. And so
the more programs you were running, the more likely you
would run into that and have to do a full
system reboot and lose all your work. So it was
not a great scene. Now. A proposed successor to System
seven was a project code named Copeland. It took a
(15:12):
very different approach to architecture to allow for better control
over multiple programs, among other things. So why was it
called Copeland, Well, it was named after the composer. The
code name for System seven point five had been Mozart.
There was a third planned iteration that was code named
Gershwin and Copeland stuck right in the between them. There
was supposed to be transitional to move the operating system
(15:34):
away from the old architecture of System seven and set
the ground for a new architecture that would support future
generations of OS builds. Apple announced that Copeland was in
development back in by Gil Emilio, who had recently become
the CEO of Apple, talked a lot about the various
features that Copeland would have. At that point, they had
(15:56):
renamed it. They were calling it System eight, representing an
entirely new generation of operating systems. Demonstrations of the operating
system did not go well, uh, they they people could
see promises of what the operating system might be able
to do, but you couldn't even do things like inter
in text in the early demos of System mate, and
(16:19):
that represented a big problem. Obviously, demonstrations uh did not
help the case. The development team was fractured, different groups
working on specific features, but seemingly no guiding hand to
bring all of those features together into a cohesive operating system.
So you had people working very uh intensely on just
(16:39):
a very narrow group of features with no thought of
how it was going to integrate with the overall system.
And there's a lot of feature creep coming into more
and more features that were being added to this operating system,
growing the project, making it harder to complete and in August,
Apple finally pulled the plug. By the end of nine,
(17:01):
Apple would announce that Steve Jobs would be joining the
company in an advisory capacity because Apple was requiring Next
Steve Jobs as new company in an effort to get
their operating system development moving again. Essentially, they were saying, well,
we couldn't develop the operating system in house, Let's go
buy Steve's company Next and bring those assets over and
(17:22):
make that into the new Mac operating system. Jobs would
eventually convince the board of directors to give the boot
to Gil Emilio and Jobs would take over, first as
interim CEO and later as the official CEO of Apple.
Back in music companies were in a tizzy because digital
music formats that made it incredibly easy to share music
(17:43):
on a global scale, peer to peer sharing networks and
pirate sites were undermining the business model the music industry
have been reliant upon for decades, and if you want
to talk about disruptive technologies, the development of digital music
file formats would be way up there. And so a
group of companies, not just in the music industry, got
together to try and create a solution to this perceived problem,
(18:07):
and the idea was to create technology that would allow
music companies to sell digital forms of music and rest
assured that only the people who coughed up the dough
could listen to the stuff at tech that would foil
the attempts of dirty, nasty pirates out there who would
steal money right from their pockets. Sort of, all right,
let's put aside for the moment the fact that you
(18:28):
cannot prove someone who pirates the piece of media would
otherwise have paid for that media, because that would negate
your argument that they're stealing money from you. Right now,
you might think this sounds a lot like the group
which was called the Secure Digital Music Initiative or s
d m I, that they were trying to come up
with a DRM strategy, and you would be right. Digital
(18:50):
rights management was exactly what they were looking at. That
was what they were trying to do. They wanted to
create a means to imprint a digital water mark on
a file, so piece of code that could be attached
to a music file to prove that it came from
a legitimate source. The watermark would be designed in such
a way so that it would be really hard to
remove without it also causing some sort of damage to
(19:13):
the music file like decreasing the quality of the audio itself.
So if you tried to remove it, then the sound
wouldn't be as good on your music file, and you
would ruin the thing you were trying to You're trying
to uh crack. And there was a second arm to
the strategy. They were going to partner with manufacturers to
produce devices that could play back s d m I files,
(19:35):
but only if there was proof that the user was
authorized to play those files. So let's say it's a computer.
The computer would have to have a proof that the
owner had a license to play that music, and then
it would say, all right, well the license matches up
with the sdm I water mark. Everything's good. The watermark
is a is a real water mark. It's clearly from
(19:56):
the company, so we will allow this file to play.
On Nimber six, two thousand, the group issued an open
challenge to anyone to try and remove the digital watermark
from some examples of music files without ruining those music files,
and to do so within three weeks. A group led
by Princeton computer science professor Ed Felton claimed to do
(20:17):
just that, though s d m I initially protested, saying
that the judging software, which by the way they themselves
had provided, could not take into account the sound quality
of the music file. Felton planned to give a talk
about his group's methodology, and s d m I, along
with some other parties, threatened to sue Felton and his group.
(20:39):
They said, this is going to be a violation of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act the d m c A.
But the Department of Justice was disinclined to acquiesce to
the demands of s d m I in pirate speak,
so in other words, they said, go ahead, dog, publish
your work. Felton, you got it, We got your back.
S d m I effectively ended in two thousand one,
(21:01):
although according to the then director, it was not because
the water marks could be removed. Rather, he said the
technology was not capable of being unnoticeable by golden ears,
meaning that he was saying that the process of putting
the digital water mark on the music files was by
itself affecting the sound quality slightly, and if you were
(21:24):
really really good at listening, you'd be able to detect it.
And that's why it never worked. It wasn't that someone
had cracked the system and they were able to remove
the water mark. It was just that it never worked
in the first place. UM. I don't know if those
are sour grapes or not, but anyway you could say
the whole stm I file uh form was was vaporware.
(21:46):
I have more to say about vaporware in the next section,
but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
All right, this next example is part software, part hardware.
Back in two thousand twelve, Justin Timberlake took a break
(22:07):
from bringing Sexy Back to take the stage at CES
in Las Vegas. He was there to announce a partnership
with Panasonic to bring a service called my Space TV
to the new Vierra HDTV television sets. The idea being
that would be an over the top service, So you
would plug your Vierra TV in, you would have it
(22:29):
connected to your network, and then you could tap into
this my Space TV service and the service would start
off with the library of music videos that my Space
already had at its disposal, which was around a hundred
thousand or so, and also my spaces library of songs,
which was around forty two million songs, and then it
was supposed to grow to quote encompass movies, news, sports,
(22:52):
and reality channels with a growing lineup of today's most
popular broadcast and on demand content. End quote a wording
to a press release issued by the two companies. Timberlake
himself talked about the social aspect of the service, which
would let people share what they were watching in real time,
so you could create a sort of online viewing party experience,
(23:13):
but the service as talked about never materialized. Just a
note here, my Space did create a service called my
Space TV, but that was way back in two thousand seven,
five years before this c e S presentation, and back
then that was a video site meant to compete with YouTube,
so it was meant to allow my Space users to
(23:35):
upload user generated content to the video site, So that
was different from what Panasonic and MySpace we're talking about
in two thousand twelve. Also, my Space had been declining
in popularity steadily since two thousand eight, so this was
kind of a big surprise to see my Space teaming
up with Panasonic in the first place, because my Space
had lost a lot of street cred by then. News Corps,
(23:58):
which had bought my Space in two thousand five for
five eighty million dollars had sold the company in two
thousand eleven for much less, perhaps as low as thirty
five million dollars. That's an enormous loss, and Rupert Murdoch,
the owner of news Corps, would call the purchase of
MySpace one of the biggest mistakes news Corps ever made.
(24:18):
A company called specific Media became the new owner of MySpace,
and then eventually they were also a company that would
belonged to a larger company called Volant Technologies. Time Incorporated
bought Volant in two thousand and sixteen, so Volant was
the parent company not only of MySpace and specific Media,
but also of other companies like Vindico and Schumo. Now
(24:41):
I've talked a lot about different examples of vaporware in
these two episodes, so I thought it would be useful
to kind of talk about why vaporware exists in the
first place, or or why it it doesn't exist, you
know what I mean. Why do companies announced products that
are not yet ready for market and may never full development. Well,
there are several potential reasons. First, there's the possibility that
(25:05):
the company has every intent to actually release the product
as they are promoting it, but internal or external problems
right at the end are derailing the project and pushing
back the release date. That happens a lot, both in
software and in hardware. So you scope about your project right.
You define what you want to deliver, You define the
(25:26):
process you're going to take in order to make the
product that you've designed. You identify what you think are
going to be the challenging sticking points. You create strategies
to overcome those challenges, and you move forward. And then
something you did not anticipate happens, because it always does.
That's that's how the real world works, and that throws
you off. So then you adjust and you try to
(25:47):
move forward as best you can, trying to keep your
vision intact. But then you find out that whatever the
solution was to that unexpected problem that popped up, that
solution has now broken something else, like one of your
features now no longer works. Or maybe your lead developer
gets hired away by a competitor, or maybe your company
is acquired by another company, or maybe your money is
(26:09):
just running out. There are plenty of cases where vaporware
is an unfortunate byproduct of unpredictable challenges during a project cycle.
Has nothing to do with any nefarious plans. But then
there are more underhanded, shady practices. There's the possibility of
an outright cash grab. This is your old snake oil
(26:29):
salesman methodology, where you promise someone the moon and stars
and you have no intention to deliver upon this promise.
But those scams are pretty difficult to pull off well
without serious consequences Further down the road, like how do
you raise a huge amount of money trying to sell
a complete scam and then still expect to get away
(26:51):
Because eventually people get mad if they find out they've
been hoodwinked, and governments exist in part to protect people
from such things. So it's not the kind of grift
that you want to run for very long because you're
gonna get come uppants. So you're likely gonna get dinged
by a lawsuit or three, and that's really gonna put
(27:11):
a crimp on your day. But another tactic is to
announce a product that's well ahead of schedule. Maybe the
general public doesn't know it's well ahead of schedule, but
you might suspect that's going to be a few years
before this product is rated to market, But you announce
it in order to take the wind of the sales
of a competitor. There's an example of this, or at
(27:32):
least an example of a company that's been accused of
doing this. Way back in nineteen sixty four, IBM announced
it would introduce a series of mainframe computers under the
name System three sixty, but those computers wouldn't actually become
available for purchase for a few years, so IBM announced
it prematurely. However, the announcement prompted a lot of would
(27:56):
be customers to wait on this promised System of three
sixty machine to come out rather than purchase a system
from one of IBM's competitors, like the Controlled Data Corporation
or c d C. C d C brought an antitrust
lawsuit against IBM in nineteen sixty eight. The United States
eventually took up this antitrust lawsuit against the company, and
(28:19):
this particular part of the lawsuits said that IBM knew
its systems were years from market, but that they decided
to advertise these upcoming machines as being comparable to c
d c s existing products on the market at that
moment in an effort to undercut their competitor. So they
said this is anti competitive. It is against the principles
(28:43):
of a free market. The anti trust lawsuit, which grew
substantially with a lot of other parties becoming involved, would
stretch on until nine two until the Justice Department finally
dismissed the case. So that was a pretty expensive strategy
marketing strategy. Employing lawyers in an active lawsuit that lasts
longer than a decade gets pretty pricey. And sometimes a
(29:05):
company will announce a product that hasn't even gone into
production just as a way to gauge demand. Now, you
could argue that a lot of the projects on platforms
like Kickstarter and indie go go fall into this category.
The people running those campaigns are usually selling the idea
of a thing. Very often they don't have a working prototype.
(29:26):
Sometimes they do, which is fantastic, but often they just
say I have this great idea, but in order for
me to make this thing, I'm gonna need money. So
they're looking to get investment into an idea to presumably
bring that idea to fruition. Or you could point at
about half the stuff that think Geek has thrown up
on its April Fools page every year. If you've ever
(29:47):
visited the Think Geek site on April fools Day, and
you're likely to see at least one or two products that,
while they are fake, seem like they'd be pretty awesome
to have in real life. And Think Geek has actually
made some of those fake product real products as a result,
and a lot of people have said Think Geek is
actually using the jokes page to kind of measure the
(30:09):
response of Think Geek customers, and if the response is
really positive, they'll go ahead and bring it to market.
Otherwise they'll just say, well, we're not gonna We're not
gonna make back the expense of making this thing, so
we won't bother with that. Uh So you could argue
that those items were in reality vaporware in an effort
to judge how much people might actually want one of
(30:29):
those things, but still clear that many of the items
and thinkings April Fool's pages are just jokes. They were
never intended to become actual products, so it's not like
every single one of them falls in that category. I
plan on doing follow up episodes in this vein to
talk more about some of the games that never emerged,
So I might might do another episode about the greatest
video games that never existed, I've done one of those before,
(30:53):
but it was years and years ago, so maybe I
can do an update sometime in the future. Not net
the next one. I think I may dedicate an episode
specifically to crowdfunded projects that either were incredible successes, terrible failures,
or they successfully funded but the item never emerged. Whatever
(31:15):
the goal of the project was, never came to fruition.
I think that it's valuable to look into that as well.
So that's probably gonna be my next episode. But if
you guys have suggestions for future episodes, whether it's a technology,
a company, a person in tech, whatever it may be,
send me an email. The address for the show is
tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
(31:37):
me a line on Facebook or Twitter to handle it.
Both of those is tech Stuff H s W. Don't
forget to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to
you again really soon for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
(32:00):
Who
Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
how Stuff Works in love all things tech. And in
the last episode, I've focused on examples of hardware that,
while promoted by a company, never actually made it to market,
(00:28):
at least not in the form that was promised. So
in this episode, I want to take a look at
software that did a similar thing, and so we're talking
about vaporware specifically in the form of software. Mostly in software,
there's some overlap here. So this episode is actually going
to go out to all the programmers out there who
(00:48):
have dedicated countless hours towards working on something that never emerged.
I cannot imagine how frustrating that must be, to dedicate
hours of your life toward a project only to see
that project fizzle. UM. Hopefully, those of you out there
who have been involved in such a thing, at least
I hope you got paid for it. If not, that's
(01:11):
even worse obviously, But one piece of software that is
not on this list anymore is, of course, the infamous
Duke Nukem Forever game for a decade that title topped
numerous vaporware lists, most famously WIREDS Hall of Fame for
Vaporware got inducted in two thousand three, I believe by Wired,
(01:34):
and that was because the editors got tired of including
the title in their annual Vaporware Awards feature. They said, listen,
we can't just keep putting Duke Nukem on this list,
so we're gonna put them in the Hall of Fame.
And then in two thousand five the raaders demanded that
they put it back on the list, so they did so.
George Bussard, who was a developer for three D Realms
(01:55):
UH and kind of a project leader, he first announced
work on Duke Nukem Forever back nineteen by n. Wired
was listing the game as vaporware because back then, two
years to make a computer game was an unusually lengthy
development cycle. Today it's not that unusual at all. Games
take millions of dollars and years to develop for your
(02:16):
your big Triple A titles, but back then it was
considered to be unusually, like ridiculously long. The game would
end up missing ship dates multiple times, largely because three
D Realms wanted the title to be a cutting edge
game that took full advantage of the latest hardware, and
hardware kept getting better and better while the game was
(02:36):
still in development, so they would change game engines a
couple of times, and that meant that a lot of
assets they had developed for the game had to be
completely scrapped and rebuilt. In other words, every time there
was a reason to change things, it's set everyone back
months or longer. The game did finally come out in
two thousand eleven, fifteen years after the initial announcement, and
(03:00):
by then the game was published under two K Games
and developed by Gearbox Software. So one thing I guess
I can say is that there's a possibility, maybe only
a slim one, that one or more pieces of software
I talked about in this episode could one day come
out after all. Just don't hold your breath now. Another
(03:22):
game that is frequently mentioned when the term vaporware comes
up is Star Citizen, But to be fair, Star Citizen
has been releasing updates to an alpha build of the
game regularly. Now, it's true there's no beta version of
this game in place yet, let alone a commercial version,
but it's also true that there are at least gameplay
(03:44):
elements that backers can you can play right now. If
you backed the project and you have access to it,
then you can actually play those gameplay elements. It's just
not a fully cohesive game yet. The story of Star
Citizen is such that it leaves many people purple next
once they start hearing details. So here's a quick overview.
(04:04):
The game's development began in two thousand eleven with Chris Roberts,
who founded a company called Cloud Imperium Games. Roberts had
previously worked on some really notable games like Freelancer and
Wing Commander, and his goal was to create a massively
multiplayer online space simulator. Players can own and operate space vehicles,
(04:26):
they can go on missions, they can engage in combat,
and they would have this enormous space environment to explore
and live in in that game. At least that's what
they'll be able to do once the game is finally finished.
In two thousand twelve, Star Citizen began to raise funds
both on Kickstarter and on its own site. Kickstarter's goal
(04:49):
was five thousand dollars, but their campaign raised more than
two million dollars. It was one of the most successful
campaigns at that time, and the game has raised funds
largely by selling in game assets to players, such as
special ships, including ships that cost hundreds or thousands of dollars.
I've listened to podcasts with hosts who have spent hundreds
(05:12):
of dollars on ships for the game. But spending that
much money for a virtual game that blows my mind.
But in two thousand eighteen, the company announced a package
called the Legatas Pack, and that includes one seventeen ships
with various add ons and skins for the game, all
for the low low price of twenty seven thousand real
(05:37):
world dollars. So you'd spent twenty seven thousand dollars for
virtual ships in a computer game. What an earlier completionist
pack sold for fifteen thousand dollars. In order to even
see the stuff that's included in the pack, you have
(05:58):
to be part of an elite group of enthusiasts who
have spent at least one thousand dollars one thousand real
world dollars on this game so far, a game that
only exists in alpha mode, and by that I mean
only parts of the game exists in alpha mode, or
or you could just call it the company and ask
about it. They'll tell you more over the phone, so
(06:19):
you don't have to spend the thousand dollars to get
access to that website. The game has raised more than
one hundred eighty six million dollars since it first started fundraising,
and while early goals were to have a full version
of the game available in two thousand fourteen, the company
has since backed off on announcing a date when the
game will be done. They got burned too many times
(06:41):
saying well, it's gonna be out at this time, and
then they missed that date. Some people have become pretty
cheesed off about this, going so far as to suggest
that the company has a game in perpetual development just
as a way to coax more money from hopeful supporters.
In other words, they don't ever have to deliver a
full game. They just have to keep people strung alow
to keep getting fundraising money from them. But there's no
(07:03):
denying that gameplay elements have emerged over time. There are
total sections of this game you can play, and other
games like Minecraft existed as a playable beta for years,
to the point where people didn't even care if the
game ever emerged as something more than a beta. Still,
this is a game that's currently an alpha, not even
(07:25):
beta testing, so there's no knowing when or if the
full game will be available. Now, I could do a
full episode about games that never came out, and maybe
someday I will, but for now, let's just go over
a few anticipated titles that have to this date not
made it out of development, and some of them have
been canceled. One of those would be Star Wars thirteen.
(07:46):
That was a game that was supposed to allow the
player to control the famous Boba Fette in an action
adventure style game. The title referred to a level inside
the enormous city planet of Correissant. Corressant just looks like
a huge planet filled with skyscrapers, and you would divide
the planet up not just by quadrants, but by level.
(08:07):
Was supposed to be a level filled with seedy underworld characters.
Early video footage was shown off at industry events and
looked really impressive. But then the Mouse House purchased Lucasfilm
and along with it Lucas Arts, the the game studio
that was developing this game. Disney made the determination to
stop all internal development for games at Lucas Arts, and
(08:30):
all the developers got laid off. Lucas Arts exists now
only as an entity to issue licenses to other game developers,
and so thirt thirteen was shelved. Disney chose not to
renew the trademark license in I plan on doing a
whole episode or two about Blizzard soon, but one thing
I will not be talking about is how their game,
(08:52):
StarCraft Ghost did once it went on sale, because it
never did that. It never got out of development. The
idea was to it a stealth based game set in
the popular StarCraft universe, and StarCraft is a real time
strategy game, but Ghost would be a different type of gameplay,
completely meant for consoles rather than PCs, and it was
supposed to come out in two thousand six, but it
(09:13):
wasn't until two thousand fourteen the Blizzard officially said, yeah,
this one's not coming out. Also, in a mysterious and
creepy demo for PlayStation four came out, and the demo
was for what was called pt PT stood for Playable Teaser,
And in this teaser, you would walk down the hallway
and you would encounter creepy and disturbing imagery and then
(09:35):
you would discover yourself at the beginning of the hallway
over and over again, and the creepy stuff would grow
even more disturbing, and it would change each time you
went down the hallway. At the conclusion of the trailer,
and was a video teaser for Silent Hills, obviously a
game in the Silent Hill horror series. Hideo Kajima, famed
video game designer, and Guillermo del Toro, the famous filmmaker.
(09:57):
We're working on the project with actor Norman Das, who
is providing voice and performance acting for the game. But
the game eventually got canceled. Cojima would leave the company,
or he was fired or something that's never been totally clear,
and then Cojima went on to develop the as yet
unreleased game Death Stranding, also starring Ritas. So what is
(10:21):
Death Stranding about? Beats me. I watched about ten minutes
of footage from and I still have no idea what
that game is all about. Other games that fall into
this category include Titan, which was another Blizzard title that
never made it all development. There were a trilogy of
games that were called Insane that was also supposed to
(10:41):
have Guillermo del Toro's involvement. Those never came out. Also
a game called Agent, which is an espionage game that
was supposed to come out from rock Star Games. It
was announced way back in two thousand nine, but as
of yet has not come out, But there have been
reports from as recently as ten that's some variation of
that game Miss still in development. So maybe we will
(11:02):
one day see Agent see the light of day. Next,
we're gonna turn our focus from video games to other
types of software. But first let's take a quick break
to thank our sponsor. Now, in the world of software,
there's an old example of vaporware that still gets reference today.
(11:24):
The example dates all the way back to nine three,
and that's when a company called Ovation Technologies announced a
suite of productivity software that it said would leave all
competitors in the dust. The company claimed it's Ovation Suite
included features like spreadsheets, word processing, data management, communication tools,
(11:46):
all of them integrated together. So it's going to be
a powerful tool for businesses, far exceeding the capabilities of
competing software that was just starting to get a foothold
in the market at that time. Ovation produced a demo
of its product Sucked, in order to show off what
it could do at various trade shows. The demo was
a video, and here's the thing. The video was filled
(12:08):
with false claims because there was no actual product to
show off. The video was just completely manufactured. It wasn't
supposedly showing off a concept, it was supposed to be
showing off a working build of the software. The truth
was the company had nothing to show yet. The demo
was created in an effort to convince potential investors to
pour money into the company. Presumably that money would then
(12:33):
be used to actually make the software that the company
was claimed to have built. But Ovation wasn't able to
stay above the waves of bankruptcy, and eventually they ran
out of money before they could ever produce anything real,
so it instead became an infamous example of vaporware and
smoke and mirrors. Some people going so far as to
say it was essentially a hoax or scam. Others are
(12:57):
a little more charitable, and they said, well, they didn't
intend for it to be a scam. They were just
trying to raise the money to build the thing they
wanted to build. And instead of saying it like that,
they said, hey, we have this thing, we've built it already,
invest in us and you'll make your money back. And
that was dishonest. When I did episodes about the Macintosh,
(13:18):
I talked about how Apple as a company was struggling
in the nineteen nineties before Steve Jobs returned to Apple.
You know, he co founded the company, but he was
then pushed aside and uh, John Scully essentially took over
and Jobs found himself leaving the company or being fired
from the company. It all depends upon whose account you believe.
(13:39):
And then he went to start a new company called Next. Meanwhile,
back at Apple, developers were hard at work trying to
create the next generation of the Mac operating system. The
preceding generation was called System seven and that launched back
in n It worked well, but it's still depended upon
old architecture that by design limited what users could do.
(14:03):
And the reason for these limitations was in order to
streamline processes. So, in other words, the stuff the operating
system could do, it could do really really well. But
largely it could do that stuff really well because the
developers were ignoring all the stuff the operating system could
not do. And one of those things was true multitasking.
You could kind of sort of multitask with System seven
(14:26):
mac os, but it was doing it in a way
that wasn't terribly efficient and wasn't true multitasking. Also, an
error could cause the system to crash, and if you
were running multiple programs at once, a bug in any
of those programs could cause the entire computer to crash
as a result. So instead of compartmentalizing each of these
(14:50):
instances so that if there's a problem, only that one
program crashes, it would affect the entire system. And so
the more programs you were running, the more likely you
would run into that and have to do a full
system reboot and lose all your work. So it was
not a great scene. Now. A proposed successor to System
seven was a project code named Copeland. It took a
(15:12):
very different approach to architecture to allow for better control
over multiple programs, among other things. So why was it
called Copeland, Well, it was named after the composer. The
code name for System seven point five had been Mozart.
There was a third planned iteration that was code named
Gershwin and Copeland stuck right in the between them. There
was supposed to be transitional to move the operating system
(15:34):
away from the old architecture of System seven and set
the ground for a new architecture that would support future
generations of OS builds. Apple announced that Copeland was in
development back in by Gil Emilio, who had recently become
the CEO of Apple, talked a lot about the various
features that Copeland would have. At that point, they had
(15:56):
renamed it. They were calling it System eight, representing an
entirely new generation of operating systems. Demonstrations of the operating
system did not go well, uh, they they people could
see promises of what the operating system might be able
to do, but you couldn't even do things like inter
in text in the early demos of System mate, and
(16:19):
that represented a big problem. Obviously, demonstrations uh did not
help the case. The development team was fractured, different groups
working on specific features, but seemingly no guiding hand to
bring all of those features together into a cohesive operating system.
So you had people working very uh intensely on just
(16:39):
a very narrow group of features with no thought of
how it was going to integrate with the overall system.
And there's a lot of feature creep coming into more
and more features that were being added to this operating system,
growing the project, making it harder to complete and in August,
Apple finally pulled the plug. By the end of nine,
(17:01):
Apple would announce that Steve Jobs would be joining the
company in an advisory capacity because Apple was requiring Next
Steve Jobs as new company in an effort to get
their operating system development moving again. Essentially, they were saying, well,
we couldn't develop the operating system in house, Let's go
buy Steve's company Next and bring those assets over and
(17:22):
make that into the new Mac operating system. Jobs would
eventually convince the board of directors to give the boot
to Gil Emilio and Jobs would take over, first as
interim CEO and later as the official CEO of Apple.
Back in music companies were in a tizzy because digital
music formats that made it incredibly easy to share music
(17:43):
on a global scale, peer to peer sharing networks and
pirate sites were undermining the business model the music industry
have been reliant upon for decades, and if you want
to talk about disruptive technologies, the development of digital music
file formats would be way up there. And so a
group of companies, not just in the music industry, got
together to try and create a solution to this perceived problem,
(18:07):
and the idea was to create technology that would allow
music companies to sell digital forms of music and rest
assured that only the people who coughed up the dough
could listen to the stuff at tech that would foil
the attempts of dirty, nasty pirates out there who would
steal money right from their pockets. Sort of, all right,
let's put aside for the moment the fact that you
(18:28):
cannot prove someone who pirates the piece of media would
otherwise have paid for that media, because that would negate
your argument that they're stealing money from you. Right now,
you might think this sounds a lot like the group
which was called the Secure Digital Music Initiative or s
d m I, that they were trying to come up
with a DRM strategy, and you would be right. Digital
(18:50):
rights management was exactly what they were looking at. That
was what they were trying to do. They wanted to
create a means to imprint a digital water mark on
a file, so piece of code that could be attached
to a music file to prove that it came from
a legitimate source. The watermark would be designed in such
a way so that it would be really hard to
remove without it also causing some sort of damage to
(19:13):
the music file like decreasing the quality of the audio itself.
So if you tried to remove it, then the sound
wouldn't be as good on your music file, and you
would ruin the thing you were trying to You're trying
to uh crack. And there was a second arm to
the strategy. They were going to partner with manufacturers to
produce devices that could play back s d m I files,
(19:35):
but only if there was proof that the user was
authorized to play those files. So let's say it's a computer.
The computer would have to have a proof that the
owner had a license to play that music, and then
it would say, all right, well the license matches up
with the sdm I water mark. Everything's good. The watermark
is a is a real water mark. It's clearly from
(19:56):
the company, so we will allow this file to play.
On Nimber six, two thousand, the group issued an open
challenge to anyone to try and remove the digital watermark
from some examples of music files without ruining those music files,
and to do so within three weeks. A group led
by Princeton computer science professor Ed Felton claimed to do
(20:17):
just that, though s d m I initially protested, saying
that the judging software, which by the way they themselves
had provided, could not take into account the sound quality
of the music file. Felton planned to give a talk
about his group's methodology, and s d m I, along
with some other parties, threatened to sue Felton and his group.
(20:39):
They said, this is going to be a violation of
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act the d m c A.
But the Department of Justice was disinclined to acquiesce to
the demands of s d m I in pirate speak,
so in other words, they said, go ahead, dog, publish
your work. Felton, you got it, We got your back.
S d m I effectively ended in two thousand one,
(21:01):
although according to the then director, it was not because
the water marks could be removed. Rather, he said the
technology was not capable of being unnoticeable by golden ears,
meaning that he was saying that the process of putting
the digital water mark on the music files was by
itself affecting the sound quality slightly, and if you were
(21:24):
really really good at listening, you'd be able to detect it.
And that's why it never worked. It wasn't that someone
had cracked the system and they were able to remove
the water mark. It was just that it never worked
in the first place. UM. I don't know if those
are sour grapes or not, but anyway you could say
the whole stm I file uh form was was vaporware.
(21:46):
I have more to say about vaporware in the next section,
but first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
All right, this next example is part software, part hardware.
Back in two thousand twelve, Justin Timberlake took a break
(22:07):
from bringing Sexy Back to take the stage at CES
in Las Vegas. He was there to announce a partnership
with Panasonic to bring a service called my Space TV
to the new Vierra HDTV television sets. The idea being
that would be an over the top service, So you
would plug your Vierra TV in, you would have it
(22:29):
connected to your network, and then you could tap into
this my Space TV service and the service would start
off with the library of music videos that my Space
already had at its disposal, which was around a hundred
thousand or so, and also my spaces library of songs,
which was around forty two million songs, and then it
was supposed to grow to quote encompass movies, news, sports,
(22:52):
and reality channels with a growing lineup of today's most
popular broadcast and on demand content. End quote a wording
to a press release issued by the two companies. Timberlake
himself talked about the social aspect of the service, which
would let people share what they were watching in real time,
so you could create a sort of online viewing party experience,
(23:13):
but the service as talked about never materialized. Just a
note here, my Space did create a service called my
Space TV, but that was way back in two thousand seven,
five years before this c e S presentation, and back
then that was a video site meant to compete with YouTube,
so it was meant to allow my Space users to
(23:35):
upload user generated content to the video site, So that
was different from what Panasonic and MySpace we're talking about
in two thousand twelve. Also, my Space had been declining
in popularity steadily since two thousand eight, so this was
kind of a big surprise to see my Space teaming
up with Panasonic in the first place, because my Space
had lost a lot of street cred by then. News Corps,
(23:58):
which had bought my Space in two thousand five for
five eighty million dollars had sold the company in two
thousand eleven for much less, perhaps as low as thirty
five million dollars. That's an enormous loss, and Rupert Murdoch,
the owner of news Corps, would call the purchase of
MySpace one of the biggest mistakes news Corps ever made.
(24:18):
A company called specific Media became the new owner of MySpace,
and then eventually they were also a company that would
belonged to a larger company called Volant Technologies. Time Incorporated
bought Volant in two thousand and sixteen, so Volant was
the parent company not only of MySpace and specific Media,
but also of other companies like Vindico and Schumo. Now
(24:41):
I've talked a lot about different examples of vaporware in
these two episodes, so I thought it would be useful
to kind of talk about why vaporware exists in the
first place, or or why it it doesn't exist, you
know what I mean. Why do companies announced products that
are not yet ready for market and may never full development. Well,
there are several potential reasons. First, there's the possibility that
(25:05):
the company has every intent to actually release the product
as they are promoting it, but internal or external problems
right at the end are derailing the project and pushing
back the release date. That happens a lot, both in
software and in hardware. So you scope about your project right.
You define what you want to deliver, You define the
(25:26):
process you're going to take in order to make the
product that you've designed. You identify what you think are
going to be the challenging sticking points. You create strategies
to overcome those challenges, and you move forward. And then
something you did not anticipate happens, because it always does.
That's that's how the real world works, and that throws
you off. So then you adjust and you try to
(25:47):
move forward as best you can, trying to keep your
vision intact. But then you find out that whatever the
solution was to that unexpected problem that popped up, that
solution has now broken something else, like one of your
features now no longer works. Or maybe your lead developer
gets hired away by a competitor, or maybe your company
is acquired by another company, or maybe your money is
(26:09):
just running out. There are plenty of cases where vaporware
is an unfortunate byproduct of unpredictable challenges during a project cycle.
Has nothing to do with any nefarious plans. But then
there are more underhanded, shady practices. There's the possibility of
an outright cash grab. This is your old snake oil
(26:29):
salesman methodology, where you promise someone the moon and stars
and you have no intention to deliver upon this promise.
But those scams are pretty difficult to pull off well
without serious consequences Further down the road, like how do
you raise a huge amount of money trying to sell
a complete scam and then still expect to get away
(26:51):
Because eventually people get mad if they find out they've
been hoodwinked, and governments exist in part to protect people
from such things. So it's not the kind of grift
that you want to run for very long because you're
gonna get come uppants. So you're likely gonna get dinged
by a lawsuit or three, and that's really gonna put
(27:11):
a crimp on your day. But another tactic is to
announce a product that's well ahead of schedule. Maybe the
general public doesn't know it's well ahead of schedule, but
you might suspect that's going to be a few years
before this product is rated to market, But you announce
it in order to take the wind of the sales
of a competitor. There's an example of this, or at
(27:32):
least an example of a company that's been accused of
doing this. Way back in nineteen sixty four, IBM announced
it would introduce a series of mainframe computers under the
name System three sixty, but those computers wouldn't actually become
available for purchase for a few years, so IBM announced
it prematurely. However, the announcement prompted a lot of would
(27:56):
be customers to wait on this promised System of three
sixty machine to come out rather than purchase a system
from one of IBM's competitors, like the Controlled Data Corporation
or c d C. C d C brought an antitrust
lawsuit against IBM in nineteen sixty eight. The United States
eventually took up this antitrust lawsuit against the company, and
(28:19):
this particular part of the lawsuits said that IBM knew
its systems were years from market, but that they decided
to advertise these upcoming machines as being comparable to c
d c s existing products on the market at that
moment in an effort to undercut their competitor. So they
said this is anti competitive. It is against the principles
(28:43):
of a free market. The anti trust lawsuit, which grew
substantially with a lot of other parties becoming involved, would
stretch on until nine two until the Justice Department finally
dismissed the case. So that was a pretty expensive strategy
marketing strategy. Employing lawyers in an active lawsuit that lasts
longer than a decade gets pretty pricey. And sometimes a
(29:05):
company will announce a product that hasn't even gone into
production just as a way to gauge demand. Now, you
could argue that a lot of the projects on platforms
like Kickstarter and indie go go fall into this category.
The people running those campaigns are usually selling the idea
of a thing. Very often they don't have a working prototype.
(29:26):
Sometimes they do, which is fantastic, but often they just
say I have this great idea, but in order for
me to make this thing, I'm gonna need money. So
they're looking to get investment into an idea to presumably
bring that idea to fruition. Or you could point at
about half the stuff that think Geek has thrown up
on its April Fools page every year. If you've ever
(29:47):
visited the Think Geek site on April fools Day, and
you're likely to see at least one or two products that,
while they are fake, seem like they'd be pretty awesome
to have in real life. And Think Geek has actually
made some of those fake product real products as a result,
and a lot of people have said Think Geek is
actually using the jokes page to kind of measure the
(30:09):
response of Think Geek customers, and if the response is
really positive, they'll go ahead and bring it to market.
Otherwise they'll just say, well, we're not gonna We're not
gonna make back the expense of making this thing, so
we won't bother with that. Uh So you could argue
that those items were in reality vaporware in an effort
to judge how much people might actually want one of
(30:29):
those things, but still clear that many of the items
and thinkings April Fool's pages are just jokes. They were
never intended to become actual products, so it's not like
every single one of them falls in that category. I
plan on doing follow up episodes in this vein to
talk more about some of the games that never emerged,
So I might might do another episode about the greatest
video games that never existed, I've done one of those before,
(30:53):
but it was years and years ago, so maybe I
can do an update sometime in the future. Not net
the next one. I think I may dedicate an episode
specifically to crowdfunded projects that either were incredible successes, terrible failures,
or they successfully funded but the item never emerged. Whatever
(31:15):
the goal of the project was, never came to fruition.
I think that it's valuable to look into that as well.
So that's probably gonna be my next episode. But if
you guys have suggestions for future episodes, whether it's a technology,
a company, a person in tech, whatever it may be,
send me an email. The address for the show is
tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com, or drop
(31:37):
me a line on Facebook or Twitter to handle it.
Both of those is tech Stuff H s W. Don't
forget to follow us on Instagram and I'll talk to
you again really soon for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
(32:00):
Who
TechStuff News
Host
Jonathan Strickland
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