Ultimately it can be boiled down to that kind of incompetence, but I got the impression that they HAD to be the best by the time they released... but the bar kept getting raised each time a new game came out(Quake, Unreal, Quake II, etc), and thus got delayed to perpetuity.
The root issue is that they interpreted "the best" to be "the best at every single feature," which is completely ridiculous. The fact is that the Duke3d had an atmosphere, depth, and immersive-ness that most games since haven't matched. They definitely should have been able to release a game within a few years that was the best game for its time.
The comic touched on a good point, too. The controversy behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2's airport massacre level went on for a little while but has since fizzled away-with that in mind, I can't see how long people will be really taken aback by this game mode.
There was also an interesting point about the curse of having too much money. With no pressure from a publisher or from outside investors to ship, they were relatively free to keep blowing deadlines.
These examples might also be due to collaborative pressure.
On Star Wars, Lucas worked with a great editor who could say no to him. Same for script on Empire. For the Star Wars films 1-3 Lucas had total control over everything.
Put another way: It's commercial pressure that made Lucas subject to collaboration. And it's subsequent commercial pressure that made collaborators subject to Lucas.
