The Too Human Side of Denis Dyack

A candid chat with the president of Silicon Knights
3/11/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 3

Crispy Gamer: I got to play the game for a while, and there were a lot of positives, but some people said they had a hard time getting into it. Do you think it's difficult to demo a game like Too Human in such a short time period?

Dyack: There's no question. When we had a previous demonstration here at Silicon Knights, people played it for hours. Essentially I think we had 15 minutes on average with every person. The other thing is -- and I'm going to come right out and say it -- people are going to hesitate in saying anything positive right now because of our past showings. I think some people are taking a wait-and-see attitude. We've done a lot of focus testing and we're pretty confident that the game is strong. I don't know what to say beyond that. I think in general I didn't hear many mixed things -- I heard all positive responses. Maybe that's just what they're telling me.

Crispy Gamer: Your first showing of the game on the Xbox 360 was rather historic for you guys. What's it like trying to shake that stigma when initially people had a bad taste in their mouth?

Dyack: Well, I don't know if there's anything we can do. We can't go back in time now. A lot of things that have changed since then -- rewriting the engine was part of that. It's interesting.... If you ever saw the documentaries with the actors on the "Titanic" movie -- that was critically panned before it came out. When the movie actually came out, it did really well, obviously. I think we really feel like they do. We really believe in the concept. I think we make really good games at Silicon Knights. We don't have any skeletons in our closet or things that we're embarrassed about in our past products. We think it's going to be really strong. When we put out a demo, that's going to help.

Too Human is a very funny game because it is a new type of game -- people don't know what to make of it. You watch the videos and you think it's an action game, but it's actually a deep RPG game, as well. I've always said before, you can't judge games by videos at all, because it's an interactive medium. The only way people are able to judge games by videos now is if they can relate to the genre, and see the play mechanics, and hypothesize about how it plays. Without actually playing Too Human, you really have no idea. There are a lot of complexities in there and a lot of subtleties that you really have to sit down and play it to understand, but once you get there, it's pretty groundbreaking in my opinion. That's part of the thing. People say they want something new, and when they see it they don't know what to make of it -- so they criticize it. That's part of the process. If that is what it means to make a new game -- break some boundaries and genres -- then I'll take that every time.

Crispy Gamer: But Denis, you know how it is. You go into a forum and someone will pan a game for just one screenshot, before the game is even playable.