Dyack is All Too Human

SPOnG recently caught up with Silicon Knights founder and director, Denis Dyack - game director of Too Human, arguably one of the biggest Xbox 360 games of 2008 and a title that many seem to think has been stuck somewhere in 'development hell' since the original PlayStation era of the late 1990s.

While, like many, we can’t wait to get stuck into his game. Dyack was, if anything, way too sensitive over any perceived criticisms and - as expected - outspoken in his criticism of ‘the preview process’ in the games industry and the machinations of fan debates in open forums such as NeoGAF.

"The whole idea that this game has been in development for over ten years is just a complete myth," Dyack told us. "We have tried to say that for the last four years, but nobody seems to want to listen, so you would a service to everyone by saying that, once we hooked up with Microsoft and started collaborating is when the REAL development of Too Human +started."

On discussing previews of Too Human, Dyack claims that certain negative opinions of his game are "down to pre-conceived notions from things that they [previewers] have heard. .. everyone is different ... I’ve had people write us to say that their 4-year-old daughter got into the game within five minutes because they didn’t have any preconceived notions of trying to control the camera with the right stick. They just enjoyed the game right away."

When discussing that NeoGAF story, we wondered why Dyack didn't listen to those advisers telling him “don’t feed the trolls”.

Dyack responded: "[Communication technology] reduces reciprocity. Today’s society is based on 4,000 years of face-to-face communication. Only over the last 75 years have we gotten these new communication technologies – people post in forums and the facial expression (that we have right now) is lost. People can ignore that change.

“So I posted there [on NeoGAF] to say ‘okay, there is a significant loss of reciprocity, accuracy, there is no responsibility for some of these posts that are occurring’ and it was affecting things ... Most of the stuff that’s posted on these forums – has no basis in reality or fact. Most of these people haven’t even played the game. They’re looking at screenshots and determining framerate! It’s completely nonsensical! "

Somewhat bizarrely, when we asked Dyack about his thoughts on the problems with 'the preview process' in the games industry (his basic argument – the movie and music industries don't do it, why do we?) he continued to talk about his run in with the player-haters over on NeoGAF, telling us:

“At the end of the day, is it more important to stand up for something that you believe in and potentially lose? Isn’t it better than just saying “okay forums don’t matter, they don’t have an affect, let’s just not talk about it?” Silicon Knights has been a company that often, more than anything else, if we see that there is something wrong, we will take a stand.

“We’re the type of company – as an example – if we saw some woman being hit on the street by someone else, we’ll step in and try to break it up. Despite the fact that we might get stabbed or whatever. At the end of the day we’re going to try to do the right thing."

Well, at least Denis can have a nice long rest now. He sure needs one!

The main thing is that his game is finally out on the shelves. Stay tuned for SPOnG's verdict in our detailed Too Human review very soon.

The full Dyack interview cum rant will up on SPOnG in due course.