Ever wonder where Too Human is? It was one of the blockbusters coming for the Xbox 360 from Microsoft Game Studios and Silicon Knights. Well, the game is still in the works but it's just not fully cooked yet for the holiday season.
Denis Dyack is the president of Silicon Knights, the St. Catharines, Canada-based developer. I chatted with him about everything except when his big game is going to ship. But it was a nice chat anyway.
Their name means that "we want to be the knights in shining armor of the game industry," he said. "We want to stand behind quality and not release a game before it's done." Well, I guess that explains Too Human.
Dyack's company has been making games since 1992. In 1998, it signed a deal to make second-party games for Nintendo, making Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes for the GameCube. It ended its relationship with Nintendo in 2004 and the next year it signed up with Microsoft to do a Too Human trilogy. The company is also doing an unannounced title for Sega. Full told, it has 150 employees on two teams now.
Asked about our favorite topic on the graphics power of the new consoles, Dyack said, "The 360 and the PS 3 are equal in power in my eyes. Maybe the PS 3 has more processing power. The 360 has more available memory. It's pretty much a net, net. The public perception of the PS 3 was that it was much more powerful. To developers, they look even."
Dyack said his company hasn't looked at games for the Wii. Been there, done that re Nintendo. Regarding staffing, he said the previous generation games required 30 to 60 people, but now that number is "doubled or tripled." Now the teams require story writers, cinematographers, musicians, and audio itself demands a whole team.
"It's starting to approach the cost of small budget movies," Dyack said. "It will be there by the end of this generation."
He says the next-generation programming is tougher. With multiple cores, it's harder to get it right. He says that one of these days, we won't have any more load times in video games. That's one of the benefits of the improving technology (but maybe it's next gen now?).
There is potentially more power in the PS 3, he acknowledged, but it is harder to tap.
"You have to get the timing right," he said, since processing with the Cell requires a juggling act to keep all the sub-processors busy.
Dyack says that he believes that HDMI cable interfaces will make a difference in visual quality. That gives an edge to the PS 3. But he noted that authoring games in 720P resolution "looks nice." He adds, "It is questionable if there is a difference between 1080P and 720P. All of our games are likely to be 720P because of the faster refresh rates. There are all kinds of trade-offs. It takes a lot more RAM to do 1080P. You'll reserve RAM for the textures. 720P is just less pixels. There is definitely a huge difference from 720P and analog."
Dyack says the costs of development are rising every year. "It is more risky for everybody," he said.
Regarding E3, Dyack said he was happy about its "death." "Eight years ago, the previews we did were just OK. Then hype got into the industry. Then the press has to become more critical. When you preview your game, it's not finished. But I was starting to see developers pull back more and more. A lot of companies have to make their quarters. The technology curve is so rapid. I hope that we don't have to spend money on anymore game previews. E3 was a distraction for everyone. Over the history of our company, E3 was the toughest crunch time. The problem was the more you spent on it, the less you spent on the game. People spent a crazy amount of money on E3."
Going to Microsoft wasn't a tough dilemma, he said. The company wanted to work on a next-generation title and Microsoft was ready. Regarding Too Human, Dyack opted not to show the title at Microsoft's event in September in Barcelona.
Who will win?
"It's a tough one. Microsoft is looking really good. Everyone is looking pretty good. At the beginning, everyone thought Sony would walk away with it. We won't know for sure for two years."
The question with Nintendo, Dyack says, is if the "controller stands the tests of time."
