Who is Denis Dyack you ask? Well, that’s the same question I asked when a friend brought his name up in curses on IRC. I was told, he’s the effing head of Silicon Knights, the creators of the yet to be released Too Human. Not being one to be left out on asshole insights, I looked him up and listened to him on a REALLY long 1up podcast (time to kill can be a good thing).
After listening to that, I wasn’t so sure. He sounds like he’s both, upset that his game got panned and upset that the industry works the way it does. I also wan’t sure if he really runs his company like a crazy house (the makes of Pariah was used an example). I honestly don’t care about that last part as I don’t have to work there. But if you’re looking into working there or work there now, you might care.
On to a piece Mr. Dyack had published yesterday. Whatever else he is, he’s right about the industry being screwed up when it comes to Previews of the game. The analogy he uses is a good one:
Imagine Peter Jackson standing up in front of an audience of film critics and saying, “We’re going to take the character of Gollum and make him look human, but he will be all CG. We are confident it will look great as we are using the latest in motion capture and computer rendering technologies.”
See, in the past, I’ve argued Previews of games aren’t critical enough. But I’ve come around on that one. It doesn’t make any sense to have previews at all, from a development point of view. From a developers point of view, they have to show unfinished code/artwork/game/etc to outsiders that don’t have anything but their word how it’s really going to look. From a Previewers point of view, they aren’t seeing the final game. PA coined a term (I think it was them) the other day, calling screenshots of games with all the fancy photoshop and the like effects on them Bullshots. That’s a perfect term, but I think it should be expanded to cover every single Preview shot from the game.
I want to get off on a rant about Previews being bad for the industry and so on, but I’ll let Denis cover it for me:
Marketing plans for individual games may vary widely, but in general a game has a two- to three-year development cycle. The first preview screen shots are shown as early as six to nine months after the game’s development begins. A demo is shown to the media somewhere around the one-year mark in the development cycle, usually at a trade show or the game’s publisher event. Review copies are handed out to print media a month or two before the game is finished and then given to online sites to review right when the game is finished.
This preview and review process is the problem our industry faces: the media and game-opinion influencers are making pronouncements about a game way before it is even finished or even near completion. Notice that at every point in the development and marketing timetable, the press is seeing the games before they are actually complete
Exactly. By having previews of the game, trying to generate buzz, etc about the game before it’s ever released, you’re showing a game that not only isn’t finished being developed, but not finished being designed in many cases (if it’s any form of the Agile development methodology, it’s very much not finished being designed, etc). So now you’re seeing a game that isn’t finished visually, coding wise or design wise. What’s the point of that?
As a personal note, I don’t like most Previews. They aren’t useful for determining if I’ll like the full game, they don’t/can’t give me a real idea of what the released game is going to be like and they often include or exclude things that do / do not make into the full game. That’s more than useless.
But that’s my opinion. Not the game publishers. That’s the problem. Publishers see it as an essential part of the development process. Dyack suggests they just stop.
All that is required is that publishers adjust their cash flow planning to reflect the delay in the release of the game.
That one sentence makes me wonder about Mr. Dyack’s sanity level. Most publishers not only require the above mentioned Previews at different stages, they write them into contracts, they plan marketing around them, etc. It’s big business and it’s not going to change by one developer simply saying, “come on guys, lets do it differently.” No matter how logical it is.
Previews are and will continue to be the real hangup in the development cycle and until they can be shown an actual money improvement in changing the system, they won’t change. It’s their nature. If it works, why change. It could be mean less money! The only thing the Publishers actually care about. Just like any other publicly traded company, the dollars made this quarter over last quarter is the absolute bottom line. That’s a big problem, not just in the game industry, but in general, when it comes to changing the status quo of any system.
So what’s the solution? I don’t know if there is one beyond self publishing, which is not an option for 99% of the development houses out there. It costs a lot of money, requires a lot of know how they don’t have and hasn’t worked great in the past for those that have tried it. Or coming up with some proof that cutting out Previews would be a good thing. Maybe a developer with a proven track record taking a stand and saying, “Nope, no previews until X number of months before release.” Maybe.
What Would Matt Do: Well, I’ll hope that not only Publishers wake up and see the flaws of the current system, but that I get a nice new moon pony. It’ll be great!