Denis Dyack's Quest For A New Game Biz

Just weeks after Too Human producer Denis Dyack confronted the folks at 1up, he's now talking to Gamasutra about many of the same topics, and seems to be pining for a very different games industry. Specifically, Dyack takes exception to the whole concept of incomplete games being seen by the press, the large and now-deceased glitz and glamour version of E3, and the enthusiast press in general. His big complaint seems to be that enthusiast press folks want things to be good. "I guess I'm really against the whole notion of the enthusiast press. Being so enthusiastic that they want things to be good. I think if our medium is going to become mainstream, and we're going to be considered an art form, we need true critics like the movie industry or even the music industry where people go up and literally critique something, and it's a profession to critique it. In order to critique something, it has to be done."

Problem Solved - One Stroke

[Babbster]

Publishers and developers: Stop showing games to the gaming "press" before release.

I'll accept my consulting fees in either free games or fresh fish - I'm that flexible.

Re:Problem Solved - Second Stroke

[RingDev]

Publishers and developers: Word of mouth > Professional Critique

-Rick

Re:

[Reason58]

Professional critics are word of mouth.

You probably have friends with totally different tastes in movies. As a result, if they were to say a movie was great you would take that with a grain of salt. Humans are all different and they define "good" in different ways.

Critics are the same way. You find a critic who's taste closely matches your own, and use them as a gauge of how much you will or will not like any given game, movie, etc.

he doesnt know the movie industry

[majortom1981]

I have seen a lot of reviews of movies that review movies that arent finished.

Re:

[Floritard]

Yeah but an unfinished movie is usually just lacking some tweaking to pacing, maybe you clarify something about the plot or maybe you drop a scene here or there. It's largely the same product when it's given a wide release. An unfinished game can have its core gameplay or engine radically changed and wind up something completely different. Apples and oranges.

If???

[sqlrob]

I think if our medium is going to become mainstream

Gaming does better than the movie box office and it's not mainstream yet?

Re:If???

[metroid composite]

No, not really.

Games: cost $50 (or $60 for next gen) Movies: cost $10

If 100% of the population goes to the theatres once a month, and 20% of the population buys a game once a month, the games will bring in more revenue...but won't be "mainstream".

From another angle, the last movie I watched I could tell my parents and siblings to watch, and they may or may not like my taste, but they'd probably watch it to see what the fuss is about. The last game I played I could tell my parents and siblings to play, and they wouldn't (unless I was there with them as an extra hand to lead them through the tutorial, and even after they learn the controls they would never pick up the game on their own).

Re:

[DDLKermit007]

I have an exception to what your statement says. Put your family on Wii Sports, and there won't be one person who doesn't pick it up within a minute or two.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[sqlrob]

You're assuming games necessarily cost $50. You're forgetting cell phone games, as well as various online games.

Sixty-nine percent of American heads of households play computer and video games. [theesa.com]

Re:

[Floritard]

Games: cost $50 (or $60 for next gen) Movies: cost $10

Are you going by ticket prices? If so even that is a little high for alot of places. I can see first-runs here for $6.50. But you are forgetting DVDs which typically cost $20 and many times make up much more than the theatrical run if a movie later turns cult. And then there are movie rentals, which I'm sure generate more revenue than game rentals, both through regular stores and online. Not to mention there are a number of gamers who buy their games used and don't pay that $50-60, and the money they do p

Re:

[Phoenix00017]

DVDs don't enter into the picture in that statistic though. Let's be clear: the game industry is larger than ticket BOX OFFICE sales ( http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/12/19/2350234. shtml?tid=98&tid=10 [slashdot.org]). It is far smaller than the movie industry (including DVDs, rentals, etc.) as a whole - which further shows why games aren't as mainstream as some are trying to argue here.

Says one thing then does another?

[ironwill96]

Does anyone else find it funny that in the Gamasutra interview he comments on the idea that when all these developers claim to the press / gamers "Oh we're fixing that etc etc" that they are lying and never do it and that it is a bad thing. And then...in the update to 1UP and IGN etc he claims "we're fixing item X you didn't like and item Y is much better now that we've fixed a code issue".

You can't have your cake and eat it too...

Re:

[SirSlud]

Considering how long Too Human has been in development, they do indeed seem to be committed to fixing things rather than just picking a release date at random, stuffing as many things into a game as possible at the cost of quality, and releasing under a blitzkrieg of marketing. He want to say, "It'll be done when it kicks ass. Check us out then and tell me straight up if it sucks." I have seen first hand what he is talking about; it happens 20,000,000 times a day in the business, and he wishes that would ch

He's right.

[b.b.rodriguez]

Its true,

How can somebody be expected to write a relevant and fair review of a game (or movie for that fact) without experiencing the whole thing.

Playing a demo/sample will tell you a little but its like reveiwing an entire movie after you have only watched the trailer, 9 times out of 10 the trailer looks awesome but the movie is crap.

Re:

[burgerdog]

I totally agree on one level, but in my experience, games with fun demos go on to be fun games, and games with broken demos continue on that path. Gameplay can't be faked like story and acting can be cut around in a movie trailer. Dyack insinuates that because Too Human got a poor response at e3 a year ago, that everyone is saying the game is terrible. No one's saying the final game will be horrible. But what has been shown wasn't impressive. If he spent the time he's been using to do interviews about

Animal Crossing

[tepples]

How can somebody be expected to write a relevant and fair review of a game (or movie for that fact) without experiencing the whole thing.

Worse yet, how can someone experience the whole thing if the title of the game contains "Animal Crossing"?

Re:

[megabarf]

How can somebody be expected to write a relevant and fair review of a game (or movie for that fact) without experiencing the whole thing.

That's not hard to do with a 1.5 hour movie, but with a game that could take 24 or (depending on the game) 40+ hours to play, there is no way any reviewer can get through it all and keep a decent schedule.

When was the last time an art critic spent 40+ hours staring at a painting before making a review? I'll bet they had their general impression of it within the first 10 seconds of looking.

Playing a demo/sample will tell you a little but its like reveiwing an entire movie after you have only watched the trailer, 9 times out of 10 the trailer looks awesome but the movie is crap.

There is a major difference here. If you watch a 5 minute trailer of a 1.5 hour movie, you are taking in roughly 5.5

You don't expect things to be good, do you?

[paintswithcolour]

'Being so enthusiastic that they want things to be good.'

This just dosen't make sense...a desire for 'things to be good' surely is natural. I've not read a game or movie preview that stated that their not too enthusiastic and hope that it will bomb. Nobody wants to read that, nor would it be the place of any press (consider an item they haven't seen/played) to make such a comment. It seems an excuse for a lousy game...what you read a preview and then you expected the product to actually be GOOD?! And to th

Accept mediocrity or outright incompetance?

[SpacePunk]

"I guess I'm really against the whole notion of the enthusiast press. Being so enthusiastic that they want things to be good. I think if our medium is going to become mainstream, and we're going to be considered an art form, we need true critics like the movie industry or even the music industry where people go up and literally critique something, and it's a profession to critique it. In order to critique something, it has to be done."

Yeah, the nerve of anyone wanting things to be good. Hell, we should just be glad the installer runs... kinda. When I buy a game, I expect it to be crap, and I'm upset when it's not. I always complain when my order at the local fast food place is correct, and the last time I purchased a vehicle I insisted that it be as fucked up as possible. Yeah, that's the ticket.

SNAFU

If I want to see art, I'll go to a fucking museum or fancy pants gallery. If I want to play a game, I expect it to work. When I open a box for a board game I expect it to work. When I install a computer game, I expect it to work. I know, I know... I'm a nervy kind of guy that wants things to work, and work well. If this guy were talking about the traditional game industry and said something like "Hey, people expect too much if they want play money for monopoly to be in every box!", we'd all be looking around and thinking "what the fuck?" As we should be now.

Re:

[RagingMaxx]

I think you might be missing the entire point of what he's trying to say. Of course we, as consumers, want the things we spend money on to be "good". He's saying that the press shouldn't go into the review process with too many expectations, because that will affect the way they review the game. Imagine a movie critic visiting the set of an action movie and looking at the storyboards for an awesome looking upcoming action scene (which AFAIK would probably never happen). This is a similar scenario to a g

Re:

[SpacePunk]

Naw, I grazed the point. I failed to add that the product of the press is lousy as a result.

Yay more Dyack news

[bobstevens_took_my_n]

I get the impression that Gamasutra is hard up for real news sometimes. I want to call Dyack's crusade Quixotian, but I've never read the novel so I'm not sure it'd be accurate. His preaching is odd, though, because he's railing against something that seems quite insignificant to me. On the other hand it's very significant to him, because his game got critically panned an E3 or two ago when they showed a crappy build of a not-anywhere-near-complete game. He can claim it's not about that all he wants, bu

Game critiques...

[RoloDMonkey]

Games are still a fledgling media. I have found that meta-ratings systems help, but their is still room for improvement.

For instance, I have found that a movie that is getting more than an 80% rating on rottentomatoes.com [rottentomatoes.com] is almost always a movie that I will find worthwhile, even if it is in a genre that I don't normally enjoy. However, game ratings like those at rottentomatoes.com or metacritic.com [metacritic.com] aren't quite as consistent.

There are several reasons for this. First, game review scores tend to be over