Why did it take so long to respond to the article?
- Dyack did not think that people would believe it
- He is now coming forward as it's impacting the fundraising campaign
Email from Andrew McMillen
- "There is no hard evidence apart from non-credible anonymous sources"
- Email from Andrew McMillen, which was forwarded to SK.
- Wired did not decide to go ahead with the story
- When McMillen was confronted with only having 8 anonymous sources, he said that it's fair enough
- Dyack: McMillen was aware that it would ruin SK and Dyack's reputation
Funds were diverted from X-Men Destiny to fund ED2 prototype
- SK put more money into X-Men Destiny than they received from Activision as they wanted it to be better than their last game
- Half way through the project, Dyack sat down with Activision executives and talked about how to improve the game after having paid 2 million more than they got paid
- Activision was stunned by this; they appreciated it and even told Dyack it was not a good business move
- Dyack sorry about how the game turned out
- Dyack also sorry about having said certain things in the past, he learnt his lesson and is now not involved in business decisions at Precursor
- Article says that 8 people totalling 45 years of experience were interviewed; Dyack says that people with only 5 years at SK would not know the budget allocation; those people who knew the allocation were not interviewed
- SK had open policy when working with partners; used Perforce and Hansoft; Activision could look at both databases and see which employee worked on what project
- External audits confirmed this
Allegation of why Silicon Knights left Nintendo
- Relationship between Dyack and Nintendo still close
- Iwata recommended that SK would become a second party
- Nintendo and SK went different ways because they wanted to create different types of games
- Nintendo were not oppressive but constructive
Allegation of claims that artists are a "dime a dozen"
- "Nothing could be further from the truth"
- Average salary 25000-30000$ higher than St.Catherines area and comparable to that at large publishers in larger cities
- People like Kevin Gordon would not work with him for over 20 years and many others stayed at SK for 10-15 years
Allegation of Activision demanding to know about staff leaving
- None of that was true, they did not feel out of the loop
- SK went through difficult time with layoffs and departures, but there was no exodus
- Turnover rate was low
- Former SK employees congratulated to Precursor campaign, Dyack does not believe this would have happened if they were treated poorly
Allegation of Activision changing the credits
- Dyack made the final call on credits, not Activision
- Allegation is untrue
Denis Closing Thoughts
- "I made a lot of mistakes"
- "I said a lot of things I should not have said"
- "Learnt my lesson"
- Focusses on creative design now
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Lm6gGFLMr_o
Kotaku article
Post is going to be updated.
http://www.precursorgames.com/forum...-vlog-plus-notes-references-posts-email.1465/
- Dyack did not think that people would believe it
- He is now coming forward as it's impacting the fundraising campaign
Email from Andrew McMillen
- "There is no hard evidence apart from non-credible anonymous sources"
- Email from Andrew McMillen, which was forwarded to SK.
- Wired did not decide to go ahead with the story
- When McMillen was confronted with only having 8 anonymous sources, he said that it's fair enough
- Dyack: McMillen was aware that it would ruin SK and Dyack's reputation
Andrew McMillen said:The gaming editor at Wired, Chris Kohler, expressed significant interest in my draft. However, after discussing the matter with his managing editor, they've decided not to go ahead with the story in its current state. This is what he told me:
"There are a lot of serious allegations in the story, not least the idea that Silicon Knights is trying to scam publishers out of money and not deliver games. But there are no real facts, documentation, etc. to back any of this up besides the word of anonymous ex-employees."
Which is fair enough, of course. It is my role, as a journalist, to seek truth which can be confirmed with facts. And it is Wired's responsibility, as a publisher, to verify the truth of any claims before publication.
As it stands, the most controversial and potentially damaging claim within my story is that Silicon Knights have a long history of deceiving publishers, by intentionally pushing out their deadlines and budgets while using the publisher-supplied cash to fund development of their own IP. I believe this is a claim that could potentially ruin Silicon Knights if it is published. I should point out that it is not my intention to ruin SK. I am simply reporting what has been told to me, by yourself and your seven former colleagues.
But allegations are hard to prove, especially without hard evidence. I fear that this is one such situation. Though I have independently corroborated from my interviews that this type of behaviour took place at SK, I can't prove it without evidence.
Funds were diverted from X-Men Destiny to fund ED2 prototype
- SK put more money into X-Men Destiny than they received from Activision as they wanted it to be better than their last game
- Half way through the project, Dyack sat down with Activision executives and talked about how to improve the game after having paid 2 million more than they got paid
- Activision was stunned by this; they appreciated it and even told Dyack it was not a good business move
- Dyack sorry about how the game turned out
- Dyack also sorry about having said certain things in the past, he learnt his lesson and is now not involved in business decisions at Precursor
- Article says that 8 people totalling 45 years of experience were interviewed; Dyack says that people with only 5 years at SK would not know the budget allocation; those people who knew the allocation were not interviewed
- SK had open policy when working with partners; used Perforce and Hansoft; Activision could look at both databases and see which employee worked on what project
- External audits confirmed this
Allegation of why Silicon Knights left Nintendo
- Relationship between Dyack and Nintendo still close
- Iwata recommended that SK would become a second party
- Nintendo and SK went different ways because they wanted to create different types of games
- Nintendo were not oppressive but constructive
Allegation of claims that artists are a "dime a dozen"
- "Nothing could be further from the truth"
- Average salary 25000-30000$ higher than St.Catherines area and comparable to that at large publishers in larger cities
- People like Kevin Gordon would not work with him for over 20 years and many others stayed at SK for 10-15 years
Allegation of Activision demanding to know about staff leaving
- None of that was true, they did not feel out of the loop
- SK went through difficult time with layoffs and departures, but there was no exodus
- Turnover rate was low
- Former SK employees congratulated to Precursor campaign, Dyack does not believe this would have happened if they were treated poorly
Allegation of Activision changing the credits
- Dyack made the final call on credits, not Activision
- Allegation is untrue
Denis Closing Thoughts
- "I made a lot of mistakes"
- "I said a lot of things I should not have said"
- "Learnt my lesson"
- Focusses on creative design now
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Lm6gGFLMr_o
Chapter Selection
0:00 - Introduction
2:30 - Why take so long to respond to the article?
6:19 - Andrew McMillen Email
11:52 - Allegation of diverting funds from XMD
19:55 - Allegation of why Silicon Knights left Nintendo
23:02 - Allegation of claims that artists are a "dime a dozen"
25:06 - Allegation of Activision demanding to know about staff leaving
26:54 - Allegation of Activision changing the credits
27:57 - Denis Closing Thoughts
29:46 - Paul and Shawn Closing Thoughts
Kotaku article
Post is going to be updated.
Conflict of Interest Questions about Joanne Dyack in Human Resources said:
Having a founders spouse in a company is very common among many small to medium size businesses. Joanne was in HR for over 10 years at SK. Anyone hired during that time had an understanding of this before accepting employment at Silicon Knights. Furthermore, there were two other people in HR that could be utilized if for any reason they did not want to speak to her.
Why Credits are always difficult said:
Consider this:
If you had 100 people who worked equally on a project, how many of those 100 people would feel they only contributed 1% to that project?
Credits are a difficult issue and there is always passionate debate on what policy to use. It is common that some people may be unhappy with what credit they received because from their own perspective they may feel they contributed more than what others believe.
New Credit Policy during XMD said:
The Kotaku article claims that the credit policy for XMD was newly introduced at Silicon Knights. This is in fact, not true. The credit policy used in XMD was the same one used for Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem and is commonly used throughout the video game industry.
http://www.precursorgames.com/forum...-vlog-plus-notes-references-posts-email.1465/