Are they still getting that sweet, sweet Canadian government money?
They never even got a single dollar from the Canadian government.
Are they still getting that sweet, sweet Canadian government money?
They never even got a single dollar from the Canadian government.
Now I can't help but imagine Dyack insisting that there should be a giant spider boss in each game.
Former employees say Dyack was confident that history would repeat itself, and that yet another publisher would cave to his demands for extensions and further funding injections. He was wrong. "SK kept getting stonewalled by Activision regarding extensions for the game and pushing back the launch," says a source. "However, SK management was convinced they would have to delay; as a result, they started shifting a few more resources very quietly to ED2." The idea was to slow down production more than ever before, to try to apply pressure for an extension.
It didn't work. Instead of offering an extension, Activision turned up the pressure by publicly announcing the game, and attaching Silicon Knights' name to it prominently.
The October 7, 2010 release of the game's first trailer , released about a year before the eventual launch date, essentially put Silicon Knights on the hook to turn out a sellable product in a realistic time frame.
"I believe that's the video that Denis did not want released," said one source. "By putting the SK logo on the project for the first time publicly, Activision forced SK to start taking it seriously. But by then, it was pretty much too late."
"This was the first time that a publisher basically said, ‘No, finish the project and get it out the door'," the source said. "Keep in mind that during this time, SK continued to have some pretty senior people staffing [Eternal Darkness 2], and had no intention of moving them back over to XMD to help out the title."
Impossibly tight deadlines and publisher-pushed rush releases are two of the most commonly-cited factors when poor-quality games appear on shelves. Yet none of my eight sources believe that Activision was putting undue pressure on Silicon Knights. "They gave SK enough time; SK just didn't use it wisely at all," says another source. "SK over-promises to get a contract, and then always under-deliver. Activision was just the first publisher to hold their feet to the fire, so to speak."
Say what you will about Activision, but they got balls:
Fucking boss move.
Startlingly, XMD chewed through four design directors during the course of development.
So the studio is done and the Eternal Darkness IP is essentially dead.
Well that's that.
Fucking amazing.Another source suggested that "Activision caught wind of Denis Dyack's plan to leave everyone off the credits and forced him to put everyone on." (SK and Activision wouldn't comment on any of this for this story, though Silicon Knights has previously said that the names were intended to be included in the game in some way all along.)
Several sources report that the company today exists as a shell of its former self, employing less than five staff—including Denis Dyack
It really wasn't.I'm actually kind of surprised that they never talked about Dyack's meltdown on GAF. That was definitely an event bigger than just this forum for both him and the company.
Retro will revive it
BELIEVE
I'm actually kind of surprised that they never talked about Dyack's meltdown on GAF. That was definitely an event bigger than just this forum for both him and the company.
I would have loved to see some of the concepts in Eternal Darkness return - too bad about this companies incompetence.
Probably The Box/The Ritualyst for SEGA.
TheOddOne said:Say what you will about Activision, but they got balls:
Weird..I thought Nintendo owned the ED IP.
Thank God ED2 never made it out alive. It's for the best.
It's been speculated about for a while now, but I think the article makes it pretty damn clear that Nintendo had a much bigger hand in Eternal Darkness turning out as well as it did then I think some people (including Dyack) were willing to admit to.Thank God ED2 never made it out alive. It's for the best.
Nintendo actually owns the sanity system implementation, which would mean that any potential spiritual successor to ED would have to survive on the rest of the gameplay, and I don't think anyone wants that from modern SK.
It's been speculated about for a while now, but I think the article makes it pretty damn clear that Nintendo had a much bigger hand in Eternal Darkness turning out as well as it did then I think some people (including Dyack) were willing to admit to.
Ice cold, man.One of the underlying themes of the article is the fact that their tech stack is a mess and so throwing together playables is a very arduous task.
Might I suggest to Silicon Knights that perhaps they'd save a little time and effort if they used standard middleware to develop their projects instead of rolling their own? Unreal Engine 3 is a very versatile engine that's been used in a wide variety of games, and most people find it very quick to work and iterate with.
One of the underlying themes of the article is the fact that their tech stack is a mess and so throwing together playables is a very arduous task.
Might I suggest to Silicon Knights that perhaps they'd save a little time and effort if they used standard middleware to develop their projects instead of rolling their own? Unreal Engine 3 is a very versatile engine that's been used in a wide variety of games, and most people find it very quick to work and iterate with.
This idea makes me want to quietly masturbate by myself in the dark next to my sleeping gf.Retro will revive it
BELIEVE
One of the underlying themes of the article is the fact that their tech stack is a mess and so throwing together playables is a very arduous task.
Might I suggest to Silicon Knights that perhaps they'd save a little time and effort if they used standard middleware to develop their projects instead of rolling their own? Unreal Engine 3 is a very versatile engine that's been used in a wide variety of games, and most people find it very quick to work and iterate with.
Ouch.
But didn't they go through great pains to make their own engine with Too Human? How did it end up such a mess that even they couldn't use it?
wikipedia said:Silicon Knights concluded that many aspects of the game engine were inadequate and/or unexplained, and therefore the engine was not functional. Pressed to continue the game's development or lose funding from Microsoft, and no longer willing to use Unreal Engine 3, but contractually prohibited from using anything else, Dyack made the decision to start rewriting portions of the engine's code so it would behave and deliver results in ways that Silicon Knights was more familiar with and expected. Eventually, Dyack came to the idea that if they were to alter the last remaining portions of unmodified code, it would become an entirely new game engine, which he called the Silicon Knights Engine. Since the contract with Epic stated that Silicon Knights would keep and own the rights to any changes or "improvements" they made to the engine, Dyack felt that he would not be prohibited from using an engine that was composed entirely of improvements, and he also felt that he wasn't obligated to pay for an engine he considered non-functional. On July 19, 2007, Silicon Knights sued Epic Games due to "breach of contract", including "inadequacies" of Epic's support, service, and cooperation with Silicon Knights concerning Unreal Engine 3.[18][19] On August 9, 2007, Epic Games counter-sued Silicon Knights, claiming that it was using its engine as it pleased without any cost.
One of them was a horror-based project called The Crucible, though it apparently had a couple of name changes during its gestation. As far as anyone knows, it had nothing to do with ED2, as I understand that ED2 was a more recent undertaking that was brought on partially out their current situation as a studio.Fantastic article, but one aspect that's missing that I lose my bearings without is the SEGA connection. The company had two projects in the works there, were either Eternal Darkness 2 or were they both original productions or what happened to those games? There's a bit of a mention of SEGA in there but I can't tell if they have three games in the works in addition to XMD or was ED2 the only project or what was it they were trying to sell SEGA?
One of them was a horror-based project called The Crucible, though it apparently had a couple of name changes during its gestation. As far as anyone knows, it had nothing to do with ED2, as I understand that ED2 was a more recent undertaking that was brought on partially out their current situation as a studio.
Well, "partially" might be an understatement.
Oh man, that explains the retail failure of Darksiders 2 now; the Nintendo Curse placed on SK was contagious!I know at least one of their SEGA projects was picked up by THQ, who then dumped it. THQ paid SK to help work on Darksiders while they tried to figure out what to do with the formerly-Sega project.
If it wasn't for taxpayers dollars, Denis Dyack would be in Curt Schilling territory a lot earlier.
One of them was a horror-based project called The Crucible, though it apparently had a couple of name changes during its gestation. As far as anyone knows, it had nothing to do with ED2, as I understand that ED2 was a more recent undertaking that was brought on partially out their current situation as a studio.
I know at least one of their SEGA projects was picked up by THQ, who then dumped it. THQ paid SK to help work on Darksiders while they tried to figure out what to do with the formerly-Sega project.
Shin'en have only five people working there and they turn out great games.