A post-mortem of Silicon Knights (Mama Robotnik research thread)

Chev said:
There was a blog called "surfer girl" if I recall correctly, that used to have tidbits about various industry secret projects, and around 2007 or 8 posted a few pics of a XBox/PS2 King's Quest reboot. it was a plaformer with SD characters, much like the Space Quest one. Sadly I don't have the screens on hand. Could that be it?
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I believe that was an internal prototype at Sierra for PS2 hardware.
I'm pretty sure that SK would've taken the series into a rather mature direction ;)
 
Great article, had a lot of fun reading it. It seems the only thing SK needed in order to survive and maybe even thrive in the games-industry, is someone to slow down Dyack. He had some great ideas and concepts, just not the talent and resources to pull it all off.
Dyack and Molyneux are quite similar IMHO, except Molyneux overpromises and delivers what's possible. It seems Dyack pushed for what he wanted, even though it was not possible to achieve.
 
neorej said:
Great article, had a lot of fun reading it. It seems the only thing SK needed in order to survive and maybe even thrive in the games-industry, is someone to slow down Dyack. He had some great ideas and concepts, just not the talent and resources to pull it all off.
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Dyack should have been one of the designers, not the guy running the show.
 
Cheerilee said:
SK signed up and paid a deposit to use the Unreal Engine. Then they didn't like it so they started "improving" it. Eventually SK decided that it was 100% made of "improvements" so it was 100% original and belonged to them, not Epic. So they thought they were allowed to stop making payments on the Unreal Engine (and demanded the money back that they had already paid).

Epic convinced the court that there was still actual Epic code left in the final retail version of Too Human, and even if there wasn't, SK's so-called "Silicon Knights Engine" was just an illegally reverse-engineered copy of the Unreal Engine.

Edit: SK gets to keep Too Human's art and game design, but all traces of the Unreal Engine (and probably the Silicon Knights Engine) in SK's possession (or in the retail market with the possibility of a recall) had to be returned and/or destroyed.
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WOW. Thanks for clearing it up, that's really quite scummy of Dyack, especially having the gall to demand payment for reverse engineering the code.
 
Having your own wife as the HR manager is completely fucking mind-numbingly stupid. That's just one big red warning sign that whoever was in charge of the studio must be insane and irrational.
 
On one hand I was really hoping for a new Eternal Darkness, and figured based on the leaks/gossip it did indeed exist. I would have liked to see a return to that universe, exploring the game mechanisms further.

On the other hand whatever of Eternal Darkness 2 existed was probably fair awful as Silicon Knights couldn't get their shit together.
 
So my takeaway from the OP was that SK was a troubled, litigious studio that kept having to have its ass pulled out of the fire by its publishers.
 
WOW, I LOVED this article. Great job, Mama!

If it hadn't been for Dyack's massive ego with Too Human, SK would still be as priviledged as most of the third parties associated with Nintendo, like Retro Studios.

Come to think of it, the only third parties that eventually failed are the ones who purposefully ended their association with Nintendo, like this and Rare :/


PS: Is it weird that I'm now tempted to try Too Human, just to see what the fuss was all about? :P
 
Really nice piece. You've got a mention on Spon.g:

http://spon.g.com/article/28604/Silicon-Knights-Had-Working-Eternal-Darkness-2

There is much more and Ace Neogaf member, Mama Robotnik, has frankly embarrassed the rest of us by doing a fantastic piece of journalism on the developer.
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Haha!

Anyways, reading through all that, it's a sad, sorry story. Where I can only feel the blame be aimed solely at Dyack's feet. Whether it was ambition or arrogance, I don't know. But the beginning of the end of the company seemed purely down to Dyacks complete compulsion towards Too Human. He put too much faith on the "series" and just wouldn't let it go no matter how many times it was cancelled and brought back to life. And when he finally released it and the world hated it... then he seemed like a volcano just ready to erupt and he did. Seemed like a horrid and miserable place to work overall.
 
Video game historian specialized in Google-Fu.


We are lucky to have you with us Mama! You should write this kind of works in your resume, I am not joking.
 
Good stuff Mama. It's really interesting.
Shiggy said:
Just a few notes:
- The game you show as "The Crucible" is not The Crucible: Evil Within, which was a temporary title of The Box/The Ritualist. The game you are showing is Big Huge Games' Ascendant that was developed for THQ.
- You may want to include some information on SK's contract work in its early days, such as Tork.
- The Too Human scenes you found on Albert Alejandro's portfolio are based on PS2-generation hardware (How do I know? That was mentioned on his old portfolio)
- The GIA artworks for Too Human are from the PSX days
- The concept room by Raffaele Ienco does not really look like something that was possible on GCN hardware, I believe it's for current generation hardware. After all, Too Human was not really in active development for GCN as the team was busy with ED and MGS.
- The Box started out as an Unreal Engine title, that's why it's in the file name.
- King's Quest was done for Vivendi, so it must have been before the Activision-Vivendi merger.

Please also watch your PM folder.
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That's pretty sharp. :o Quoted so it doesn't get lost.
 
Holy shit, Mama you've really gone all out here! Love these threads. I haven't read much of this yet but you can bet I'll be reading it all tonight. Thank you so much for the hard work you do.
 
I had no idea Too Human was that old. It seems that DD considered Too Human his lovechild and refused to abandon it no matter what. I wonder how events would have unfolded had they abandoned that game long ago.
 
Read some of this. Great work man. I thought SK would do great things this gen because it felt like they were building up to something great. They really screwed up in the end. Seems like the company got too big for Dyack to manage it.
 
Good work Mama Robotnik - it's great that you do this.

I hope you're not bummed that the exceptionally interesting and comprehensive Metroid Prime thread only got 2 pages of discussion.

Maybe that's your problem - you cover everything, leaving little left to be discussed!
 
Bernbaum said:
Good work Mama Robotnik - it's great that you do this.

I hope you're not bummed that the exceptionally interesting and comprehensive Metroid Prime thread only got 2 pages of discussion.

Maybe that's your problem - you cover everything, leaving little left to be discussed!
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Or people aren't interested in anything but sensationalism?
 
Just read the whole piece. Amazing work! What a sad and interesting story about a developer that definitely shouldn't have turned away Nintendo's apparently much needed guiding hand. Too bad if their demise means that we will never see a sequel to one of the greatest horror games ever made. I am holding out hope that Nintendo will (or better yet, already has) hand over the Eternal Darkness license to Retro.
 
Amazing thread. Seems SK was mostly about this...

0NgYK.jpg
 
What an informative read. It reminded me of something that could have been in 'Next Generation' gaming magazine, only better. Thanks for this Mama Robotnik.
 
My Top Ten Fantasy Mama Robotnik Research Threads
---------------------------------------------------------------

HARDWARE
- Internal Team Structural Changes at Nintendo since 2005 and Effect on Quality of Output
- The Decision-Making Process Leading Up To The Playstation Vita
- Microsoft's Repeated Failures to Adapt in Japan

GAMES
- Lost Odyssey
- Devil May Cry 2
- Grabbed by the Ghoulies
- Malice

STUDIO PROFILES
- Harmonix
- Team Siren
- Seeds Inc.
 
Grief.exe said:
Interesting read. SK's 'something quick' to tide them over before the Wii released could have been the MGS2 port to the cube, may not have been financially viable at the time though. Should have been fairly easy since they already did the leg work in porting over the MGS2 engine for Twin Snakes.

What was changed between the Twin Snakes and the original version of MGS1 in terms of lore? The only time I've ever played through MGS1 was through Twin Snakes.
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The script for TTS was pretty much identical to the one in MGS1; the only major changes that came about were the removal of Naomi's British accent and Mei Ling being less obviously Asian.

I think the whole "why is MGS1 the definitive version of the game in Kojima's eyes" is a two-fold answer.

-One, it's the version that Kojima personally worked on, so it makes sense that he'd stick to that out of personal pride.

-Two, I think it's fairly obvious that Nintendo offered some serious monetary compensation for TTS, in addition to handing KojiPro a developer for the project in the first place, so there's gotta be some kind of exclusivity that prevents TTS from being ported to non-Nintendo systems.
 
Great, great thread, thank you for sharing all this info.
Such a shame about Too Human, really, could've been a great series.
Also, no one can take Eternal Darkness away from them, it was and will always be a fantastic game.
 
Wolves Evolve said:
My Top Ten Fantasy Mama Robotnik Research Threads
---------------------------------------------------------------

HARDWARE
- Internal Team Structural Changes at Nintendo since 2005 and Effect on Quality of Output
- The Decision-Making Process Leading Up To The Playstation Vita
- Microsoft's Repeated Failures to Adapt in Japan

GAMES
- Lost Odyssey
- Devil May Cry 2
- Grabbed by the Ghoulies
- Malice

STUDIO PROFILES
- Harmonix
- Team Siren
- Seeds Inc.
Click to expand...

I think it would be nice to see "Internal Team Structural Changes at Square/Square Enix [Since The Merger / Since FFXI] and Effect on Quality of Output" or something to that nature.

Great thread, mama robotnik!
 
EatChildren said:
On one hand I was really hoping for a new Eternal Darkness, and figured based on the leaks/gossip it did indeed exist. I would have liked to see a return to that universe, exploring the game mechanisms further.

On the other hand whatever of Eternal Darkness 2 existed was probably fair awful as Silicon Knights couldn't get their shit together.
Click to expand...

The very well-done Kotaku article (I know, right?) on X-Men Destiny, linked to in Mama Robotnik's posts, states that SK had only finished one room for ED2 despite expending all that energy on it, and it was a hot mess.
 
Absolutely amazing thread, as per usual.

Factor 5 and Silicon Knights both appear to have followed similar trajectories after separating from Nintendo. Both studios jumped ship after learning of the Wii, acquired exclusive contracts for multiple games with one of the HD console manufacturers, released one game of dubious quality and poor sales, floundered and died. And both attempted a last-ditch effort of getting a game published by Nintendo prior to their eventual collapse.

To be fair, quite a few mid-tier developers unaffiliated with Nintendo suffered similar fates during the course of this generation.

Left Field Productions continues on though, making budget extreme sports titles. I wonder how many of the developers that created the N64 sports titles (NBA Courtside, Excitebike 64) still remain at the studio.

ferr said:
I think it would be nice to see "Internal Team Structural Changes at Square/Square Enix [Since The Merger / Since FFXI] and Effect on Quality of Output" or something to that nature.

Great thread, mama robotnik!
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While I would love to see this as well, researching such a topic might be difficult without being able to read Japanese.
 
Great thread.

I found myself most interested in the early stuff rather than the later....Blood Omen especially. I always hear about how great of a game that was. I think its great that it survived and saw release despite all the behind the scenes stuff.

I remember the pre-TTS hype on the IGN forums. It was really great when Dyack came on there and answered our questions and I remember thinking about how nice it was that a dev would do that. As a big MGS fan, I was so used to Kojimas approach where you literally get no info except what the trailers feed you.

After playing the game, I remember going back and reading his QA thread and just feeling like some of his answers were so...fake. Like he wasnt flat out lying but his truths were embellished so that everything sounded better than it actually was. I guess that was my first taste on how he really was.

If anyone cares, heres the link to his QA thread on the IGN forums
http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/official-denis-dyack-question-thread.51896709/
 
Great work. If only the studio itself (a neighbour to my home city) was still around and not run by someone who had more ambition than common sense :(
 
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