The version of Too Human shown at last year's E3 was half-baked. The Xbox 360 exclusive wasn't finished, and it showed. During the entire preview, the game's creator Denis Dyack kept saying that the tile wasn't done or that things we still being worked out. Dyack later wrote a very personal blog entry, saying the E3 experience was "painful." Once again, Dyack has opened up — This time over at Newsweek in which N'Gai Croal has let the Silicon Knights president take the reigns and write about how the practice of previewing games can be fixed. According to Dyack:
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. This is equivalent to sending movie critics to review Lord of the Rings before all the special effects are added. 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." Sounds odd, right? Well, that's what my fellow game developers and I have to do on a regular basis, even when we believe that it is not what's best for our projects.
Dyack goes on to say that games should take a page from the Hollywood PR text book and not be marketed until they are finished. He does have a point. Heck, he's got several points. Good read, slightly rantish and defensive, but smart and honest.
Dyack Writes About Previews [Level Up]
