Dyack Acknowledges Personal 'Noise' Put Kibosh On Eternals

[Karloff]

Dyack Acknowledges Personal 'Noise' Put Kibosh On Eternals

"I think that noise was due in large part to misconception," says Denis Dyack.

"I guess it's safe to say there's always been noise around me," says Denis Dyack of Precursor, late of Silicon Knights. Precursor's Shadow of the Eternals crowdfunding efforts did not go well at all [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/124619-Shadow-of-the-Eternals-Studio-Cancels-Kickstarter], a performance that Dyack blames on "misconceptions" about both him and his former studio, Silicon Knights. Precursor has nothing to do with Silicon Knights, he insists. "We're working on getting over that," he says.

Precursor Games' Chief Operating Officer Shawn Jackson added that, in his estimation, Precursor's crowdfunding being released at around the same time the new studio was created - when who worked at Precursor and where it got its stuff from was and Dyack [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/123901-Silicon-Knights-Still-Breathes-Dyack-Has-Left-The-Building] - spent time trying to put out old fires. It distracted from the game, and its crowdfunding suffered as a result. "I think, ultimately, that was a mistake on our part," Jackson said.

Shadow of the Eternals will return to Kickstarter at some point, Precursor claims, probably with a lower ask. But if you were hoping to know when that would happen, Precursor isn't about to say.

Source: Joystiq [http://www.joystiq.com/2013/06/13/precursor-on-shadow-of-the-eternals-and-its-failure-to-connect]


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[mechalynx]

Put a gag on that fool, please. The only reason I didn't back this project is because Denis Dyack has less than zero credibility. I can't believe this man made Blood Omen and Eternal Darkness happen.

 

[CriticalMiss]

I think at this point they would probably be best shooting Dyack out of a cannon as a Kickstarter stretch goal. They'd probably get the funds they need if only he would agree to be the internet's whipping boy for cash.

 

[lacktheknack]

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

People outright loathed Too Human, a very interesting idea made lackluster through (supposed) uninteresting and bland game play. Dyack promised the second coming of games.

X-Men Destiny was made under his watch. Which is a game that no one was interested in (If I want to be in the X-Men universe.. I want to be an X-man, not some unknown hip teen sidekick.).

He's like Peter Molyneux, but instead of making merely somewhat good games that were promised to be spectacular (like Peter), Dyack made games that were terrible. He shrugged and just tried to do it again with more games.

 

[mechalynx]

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

People outright loathed Too Human, a very interesting idea made lackluster through (supposed) uninteresting and bland game play. Dyack promised the second coming of games.

X-Men Destiny was made under his watch. Which is a game that no one was interested in (If I want to be in the X-Men universe.. I want to be an X-man, not some unknown hip teen sidekick.).

He's like Peter Molyneux, but instead of making merely somewhat good games that were promised to be spectacular (like Peter), Dyack made games that were terrible. He shrugged and just tried to do it again with more games.

To top it all off, instead of taking the responsibility for the failures, he sued Epic as a last ditch attempt to get some money. He blamed the disaster that was Too Human on shoddy Unreal Engine support, claiming that Epic didn't deliver the product Silicon Knights paid for, instead focusing on developing Gears of War. The judge didn't see it that way. SK then got by on government grants without actually producing anything, with Dyack spouting some random bullshit and being largely irrelevant in the industry until he left the company.

Last I heard of SK, they were selling off equipment just to stay afloat

 

[oldtaku]

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

You can get away with being an arrogant dick who blames everyone else for everything if you keep producing great games/music/movies/books/etc. When you were involved with making one of the most loved games on the Gamecube and it's way, way downhill since, the sharks close in.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

People outright loathed Too Human, a very interesting idea made lackluster through (supposed) uninteresting and bland game play. Dyack promised the second coming of games.

X-Men Destiny was made under his watch. Which is a game that no one was interested in (If I want to be in the X-Men universe.. I want to be an X-man, not some unknown hip teen sidekick.).

He's like Peter Molyneux, but instead of making merely somewhat good games that were promised to be spectacular (like Peter), Dyack made games that were terrible. He shrugged and just tried to do it again with more games.

To top it all off, instead of taking the responsibility for the failures, he sued Epic as a last ditch attempt to get some money. He blamed the disaster that was Too Human on shoddy Unreal Engine support, claiming that Epic didn't deliver the product Silicon Knights paid for, instead focusing on developing Gears of War. The judge didn't see it that way. SK then got by on government grants without actually producing anything, with Dyack spouting some random bullshit and being largely irrelevant in the industry until he left the company.

Last I heard of SK, they were selling off equipment just to stay afloat

Ok, maybe I should have called Denis the AIG of Silicon Knight? I don't have a seamless analogy for this

 

[II2]

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

Kinda a combination of things, though I'm not sure the fervor of the vitriol is warranted (then again, when is it, online?):

As a developer and CEO / creative director at Silicon Knights, he lead the company to create Too Human for Microsoft, leaving Eternal Darkness Fans wanting. Too Human went way over schedule and eventually came out, an awful mess. Jobs were lost. He was involved with the lawsuit that started then against EPIC Games, regarding the liscence of the Unreal engine used for Too Human and then XMen Destiny. More layoffs, as Xmen Destiny went overtime and overbudget, released as an awful mess people hated. EPIC won the lawsuit/countersuit and effectively closed SK, with a product recall for any titles using the Unreal engine, their last two games... SK Closes, all remaining jobs lost.

Anyway, then he got involved with the company trying to kickstart the Eternal Darkness sequel, but Kotaku and some other places were publishing some articles regarding some shady business he got up to, allegedly embezzling money and buying assets from the defunct SK.

He published the 30 minute video response to the allegations of him embezzling money, mistreating employees and being a sketchy bastard, just drawing more attention to the issues. The Eternal Darkness kickstarter fell short of the goal and died on the vine, pending resurrection.

I knew a number of people who worked with/for him at SK. They're professional enough not to speak ill of colleagues, but people's opinion of him was... reserved... and while they didn't directly talk shit about him, they spoke to a lot of friction and division among the team at SK, during his problematic leadership.

 

[Gatx]

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

For me it's not that Too Human and X-men Destiny were bad games, they were, but apart from that there are allegations that when Silicon Knights was assigned to make X-men Destiny, they took the money they were paid to do that, and put some of their top talent to work on an Eternal Darkness sequel demo instead. Then in the Kickstarter response to those allegations, he instead claims that they wanted to succeed and rather than taking money like they had been accused of doing, actually spent an extra $2 million themselves to make the game good. If that were true, it basically means that they can't make a good game even with extra money so it doesn't exactly breed a lot of good will on the part of any prospective kickstarters.

 

[vv85]

Pft not very business savvy imo...
Dyack was always going to be bad candy after the lawsuits and the end result of SK, they shouldnt have mentioned him at all. What mightve worked:
* Dyack starts up a shell trust-owned company, a consultantancy which provides creative support
* Precursor hires the consultant company into the current Dyack position, same salary etc
* Precursor hinge their press releases on the fact they have Nintendo support to create a new sequel (technically true but a mildly misleading statement)
* A Precursor salesman makes the pitches, not Dyack
* Once the game is made, Precursor thanks Dyack for his support and vision.

The cost to Dyack would be official credit on the sequel and a cautiousness around future Precursor devs/reveals, but both can be balanced imo

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

To me, it was how he ran his company. His litigious nature, his inability to separate his creative responsibilities from his financial ones, the culture he allowed to develop at SK... (note: no first hand experience at the business, based off hearsay / media articles)

 

[Terramax]

There are certainly worse games than Too Human though. If they'd not mucked about with the analog sticks, and made the deaths faster, it might've been a pretty good game. It's a shame it was released before patches on 360 became mainstream. Patching with those improvements might've changed that game's destiny.

Honestly, I don't think the lack of funding came from who this guy is, but the fact that most people aren't that interested in a game of its sort. Eternal Darkness might've been a great game, but the fact that it sold really badly, even for a Gamecube title, speaks volumes.

 

[LordMonty]

All this makes me sad as i kind of want to see this game made. Hope they find a way and it turns out good. This whole Denis Dyack is bad but all of them and him as well... he probally needs this to work out to restore some faith in his name 'if' he truely is just some dude who got screwed.

Heh well thats me being positive in this otherwise negative thread... i'm off to moan about xboxone somewhere on the internet to keep the balance.

 

[Callate]

Uhhhhh... Guys? What did Dyack do to warrant all the furious hatred again?

Article at Kotaku:
[link]http://kotaku.com/5955223/what-went-wrong-with-silicon-knights-x+men-destiny[/link]

Between this and the "We spent $2 million of our own funds to try to make X-Men Destiny a great game" claim, it seems likely that one of two things is true:

1. Dyack is a liar, a bully towards his own employees, a poor manager who refuses to shoulder any of the blame, and a cheater of the publishers who provided his companies with funding,

or

2. Dyack is a manager who failed to pull off a much-needed success after a crushing failure in spite of an unusually long development cycle and throwing good money after bad.

Neither possibility exactly makes a case for throwing briefcases of cash at his current endeavors, Eternal Darkness's cult following notwithstanding.

Not that it's impossible that neither case is the reality, (he said with an eye towards certain individuals' willingness to engage in lawsuits...)