NWR: I want to ask about hype, because certainly this process of showing games before they're finished or before they come out, a lot of it is about building up interest in the fan base, and for marketing reasons. You know, the whole build up an interest in a game so people will pre-order it or whatever, will buy it when it comes out. And I think for a game like Eternal Darkness, which didn't have a massive marketing push behind it at the time of its release, a lot of the people who did buy it, bought it because they heard about it in the years approaching it's release, and they got interested in it. They became very fascinated by the innovative game mechanics that you were including. In light of that fact, Eternal Darkness was not a major seller. And the same could be said of Twin Snakes. I'd say probably they both sold below your personal expectations. I don't know if they sold below the publisher's expectations. But despite very positive critical reviews, which as you said probably don't have an effect currently on the sales of a game, these games were minor hits. So I just want to ask you, is part of your philosophy that games should not be previewed before they're finished have to do with the fact that hype, building up 2 or 3 years before the game's release, essentially is not effective for sales, that hype should be formed closer to the launch, is that an element of what you're saying?

Dyack: No, actually not at all, and I think hype had a huge impact. I would say, as an example, the most recent example of that is Gears of War. Very little footage was shown, but that game had more hype than any game I've ever seen for a long time, especially for a new IP. And people bought it on that alone, and it sold tremendously well, so well that I don't think there's any need for a demo at all. If you haven't tried Gears of War by now, in a sense anyone who bought Gears of War didn't care to try it, they just heard it was great and they were going to buy it. So I think hype can be very effective.

NWR: How was that hype built up? My understanding is that a lot of the hype for a game like Gears of War was built up through demos to the press at events like E3 2006.

Dyack: Right.

NWR: People actually got to play the game and then they wrote about it they were highly impressed, and then they started to spread the word 'this is the next Halo.' And sales wise that's almost practically what it turned out to be, so I mean that hype didn't appear out of thin air and it didn't come from screenshots.

Dyack: Right.

NWR: It didn't come from clever websites like "I Love Bees", it came from people playing the game before it was finished and talking about it in a positive way.

Lusty: Yeah, but I would argue that Gears of War was father down the development cycle.

Dyack: Actually, let me answer that. I actually think Gears of War was only playable at one event as far as I knew, E3 was ... a demo. I don't think it was ever playable as I recall. And Gears of War had tremendous hype before it was ever allowed to be played. I'm sure of that actually. But in the end it all comes down to, it's not allowing the game to be played before it's finished, it's allowing the game to be played before it's released. And there's a big difference there. So that's an example of why there's no reason why you can't allow a game to be played before it's released to build up hype in the press. Just like the same thing in the movie industry where you can have a screening of a movie to the press a few weeks or a month earlier before it's released to the public so they can do the reviews. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact I believe that strongly that that's the model we should follow. And I think doing things like that, like having a demo of Too Human before it's released, all those things are very very important, and we're striving to do that, so I guess if you're assuming that I don't agree with that, it's not true. I actually do agree with that and I think it's great and can be very effective.

NWR: So, you have related the gaming industry to the movie industry when you suggested that games be finished months before they are demoed for the public...

Dyack: Yeah.

NWR: ...however, video games aren't identical because games are interactive...

Dyack: Correct. Absolutely Correct.

NWR: ...and at GDC Eiji Aonuma related the experience of the development of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and after receiving negative feedback regarding Wii controls at E3 2006, he had his team actually go back and redo the controls, and I think pretty much everybody agreed that it resulted in a much better experience.

Dyack: Uh-huh.

NWR: So is avoiding press negativity worth the risk of leaving such a critical game element unrefined, especially in such a large-production game?

Dyack: No, I mean the bottom line is that he could have gotten that feedback from focus studies. And you don't have to get that kind of feedback in a public forum first of all. So, we have done all kind of focus testing on Too Human and our other games. And the reality is in the industry, whether people like to believe it or not, most of your feedback and changes you're going to make on the game are internal. Anytime that you say "We responded to public feedback" is generally good PR, but the reality is that fitting that into your dev cycle is very, very difficult and most games simply just don't and cannot do it. To go further on your earlier point, because you said a lot of things there, I definitely do not think the movie industry is identical to the film industry. [Ed. - We believe Dyack was trying to compare the film industry to the game industry here.] However, I think they're following parallels, so much so that I recently did a talk in a conference called "The 8th Art", and film in the early 1900's was criticized for not being art. Actors wouldn't act in a film because it was cut in different segments and it wasn't their whole performance. I think in the early 1900's, Canudo, the first film theorist, actually called film the 7th art. Highly criticized, very radical, now it's accepted as an art form. And he basically said it's combining all the other spatial and theoretical forms of music and dance, sculpture, spatial arts, pictures. What I would say is video games are the 8th art, where we're combining all those things that Canudo said was making films the 7th art, and the addition of interactivity and interaction making it the 8th art. So all the same criticism, we're just following a similar path.

At the end of the day, I've made video games for 15 years. I guess the fact that they're not the same as a movie and we never want to make interactive movies, that doesn't make any sense. But I think seeing the differences between art and film are very easy, but I think it's much more challenging and much more useful, quite frankly, to try to find parallels, and try to learn something from those parallels, because the film industry and the language of film really has spoken things to people worldwide and it can really influence people. It's really made a difference on society and I think that there's a lot to learn there. So I'm looking at the perspective of what can we learn. I'm not trying to say "Let's just do everything exactly the same" because it's clearly not applicable, and if it was then the movie industry would have taken over the games industry a long time ago. So that's how I answer those two points, and I think certainly the (Zelda) control scheme, everyone welcomes that, but I think there are better ways to do it than showing a demo at E3. And I think, quite frankly, everyone would probably agree with that. In the industry, that is. Maybe not the fans.

NWR: Well I know you want to talk about Too Human today, and we have some more questions about it, but let me try and tie in Too Human with some of the things that we just got done talking about. Obviously the game took a hit in the hype department a year ago at E3 2006, and from what I can tell it's now kind of recovering, and people are getting more excited. It seems like a lot of fans are having more faith that the game will turn out well. And from my perspective, it looks like the way you have turned around that situation, or are in the process of turning it around, is through more demos to the press of an unfinished version of the game.

Dyack: Correct.

NWR: And so is this a case where the philosophy that you're talking about of not showing the games to the press until they're finished, is that something that you wish you could do with Too Human but you can't because of the publisher agreements and so basically this is kind of "wouldn't it be nice"? Is that what you're saying?

Dyack: Yeah, let me go further. I think most people in the industry would like to see it this way, and it's really a matter of cash flow, finances, and structure. Everyone I know in marketing would love this, because your marketing windows you have to send things out to the paper magazines like 3 months in advance. You have to buy your television 3, 4, even 6 months in advance. If you know when you're game is done and you can predict exactly when it's going to ship, then those things are never at risk. Generally when people spend millions of dollars on those things like to be risk adverse. The bottom line is shipping, the way that people do things in the industry, yeah I would love to have that. Is it going to change overnight? No. Do I think it's slowly changing, and some of the examples that you said you've seen, I think we're going to see more of that, and I think it eventually will go that way. It has to, because every time a game slips and somebody blows a 20 million dollar marketing budget because they missed their date by 6 months... That will not continue to happen, or at least Darwinism will take care of those things, so... In the end, I know people look at this and say "are you practicing what you're preaching?" I guess the way to look at it is I really hope what I'm preaching takes place, because I think it'll be good for everybody.

Lusty: Also, I mean, Too Human is farther along in the development cycle, so he is practicing what he's preaching.

NWR: In other words, you're approaching... because you're now showing the game at a much more mature stage, you're approaching closer to what you'd like it to be.

Dyack: Correct.

NWR: But isn't the fact that these demos of the game, which is at this time unfinished as far as I know, the fact that they are basically reversing the bad hype that you had a year ago, doesn't that basically show that the result of showing a game before it's finished has more to do with... it's not that showing a game before it's finished is wrong, or is a bad practice, but simply that it is dependent upon the quality or the impressive power of the demo itself.

Dyack: I would say to some extent, and I would also say to some extent it's the environment, and mostly how finished the product is. Actually that's not true, it's how good the show is. We're talking about it again, but the bottom line is, once again, demoing the game when it's the right time should be not dependent on a set date, but should be more dependent on when it's ready for the title. That is really what I'm saying more than anything else. The problem with E3 the way it was, was that date never moved.

NWR: Right.

Dyack: And let's face it, we all know game developments don't follow a predictable cycle. If they did, the industry would sure be a lot easier. You know, games slip all the time, problems come up, and the problem with that is it's not about showing the game. It's about the way that the structure was and the way it needed to be changed. So I think that's how I would sum up that answer.

Lusty: And I'm going to add something in here too. You keep saying "finished game", and ideally, yes that's what we would be able to do, but Denis's whole argument has always been moving down the development cycle.

Dyack: Yep.

Lusty: And you keep saying "finished product" and showing it when it's the right time to show it like Denis said is very different than a finished game.

NWR: Well he keeps comparing it to the movie industry, and in the movie industry, movies are absolutely not shown to the press until they are finished.

Dyack: I didn't say absolutely, I said most of the time. But yeah, generally that's the case. Yes, correct.

NWR: So that is what you would like for the game industry, for the game to be finished before it is shown. That's what you're saying. I mean am I just misunderstanding that?

Dyack: No, you are a little bit. I guess as a developer I want everything to be perfect and I never want to show it until it's done. Ever.

NWR: Right.

Dyack: Under any circumstances. However, that might not be the best time for the product. So marketing and sales and PR all have to get together and say "if we're going to meet all these deadlines and get people excited and do all these things, we need to show it at a time when it looks good." It might not be finished but it's still showable.

NWR: Okay.

Dyack: And a fixed date has nothing to do with the development cycle and is problematic for that.