Denis Dyack interview

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As the public figurehead for Too Human, Denis Dyack has never been short of something to say.

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Dyack is a man with ideas and even if you don't necessarily agree with what he says, he has such conviction and belief in his own thoughts that you can't help but be impressed. That conviction spreads to Too Human, a game that regardless of opinion undoubtedly has its own unique identity.

Speaking to OXM at Too Human's UK launch press event in London, here's what Dyack had to say about Too Human...

How did the idea for Too Human come about?
The original inception of the game was to create a game that commented on the effects of technology of society and culture. So we wanted to create a game where you had the ability to upgrade yourself cybernetically and where people were telling you that you were too human and you needed to do this to survive but at the same time, knowing that there's not necessarily all these positive effects. So just like with some technologies, people always see the positives and don't always see the negatives, we want people thinking about both the positive and the negative. So that was the core concept.

So you're highlighting the negatives of technology as well as the positives?
Yeah. That's going to come out in the trilogy and it's very, very subtle. We wanted to create a game that made commentary on that, not to make any judgements necessarily. For example, there are a lot of things in today's society that just don't make any sense. There are all kinds of examples. Today, I seem to be focusing on the automobile.

When the automobile was first marketed to men, those were the people buying them, they were marketed from the perspective of wash your car everyday, treat it better than your girlfriend or your wife... and people did! And it's a machine! And it's non sentient. People were paying more attention to their cars than they were their spouses and that was the way it was marketed, people bought into that. You have to stand back and say, is that a good thing? Should we be doing that? Obviously that's not the case anymore, that kind of marketing trend died out but for many years, the infatuation with the automobile was out of control.

I really think that when we make videogames, we have to make commentaries beyond just allowing people to escape and have fun. We should make commentaries on society coming to a catharsis, so we can think about what it means in our everyday lives. So that's why we created Too Human, for people to think about these things. That's why we started off with a Nietzsche quote "when you fight monsters, you have to be careful you don't become one yourself." These are the kind of things we want people to think about when they're playing Too Human.

It's interesting you say that because the first thing I thought when you mentioned negatives of technology is that you're doing this within a computer game. How do you go about doing without insulting the audience because a computer game is technology and one that already carries a negative reputation within certain sections of the media.
Well, I think they have a negative reputation because it's the newest form of media. In a sense, it's the whole dichotomy of we wouldn't be where we are today without technology and we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't for technology. So as an example, people think that technology general saves them time and it makes you more productive. It does make you more productive but it certainly doesn't save you time.

It takes more of your time. With my Blackberry for example, I can get emails 24/7, pretty much all over the world. Twenty years ago, I didn't even have email. Emails 25 years ago didn't even exist. Maybe that's not far enough back, say 50 years ago, there certainly wasn't any email. Now we can communicate with all these new means, but is that necessarily better for us? It just takes more of our time. The idea of an eight hour work day or the forty hour work week, it's a complete myth. Technology has changed all that for us.

You and I can communicate via thousands of miles now where back 2000 years ago, the only way we could communicate in any reciprocal way was to talk to each other. Society is changing massively because of technology and the only way we can make this commentary is through this new form of media and videogames. I guess, if you look at Marshall McLuhan, 'if the media is the message, don't we really need to understand the media?'

The only way to do that is to talk about it. We think videogames is the eighth artform. Film was coined the seventh artform. By adding gameplay, this new interactivity, and melding all the previous artforms of cinema and art and sculpture and dance and music... all of these things together entertain people on a higher plateau, I think. It's the only way we can do it.

So in some sense, the fact that it's very ironic that we're doing it through the latest type of technology enforces that the media is the message, because that's the best way that I think we can communicate it. If that makes any sense.

Given all you've said, how do you want Too Human to be remembered - as a great videogame or for its message?
[pause] Probably for its message. Probably. But I'm not sure.

Do you think that's its priority?
Er... no. I don't know. You're asking questions... I've never been asked that question before. From the standpoint of what do we do as entertainers... the reason I'm an entertainer is that if I can make positive commentary or contribute to society in a positive way, then that's the ultimate goal.

Whether we're be remembered as a videogame, as a state of mind or whether Too Human is a reflection of myself or the team or society in general, those are all positive things. So I guess given the choice between the higher plateau of the medium as the message, we would probably always go in that way. But we hope it's also received as a great videogame that people hopefully like to play.

The reason I ask is it's unusual for developers to immediately talk about the message of the game itself. Usually they talk mechanics, how the game works, how it differs, but you're really focused on the message. Has that been the priority since day one?
Yeah. I think that's the signature of Silicon Knights. I can certainly talk about the technology and the differences in gameplay and the hybrid approaches we've taken with the automated camera and all these things. But it's all meant to... with our engagement through combining all the different artforms into something that becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

In the end, we're trying to entertain. We're trying to give people a positive experience. I really wish other developers would focus on it but our industry is in its infancy. As technology becomes less important and the medium and the story-telling becomes more dominant, as it probably will, then more of these messages will come out. We'll see that more and more as time goes on. You're starting to see more of these story-based games now, which is fantastic. Hopefully, other designers will aspire to that as well.

Over the last few years, there's been a debate over whether videogames are an artform. I think that's a moot debate. Definitely, videogames are an artform. I think the highest level of artform right now. Maybe 10 or 15 years from now, there will be a newer form of art, whatever. I think interactive entertainment is something that we really need to study and I think it's something that can really positively contribute to society.

Too Human has been in development for a while. Is the game today the same game you envisaged when work started on it? I'm guessing as technology has changed, your ambitions have changed to match that.
Well, a big myth out there is that we've been developing Too Human for over 10 years. That's not true. We really started work on Too Human after we finished Metal Gear Solid.

Too Human has changed a ton. When we were working on it on PlayStation One, it had nothing to do with... [pause] when we partnered up with Microsoft, it became a collaboration. We looked at Xbox Live as a foundation and a pillar. What kind of game we could make with that. We took all the themes of technology with society, incorporated where we wanted to go in the future with all we had learned with our past games, Eternal Darkness, Legacy of Kain, Metal Gear Solid, fused it all into one and then partnered with Microsoft and collaborated.

That's what Too Human is today, something very, very different than what it would have been or that we possibly could have made 10 years ago or 12 years ago.

There was a demo for Too Human on Xbox Live not so long ago... did you look at the feedback and respond to it? What do you do? How do you address that type of feedback?
You can't. From a standpoint, we can address it in the future with downloadable content and in the sequels. But the feedback from the demo... we pretty much gold and mastered around the same time as the demo came out.

But one of the interesting things... it's funny because you look at it... I think we took for granted how innovative the game was. First of all, the demo got a tremendous amount of attention. We've had over a million downloads, the reception has been by and large extremely positive.

But what we're also seeing is for the people who don't like it, generally just don't get it. And it's because we've created something so innovative and different. It's ironic, it just shows that human nature of if you don't understand something, you immediately attack it. It's pretty interesting in that regard.

Once people understand it, you can almost see it click with them. Once they stop trying to fight the camera. As soon as you hear someone say the controls are really simple or the gameplay is not very deep, that's absolutely not true. Too Human is extremely, deceptively deep. Once that stuff clicks, those are the people that are going round telling ten other friends. I guess the word of mouth for Too Human is really going to carry it to ground now.

That's why we released a demo. We thought that was really our only chance. It was so different of a game but how different became clear with the demo. But the reception has been so positive and the interest has been so high, that we're feeling really good about where the game is trending towards.

Did you expect the interest to be so high? Wasn't it one of the most downloaded demos on Live?
I don't know about the most overall but it's certainly doing extremely well. I think it's the most action game downloaded... within a month, less than a month, to have over a million downloads is very unprecedented and extremely good. I don't know how many total downloads we'll get for the demo but if that's a direct indicator of what sales are going to be like, then I think Too Human is trending towards something that's really, really positive, which we're really excited about.

Were you expecting that though?
No. No. I... no. I don't know what we were expecting but that pretty much blew all our expectations out of the water. It's done a lot better than I think anyone thought we were going to do, so that's good.

Finally, how do you think Too Human will be received?
Well, if the demo is any indication, pretty positively. It's very different. How do you judge... when you do something new, it's pretty hard to judge how it's going to be received. It's going to be received as something that's never been done before. That's my opinion. I don't know. The demo has been downloaded a lot and it's a game I like to play, and I think gamers like to play it as well.

So the game we have now, is that the game you originally set out to make all those years ago?
Yeah, it pretty much is. Almost exactly. Silicon Knights is really good at that. We had a original design document and the only thing we missed is the date and the engine. We had to rewrite the engine. Beyond those two things, it's exactly the game we set out to make from day one.

Ryan King