Silicon Knights Reportedly Lays Off Dozens of Employees

Too Human might have been alright if it wasn't for the fucking
constant dying & the fucking 20 second delay after every death.
It's the only game I can recall in recent memory where I wanted
to throw the controller against the wall.  And I yelled & cursed at
my screen many times during game play.
 
I guess we will not see a Too Human 2 or 3.  Perhaps they can 
sell the franchise to somebody that knows how to make games.

Give me Eternal Darkness II.

Its a hard business. The good ol' knights did some good things with cinematic gaming, thats for sure

@SHARKS_ZA said:

@Shadow: You are not the only one :)

The game was not perfect, but I really enjoyed it. I kinda felt that everybody jumped on the "Hate Too Human" bandwagon.

This. I ended up putting a dumb amount of time into that game, and having a blast. It felt like people wanted to hate Too Human before they even played it, based solely on the way everything played out leading up to it's release. The slightest hint of a flaw, and people jumped all over it.

On it's own, separate from all that internet BS, I think it's a fun little game... an interesting take on a Diablo-style loot whore game at the very least. Sure, it's got problems, but it's nowhere near the scapegoat for terrible games that it's become now.

I've always felt that a sequel would probably end up being fantastic, giving them a chance to refine the controls an interface.

@jakob187:

Yea, I was thinking the same thing, LoK is what they're primarily known for.

Anyway, Eternal Darkness II is so happening...

http://www.giantbomb.com/wii-u/60-139/hope-remains-for-eternal-darkness-ii/35-522412/#3

Shitty! I live near Silicon Knights and I know more than a few individuals who are likely to be axed.

They may not have put out anything great in a while but its always sad to see more artists out of work.

I will always be grateful for The Twin Snakes. That was the best thing to happen to my Gamecube collection, ever!

Having been part of a recent layoff with the game industry I hope that they bounce back soon. Maybe they can follow suit as Twisted Pixel & put out a few quicker games on XBLA/PSN for things like the Soul Reaver/Kain franchise or just making a HD (or something close) for Eternal Darkness.

@patrickklepek:

Whatever happens, I hope Dennis Dyack can return to being an outspoken creative in the industry. I felt he had a real-ness to him of a similar tone to David Jaffe. Putting aside the problems of Too Human, I liked the passion he brought to the table when speaking about the game. On the '1up Yours' podcast many years ago, he was invited to talk about (and plug) his new game Too Human. Instead he took the time to talk about how the internet is changing how humans interact. He was especially concerned about the lack of reciprocity in online conversations due to their anonymity. He cited several books and even related it all back to Too Human [in a round-about way]. It was all very interesting but most of all I loved how genuine he was. I was glad to have the opportunity to listen to him when Too Human was upon release, and so today I miss his presence.

@pepsimaxofborg said:

How the sort of mighty have fallen.. well considering that one spooky game from years back, that was kinda good right? It's sad to hear about people being fired but with the crap they've been slinging at gamers the last 10 years it's to be expected.

Maybe they can resurrect Double Fine style? Releasing smaller, downloadable titles? They obviously have some neat little ideas that might fit that format.

Several of the premier third party Gamecube developers fizzled out this generation.

Factor Five, Silicon Knights, Free radical Design...

@squidracerX said:

@Tru3_Blu3 said:

Profit and currency are destroying and regulating human imagination and art.

Actually shitty games like X-Men Destiny are. And I don't think it was a rush job, or whatever other excuse Dennis or his supporters will throw out there. I think the game actually had a lot of potential (I platinum trophied it so i have played the WHOLE thing), and had a lot of different things going on, just none of them came out very good. (Well voice acting was good but the character models in cut scenes moved and looked like this was a juvenile animation team). Ambitions too big for their britches so everything suffered. Poor boss fights, too many characters and powers etc so that they spread themselves too thin. They set their sites on too lofty a goal and they were not able to reach that and so the whole game suffered. Being a good studio is in large part knowing your own limitations and working within them, and this game was very close to being good, but it failed. They made excuses on why Too Human got poor acclaim, but X-Men now shows they might just not be a great studio. Sad to see loss of jobs, but the cream will float to the top and the good parts of the team will get hired else where i hope.

I'm NOTt a Dyack supporter. I thought he made an utter fool of himself over Too Human. And it doesn't matter if you think X-men Destiny was a rush job or not. It still was. Activision hired SK to make a rushed game to hold on to their Marvel and X-men rights which will lapse if they don't act on them and make a game. There was no lofty goal in the damned game at all! It's an orb collecting arena beat-em up with skill points, essentially just a really bad God of War/Onimusha type game with easy token platforming to punctuate the fights. It has three characters who have almost the exact same story excpet for the very beginning scenes. It has no real decisions except which power set you chose, which power-up items you equip, and how you spend your orbs or which mission goals you follow. These only effect these have on the game in how you look and what combos you have.

It is a fairly ugly game where mouths don't move when people talk. It has a few types of enemies that attack in hordes. It is easy as pie. It has a minimal plot and bland dialog between cameo characters and an occasional get more kills than wolverine race.. It is a cheap quickie project that was made like a budget game and had a full $60 price tag. It is less than 5 hours long.

The game was NOT close to being good. It should have been $30 or less. Like Spider-man: Edge of time it was a poor game rapidly made with little effort or ambition behind it. It was a placeholder to keep a license in effect. It was done on the cheap. I doubt Bungie or Naughty Dog could have done much with such a limited game design and restricted resouces. This is like that Terminator: Salvation game that Grin made before they went under. This was a crap factory project. But like I said Denis kept his people working longer than they would have if they had turned this project down. That doesn't make Too Human good, or his fight with GAF or his suit against Epic any less embarrassing. But give it to him at least that he found a year's worth of work for his employees for a while when things were looking grim and it's a shame that he couldn't find them more. In times like these crap work is better than no work at all.

How the sort of mighty have fallen.. well considering that one spooky game from years back, that was kinda good right? It's sad to hear about people being fired but with the crap they've been slinging at gamers the last 10 years it's to be expected.

Maybe they can resurrect Double Fine style? Releasing smaller, downloadable titles? They obviously have some neat little ideas that might fit that format.

@Wikitoups said:

@Vonocourt

Bummer to hear any kind of mass layoffs. Though I wonder if this means the Canadian game industry is effectively dead now, since Dyack believed it hinged on Silicon Knights success.

Let's see:

2 ea studios in vancouver and montreal

3 ubisoft studios (montreal,north quebec and toronto)

A thq studio in montreal

Rockstar vancouver and toronto

Eidos montreal

A microsoft game studio in vancouver

I think 2 other ocean studios in east coast canada

And some smaller indie studios in toronto and montreal (eg cappy in toronto and trapdoor in montreal)

That's all I can remember right now but I think we are all right :p

Edit: After reading some of the posts I totally forgot about Bioware in calgary and Hothead in Vancouver!

completely right

don't forget the company "glitch"....because Keita Takahashi works there. IN CANADA. He made Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy! That guy alone is enough to show that Canada has talented game devs living in the country. even though hes japanese and only recently moved to canada lol

Eternal Darkness was sooo good at the time. I'd love to see a new one. But Too Human was a piece of shit, in fact it's THE shittiest "AAA" title I've ever had the misfortune to play, with its terrible control, awful animation, horrendous camera, boring story, forgettable characters and too long un-skippable resurrection animation. In other words, that's what they get for shitting on their fans. Hell, I got laid off from my job thanks to the housing market and sub prime loan rates through no fault of my own, whereas SK just made one "Too" many shitty ass games, so yea.

More Lovecraft.

@MrKlorox said:

This studio is still open? How is that possible? Many greater studios have fallen already.

Taxpayer funding keeps it open. They got 3 mil a couple months back to increase staff. http://www.shacknews.com/article/69303/silicon-knights-gets-canadian-government-funds

Shame. I liked (the idea behind) Too Human a whole lot.

@Tru3_Blu3 said:

Profit and currency are destroying and regulating human imagination and art.

Actually shitty games like X-Men Destiny are. And I don't think it was a rush job, or whatever other excuse Dennis or his supporters will throw out there. I think the game actually had a lot of potential (I platinum trophied it so i have played the WHOLE thing), and had a lot of different things going on, just none of them came out very good. (Well voice acting was good but the character models in cut scenes moved and looked like this was a juvenile animation team). Ambitions too big for their britches so everything suffered. Poor boss fights, too many characters and powers etc so that they spread themselves too thin. They set their sites on too lofty a goal and they were not able to reach that and so the whole game suffered. Being a good studio is in large part knowing your own limitations and working within them, and this game was very close to being good, but it failed. They made excuses on why Too Human got poor acclaim, but X-Men now shows they might just not be a great studio. Sad to see loss of jobs, but the cream will float to the top and the good parts of the team will get hired else where i hope.

Anybody else remember Dyack's loony 1up yours interview? The one where he claimed NeoGaf to be a non-profit entity that wasn't performing enough socially conscious project, and so they should be shut down?

I haven't liked a single game by this studio, so whatever. Twin Snakes was kind of a bad remake, Eternal Darkness didn't intrigue me at all, and Too Human was pretty trash. I've never played Legacy of Kain so I can't speak for that, but I can't imagine a studio that makes as few games (and no good games) like Silicon Knights can be making any money.

If you guys agree to remake Blood Omen as a downloadable title, i'll let you have your employees back. BECAUSE I AM THE ONE WITH POWERRRRR.

@Wikitoups:

Don't forget Digital Extremes in London, Ontario.

Eternal Darkness belongs in a museum. Since then I honestly can't say any of their titles have stood out so it's no surprise they are fading away.

Eternal Darkness sequel seems unlikely now. I don't see it coming out soon even on next-gen consoles.

so what's the status of their lawsuit against Epic, for fucking them on the Unreal Engine?

Isn't the whole point of that suit that Too Human suffered bad early press, and then was delayed while they wrote their own engine? If the studio is crumbling, wouldn't this be relevant?

(personally, I loved Too Human, and doubt all these people talking shit about it actually played it through.)

(However, I didn't see any reason to buy the recent xmen doody game... because everyone talked shit about it. hmmf.... but in a much more consistent way).

This is the best way to make good games.

@Palaeomerus: Well, that's an interesting story. If that's the case, I hope he told his employees, "Look, this kind of job doesn't get handed down to studios with a future, so you'd better update your resumes."

@Veektarius: "You don't put out shit like that X-man game and expect to keep your job."

SK was set up to fail. Not intentionally exactly. Activision wasn't TRYING to sabotage them. But the whole IDEA was bad. Activision wanted a cheap ass Marvel game for the early fall, cranked out fast, to be sold at full price alongside Spider-Man: Edge of Time. That's something that nobody wants but Activision who needed keep some Marvel licenses active by producing a certain number of products with that license. Well, the best way to do that when you don't have a big project ready to go is to put out a couple of minimal effort projects with a popular name that fans of that name will at least TRY and you make sure that those titles cost very little. You take NO chances. You set a minimalist combo beat-em up action design with few enemy types and assign a very tight time frame. Then you put out whatever hell the runs, test and polish it for a month and buy a few magazine ads and boom, you are done.

Sure you potentially piss off the license granter because you risk hurting the value of their brand but if you hold onto the license you can always make a good game later, possibly while a superhero movie is out to drive sales.

No doubt resources and time were very limited. This kind of job is the game development equivalent of doing odd jobs like cleaning out rain gutters when there is no carpentry/masonry/roofing/plumbing work. You have to grit your teeth and try to make the best of it and you just hope it will get you by until something better comes along.

Well, something better didn't come along. Often it does not. But at least by sacrificing his pride and accepting this crap-job Dyack kept his people working for maybe a year and half longer than they would have worked WITHOUT IT. I respect him for that. Doing a cynical cash grab project so Activision can hold onto a license, that was a bad idea to greenlight from the beginning, is a lesser evil compared to shutting down and letting everyone go over a year ago.

@Vonocourt

Bummer to hear any kind of mass layoffs. Though I wonder if this means the Canadian game industry is effectively dead now, since Dyack believed it hinged on Silicon Knights success.

Let's see:

2 ea studios in vancouver and montreal

3 ubisoft studios (montreal,north quebec and toronto)

A thq studio in montreal

Rockstar vancouver and toronto

Eidos montreal

A microsoft game studio in vancouver

I think 2 other ocean studios in east coast canada

And some smaller indie studios in toronto and montreal (eg cappy in toronto and trapdoor in montreal)

That's all I can remember right now but I think we are all right :p

Edit: After reading some of the posts I totally forgot about Bioware in calgary and Hothead in Vancouver!

I wish all those affected all the best. This is always hard topic to read about, because layoffs no matter what industry can be a very painful thing for the individuals affected and their families.

They should make an Eternal Darkness sequel.

These guys need to get right sized and get some profitable projects under their belt. Maybe a killer XBLA project? Double Fine has found a great footing with regular small games and packs.

Also, Destiny was terrible.

You don't put out shit like that X-man game and expect to keep your job.

Anyone hating on Too Human, probably hasn't played Too Human. No its not the greatest game in the world. but its still a decent (dare I say...fun?) game. I had a great time rocking it with a buddy of mine for a few weeks.

I've always said, if they fix some of the middling issues that were present for the sequel, they would probably have a decent hit on their hands.

It always sucks to hear about someone getting laid-off, but I would bet most of those people will find work sooner than later.

WAAA LAYOFFS WAAA! Can't keep everyone on the payroll if you're hemorrhaging money. Business 101

It doesn't augur well for them if Dyack's keeping mum.

@Tru3_Blu3 said:

@Rabbykayn said:

@Tru3_Blu3: Come on now.. you can't run a business if it's losing money.

Fuck business.

I'm not getting into this discussion about the evils of big business..but this is an extremely stupid statement. Fuck business? without business we have no video games moron.

I honestly forgot Silicon Knights was still around. It's unfortunate that their recent development record does them such a disservice, but at the end of the day they are in control of the quality of their games. Survival of the fittest seems to be taking effect.

A shame for the employees, that said you make one to many bad games and your asking for cut backs.

Never nice to hear of people losing their jobs :( Best wishes for swift re-employment to all those effected!

It was bound to happen folks.

I liked Eternal Darkness, and it sucks to hear people lose their job, but after X-Men: Destiny? I wonder if this can be spun around to another anti-Bobby Kotick thing.

When you play fast and loose with who you hire, who you sign with and what you make, this kind of stuff happens.

While I feel bad for the people with legitimate talent who just lost their job, I'm sure more than a few of the displaced ex-employees didn't really pull their weight anyway. Granted, all the trouble they've been through could be less about lazy workers and more about bad management, but I digress. Someone wasn't doing their job very well, and that's why that X-Men game exists.

I bet they are screaming "This isn't really happening!" like the characters in Eternal Darkness when they suffered a sanity effect.

It was such an awesome game. After a while I started playing with my sanity meter low just so I could experience all the cool stuff. The fake "Your gamecube disc is broken" was a good one, but the most scary one was the fake deletion of the save file when you tried to save.

@Shadow: You are not the only one :)

The game was not perfect, but I really enjoyed it. I kinda felt that everybody jumped on the "Hate Too Human" bandwagon.

Sincerely hope all these folks land on their feet somewhere. If any former knights are reading this, don't break bad, guys. :P

As someone with 150 hours put into a single Too Human character (yeah), this makes me kind of sad

God damn it you can't disband Silicon Knights until they make the next two Eternal Darkness games!

You can't!