The Creators
Some Brief Philosophies
Silicon Knights has been creating original content for 5 years. Kain is our most ambitious product to date and we are very proud of it. We believe that it is time that companies start delivering content over technology. It is our view that we create Entertainment. In fact, it is non-linear content that we are creating and that is a difficult thing. To do this, if we are creating entertainment we should concentrate on content, not the latest and greatest engine, simply because if you have the best engine that does not give you the best game.
Did you ever wonder: If 8-bit brought us game-play, the 16-bit systems brought more colours and the 32-bit brought us 3D, what will the 64-bit & 128-bit systems bring us? 4D? Virtual Reality? Internet Games? We don't think so. We believe that technology will only get you so far and that engagement is what makes a game great, not technology. Imagine a future where technology is so fast that you cannot tell the difference in speed between machines, where there are no serious memory limitations. What will make the best games then? Not technology but content. We believe that we have started to prove this with Kain. It is a 2D game on a 32-bit system. You be the judge.
Credit - Denis' Brief Editorial
Did you ever wonder why some larger companies sell some really great games and later sell some really bad ones? We believe that there are several complicated reasons for this but there are two major ones that contribute to these problems. The first is that creating games is a very difficult process. The second is that generally larger companies do not create all the products. Often external developers like Silicon Knights create the games. There is a problem in our industry. The problem is that the majority of the developers of products do not get credit for their creations. Lets make an analogy to the book industry: if Kain was a book (which is a linear form of entertainment), we would be known as the authors. However, we believe that this is not always the perception with the game industry. Perhaps our industry has not matured yet. We believe that as the book industry matured to the point where the readers began to look for the authors when buying books, so will the game industry mature so that gamers will look for the developers (or authors) of games. Make no mistake, we created Kain. The game industry is changing in many ways, this is just one of the ways in which it will change. We hail all of the publishers who are starting to give credit to the developers because in the end we all win.
If you have any comments about our philisophy, or about Denis' editorial, please feel free to mail us at <old email address removed>.