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Too Human Meets Mediocre Reviews
Earlier this week, the long anticipated action-adventure game, Too Human, was finally released for the Xbox 360. After being in various stages of development for about a decade, the game made its US debut to overall lackluster marks. Gamespot weighed in with a 5.5/10, while IGN gave it a slightly more favorable 7.8. Developer Denis Dyack from Silicon Knights defended the game, saying players didn't yet "get it," and that it was "so innovative that we have put some people off." The game's reception in Japan has been similar.
Just because you have the skills to develop a game, does not mean you know how to develop a gaming experience.
There are developers that know how to develop entertaining gaming experience, and their are dev's that just know how to make games without a decent ability to judge whether or not what they are developing is exciting, interesting and entertaining and doesn't suck.
This is a big problem in the industry as far as I'm concerned, there is just too many clueless people (pub's and developers) about how to build entertainment. I think the biggest problem is still the technology. There is so much time and money consuming technical engineering that it overtakes the money and time needed to develop the entertainment aspect. Too much on art and engines, not enough on developing interesting things and connecting them with skill.
Striking a balance is hard, I agree, but that's the business you're really in: Entertainment. Game developers have to be good at knowing entertainment as well as engineering. It's hard, no doubt... and sometimes you just want to keep trying just doing your own thing (which is also valid) but if you want to do your own thing, you got to go back to small time games and understand what aspects of both the art, and the interaction of the objects, makes the game. Some indie game developers know this, they know what is wrong with the industry.