About
Our Company Focus
Silicon Knights® is a guild of talented individuals dedicated to creating groundbreaking video games. We believe that our culture has only begun to explore the potential of video games, which will evolve into the dominant art form of the 21st century. We want to ride that shock wave, creating innovative products that stand out in an outstanding new industry. Like a true guild, we are completely self-sustaining, creating 100 percent of the content of our games. We have developed a reputation for creating superior original content through strong educational backgrounds, professional artists, and unique game designs.
Our aim is to completely engage and immerse gamers by combining the very best elements of technology, art, audio, game play, and story. For each game, we blend these elements until the result becomes greater than the sum of its parts. We seek to create a compelling and detailed world within which the game player can become absorbed into a seamless and compelling experience.
A Brief History
Silicon Knights® was incorporated in July, 1992. Our first games were real-time strategy/action hybrids for the PC, Amiga and Atari. During the final stages of development of our last PC game, Dark Legions™ (1994), we found our calling writing stories and the creation of backgrounds for characters.
Since then, we have focused on developing new ways to make non-linear content in games. This resulted in our first action adventure game, Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain™ (1996) for the Sony PlayStation. In 2000, Silicon Knights® became an exclusive second party developer for Nintendo during which time we created the critically acclaimed, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem™ (2002). Later with Nintendo and Konami, Silicon Knights® created Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes™ (2004).
Most recently, Silicon Knights® released Too Human™ with Microsoft on the Xbox 360.
Our People
Currently, over 120 talented people work together at Silicon Knights®. All of our programmers have computer science degrees. All of our artists/animators either have had extensive experience in the film and/or animation industries or are graduates of institutions known for excellent art programs. As our numbers grow, we continue to develop close ties with academia and research, allowing everyone to continue personal growth and to explore areas of interest within gaming.
Our Philosophy
Silicon Knights® operates as a guild, an organization of individuals working together toward common goals. Guilds share internal resources collectively but also guard inside knowledge against the outside world.
"What they used to do in guilds was teach about things that nobody else knew how to create. And they also did things differently than anybody else out there. It was a very open environment with knowledge inside the guild, but that knowledge could never be let outside." - Denis Dyack, President of Silicon Knights®
Previous experience in the games industry is not necessarily required when we look for new people. We primarily target talent. This may or may not make sense until you look at it from the guild perspective. A guild would bring in an individual and teach and train him or her in a particular craft, so that he or she can function optimally in the guild's environment.
Another interesting point about the functioning of a guild is the level of trust, loyalty, and teamwork. A guild works best when you have trust in those around you to carry out tasks and when you show loyalty by performing your best at all times. A guild can only be successful if every member works together and performs as a team to accomplish the goals of the guild.
engagement theory
Silicon Knights believes that video games are the 8th art and that the goal of every game is to engage and immerse the players into our games through the use of artwork, audio, game play, story and technology. By combining these elements we hope to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. We call this engagement theory.