Silicon Knights’ Denis Dyack discussed the importance of story in making games in part one of an interview with 1UP’s wunderkind Philip Kollar.

Dyack founded Silicon Knights and is currently working on “Too Human.” He participated in a “Future of Story in Game Design” panel at the Game Developer’s Conference last month.

In the 1UP interview, Dyack adds to the issues raised at the panel, commenting on the future of story in specific genres of games, but the most interesting part of the discussion has to do with Dyack’s own studio.

Silicon Knights has a dedicated story, or content, department rather than a few writers. “It’s all based around this thing we call engagement theory, which is written like a formula: ‘engagement = story + technology + gameplay + artwork + audio.’” Each of those five components has its own director and department.

“We’re always evolving the content. Don’t think the content department does just story, either,” said Dyack, adding that the content team also works on in-game cinematography and on building tension through level design. “Whatever it takes to tell the story in the game, that group concentrates on, and they are busy from beginning to end just like all the other departments.”

Dyack is involving story in every aspect of game design for “Too Human.” I can’t wait to see what this approach yields when the game is finally released (still TBA).

Edit, March 18, 2008: Part two of the 1UP interview with Dyack is up. Dyack and Kollar talk about how games compare to other mediums. “When it comes to our fiction and the types of content we create, there’s no reason we can’t aspire to Shakespeare,” said Dyack.