Matthew Karch is the CEO of Saber Interactive, the developers behind TimeShift, dared to tell his side of the story after catching some flack during a GDC 2008 discussion panel with Silicon Knights' Denis Dyack. The debate started after Karch rejected the idea that games are evolving as an art form and story will take over gameplay as the most important aspect.
TimeShift was in some respects a disaster in the making. It was redone so many times. It was passed from publisher to publisher. The story was rewritten three times. We had a challenging story in TimeShift, because the writer wasn't sitting with us. He wasn't on staff, in our office, sitting with the team and making sure that the story was married to the gameplay. I do believe that the press criticized us overly harshly for the story because we're a new franchise, and it's much harder with a new IP to get a footing. You don't get the luxury of an established brand. Look at Call of Duty 4 — it's a great game, but do you really care about the story? I didn't. No one else did, but it didn't matter.I cared about the story in Call of Duty 4, and I know others have as well, but this is besides the point. The full interview does tell Karch's side of the tale. You can see the beginning of this debate on the art of story telling in games from the GDC panel discussion and from a subsequent interview with SK's Denis Dyack.