"Look at Call Of Duty. How many copies does it sell every year? I'm fine with that. It's cool. I'm just saying that I'm not happy with an industry that is entirely limited to experiences where all you are doing is shooting. That's my problem. There is much more we can do with interactivity than just killing people."
David Cage has just sold two million copies of one of his games for the first time in his career. Heavy Rain has won him and his colleagues at Quantic Dream numerous weighty accolades, including three coveted BAFTA Video Game Awards. And Cage's controversial GDC session - in which he called out swathes of games developers for creating titles "for teenagers" - stole the show in San Francisco last month.
His opinion that video games creators are restricted by a depressingly limited template of ideas hasn't been quietened by Heavy Rain's runaway success - but rather vindicated and inspired.
"Would you go and see a movie which just shows shooting for 90 minutes?" the French game director asks CVG. "That appeals very much to my son, who is 10 years old. He wants to explore the world, but also fears it. Being in a video game where he can jump very far, have cool guns and shoot at people without getting hurt is something he feels very good about. It gives him exaggerated confidence, control. But as an adult, it doesn't work. When you think of non-gamers, very few people have an interest in that."
It would be all-too-easy to tie Cage's nationality into his noisy clamouring for revolution - it's in the blood, after all. But speak to him for five minutes about his lofty career goals, and it becomes clear that the 41-year-old's mission to personally improve emotional relevancy and sophisticated storytelling in video games seems to have far more to do with adoration for the medium - alongside, to be frank, individual legacy - than a mere penchant for upsetting the apple cart.
Furthermore, Cage shows himself to be intensely self-aware, realising that his forthright opinions on the games industry have probably won him more enemies than friends - particularly in that orthodoxy-come-lynching-ground, the angry forum thread. He takes it on the chin, but baulks at accusations of pretentiousness and arrogance.
"If what I was saying was totally agreed by everybody, then my life would be very boring," he says smirking, in a fleeting moment of bravado - before his smile transforms into nasal-voiced agitation.
"Look, I'm not a programmer, I'm not a graphic artist - I come from an outside world. I approach video games the same way I approach theatre, filmmaking, poetry or painting. I wish more people would take that point of view. It would help the industry to move on. I don't just say these things to annoy, or to try and sound cleverer than anyone else."
Comments
11 comments so far...
TykerD3 on 7 Apr '11 said:
Im 32. Im sick of shooters. Mindelss Shooting, following a linear route. Same crap reyclyed each year.
I want deep involved games, branching storylines, intelligently written, game changes considerably depedning on your actions. Adult storylines. Games that are slow paced and makes you think. Will LA Noire tick these boxes, i have heard it is linear. I hope im wrong.
gmcb007 on 7 Apr '11 said:
David cage reminds me of jamie Oliver. While hes determined to make kids eat healthly in schools. Its David's mission to make all games have more feelings
solamon77 on 7 Apr '11 said:
What? Where did this come from? I don't think I once considered his nationality.
I fully agree that Cage has created a new template for games and I think it needs to be aggressively pursued. I like to think of Heavy Rain as in the same vein as the old Point-and-Click adventure games or even text adventure games of yesteryear. These were games that weren't sold on how flashy they were. The main people buying and playing them were relatively educated and generally older than teenage. Furthermore, the people playing P&C adventure games weren't predominately men (or boys). Somewhere along the way video games picked up a stigma that they are only for boys even though that wasn't true back in the day and certainly isn't true now. Games like Heavy Rain feel almost like they are returning to one of gaming's deep roots, but modernizing them for today's players. I love a good shooter, but if I could get some more games like Heavy Rain I'd be very happy.
toaboa on 7 Apr '11 said:
Had this crazy experience the other day at the airport, shipping my girlfriend off to a conference.
A very small todler started running towards the door out of the main hall with the mother sprinting after furiously shouting. I turned to my GF, said "hey honey, that's just like the mall scene from Heavy Rain". We both watched completely mesmerised, at the child was finally swept up in his mothers arms inches from a fast revolving swing-door to the outside road.
Pretty seldom, that games will leave so enduring images in my mind now a days; cudos to Cage and his vision for gaming with Heavy Rain, keep 'em coming!
humanhand on 7 Apr '11 said:
J A S O N !
runadumb on 7 Apr '11 said:
So am I narrow-minded in thinking Heavy Rain was a huge pile of s**t? A "game", and I use the term loosely, which failed in story, controls and playability?
It's narrow-minded of me too object to the limited system and god awful system in which I control my characters?
I completely agree that every game needn't be a shooter and new ways too play games can be exciting but Heavy Rain is at best 1 step forward and 10 steps backwards. I am so glad Ico was mentioned as it truly was something new and something beautiful. That is an engaging game which had little action but the action it did have was tense and exciting. You felt for the characters. It's a much better example of the industry moving forward than Dragons Lair v2.0
Funnily enough Bittech just did an article praising it last week as well. God damn hated Heavy Rain.
JOHNKARA on 7 Apr '11 said:
GOTTA LOVE DAVID CAGE. I WILL CONTINUE PURCHASING ALL GAMES DEVELOPED AND SUPPORTED BY THIS GENIUS. KEEP IT UP DAVE.
toaboa on 7 Apr '11 said:
It's not narrow minded at all -it's just what you took away from the game.
Actually from my point of view, I'm with on a lot the things you point out! It is incredible flawed, full of bugs, strange design choices all over the place, repetitious, uneven paced etc etc.
But, Heavy Rain still got to me - when I'd prepared dinner for the boy, gotten him a pill, found his teddy bear, tucked him in - and just before I was to leave, he turned to me and said ' it wasn't your fault Daddy'! before he went to sleep. From there on, I was hooked!
ianson on 7 Apr '11 said:
I appreciate what he his trying to do but, I really do believe he is missing the point. Take Heavy Rain, it actually removes a huge amount of Gameplay in order to emulate the film industry. What the industry should be doing is carving it's own path not removing its individuality so it can be shoe-horned into a movie stereotype. Movies find it hard to explore the inner workings of a character without becoming abstract or having voice overs etc. They haven't the ability of a novel where they can describe the inner space. Lets take an FPS.
The Darkness:
By robbing the player of camera control at key points you KNOW that Jackie is in love with his girlfriend. You get to care about her and feel his anguish at her fate. Good use of reflection to show his face at the key moment when he decides on suicide.
Modern Warfare:
By putting the player in the shoes of someone dying from a helicopter crash and offering lots of ways for the player to go you feel overwhelmed not really knowing what to do. This helps to highlight the helplessness of the character.
I think that people have bought into the bull that a good story == a hollywood story. Which angers me, Hollywood is the slow little brother to the novel. I am not denying that Movies have done incredible things and told stories that couldn't have been told otherwise.
Games need to do their own thing not copy movies... why is this article called revolutionary thinking when all Heavy Rain did was shoe horn hollywood tropes into a game??????
A great deal of film and novel narrative deals with seemingly everyday small actions that build to a bigger picture. In games these are gameplay factors. Walking left instead of right. But, players don't consider that narrative because they are in control of it. So lets abandon narrative in place of story and start adapting the way we design the games to create ways of modelling internal spaces as well as we model external ones. If we can begin to model characters as well as character models then we will make a break through (IMO).
KippDynamite on 8 Apr '11 said:
Well said, ianson - you've given me a lot to think about.
I, too, find it strange that many progressive game disigners think that copying movies is progress. Now, I loved Heavy Rain and even platinum'ed it, but it's not like I haven't played murder mystery games before. I think it was innovative, but not hugely. I think Kojima is a good example of someone who understands what makes games unique, and he exploits those things: the phycho mantis battle wouldn't have worked in a movie because games are interactive; games are a one-on-one experience between gamer and game, and so it was weird when the AI Colonel Cambell started talking to me and telling me to go to bed in MGS2; the interactivity of games made killing The Boss in MGS3 a memorable and extra-sad experience.
Stuff like the QTE actions in Heavy Rain, as well as motion control (wii, move, kinect) in general only approach a surface level of understanding that video games are interactive.
gypscanuck on 8 Apr '11 said:
Even Bulletstorm, though nothing really new, had a great clever story and gave me a reason to buy DLC BECAUSE of the story, and it was fun. If shooters can head down the road of more story like Mass Effect or Uncharted then I can see a bright future. Brothers in Arms:HH tried this emotional touch but it somewhat failed. ....