David Cage has had an interesting path into the gaming industry, which began in earnest with a desperate pitch to Eidos during the mid-90s when he labeled the company “a real rock and roll publisher.” He noted that the name Quantic Dream for his studio “was a play on the phrase ‘quantum physics’, which in itself is really interesting because the more you study it the more you can’t explain. So our name was a mixture of science and magic.”
His first two games were renamed Omikron: The Nomad Soul and Indigo Prophecy for the U.S., a decision he derides. When asked about the nomenclature of his games, Cage had a much wider reaching answer.
“The games I make don’t include a gun [Note: Cage's games do have guns, but they don't have aiming and shooting in the conventional sense – Ed.]. Very often, American marketing departments have a problem with this,” Cage explained to Develop. “They have this image of their market being gun-loving red-necks. It’s completely wrong. We had huge arguments with Atari in New York about Fahrenheit. We told them they were making a huge mistake not supporting the game – they will see the reviews and they will like what they see.”
“They should have put marketing dollars on the table, and I told them that, but they didn’t want to listen to us,” he continued. “When the reviews came in they were even better in the U.S. than they were in Europe, but by the time they realized, it was too late. Fahrenheit sold well in the U.S., we made money out of it, but it was a slice of the potential, because of this lack of trust.”
“The problem is that we are in a very conservative industry,” Cage lamented. “Each time you come to marketing departments with very simple concepts, like 'the hero has ten weapons and goes through twenty levels, and there’s a snow level and a jungle level and a sand level and a whatever level and it’s gonna be so great because I can display more explosions on screen than any other game and…' then they have it. The marketing departments go, 'oh that’s really interesting'.”
Cage says he has a deep passion for making games and that he is not in it for the money. He also admonished himself over the bombastic ending he felt he had to put into Indigo Prophecy and that mistake pushed him towards doing something more personal and down to earth for Heavy Rain.
“A developer once told me, being a hero in a videogame is about being a mass-murderer,” noted Cage. “I mean, how many people do you need to kill in a videogame to save the world and be the good guy? It’s absurd.”
Heavy Rain was a success for the company and he gave much of the credit to the press for hyping the game up. However, he observed, “But y’know, the success was there for Heavy Rain, but at the same time, look at the biggest games of today and it’s always the Call Of Dutys, the GTAs, it’s always the games where you have a gun. It’s always the sequels. Yes, people want something different, but not too different. And not too often.”
“I do wonder sometimes, is Heavy Rain good because I’m the first one to do it, or is it actually good?” asked Cage. “The movie industry has been doing its thing for a century. The challenge from their perspective is to create an original story, which – going back to your earlier question – is why movies often tell interesting and original stories.”
“Games don’t have this kind of challenge, but there is so much potential. No one has done a tragedy yet, no one has done a comedy, no one has done a musical,” noted Cage. “Nothing’s been made apart from prap-prap-prap shoot-shoot-shoot prap-prap-prap-prap-prap.”
The genres that comprise AAA gaming tend to be limited to a few select fields and Cage thinks that's limiting the audience. “When I talk to people at games conferences, I always hear someone say video games are mainstream. You know what, you’re not mainstream, you’re a niche. You’re a very small niche. You are nothing. Look at Farmville. Look at Wii Fit. They’re both closer to being mainstream,” he said. “Look at Avatar. Look at any movie. Look at any TV show on prime time. That’s mainstream. Something’s mainstream if my parents and grandparents understand what I’m referring to.”
“It’s a double-edged issue. Because nothing has been done in videogames, so any narrative-led idea you have is in a sense still pioneering. It’s horrible,” Cage added. “The first person to make an interactive comedy – one that’s actually good – will be the inventor of that genre.”
As for his next project, he was very vague save for confirming that it will be on the PS3. “Hopefully we’re building something exciting, something different. Hopefully it will build on the foundations of Heavy Rain, but go forward in a very, very, different way,” said Cage. “Now I want to show that what can be done with Heavy Rain can be done with completely different stories. I want to show what we’ve done isn’t one game, it’s a genre.”
