I've been playing video games since I was 10 years old, and I think it's important to play games if you want to design them yourself.
— David Cage
With 'Heavy Rain,' we're creating something that changes many traditional game paradigms.
Technology is not going to be perceived by different classes of people in the same way.
I've always felt that 'game over' is a state of failure more for the game designer than from the player.
Getting the player emotionally involved is the holy grail. We try to make players forget they're playing a game. We want them to live the experience and suspend disbelief.
We called 'Heavy Rain' an interactive drama, for whatever that's worth.
'Fahrenheit' was a very difficult product to sell to publishers initially because no-one believed in storytelling or emotion.
There are many different ways of telling an interactive story, I think. I don't think there's a right one and a wrong one. There are different games telling different types of stories in different ways.
Whether you make an action blockbuster or a comedy or a drama, you've got the right camera and all the right technology to do it. In games, it's not the same yet, and I would like to see technologies dealing with cameras the way we do - dealing with bouquet, dealing with performance capture, with lighting - with all this stuff the way we do.
I'm not a frustrated movie director: I'm not making games because I can't make movies.
I hope that there will be more and more games that will have something to say and become a little bit more meaningful.
We believe that we can use interactivity to create meaningful games. Games with emotions and virtual actors telling you something. Resonating with you as a human being, giving you food for thought. We don't need to deliver messages or whatever, just need to create a moment in time that will leave an imprint in your mind.
Playing with light is something that is very important, especially when you want cinematography in your game.
The videogame industry is really weird because it's an industry that's highly conservative. People see the technology evolving every month, but when we talk about concepts, what people really want is for things to remain the same.
Anybody working on storytelling has my respect.
If you ask me what genre 'Beyond' is, it's really difficult for me to answer.
I'm not fighting for the right to do whatever we want without any restriction. We need to be careful of the fact that we also make games for kids and teenagers.
Game Over is a very frustrating game convention. In short, it means, 'If you were not good enough or did not play the game the way the designer intended you to play, you should play again until you do it right.' What kind of story could a writer tell where the characters could play the same scene ten times until the outcome is right?
When you try to create something different, there is always a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism, and I think this is fair.
When we talk about technology, often, we talk about the fact that it's going to be cool; it's going to do all these things for us. But at the same time, technology will deeply change our societies.
Technology must remain a tool. It's a great tool, but technology is the pen to write the book. It's not the book. If you have a great pen, maybe you'll write faster or it will look better, but at the end, you have something to say, or you don't.
When you want some subtle emotions, you need some subtle vehicles for emotion.
I don't think that photorealism is required to offer emotions. You can have very abstract characters and renderings offering the same type of emotions - look at Pixar movies: they're not photorealistic; they're stylised, and it doesn't prevent emotion from happening.
'Heavy Rain' is really 'Fahrenheit' with more experience, more maturity, and probably a better vision and understanding of how this type of experience can be created.
'Detroit' started based on a book called 'The Singularity is Near' by Ray Kurzweil, which is about this idea that one day there could be machines that are more intelligent than we are.
Quantic Dream is a very special company in the sense that we do a lot of things that wouldn't make any sense in any other company.
When I started crediting myself as writer and director, I saw that as a political act.
I wish that there were more games having the courage to talk about more subversive topics. Talking about politics, sexuality, human relationships.
What we believe at Quantic Dream is that there is a space for adult games: meaningful experiences for a mature audience.
I never write with constraints, which I don't know if it is a good thing or a bad thing.
'Heavy Rain' responded to a period of my life, things I strongly believed in, things I wanted to suggest or experiment with. I'm really happy with the overall feedback; the reception was a success.
I try not to do traditional games.
I often say that buying 'Heavy Rain' is a political act.
Freedom comes with responsibility.
I don't pretend that 'Heavy Rain' will be a revolution, and I don't know if people will love it or hate it. All I can say is that it is definitely going to be different.
We believe that games are a legitimate medium, as legitimate as literature, to talk about very dark and serious things.
When you really love someone, you try to tell the truth.
Cinema became what it is today when technology allowed movie directors and actors to develop emotion. You can see into the eyes of the actors and know when they are going to cry.
'Heavy Rain' is a cousin of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books.
I love games like 'Flower,' for example - I thought this was amazing. It's great, it's new, it's different, and it's invented something that didn't exist before.
There are different games for different people and different expectations. Sometimes you want a great story, and sometimes you don't. I don't believe we should have stories in every single game. Sometimes it doesn't matter.
On 'Heavy Rain,' the game started with something that happened to me when I lost my son, my six-year-old boy, in a mall. I was so scared. I was curious to see if I could create that impression, that fear, in a game, an interactive experience.
I'm inspired by film-makers such as Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Orson Welles.
If 'Heavy Rain' is a huge commercial success, it will show everybody in the industry that the world is sick of first-person shooters, that people are ready for an adult gaming experience. If we fail, it will say, 'Please keep making the same old stuff.'
Games are quite shy at talking about different things. Most are about facing hordes of monsters or saving the world or whatever; few games actually talk about the real world, about real people, about their relationship, their emotions, their feelings.
Life is sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're sad, sometimes you're in love, sometimes you fight, and that's a life.
My goal with 'Beyond' is really to create a strong sense of empathy between the player and Jodie Holmes.
I play a lot of games. I love indie games.
'Heavy Rain' was really close to a dark thriller, like 'Se7en.' 'Beyond' is different in terms of tone.
I'm not a big fan of free to play. And this is just me, but when I buy something, I don't like the idea that I start playing for free, but each time I want to do something a little more interesting or progress, I have to pay. I'd rather pay up front.
