"Games can also be moving and meaningful" - Interview with game developer David Cage

Created: 06/15/2022, 10:49 am

By: Omer Kayali

David Cage with Hollywood actor Willem Dafoe at a presentation of Beyond: Two Souls.

© alterphotos/Imago

The development studio Quantic Dream celebrates its 25th anniversary.

In an interview with us, the head of the studio, David Cage, looks back and gives a small glimpse of the future.

There's more to video games than dull action gameplay.

That's the message David Cage, lead game developer at Quantic Dream, has been conveying for many years.

With titles like "Detroit: Become Human" or "Heavy Rain", his studio always focuses on the story and the characters.

In an interview on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Quantic Dream, David Cage talks about the development of storytelling in video games.

He also gives some details about his studio's next project, "Star Wars: Eclipse" which will probably get more classic gameplay elements.

Interview with David Cage from Quantic Dream

Interactive stories have evolved a lot over the years.

Besides the Quantic Dreams titles, what have been your favorite stories in games over the last 25 years?

David Cage

: There were many games that included different forms of interactive storytelling and offered very interesting experiences such as Papers Pleaser, Her Story, Inside, 80 Days, Lifeline, Bury Me My Love, "13 Sentinels" and many others.

I've mentioned my admiration for the work of Fumeto Ueda (

) on numerous occasions.

But there are also games like "It Takes Two" by Jose Fares or "The Last of Us 2" that follow very interesting paths.

These games showcase a variety of tones, styles, and visions of interactive storytelling, but a common bond with emotion and meaning, which are two important elements of storytelling.

Games can be fun and entertaining, but they can also be moving and meaningful.

And that's what interactive storytelling, in any style and form, can add to these experiences.

What have been the biggest changes and challenges in story game development over the past 25 years?

David Cage

: There have been so many advances in technology over the past 25 years that it's difficult to single out just one.

Of course, rendering has made tremendous strides.

If I compare what we thought was visually beautiful 25 years ago and today, it's very different... Lighting, reflections, realism in general are progressing very quickly.

It won't be long before we see fully photorealistic games.

But what impresses me the most is the online gaming.

I think that's one of the few features that really changed gaming.

While the ability to display more polygons or high-resolution textures is great, it's purely cosmetic, while online gaming has really changed the way we play games.

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Some new technologies are also spreading rapidly in the industry, notably deep learning or neural networks for different types of applications, opening new possibilities for developers.

I was also very impressed with VR when it came out, as was everyone.

But as hardware advances, I hope we'll see more quality content.

Star Wars: Eclipse will be Quantic Dream's most ambitious project

How has Quantic Dream evolved over the years?

David Cage

: The studio started with 39 employees for Nomad Soul - which was quite a large team at the time - and grew to 240 for Detroit: Become Human.

Star Wars: Eclipse has an even larger team due to the ambition and complexity of the game.

In the video: Trailer for "Star Wars: Eclipse"

The growth of the studio is not actually a goal, but the logical consequence of the increasing power of the consoles and the increasing expectations of quality.

Every part of the game today is highly specialized and you need very specific people for very specific tasks, from rendering to clothing simulation and motion matching to physics particles and optics to name a few.

Not only do you have to have the feature in game, you also have to have the tools and pipelines to produce content with it.

80 developers from Quantic Dream are working on the engine alone

David Cage

: I've always loved technology, although I'm not a programmer myself, but it fascinated me 25 years ago and still does.

That's why when we founded the studio, we decided that Quantic Dream would develop its own technologies, tools and pipelines, and we still do that today.

Every game we develop has its own engine designed and customized for the needs of the game.

But aside from loving engineering, it's also a way to make our games look unique and control everything from the feature list to the pipelines and final performance.

Today, the Quantic Dream R&D team consists of approximately 80 engineers developing our next-gen engine.

There have also been films with interactive features, the best example from recent years being Black Mirror Bandersnatch.

It basically works the same as your games.

Do you think there is more potential for these kinds of films?

David Cage

: Bandersnatch offers a very different experience than our games.

In our games, players are in control of their characters all the time, they are actors of their experience, not spectators.

Detroit: Become Human offers something completely different in terms of interactivity and branching complexity.

Interactive storytelling is central to our experiences, but I genuinely believe these are real games even if they don't rely on action gameplay.

Our experiences are all about role-playing.

They put players in the shoes of characters and let them decide their fate.

They require less input on the controller, but they offer a very different type of experience that can also resonate greatly with gamers.

games,

In some games, players seem to have different choices, but sometimes they all lead to the same result.

Is it better to have this "illusion of choice" than none at all?

David Cage

: This is another issue that has been at the heart of our work for the past 25 years.

For a long time we have all tried to deal with smoke and mirrors, the illusion of choices that in reality all lead to almost the same result.

But over the years it became clear that this wasn't a satisfying design choice.

In Heavy Rain we had many different paths leading to 23 completely different endings, allowing players to truly tell their own story through their choices, successes and failures.

Detroit: Become Human went even further by having entire scenes and key characters for players to see or miss entirely based on their choices: they can make Connor join the androids or stay loyal to the humans, Markus to lead a pacifist or violent revolution, Kara to flee or end up in a dramatic situation.

"Heavy Rain" was a turning point for Quantic Dream

David Cage

: For us, the turning point in Heavy Rain was when we made the decision that all of our characters could die at any point in the story.

This suddenly radically changed the gaming experience, making all decisions really matter, giving every moment real and tangible consequences, and most importantly, making every story unique.

For some players, all characters were still alive at the end, for others, all characters died.

It made it clear that players' actions had tangible consequences, and it gave weight to all their decisions.

In Detroit: Become Human we wanted to go even further by showing players the main branches of the story between scenes so they knew what they were playing and what they were missing.

This became something really important to the gaming experience that definitely contributed to the success of the game.

Giving tangible consequences to player decisions means creating entire parts of the game that not every player will see.

It's sometimes heartbreaking to create content that we think is very cool but only a few people will see.

For example, in Detroit: Become Human we developed a very moving scene where androids start a peaceful revolution and start singing just as they are about to be killed.

We had a group of 50 vocalists in motion capture that gave an incredibly moving performance... that only players who made certain decisions will see.

There are also some very touching moments with Kara and Alice that are based solely on choices, or even the presence of Luther,

It's sometimes heartbreaking to create content that we think is very cool but only a few people will see.

David Cage on Detroit: Become Human

Creating all that content that not everyone will see can be frustrating, but that's the price to pay to create experiences that don't rely on smoke and mirrors.

What do you think is the next step for interactive storytelling in games?

Have we seen everything yet?

David Cage

: The situation has changed significantly over the last few years and we are now seeing even more interesting stories being told in games.

Just as I believe indie developers are the source of creativity in the gaming industry, I believe video games will be the next source of creativity for cinema.

In some games, the story is still constructed by the constraints of gameplay and the need to justify spectacular action sequences.

But some games manage to tell a story that stands on its own, and some very interesting stories are told in very unique ways.

I don't know if there's a next step for interactive storytelling, but I think some studios around the world keep working to tell better stories and create better narrative experiences.

And that's what, over time, will convince more and more people that these games can also be engaging, even though they aren't action-oriented.

We started this movement with Fahrenheit in 2005 and Heavy Rai'n in 2010.

TellTale, Supermassive Games, Don'tnod and several other development studios have contributed greatly to the popularity of the genre, we need more great titles to show the potential of interactive storytelling.

Quantic Dream will of course continue to support storytelling in games as it is part of our DNA and we strongly believe in it.

We do that, for example, by supporting studios like Parallel Studios with their announced (

) project or Red Thread Games with Ragnar Tornquist' Dustborn, two projects with very unique voices that we are very excited about.

On our own projects, we are working on a mix of storytelling and action gameplay in Star Wars: Eclipse, which could be one of the next steps for interactive storytelling.

There are many film adaptations of games, the last ones were "Uncharted" or "Sonic 2".

Since Quantic Dreams games are essentially playable movies, they would lend themselves well to a theatrical adaptation.

Would you like a Quantic Dream title to be adapted into a movie?

David Cage

: We've been talking to people in Hollywood for 25 years, we go there regularly to meet actors, composers, agents and production companies, and we've had and still have many projects on the table with different partners.

We're looking for the right partners and talent who are genuinely passionate about our titles to make an interesting film, and that can take time.

It may happen one day or never, although I think Detroit: Become Human could make a great movie or TV series...