ComputerMKII
Banned
Translated from http://www.telerama.fr/techno/david...t-aussi-avoir-du-sens-et-un-propos,104382.php
David Cage: "Video games can also have meaning and a purpose"
INTERVIEW | In the formatted video game industry, Frenchman David Cage is upsetting. His creations, which focus more on empathy than adrenalin, are blamed for being too "cinematic". He would like to go even further.
At age 44, David Cage has a special place in the world of video games. Since the late 1990s, this Alsatian man seeks other ways, other approaches in a sector very attached to its usual codes. Empathy, interactivity, emotion, this triptych is at the center of the four games he designed with his studio Quantic Dream. More than skill and speed exercises, Omikron - The Nomad Soul, Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls offer complex and engaging stories, authentic "experiences" from which players do not come out unscathed. Works for which Cage has collaborated with artists from different backgrounds: David Bowie, Angelo Badalamenti (the musical alter ego of David Lynch) and, for Beyond, his new game, composer Hans Zimmer and Hollywood actors Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. His critics accuse him of making a new kind of cinema - he prefers to speak of "interactive storytelling." Meeting with a nonconformist creator.
Even today, when a lunatic shoots anything that moves, video games are always blamed. What do you think about that?
It's more insidious than before. Journalists suggest in their comments that violent video games were found in the personal effects of the killer, and leave the audience to link cause and effect. This is especially unfair and simplistic. Several recent U.S. studies have found that, like television or music, video games only have a marginal impact on violent behavior. Just because someone has seen a Tarantino movie or played GTA doesn't mean he'll go shoot people in the street! The reasons are always psychological, related to social and family situations and the easy availability of weapons in some countries. As soon as a new medium appears, it is stigmatized. Remember the image rock had in its infancy, these lewd and provocative singers, these "hooligans" ("blousons noirs") who started riots. Same for the comic-books, guilty of perverting the youth and long censored in France. Today, who would ban a Johnny (Hallyday) concert or censor superhero adventures? This time it's video games which are targeted.
It is never justified?
It is, of course - some games do emphasize violence too much, there was an escalation in hemoglobin and exploding heads. It's gratuitious, repetitive, but gamers very often ask for this. The gaming industry is suffering from Peter Pan syndrome, the fantasy of eternal adolescence. Creators age, players too, yet the vast majority of console games are designed to appeal to an audience of middle school students who want "fun", action and adrenaline. For thirty years in the industry, technology has made a huge leap, but the game concepts have remained more or less the same: run, shoot, jump, smash as soon as possible and with maximum realism. Competition, skill, speed, it's exciting when you're 15. With age, many players abandon their consoles. For lack of appropriate content, they move on to other things - TV series, for example. But the industry does not care and continues to produce the same themes and the same universes to teens.
And you plan to change all that?
I have neither the power nor the will. I'm just trying to offer different games which are based on other codes. Only 30% of players finish "classic" games, it is as if two thirds of the audience left the room before the end of the movie! This shows their lack of involvement in the plot. For them, the game is primarily an exercise in skill. I invest a lot in the story, I create complex characters, fragile ones, especially not supermen, and I encourage players to identify with them. My games run on empathy. In Beyond, we accompany the character of Jodie Holmes for fifteen years of her life, her eighth birthday to her 23rd year. Following this girl like no other, attached to a paranormal entity against her will, the players go through all kinds of situations. There is certainly action, but also scenes where you have to play with dolls, help a young woman give birth, share the existence of homeless people... Beyond is the opportunity to experience sadness, difference, compassion, despair. I believe that video games can have meaning and a purpose.
Where does your vocation come from?
I started playing when I was a child, but music was my first passion. I started piano at 5 years, then I started to compose. I finally dropped out of economics studies to devote myself to music. I worked a lot for advertising, TV series, video games, and then one morning, sitting at my piano, I realized that I had nothing to say anymore... I imagined a video game scenario, the story of a character who could not die, going through centuries and myths. I wrote a synopsis of two hundred and fifty pages, it was 1995 and everyone was telling me, "Your idea is great, but too complicated to achieve, we must design a city... "When someone says that something is "impossible", I tend to want to prove the contrary. So I put together a team, funded a prototype on my own funds, contacted all publishers. And things succeeded one another and I founded my own studio, Quantic Dream in 1997.
Why taking a pseudonym?
My real name is David de Gruttola (my father is Italian). When I started to talk with English video game publishers on the phone, sixteen years ago, to present The Nomad Soul, my first title, I realized that my name was unpronounceable for English-speaking people (and a good number of French...). So I quickly chose a nickname taken from a video game, which is easily pronounced in French and English.
Beyond was selected and presented in New York at the last Tribeca Film Festival. A first time in a festival dedicated to cinema. Could your games be considered as movies?
Nothing can be created from nothing, ever. We can not ignore a thousand years of literature or one hundred years of cinema. As all media invented by mankind, video games are part of a continuum. It is necessarily influenced, permeated by what preceded it, both in fictional narrative techniques. However, it has a specificity that makes it unique: interactivity. In film, the viewer is passive, he looks at the story unfolding, reacts emotionally, but can not change anything. In my games, the player is at the heart of the story, his decisions transform it, shape it.
At the same time, you can not invent any story, it is relative freedom...
Yes, of course, there is a defined narrative space. This is similar mechanism to the Choose Your Own Adventure books - a tree structure, but on a completely different scale. Here, the choice is not made every two pages, but almost every line! In Beyond, there are twenty-three possible endings and even more paths to get there. The player may or may not intervene in the situation, there is no "right" or "wrong" answers, as in life. His decisions, however, have implications for the rest of the story. This game comes as revealing: you can play it without a second thought, but it can also be an opportunity to learn about yourself, to answer this nagging question: what would I have done in her place? Interactivity is a powerful narrative tool.
This is not what think Steven Spielberg and George Lucas think - they said recently to American students that video games "are not Shakespeare"...
They are not entirely wrong, but it nevertheless reflects a real misunderstanding of what is at work. Our trend is still very small, but it exists. The recent success of games such as Heavy Rain, Journey or The Walking Dead attests it. Unfortunately, the mainstream media talk about video games in the "Economy" or "Crime and Accidents" pages. It's heartbreaking because this art form is being invented. At first, movies were considered a fairground attraction, a second-rate show made by smooth talkers. Look what it has become! The Mélièses of video games only ask to be discovered.
To embody the characters of Beyond, you hired Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe. A nice publicity stunt?
I have not chosen them for their fame but for their talent. In this kind of story, the actors are paramount. We can not settle for composite characters, patched together with the voice of one, the body of another, with a face invented from scratch on the graphics palette. It takes a single person to carry and convey complex emotions, the actors are irreplaceable. Especially when it comes to actors like Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe, sensitive, powerful, ultra-precise. As the director, I sometimes felt like I was driving two Ferraris at the same time! In some scenes, their performances were so pitch-perfect, so strong that I had goosebumps. Even if their image is completely digitized, reworked or, as we say in our jargon, "implemented", the feeling remains on the screen. There is in their digital clones impalpable humanity, a heartbeat, a bit of soul, a je-ne-sais-quoi that would be impossible to reconstruct artificially.
You have created an application for mobile phones that allows you to play your new game what purpose?
I want video games to become cultural objects as any other. For everyone to discuss with their family as easily as a film, a book or a series. With Heavy Rain, the last game, some testimonies gave us the idea. Many men were moved by the fact their partners were interested, even became immersed in the game, a first time for them! We did a lot of tests and studies with couples and "non-practicing" people - we realized that the main obstacle was the controller. Too technical, too complex to master, too many buttons. We have designed an application for smartphones, which allows people to play the game with one finger!
You have many opponents...
I am guilty of wanting to pervert the genre, to alter it... The heart of this industry is very conservative - It's like nothing should change and we shouldn't ask ourselves too many questions. Many consider me a frustrated filmmaker and feel that I do not make video games. These "purists" wage trench warfare against everything that goes out of their own frame, there is a lot of contempt and virulence on their side. They forget too quickly that the Wii and its sports or fitness games have sold over sixty million copies worldwide. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of people who play Angry Birds or Candy Crush every day on their phones. Not that I like this type of game, but they do exist. There should be room for everyone, these outbursts of hate on the Internet make me uncomfortable.
Are you not attacked because you often put yourself in the limelight in an industry that emphasizes teamwork and studios?
I do not run after glory and medals. My name is a label, a mark of recognition for the games coming out of Quantic Dream. As we don't make sequels, the games have to be identifiable. Obviously games are collective works, but without an architect or contractor, nothing would get made. For a long time studios left the designers behind the scenes to keep the control, but individuals still emerge, eventually. Today, all gamers know Warren Spector, Peter Molyneux, Will Wright and Kojima. As in the early days of cinema, studios fade gradually in favor of the directors: people will see the new Tarantino, not the new MGM production.
For ten years, Québec has been offering very attractive conditions for people in the video game industry. Many French companies have already settled there. Why do you stay in France?
Because I was born and raised in Mulhouse, I've lived in Paris for twenty years and I feel comfortable here. However, the situation is worrisome. Whether right-wing or left-wing, successive governments have made and extended tax credits for companies that reinvest in France. So, a tax reduction of 20% - which is good, but Québec provides double that and Australia and Singapore are considering similar measures! Difficult to match, especially when the European Union blocks everything. So, all companies migrate: small studios, but also the last major French publisher Ubisoft, which has already created three thousand five hundred jobs in Montreal. The challenge is not to make more money, but to remain competitive. For a studio, 20% more credit is the possibility of a better title. At Quantic Dream, we have two hundred employees, with superior education, relatively high wages and mostly with permanent contracts. We do not fight on equal terms with some countries.
Yet, historically, France has a real know-how with video games...
Yes, in engineering, animation, design or artistic creation, French courses always have an excellent reputation. Yet we have the greatest difficulty recruiting. Graduates cross the Atlantic because they're offered golden bridges. We try to get those who want to stay because they have a family, or those few who wish to return. Especially, we recruit abroad -Americans, New Zealanders, Japanese. The situation is grotesque. We will try to continue to grow, to develop ourselves, to create wealth in France... As long as we can do it [unfinished sentence - ???]