ComputerMKII
Banned
In February 22, 2013, two days after the official announcement of the PlayStation 4, the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie and Jeux Vidéo Magazine invited David Cage (CEO/founder of Quantic Dream) for a masterclass, in Paris. He talked about his entire career, his life, his games (Omikron: The Nomad Soul, Fahrenheit a.k.a. Indigo Prophecy, Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls) and answered questions from the audience.
The masterclass was filmed and it's available for free on the Internet but it's entirely in French. You can watch it here: http://www.cite-sciences.fr/fr/au-p...on-des-masterclass/masterclass-de-david-cage/
Or here: http://cite-sciences.ubicast.eu/videos/masterclass-cjv-1-david-cage-/
I thought it was a shame to have an important figure of the industry share his thoughts for a long period of time (two hours), only for them not to reach the audience they deserve because it's not in English. So, I've decided to transcribe the masterclass and translate it into English for anyone who might be interested.
I'm not a professional/certified translator so I did as best as I could and I hope I haven't distorted his words. Feel free to report any mistakes so I can fix them. For reference, here's my transcript in the original language: https://docs.google.com/document/d/...5QgGW5AneVrQrCVEY/edit#heading=h.aklnb4vcn33r
Also, there are some rare words I haven't been able to decipher. Those are marked as [unintelligible] in the translation. If anyone would be patient enough to look into the video and help me know what those words were, I'd be very grateful.
Since it's a long document, I've uploaded the translation to Google Docs as an alternative way of reading it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10mqfoamiOU0HVKhfeezvzjgf-PHORvXzXIupuoAD33c
I've also made a summary of sorts, so you can jump directly to the part that interests you, if you don't feel like reading the whole thing. Just copy one of the titles in brackets to your clipboard, and make a browser search with CTRL + F. This should take you to the desired part.
Finally, many thanks to Olivier Bal, Jeux Vidéo Magazine, the Cité des Sciences and Orange, for making all this possible.
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Summary:
- [Introduction]
- [Childhood]
- [Becoming a musician]
- [Origin of the David Cage pseudonym]
- [Working on video game music]
- [Founding Quantic Dream]
- [Making Omikron - The Nomad Soul and working with Eidos]
- [Working with David Bowie on The Nomad Soul]
- [Cage’s opinion on The Nomad Soul]
- [Making Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy]
- [Fahrenheit’s influence on Heavy Rain]
- [On episodic content]
- [On choice, consequence, and contextual actions]
- [On David Cage’s virtual appearance in Fahrenheit]
- [Heavy Rain and tribute to composer Normand Corbeil]
- [Cage’s opinion of Fahrenheit]
- [Impact of Fahrenheit on Quantic Dream’s relationship with the industry]
- [On The Casting demo and catching Sony’s attention]
- [On writing Heavy Rain]
- [The importance of eye modeling]
- [Player choice and the father-son relationship in Heavy Rain]
- [On Beyond: Two Souls]
- [Working with Ellen Page on Beyond]
- [On removing QTEs for Beyond]
- [On playing multiple roles in the same company]
- [“The industry will die if it doesn’t innovate”]
- [Opinions on the PlayStation 4]
- [Start of the Q&A session - What is Beyond about?]
- [On which emotions to transmit]
- [On letting players express themselves differently]
- [On letting players tell their own stories]
- [On augmented reality, multiple screens and defining 3.0 gaming]
- [Public reception of The Walking Dead vs. Public reception of Heavy Rain]
- [Origin of the name Quantic Dream and opinions on machinima]
- [Opinions on the role of cutscenes]
- [“Are videogames art ?” and using neuroscience to trigger emotions]
- [Creating emotion through higher graphic fidelity?]
- [Practical advice to young video game creators]
- [Status of the Heavy Rain movie adaptation]
- [Laughter as an emotion]
- [On transmedia experiences]
- [Why David Cage isn’t making movies]
- [Mistakes on Nomad Soul and saying goodbye to science fiction]
- [The specific language and codes of video games]
- [On UGC (User-Generated Content)]
- [End of the Q&A session, thanks and final words by David Cage]
[Introduction]
Olivier Bal: Good evening everyone, welcome to this first video game masterclass. Good evening.
Olivier Bal: We're very very happy to welcome you tonight in this wonderful auditorium of the Cité des Sciences. The Video Game masterclass was designed by the Cité des Sciences and Jeux Vidéo Magazine as an event that would allow you to review the career, the path and the vision of a great video game creator. An event placed under the sign of exchange and friendliness. This meeting also prefigures the future Cité du Jeu Vidéo, which will open right here at the Cité des Sciences, in October 2013.
Olivier Bal: You know that tonight, we'll receive a guest with an exceptional career - the founder of Quantic Dream. He's directed the games Nomad Soul, Fahrenheit, Heavy Rain, and -very soon- Beyond: Two Souls. Game after game he tries to develop his own vision, to go his own way, with one end goal: creating emotion in the player. I keep speaking but I think you all know who I'm talking about, who we're about to receive tonight. So rather than pretty speeches, let the images talk.
Video: [Trailer of Beyond: Two Souls]
Olivier Bal: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome David Cage!
Olivier Bal: Good evening, David. How are you? I took the liberty of inviting a few friends, we thought...
David Cage: You did well.
Olivier Bal: ...that, between us...
David Cage: Of course!
Olivier Bal: We have a few friends, here. How are you ? Well... A bit tired, right?
David Cage: I came from New York this morning - eight hours and a half, so...
Olivier Bal: David was at a small conference, some unimportant thing, I think...
David Cage: Yeah, some small folk event in New York... It's peanuts...
Olivier Bal: Please have a sit over there, David.
Olivier Bal: So, the idea is that, together, we'll review David's career in one big first part. Then, we'll answer your questions in a second part.
[Childhood]
Olivier Bal: Every story has its beginning, David.
David Cage: Hmm hmm.
Olivier Bal: So let's talk about your first steps.
David Cage: Yeah...
Olivier Bal: The youth...
Olivier Bal: You were born in Mulhouse (eastern France)...
David Cage: Hmm hmm.
Olivier Bal: What kind of child were you?
David Cage: What kind of child I was?
Olivier Bal: Ah, yes!
David Cage: It starts strong.
Olivier Bal: Yes, I'm not here to joke around.
David Cage: We're at top speed!
David Cage: So yeah, I was a cute little boy...
Olivier Bal: I'd like to point out that David was kind enough to give us all his personal pictures, so be lenient.
David Cage: Yes, no mocking, please. Alright...
David Cage: What small boy I was? I had a very happy childhood. I didn't suffer, I didn't get beaten, nothing like that. I had hair - oh, come on!
Audience: [laughing]
David Cage: And I was a rather rational boy, yet rather dreamy at the same time.
Olivier Bal: Alright.
David Cage: So yeah, I did... yeah. Little boy...
Olivier Bal: Did you start music very at a very early age?
David Cage: I started music at a very early age. I started music when I was five.
Olivier Bal: Yeah.
David Cage: Hmm... piano.
Olivier Bal: Alright.
David Cage: ...classical piano.
David Cage: And... that's it. I struggled a lot...
[The screen shows a a picture of a young David Cage]
David Cage: Oh come on, hush.
Olivier Bal: Ah, oh, come on, we're just getting started!
David Cage: So, in this picture, I'm thirteen.
Olivier Bal: OK.
Olivier Bal: A bit earlier, backstage, I thought: "How hold were you in that picture, with the glasses? Eighteen? Nineteen?"
David Cage: No, no, I'm thirteen. I'm thirteen and I'm in Canada. Actually. I'm by the lake, at Sherbrooke. It's my first time being on vacation on my own.
Olivier Bal: At that point in time, in your life, did you see yourself as a musician or were you already sensitive to the universe of video games, cinema and all that?
David Cage: No. When I was young I saw myself as an astronaut...
Olivier Bal: [laughing]
David Cage: ...or... I was very interested in history, too.
Olivier Bal: Yeah. Alright.
[Becoming a musician]
David Cage: Actually, I fell in love with music rather late. I started music when I was five but I really started appreciating music around the age or twelve or thirteen. Back then, I studied classical piano. So, at the age of twelve or thirteen, I fell madly in love with music, somehow, and I said to myself: "That's what I want to do in life." And that's the part I'm interested in.
Olivier Bal: Yes. Because -precisely- as a young adult you created your production company, "Totem Productions."
David Cage: Yes. I'm not going into the details but, when I was fourteen or fifteen, I started working in music. What it means is that, beside my studies -of course- I started having an interest in computers and samplers, back then. That's how I started working for clients - people from the Mulhouse area. I was at the border between Germany and Switzerland and I started working for those people, writing music for them, doing arrangements, doing choruses -I was also a singer- and...
Olivier Bal: Did you move to Paris...?
David Cage: No, back then I was still in the Alsace region. I worked in Alsace for several years and, since the age of sixteen I started having my clients work with me in big parisian studios.
Olivier Bal: Alright.
David Cage: Strangely enough, at the boulevard Davout, there's a very big studio called Studio Davout, which now faces Quantic Dream. What a curious ellipsis.
[Origin of the David Cage pseudonym]
Olivier Bal: I think that's when you’ve decided to work under a pseudonym. Because David Cage is not your real name.
David Cage: No, it's not. My name is David de Gruttola.
Olivier Bal: Alright. So why a pseudonym, David? Because some people may be asking themselves this question.
David Cage: The pseudonym arrived much later, actually.
Olivier Bal: Really?
David Cage: It really arrived when I started working in video games.
Olivier Bal: Wait, who wrote my index cards, again?
David Cage: [laughing]
Olivier Bal: Alright, sorry.
David Cage: It arrived much later, when I started working in video games. In that era, I started picking up my phone to call English or American publishers. I would say to them: "So, I'd like an appointment" and I begin by saying "Hello, my name is David de Gruttola" and, generally, they replied "Bless you!"
Olivier Bal: [laughing]
David Cage: That's when I thought: "I have to do something, it can't go on like this", and there you go. I was looking for a simpler name which could be remembered -and not mangled- by the people I spoke to.
Olivier Bal: Alright.
David Cage: And I failed because people often called me Nicolas Cage, at first...
Audience
[laughing]
David Cage: ...desperate, I...
Olivier Bal: So it wasn't you.
David Cage: No.
Olivier Bal: Too bad, because I wanted to talk to you about Hell Rider [Ghost Rider] and...
David Cage: Oh, damn.
Olivier Bal: No, OK…
[Working on video game music]
Olivier Bal: So, back then, you worked on video game tunes, some... unforgettable...
David Cage: Yes...
Olivier Bal: I'm gonna name a few of them.
David Cage: Well... We have to make the link...
Olivier Bal: Ah yes, sorry.
David Cage: So, I left Mulhouse and came to Paris because I made a deal with a record label. I worked in the music industry with a few friend so I made a deal with the company and I came to Paris. With the small sums we had earned - we had been working since we were fourteen so we had saved some money and, since we were living with our parents we didn't have money to spend, except on our instruments. I bought a small studio called Totem, located in the Montparnasse area and I started working for clients. I started working in the video game industry as a composer, an arranger, and voilà.
Olivier Bal: May I name names?
David Cage: Is it really necessary? [laughing]
Olivier Bal: Yes, unfortunately. So, you worked on the music of video game Super Dany, in 94. Cheese Cat-Astrophe Starring Speedy Gonzales in 95...
David Cage: That's the pinnacle of my career.
Olivier Bal: Yes... We'll return to this point later! You know!
Olivier Bal: Timecop, in 95. Hardline in 97. By the way, I know it's gonna sting a little, but we're going to listen to an excerpt from the OST of Cheese Cat-Astrophe...
Olivier Bal: It's gonna be fine.
David Cage: [sigh] Or not.
[The music from Cheese Cat-Astrophe plays]
Olivier Bal: Let's play the entire thing... It's three hours long.
[The music from Cheese Cat-Astrophe stops playing]
David Cage: Well, I'm sorry.
Olivier Bal: Cheese Cat-Astrophe... Well, it's interesting because it makes you see, somehow, how far you've come.
David Cage: [laughing]
Olivier Bal: There are students here. They'll be glad to think that...
David Cage: That's gonna give everyone some hope, yeah.
Olivier Bal: Yes.
David Cage: You can start from the very bottom, and...
Olivier Bal: So let's talk about...
David Cage: Just a word, because...
Olivier Bal: Yes, go ahead, feel free to bounce back on this.
David Cage: I'm bouncing back - "bing !" - Hmm... I was with Cryo, at the time. I had my studio in the Montparnasse area, I had called a lot of publishers and Cryo was the first one which gave me my chance as a composer. What's interesting about that kind of thing is that -back then- there was no recorded music as we know now. I have a vivid memory of Rémi Herbulot giving me a Sega Genesis with some sort of printed circuit board attached to it, which was the dev kit thingy they cobbled together. He told me: "There it is, that's what you're making music with" and I'm like: "But... erm..." "How am I supposed to do it?" He told me: "It's not hard, there's an FM synthesizer, you program your sound, then you program your sequences and that's it." [silence]
Olivier Bal: Alright.
Audience
[laughing]
David Cage: "OK."
Olivier Bal: "Let's do that."
David Cage: So I end up thinking: "It's Mexican so I'm gonna need some maracas, some double bass, some so-and-so..."
Olivier Bal: Creating a musical universe.
David Cage: Exactly. Through a FM synthesizer. It was one hell of a school, all things considered. You learn stuff and you end up with... that.
[Founding Quantic Dream]
Olivier Bal: In 97, you decide to create your own development studio called Quantic Dream, I think.
David Cage: Yes, absolutely.
Olivier Bal: How did you reach that point? I mean, you're making those video game tunes, you're immersed in this universe, you work with Cryo, etc. Why the idea of creating your own studio?
David Cage: Everything was going well. I had been working in music for five years. I was working for Cryo but I worked with Virgin, too, I worked for commercials, for TV series, I did different things so I made music for everyone who needed music. I worked with a record company, too, back then. I worked with different artists whom I produced and arranged. I did different things left and right, so I had an interesting life. I made a decent living, back then, and I was autonomous. It was my business, etc. When I worked with Cryo I made some friends there, people I got along with. I wrote a little, as a hobby, and I was an early fan of games. I really was born with an Oric 1 computer. Then, I played the Amstrad, the Atari, the Amiga... I played everything that came out. The SNES, the NES, etc. One day, I thought : "Hey, I'm gonna try to write the kind of video game I'd love to play."
Olivier Bal: Alright.
David Cage: So I wrote a scenario with the naïve idea -at the time- which was : "I just have to create a city. The other guys are stupid, why do they not do it? I just have to create a city, then there will be a crowd, and it'll be science fiction, and you'd be able to go wherever you want, whenever you want, and you'd be able to enter all buildings, and there'd be vehicles outside, and you could fight, and..." OK... Nonsense!
Olivier Bal: [chuckles]
David Cage: So I showed that to my friends, who were programmers and worked on Cryo games. They told me: "You're crazy as hell! Don't you realize? Your thing cannot be made, it's..." It was an era when 3D was barely coming out, it was the really early days. By constantly telling me it was impossible, they managed to convince me that it was what I wanted to do, and that's how it started. We started working at nights, after several hours in the office and after my daytime hours making music. We worked at night to try and build a prototype. There was no company yet, no Quantic Dream. There was no employee, nothing at all.
Olivier Bal: It's not the machinery to set up at all [unintelligible]
David Cage: I knew nothing at all...
Olivier Bal: Yeah.
David Cage: I mean, I don't have a background in programming. I was just a guy who had ideas, that's it. And who had friends. So to speak... I managed to convince them of trying. We built a prototype on PlayStation 1, which -at the time- was a real achievement. I think we built one of the first PlayStation 1 demos of the time, and we went to show it to some publishers. We had a character who moved around and ran in a city. That was certainly something. It was a real achievement, back then. We went to show it to different publishers and the different publishers said: "Yeah, yeah, not bad, not bad... It's not bad but, you know, the PlayStation is a fad, it will go away...
Olivier Bal: Personally, I don't believe in this console.
David Cage: Me neither. I think it won't succeed.
Olivier Bal: And don't get me started on the name...
David Cage: Yeah. Nonsense. Yeah, yeah.
David Cage: So -true story- but then I go to the US, carrying my PlayStation around. It was the time when you had to open it, hold the button, switch CDs at the same time... Well. It was the heyday. So, we arrived, we visited all the American publishers and everybody told us: "No, the PlayStation is a fad. Honestly, make PC stuff. That's something solid. People will still talk about it in ten years. Really, forget about the PlayStation." So we come back, completely demoralized, depressed, etc. We think: "Well, let's make a PC demo." And, at this moment, I have another thought, which is : "Working again on a demo at nights is really tiresome. It's exhausting. It takes a lot of time, I don't want this", so... One day, I gather all my friends in a corner and I tell them: "Listen, I've earned a bit of money with music so what I'm offering you is a pay. I have enough money to pay a small team for six months. Let's give ourselves six months, full-time, working our asses off, with a five or six-man team. I have one available studio. In my sound studio I had two cabins and one of them is now available. I'm gonna buy PCs, I'm gonna buy desks, I'm gonna pay you for six months and we're gonna work our asses off for six months. After six months, we either have a prototytpe and -bingo- we sell it, we start a company, and it's great, or we don't have a prototype, we stop everything and everybody goes back to what they were doing before.
Olivier Bal: Alright.
David Cage: Some of them accepted. Some of them declined.
Olivier Bal: Alright. And that's how we come to...
David Cage: Those who declined were like: "No -you know- it's risky. You know, we have a job at Cryo. And, after all, Cryo is a safe position."
Audience
[laughing]
Olivier Bal: "Cryo, after all, it's a safe position". You bet it is...
Audience
[laughter intensifies]
Olivier Bal: You met some great visionaries, actually, at the time.
David Cage: It was very hard to be a visionary because you're in such an unpredictable industry. At the time, it was common sense to say : "But Cryo's stocks are booming..."
Olivier Bal: They were booming.
David Cage: "...what are you talking about?" We were creating a company and the word "start-up" didn't even exist yet. You need to know which era we're talking about. Starting a company was nonsense. More importantly, you had a one in ten thousand chance for it to work after your six months. That's it. But... yeah, yeah. That's a real memory of mine: "No, you know, Cryo means safety, we'd rather stay..."