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I suppose what it comes down to is that I fear the maturity and complexity of gaming aren't going to grow meaningfully unless we spend some time examining our basic assumptions about video games - and, maybe I haven't made this clear either, but "traditional" gaming tropes don't have to suffer for this experimentation to happen. It's my opinion that the way we do story in video games is structurally flawed, and so I'd like to see some progress made in the way we approach storytelling. I believe Cage is absolutely right in pretty much everything he says - probably why it doesn't bug me like it does you.
I still don't think Cage wants everything to be like Heavy Rain, and I think he recognizes how far flung his work is from mainstream tastes. More simply, I think that he'd liked to see the same "revolutionary" approach to game design and a new emphasis on narrative, ideas from which Heavy Rain was born, but not necessarily the prognostication to which all games should look for future reference. I think Cage realizes that Heavy Rain was an attempt that grew out of his ideals, and that he'd like to see others attempts as well. Is he so wrong for operating on a philosophy?
Anyway, I mean no spite. Like I said, I think it comes down to whether or not you think Cage is on to something, and I absolutely believe he is. You don't have to. "
"Without some degree of interactivity, games are little more than expensive (very expensive) movies. And interactivity usually involves some level of action. I think we need to rethink what we expect from video games. Are they a hobby? An escape from reality? Some higher form of entertainment? Most gamers (read: mainstream gamers) consider them a fun distraction. And the simple fact remains that Joe Gamer doesn't like nuanced, arthouse faire--the overwhelming commercial success of Black Ops attests to that."
I find this bit intriguing. I feel like we're assuming that you have two sides of the spectrum, where never the twain shall meet. You've got Black Ops over here and you've got Heavy Rain over here, and never the twain shall meet. But they meet everyday: FarCry 2 is a shooter that's got what you call "traditional" elements but also has some more interesting design choices that make it stand-out, straddling the spectrum and offering a little to all parties. The Sims is a game that is hugely appreciated and thought of as "fun" but is also built on expression, a tenet of art.
You get that in film a lot more than you do in games. I think of the Dark Knight: a movie that was widely appreciated by mainstream audiences but could also be appreciated by cinephiles who can pick apart its innards. Inception, too: action and thrilling but also mind-bending and ambiguously artistic. Even Toy Story 3: great for kids, great for parents, great on an emotional level as well as a visually and comedically-minded one."
If what you're saying is that you only want to adventure through the action-packed, that's fine, because I have no problem with you wanting that. I don't want that, though, and what I object to is you telling me that gaming may not be the right medium for me. I want measured, nuanced narratives, and I want them from video games because I believe there's something special there, something untapped, some story to be told through a medium of interaction. If you get to tell me that not all players want an experience with the mentality of Heavy Rain, that's fine, I believe you. But then I get to tell you not everyone wants to play Call of Duty and Elder Scrolls over and over again.
I really have no issue with what pleasure you take in gaming, because it's like you say, we shouldn't homogenize everything. The more alarming thing is the tone of your argument, which I see a lot (but is rarely articulated well). In short, it's a narrow perception of what video games can be and clinging on to what we know rather than expanding our palette. Ironically, you say it's wrong for Cage to prognosticate any definition of gaming's future, but you find it perfectly acceptable to tell me that games can't and will not offer me nuanced narratives, romantic comedies, genres free of conflict resolution, or perhaps something else. I imagine that if there were something like that you'd strip the definition of "game" from it in an effort to invalidate it. Maybe you personally wouldn't, but your argument follows in line with that kind of thinking.
And this is why we dismiss things like Wii Fit, Nintendogs, Dance Central, the Sims, and Harvest Moon as not "real" games. They're toys to be played with in a harmless corner, certainly not valid experiences.
When you tell me I can't have a game where I learn to love someone, a game where I self-destruct bit by bit, a game where I just talk to people and never kill anyone, or a game where I explore simply to explore, you're confining me more than anyone ever could by saying we should forget video game rules."
@ Jim
" I think of him like the early filmmakers who first thought 'Why do we keep the camera in one place like people are watching a play? We could do more than that.' "
I agree, and that's not to imbue Cage with vision, but to say his view takes no basic assumptions about the way things should be, which is never inherently wrong or even misguided. Why stop people from asking basic questions?
And saying that "we could do more than that" recognizes that "doing more" doesn't have to sacrifice "that". We can expand our idea of video games while keeping our former ideas, unless, of course, those ideas prove to then be anachronistic. "
But confrontation always comes down to killing in games, which feels dishonest. I think of violence as the last result of an impasse between parties: jumping straight to violence makes me feel cheated out of the conflict resolution leading up to it. Conflict is more than violence, though it is a part of it.
I recognize that the mechanics (at least in their minutia), setting, stories, and atmosphere of top-tier (whatever that means) games are different, and I'd even say radically, but they are, simultaneously, all cut from the same cloth, one of empowerment and reward. Yes, the way you shoot in Red Dead is different from Black Ops, but you still shoot people, and the mentality there is the same. The story between those two may be different as well, but mucked up amongst it is a slew of game tropes that undercut the ability to tell a story, to communicate some idea: what place does "game over" have in telling a story? What hope will that story ever have of profundity with "game over"?
And so I feel like you're missing David Cage's point. Again, none of those quotes convince me David Cage would like to see a games' industry full of Heavy Rain-esque games. It's true that Heavy Rain probably grew out of that line of thinking - forgetting about "video game" rules, redefining what a video game is - but that doesn't convince me he wants games full of QTEs and pretty piano music.
What it does convince me of is what I said: there's value in reexamining our base assumption of what constitutes a "video game": looking at what we call "traditional" games, "casual" games, "mainstream" and "indie" games, and wondering whether there's more value in building up those walls of separation or in tearing them down.
And so "game over" may well have a place in storytelling, but let's figure out where that is instead of insisting it stay put. "
They're different experiences, sure. Black Ops is about shooting people in the face. Red Dead is about shooting cowboys in the face. Mass Effect 2 is about shooting aliens in the face. Wait...
I'm kidding, and I realize there's more to those games than that, but you have to admit, the bulk of those games included the same experience of stopping and popping. And yeah, there was Super Mario Bros. Wii, and I found that game delightful, but it was admittedly uniformly "Mario" and a regression from its NES progenitor. Madden was, as always, archaiacally Madden, and I feel fine lumping it into the same list as those shooters above for being mostly the tool of male-empowerment. On a micro level, those games are different, but on a macro the effect is largely the same (Mass Effect 2, even, included in a lot of ways).
I think it's strange to repudiate someone for criticizing the established. I don't follow David Cage but I haven't found any yarn ball of his criticism that could be unthreaded to mean he believes video games ought to be more like Heavy Rain. The only real contentious thing he seems to have said is that we could benefit from reexamining our base assumptions about video games and what they can be, the role they could serve in people's lives, and why that's dangerous or pretentious, I'll never know. "
