Cage: Sony grants "total freedom", indies the "future of the industry"

Quantic Dream boss David Cage has said very few developers have the chance to explore new ideas - and those that do will shape the future of games.

"If you asked developers, they all have incredible ideas. There are tons of very talented people in this industry, but what you see these days is that when people cannot express them in the game space, sometimes they just leave the game space and go into films, or into movies, or do whatever."

"Total freedom. Total freedom. No constraint in anything," Cage told Gamasutra when asked whether Sony had given Quantic Dream liberty to pursue its own agenda.

"Many publishers, after the success of Heavy Rain, would have said, 'Well, you need to do Heavy Rain 2. And do what you want, but it's going to be called Heavy Rain 2.' And we never had this conversation with Sony. They just asked me, 'What's next? What do you want to do?' 'Well, I have this idea, what do you think?' 'Yeah. It looks great!'"

Cage said Sony didn't even make small requests to change the game's script, which was very important to the development of Beyond: Two Souls, because "this kind of project can only be made in complete freedom".

"It's really a story that I needed to tell, and Sony gave me the opportunity to do it. Which is quite unique. It's really incredible in this industry to have the possibility to work like that," he added.

"Usually, you make indie development, and you have limited resources, but you have freedom, or you work on a triple-A and you have the resources, but limited or no creative freedom. And I'm in the strange position where I have both."

Without naming names, Cage said many of his peers at other developers had expressed a desire to have as much creative control as Qunatic Dream has.

"I felt many times people saying, 'I wish we could do what you do' which was really a surprise, because I thought that what game creators were actually doing [was what they wanted]," he said.

"Actually, no, they felt they had to do certain things, because they thought that's what the market was expecting."

Cage said developers stick to what they do due to external pressures.

"If you asked developers, they all have incredible ideas. There are tons of very talented people in this industry, but what you see these days is that when people cannot express them in the game space, sometimes they just leave the game space and go into films, or into movies, or do whatever," he said.

"I think it's our responsibility in the games industry to make sure that creative people have a space where they can have these ideas. It's interesting to see indie developers these days, because I think there's a lot of creativity with indie developers because they have this space of freedom where they can try new ideas, and I think they are the future of the industry."

Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain has sold over 2 million copies by this time last year; is next game, Beyond: Two Souls, is expected in 2013, exclusively for PlayStation 3.