Games industry must innovate or "die", says Cage
If the games industry doesn't make a greater push to innovate it will shrivel up and expire, Quantic Dream boss David Cage has warned.
"This industry will die if it doesn't try more to be innovative and to come up with new ideas and to talk a bit more - not necessarily serious, but deeper things at some point," the Heavy Rain and Beyond: Twin Souls creator told GamesIndustry.
"It's great that you can shoot at monsters, and that's great and it will always be there and it will always be successful, but at the same time, what about giving the choice to people? Give them different options. So if they like that they find it, but if they want something deeper and interactive, they can find that too."
Cage said he's not "interested in making just software to sell to people at Christmas" and although he respects the "very clever people" who do, he has different ambitions.
"It's not how I see my work. I'm interested in using this medium to express something and to trigger deeper emotions. I think you can do it if you make movies, if you make TV series - all expression forms are great for that. But games, we just shoot and jump. What about trying something else and using it?" he said.
"It's a fantastic medium. It's crazy what you can do with this thing, because the relationship you have with experience is so different from what you have with anything else. You watch a movie, you're just passive. You watch a story, and it's a story that's told to you. But when you're in a game, you can tell the story. You can decide what you want to happen. And you can make up pretty much your own story based on your choices and your moral decisions. That's fascinating."
Cage said the last game he really enjoyed was thatgamecompany's Journey.
"Journey was amazing. It has nothing to do with what I'm doing. But it's not so much about storytelling. It's about emotion. It's about trying something different," he said.
"I think this industry needs more games like Journey because it's a breath of fresh air; this is necessary in any medium. How many first person shooters can we create per year? How many can we play per year? How many of them will be successful? Even from a business point of view, does it make any sense? I'm not sure."
Quantic Dream's Beyond: Twin Souls is expected on PlayStation 3 in 2013.