Playing with light is something that is very important, especially when you want cinematography in your game.
David Cage
Getting the player emotionally involved is the holy grail. We try to make players forget they're playing a game. We want them to live the experience and suspend disbelief.
Game Over is a very frustrating game convention. In short, it means, 'If you were not good enough or did not play the game the way the designer intended you to play, you should play again until you do it right.' What kind of story could a writer tell where the characters could play the same scene ten times until the outcome is right?
Anybody working on storytelling has my respect.
I don't think that photorealism is required to offer emotions. You can have very abstract characters and renderings offering the same type of emotions - look at Pixar movies: they're not photorealistic; they're stylised, and it doesn't prevent emotion from happening.
When I started, I wanted probably to make games that were inspired by films that I liked.
'Indigo Prophecy' already brought a lot of new features to the traditional adventure genre, including the Action system, MultiView, Bending Stories, etc. 'Heavy Rain' will include features like advanced physics and AI, realistic characters and living environments.
When you're a writer, you talk about things that move you, that you feel really deep inside you that's something that moves you, and you hope it'll move people, too.
Games are quite shy at talking about different things. Most are about facing hordes of monsters or saving the world or whatever; few games actually talk about the real world, about real people, about their relationship, their emotions, their feelings.
Working on 'Beyond,' I try to give an explanation to death that's different from the explanation religions have to give. So I made up my own story around all this and how life and death and souls work.
I broke pretty much every rule of classic game design and tried to invent new ones.
We're not going to just duplicate 'Heavy Rain,' because we are passionate about innovation and discovery, so we're trying to discover new ground and see how we can move from 'Heavy Rain' and create something even more immersive.
I don't pretend that 'Heavy Rain' will be a revolution, and I don't know if people will love it or hate it. All I can say is that it is definitely going to be different.
Cinema became what it is today when technology allowed movie directors and actors to develop emotion. You can see into the eyes of the actors and know when they are going to cry.
Life is sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're sad, sometimes you're in love, sometimes you fight, and that's a life.
I approach video games the same way I approach theatre, filmmaking, poetry, or painting. I wish more people would take that point of view. It would help the industry to move on.
I'm inspired by film-makers such as Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Orson Welles.
I've always felt that 'game over' is a state of failure more for the game designer than from the player.
Our goal is to develop our studio as a global, multifranchise company while remaining an independent studio.
We want to satisfy our fans, but we want to surprise them, too. That's our challenge.
The concept of 'Heavy Rain' is to offer real-life situations with real characters. There are no supernatural elements in the story.
'Detroit' started based on a book called 'The Singularity is Near' by Ray Kurzweil, which is about this idea that one day there could be machines that are more intelligent than we are.
I believe that interactive storytelling can be what cinema was in the 20th century: an art that deeply changes its time.
'Heavy Rain' is a cousin of the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books.
Some media used to talk about video games only to say how violent or addictive they could be. With 'Heavy Rain,' they talked about the story of the game and the emotions they felt while playing.
I think it's a mistake to limit ourselves to a certain audience when we could reach everybody.
If 'Heavy Rain' is a huge commercial success, it will show everybody in the industry that the world is sick of first-person shooters, that people are ready for an adult gaming experience. If we fail, it will say, 'Please keep making the same old stuff.'
I'm not a frustrated movie director: I'm not making games because I can't make movies.
'Heavy Rain' was really close to a dark thriller, like 'Se7en.' 'Beyond' is different in terms of tone.
Most games end up with quite caricature scripts because they are just here to serve the game-play mechanics but not to trigger any emotional response.
Every time you try to create an experience with a character who doesn't use a gun, doesn't drive a car, doesn't jump off platforms, doesn't solve puzzles, you are taking a risk.
As a storyteller, I've always been fascinated with the idea of recreating this notion of choices in fiction. My dream was to put the audience in the shoes of the main protagonists, let them make their own decisions, and by doing so, let them tell their own stories.
We called 'Heavy Rain' an interactive drama, for whatever that's worth.
With 'Heavy Rain,' we're creating something that changes many traditional game paradigms.
'Fahrenheit' was a very difficult product to sell to publishers initially because no-one believed in storytelling or emotion.
Technology must remain a tool. It's a great tool, but technology is the pen to write the book. It's not the book. If you have a great pen, maybe you'll write faster or it will look better, but at the end, you have something to say, or you don't.
If you ask me what genre 'Beyond' is, it's really difficult for me to answer.
Quantic Dream is a very special company in the sense that we do a lot of things that wouldn't make any sense in any other company.
Stop making the same games about shooting something and driving; try something else. There is a market for that.
I think the difference between 'Heavy Rain' and 'Beyond' is that 'Heavy Rain' still had a lot of references to films. Especially in the mood, and it was a dark thriller... where, in 'Beyond,' we tried to create something truly original and doesn't refer to anything.
When you try to create something different, there is always a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism, and I think this is fair.
With 'Detroit,' we realized that we wanted to create an experience that could be meaningful.
Choices are a very important part of our lives.
We, as individuals, are defined by the choices we make. Some of our decisions can have very significant consequences and totally change the courses of our lives.
The right way to enjoy 'Heavy Rain' is really to make one thing because it's going to be your story. It's going to be unique to you. It's really the story you decided to write.
'Heavy Rain' was my baby, my reason to live, and my oxygen for four years. And seeing the successful release of the game has been the most extraordinary reward I could have dreamt of, after years of working in the dark.
Photography was inspired by painting, cinema by theatre and photography, I don't believe that any new art form was ever created from scratch.
The first movies were made by technicians building their own cameras. Movies became an art when technicians worked on the technique and artists took care of the content.
When you believe games can only be toys for kids and that you are successful at doing this, why would you look further and take risks exploring new directions?
Innovation is a big risk. It can also be a big reward - but a big punishment if you fail.
