Is David Cage being a tad pretentious?

Hello. I was just reading this on the front page a few moments ago.. Much of which I disagree with (well, pretty much all of it tbh). However, this stood out for me...

"My opinion is that we have nothing in games that gets anywhere near to a good film in terms of narrative or characterization. Games focus on simple themes and target a teenage audience," Cage said. "They could become meaningful. They could have the power to move a larger audience. But it would take new paradigms, a shift to privileging meaning over action and a lot more power given to talented people for that to happen."

It is just me, or is he equating age and simplicity to a lack of quality?

Would people argue family Pixar movies (for example the Toy Story series) that are aimed at primarily children, younger than teenagers, are not meaningful, powerful, moving, full of incredibly high quality narrative an characterization? It would be nice to hear your thoughts on this article.

You can read the full article here btw

Many seem to have a narrow ideal of what makes up a good story and if the story is in the tiny box then it is not a game story no matter. When it comes to stories, video games are the most limited to the type of stories they can tell well. The problem is what story the game can not tell well is the only place they look for good stories. They will praise the dialog for movie like The Dark Knight, and I will call it a mindless action film because they put no though into the action. You can shut down your brain for the slop they call action in that movie, I do find the transformer movies' action to have more though put into them.

Also, It seem that many overestimate what the story telling that video games can do.

He is pretentiousness defined.

He makes bad movies with scene prompts. His opinion on the direction of the gaming industry is useless.

I think he's right in the sense that (at least up to this point ) video games are incapable of telling a moving and inspirational tale without inter-twining the obligatory and gimmicky gameplay element along with it that ends up breaking the immersion.

I'm not really sure if something like that is even possible because of the mandatory interactions involved in the medium.

How do you tell a grand tale and have great gameplay? A story is told to you, so how can that be done while asking you to add your own personal input?

He is definitely a cock. But I really liked Heavy Rain so it's fine with me.

The opposite is true, really. I think he just means his silly games that try to be movies are bad compared to real movies.

And -

Not sure I agree, since I'm not fully sure as to what you mean by this. But to my mind, Halflife in 1998 became renowned for using scripted sequences as a means of storytelling. the gameplay triggering the scripted sequences to enhanced immersion.

The real problem is what he thinks of as a grand story is narrow and does not fit into what a game can tell well. He is trying to judge games' stories with unfair bias. Many seem to judge stories by focusing on the character internal conflict and story theme. You talk to them and it is all about the internal conflicts the character are going through. That is all they talk about. I had a guy say that Nolan's batman was the best because it did the best job showing the internal problem that Bruce Wayne gone through. He throw out the countless mistake the character make just because they were not apart of the internal problem of Bruce Wayne. What does this mean for games? Well, guess what games' stories can not do...internal conflict of characters. One they make it just a movie cut scene or make the internal into external.

What make great game stories are different because the media they are about are different. I was once told that a story can be about a people, place, ideal or events. Games tell the story of the events the best out there. They tell the story of how the heroes fight the monster the best. Sadly that story most do not care about to try to down play.

Now on to immersion. I still do not understand what many seem to use immersion as the magic "I win" button for some. You know how many times I see something thing by saying it breaks immersion as justification for their view. The problem is that immersion is subjective. What breaks immersion for me may not be the same as you. Moral choices and dialog picking is what breaks my immersion. fun and deep game play even if it is not realistic when I get immerse into a game.

That reminds me as well of his PS4 launch event thingy, when he showed the old man. He seemed to make out primitive technology had been holding games back from producing "emotion" while showing off a facial animation demo using movies specifically as an parallel.

But he seemed to be ignoring stuff like Disney cartoons with simple, but beautiful and emotive animation.

And games, like movies, need not be by law, 1 million pixels and anatomically grounded. So, what the **** was he on about?

@wiouds:

Well, there's so many variances in gameplay and story telling, and everybody has different opinions on what's good and so on. I enjoyed Heavy Rain just because it was something different. I didn't think the story was very good though, and the gameplay was pretty pathetic. I enjoyed the story in Beyond: Two Souls but thought the gameplay was lacking, just like in Heavy Rain.

For me, it's just hard to get engrossed in a game's story when I'm put in set pieces that have been done to death already, and doing the same things in games I've done endless times like push blocks around, and run down hallways shooting the enemy.

I just don't see how devs can enhance story telling through gameplay. Not saying it can't be done, I just don't know how they'll do it effectively.

When a game moves me the way certain movies, and especially the way books can, I'll change my tune dramatically.

These days he is pretty much the epitome of pretentious

a Tad Pretentious ?

David Cage is beyond Pretentious ! Still..... The problem with this medium was never characterizations and storylines and what not..... Its the Presentation, the Cutscenes, the inactivity.... i think Quantic Dream has been trying to push that aspect of this medium.

I love quantic dream games and will defend them even when they are heavily flawed but on this? Yeah he is more than pretentious, the best thing he could do for his games is shut up. half the issues his games get are because of the shit that rolls out of his mouth.

@Bigboi500: The main point I was trying to make is it is trying to force game to his view point and getting upset when they do not fit it. As I said before Game tell the story of the challenge the hero face and how he/she deals with it better than any other media. The problem is that type of story many do not care about or not take into account when judging a story. While movies focus on conflict, games focus on problem solving. The problem he has is he want games to focus on conflicts and then he get upset that they do not do it as well as other medias do.

I honestly would rather hear more from machinegames developers. At least they know how to make a fun game and still tell their story.

He defines the word

Cage isn't being pretentious he is just french but he is speaking the truth and there is a correlation between age and simplicity, does that mean you can't find kids who can read Citizen Kane, Two cities, Shakespeare of course not, but a majority don't want that and therefore the game developers target the majority and stay simple.

Cage himself isn't the best though to speak it even though i can agree with him, his stories are all over the place and heavy Rain and Beyond lacks under not having a editor or a 2nd opinion that could kick Cage when he goes of course.

And in regards to movies, kids movies are not powerful, meaningful or moving, it just plays on the simple emotions love, hate, loss etc. which isn't very deep.

Yea, nope.

agree

I see what he is saying here . the problem with they way he wants games to be is , that they are not games !

first we have to see what is a "Game" .

I would call it a challenge which if you beat it you get a reward , and you go forward in the story . but David's " games" really lack in gameplay . there is no challenge !

when I "played" Beyond two souls and Heavy rain , I felt that I'm watching a long interactive movie . it is a great experience , its artistic , its beautiful and compelling .

but its just ... not a game .

if Beyond two souls had a little bit of good combat system and challenging gameplay I would call it a masterpiece .

A bit ironic for him to say this considering the fact that his "games" suck.

His words not mine

"anywhere near to a good film in terms of narrative or characterization"

^this also applies to his "games"

So by his logic, Transformers 3: Dark Side Of The Moon has better narrative and characterization than Portal 2?

@kingcrimson24

I get that That you were just giving a quick explanation about what a video game is.... But "Reward" isn't the Right Word..... I'd say you get "Feedback" or an "Effect"

The concept of gaming as something you do because you get rewarded/punished for is kinda whats wrong with the industry today, If you remember the violent video game contreversies, you'l notice how non-gamers think we kill prostitutes in GTA for points or Cash..... They think we are governed by the notion that we can be manipulated into doing something just by attaching a prize for doing it (We can, but thats not why we kill hookers), regardless of whether the game is fun or not. The thing that bothers me now is that gamers also think like this now. They think the difference between a chore and fun is determined by what reward you get for doing something instead of what it is excactly that you're doing. So to make a long story short.... We use to kill hookers for fun..... Now we do it for the reward.... The Money ! :(

Gone are the days when gameplay is its own reward ! Welcome the new world.... Were we need to be rewarded for having fun. And if I had to summarize all that into one word then.....: Skyrim.

He's right in that game narratives explore a very narrow spectrum...most games are violence driven narratives.

But he's wrong in his conclusion about how to fix it. It's not a talent issue - it's a control issue. Violence is simply easier to code and easier to map to a controller than the kind of subtle, constantly changing, context sensitive interactions you need to explore other kinds of human relationships. And Cage should know this because the biggest complaints about his games all revolve around the lack of player agency - even he can't figure out how to code gameplay for these kinds of interactions. He's not really considering the problem of mapping a love story to a dual shock.

Right now devs are confronted with a choice: simple story with complex gameplay or complex story with simple gameplay. The former tends to sell better, so that's why the narrative landscape is what it is in gaming. Changing it to the point where we can get a complex story with complex gameplay is going to take a revolution in how we control our games. But I don't want to give the impression that simple stories are bad, because they're not. But there are some kinds of stories we just can't tell effectively in gaming right now and that is purely because of the state of game controllers and not because of any deficiency in the work force.

But let's never compare to movies. At least game developers write their own stories, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of movies that come out these days, which are based on books, comics, games, older movies and sometimes even board games and theme park rides, but rarely ever original.

The Most important thing to remember is that David Cage and Quantic Dream don't Make Games.... nope not a single one.... Except maybe Omikron.

They make interactive movies, which is exactly what Cage has been saying for years, if only people had ears to listen.

Uh huh. We might be able to accept what he said with some value if he hasn't been trying to (and failing) make games that equate to quality movies. So the guy that wants us to buy his games is telling us that he sucks at what he's trying to do. Wonderful.

Can it ever be argued that David Cage is not being pretentious? The guy likes to act like he's making cutting edge drama. If any of his games were films they would be universally panned for being so corny and hamfisted.

How was that quote pretentious? The quote you gave just stated his thoughts on how the industry should progress. There aren't many games that have a good narrative.

Disagree friend. While video games may not specifically lift text, they do outright ripoff movies, books and comics. Halflife 2 for example, while the story itself is not explicitly copy pasted from HG Wells, it is a hodgepodge of War Of The Worlds and 1984. Did that make it a bad game? No, it's considered one of the greatest games ever made.

Likewise with movies, It's not all bad. Some of the best movies made have outright ripped off other movies. Sergio Leone Western Trilogy began by outright ripping off (without permission of credit) Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Without that, we probably wouldn't have movies like The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, or Once Upon A Time In The West.

The question is written directly under the quote.

@uninspiredcup:

@Ish_basic said:

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But let's never compare to movies. At least game developers write their own stories, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of movies that come out these days, which are based on books, comics, games, older movies and sometimes even board games and theme park rides, but rarely ever original.

Disagree friend. While video games may not specifically lift text, they do outright ripoff movies, books and comics. Halflife 2 for example, while the story itself is not explicitly copy pasted from HG Wells, it is a hodgepodge of War Of The Worlds and 1984. Did that make it a bad game? No, it's considered one of the greatest games ever made.

Likewise with movies, It's not all bad. Some of the best movies made have outright ripped off other movies. Sergio Leone Western Trilogy began by outright ripping off (without permission of credit) Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo. Without that, we probably wouldn't have movies like The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, or Once Upon A Time In The West.

I would differentiate between something that draws inspiration from another source and something that is simply a reiteration. No art operates in a vacuum...it's like the saying usually attributed to Einstein - creativity is hiding your sources well. If the test of originality is having been inspired by no other work, than you'd pretty much have to go back to cave paintings to find anything original.

My comment is strictly speaking to the way that the majority of movies coming out are simply franchising. That is, they're taking a brand that has been established elsewhere and doing a movie version of it. They're not creating something new...they're just duplicating something we already have. Surely you can see the difference between something like HL2 and the Hobbit movies.