'Sequels kill creativity' says David Cage

Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls designer David Cage is no fan of sequels. Speaking to the Official PlayStation Magazine, the Quantic Dream boss said the lack of innovation in the game industry today is a result of gamers getting what they pay for.

“Many people want the same and if that’s what you offer them, they will gladly buy it," Cage said. “The result is very simple. Gamers invest money in publishers having no interest in innovation. [Gamers] encourage [publishers] to keep making the same game every Christmas, and everybody’s happy.”

Cage claimed that gamers must vote with their wallets if they want to break the cycle and help spur publishers to greenlight innovative concepts.

“If you’re interested in innovation and believe that games could be more than shooters, then you realise that sequels kill creativity and innovation,” Cage said, noting Beyond: Two Souls will be different. “We don’t give people what they expect. We want to give them something they want without knowing they want it”.

This is not the first time Cage has made an emphatic claim about a lack of innovation in the industry. Last year, the developer called on the industry to "grow up" and claimed games would die without innovation. Cage has also lamented the ubiquity of first-person shooters that glorify violence, noting he would rather see a shooter in the vein of war movies like Platoon or Apocalypse Now that depicts the difficulty of being at war.