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Heavy Rain Creator: Game Mechanics Are Evil
With the panel entitled "Creating an Emotional Rollercoaster in Heavy Rain," Quantic Dream head David Cage encouraged fellow developers to prioritize storytelling as much as gameplay and also dropped some interesting facts about the game.
Here are some of the highlights from the talk:
- Heavy Rain has sold over 2 million units to date. "The game was a commercial success, which is new to me," Cage joked.
- 72 percent of players made it to the end of Heavy Rain. Cage says the average is only 20 percent and that the reason so many players completed his game is because of the strong story. He also claimed that players tend to keep the game in their library instead of trading it in at a game shop though he didn't provide any stats to back this up.
- Cage says that most games are made for teenagers and challenge developers to make mature, serious games for adults.
- When he pitched Heavy Rain to publishers the fact that it centers around child abduction made it a tough sell.
- "You can't tell a good story if you're just shooting and running," Cage says of most games. A slide during the presentation read "Game Mechanics are Evil!" He explained that he'd like to get rid of traditional game mechanics because they are limiting. If you only have ten buttons to do ten actions that limits your vocabulary, he said. Cage much prefers contextual interfaces that allow characters to do anything, allowing an unlimited vocabulary with which to tell a story.
- Cage brought up the complaints about the orange juice drinking and tooth brushing segments of the game. "I think that's a very stupid comment," he said, explaining that players had to get into the role of Ethan for later dramatic moments to have an impact.
- A gamer told Cage that he turned off the game for two weeks when faced with the decision to kill a man to save his son. Cage says the object of that moment was to give meaning to killing someone in a game as opposed to numbly mowing down thousands of enemies in most games. "I think he ended up killing the guy," Cage recalled.
- Cage is commonly asked if Heavy Rain is still a video game. His answer? "Who cares?" He says he'd rather innovate in the gaming medium than work within the rules of game design that have been in place for decades.
- At the end of the panel, Cage invited actor Pascal Langdale (Ethan Mars) up on stage to say a few words. None got the crowd more excited than when Cage asked him to call for Jason. Langdale happily obliged.
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